China and America Are Courting Nuclear Catastrophe

Over the past decade, China has been steadily reshaping the global nuclear order. According to U.S. government assessments, Beijing has almost tripled its stockpile of nuclear warheads since 2019. It has rapidly increased its nuclear capabilities on land, in the air, and at sea. It has significantly expanded its infrastructure for the research, development, and assembly of nuclear warheads. And Beijing shows no intention of slowing down. In mid-March, the country announced that it would “strengthen and enlarge” its strategic deterrence capabilities, reaffirming its commitment to qualitatively and quantitatively enhance its nuclear arsenal.

American officials have certainly taken notice. They worry that the bipolar nuclear world—where almost all the globe’s warheads are controlled by either Moscow or Washington—is being replaced by a tripolar one. In response, they are trying to strengthen Washington’s own nuclear stockpile while attempting to negotiate with Beijing. In February, for example, the United States chose not to renew the New START treaty, a nuclear arms reduction agreement between Russia and the United States, because it did not want to be bound by restrictions that excluded China. But despite increasing U.S. pressure, China has consistently refused to conduct nuclear arms control negotiations. It seems to have no interest in constraining its capabilities.

There is a reason why Beijing does not want to haggle over its nuclear forces. The Chinese government believes that, rather than generating risk, a stronger nuclear deterrent will actually stabilize relations with the United States by forcing American officials to treat Beijing as a peer and avoid challenging its core interests. The United States’ recent behavior appears to support that approach. Particularly since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to office, Washington has been more cautious in handling core Chinese interests, such as Taiwan, and has signaled greater interest in forging a stable bilateral relationship through business deals. Beijing considers this proof of concept and thus sees little reason to change course.

But in reality, China’s repeated rejection of substantive arms control negotiations, meaningful nuclear transparency, and basic confidence-building measures largely undermines stability, even by Beijing’s standards. Such refusals lead to U.S. disillusion with cooperative security solutions and fuel its own expansion of nuclear and missile defense capabilities. China’s growing military cooperation with Russia, including on nuclear issues, has also heightened unease in Europe, where many leaders believe that China is enabling Russian aggression. France and the United Kingdom are rebuilding their nuclear arsenals in response, further diminishing the prospects for multilateral arms control. The result is a more anarchic international landscape that reinforces Beijing’s belief that it needs to continue the buildup.

Escaping this security spiral will not be simple. But there are paths to meaningful limits. China and the United States are both reacting to concerns that the other side will use nuclear weapons first. Neither country actually relies on nuclear first-use strategies, but when it comes to nuclear brinkmanship, perceptions matter just as much as reality, perhaps more. To achieve nuclear stability, both Beijing and Washington must recognize that they are misreading each other. China’s suggestion that the United States adopt or negotiate a no-first-use policy similar to its own would still not yield an agreement credible enough to bridge this perception gap. But if Beijing and Washington can increase transparency at more concrete levels—on short-range nuclear capabilities, for instance, which are the most relevant to a regional conflict and most likely to drive first-use fears—then they can defuse the most acute risks in an intensifying nuclear competition.

SHOOTS AND LADDERS

In a sense, China’s nuclear weapons program is a reaction to its threat perceptions. Chief among them is a fear that Washington is more powerful, and will thus be emboldened to exploit Beijing’s internal vulnerabilities. It is not a coincidence that China made its clearest commitment to accelerating its nuclear expansion in early 2021, after the first Trump administration attacked its political system during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbating concerns about regime security. This year’s U.S. interventions in Venezuela and Iran have reminded Beijing that Washington is still in the business of toppling authoritarian governments, despite its claims to the contrary. And in the eyes of many Chinese strategists, U.S. intervention hinges on an adversary’s relative military weakness. As a result, many in Beijing see a relentless buildup of military power as critical to national security.

International public opinion could also influence Beijing’s nuclear decision-making. History suggests that Beijing is more responsive to collective international pressure and global norms than to Washington’s demands alone, given that it seeks to cultivate an image as a responsible nuclear power. It has been more willing, for example, to entertain arms control proposals that involve all of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. But now, there is significantly less risk of international blowback. Every permanent member of the Security Council is ramping up its nuclear program. And as Washington abandons elements of the rules-based order and uses coercion to advance its interests, other countries are becoming receptive to Beijing’s narrative that the United States, not China, poses the greater threat to global stability. If more small and middle powers come to view China’s expanding military strength as a useful counterweight to U.S. hegemony, they may be less inclined to tell China to check its nuclear ambitions.

The domestic environment in China is also unlikely to check Beijing’s buildup, largely because there is less room for anyone to push back against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s initiatives. The Rocket Force, which is responsible for operating the majority of China’s nuclear arsenal, has been a primary target of Xi’s recent purges of senior military leaders. Generals are increasingly fearful of perceived disloyalty, so they are less and less willing to support politically risky or unpopular initiatives, such as arms control negotiations.

As the People’s Liberation Army seeks to translate the Chinese leadership’s political mandate for nuclear expansion into operational terms, it must decide whether China will quietly move away from its longtime policy to not use nuclear weapons first. It is unlikely to do so. Contrary to common U.S. perceptions, Beijing’s strategists believe that China lacks the capacity to credibly adopt a nuclear first-use posture and need not do so. Beijing believes that its conventional capabilities—warships, artillery, and nonnuclear missiles, for instance—are beginning to outpace Washington’s, at least in East Asia. This allows China’s military strategy for a major hot conflict with the United States to rest on superior conventional power while relying on its nuclear arsenal to deter U.S. nuclear escalation. Beijing, however, expects the United States to remain the superior nuclear power in both sophistication and size despite China’s buildup. This perception further discourages China from initiating nuclear escalation, because doing so would play to its adversary’s advantages.

It is time for Beijing to recognize that its campaign against nuclear first use is not credible.

But Beijing is worried that Washington may not actually be dissuaded. In fact, China’s analysts fret that the United States might resort to nuclear escalation in the event of war precisely because its conventional power is weakening. This concern has been reinforced by growing acknowledgment among U.S. policymakers—including the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby—that the United States may need to rely more on its nuclear arsenal to compensate for declining conventional resources. U.S. officials, for their part, are afraid China will abandon its no first-use policy in the midst of conflict, even if its commitment is currently genuine. The most ironclad of pledges can become unreliable in major crises, and American officials are much less sanguine than Chinese experts about the ability of the PLA to use its conventional capabilities to successfully execute a large-scale invasion of Taiwan. Some American analysts also suspect—albeit without clear evidence—that Beijing believes it is gaining an edge in tactical nuclear capabilities and would seek to exploit that advantage through nuclear first-use.

By keeping its nuclear planning opaque, China has only heightened U.S. anxieties. Beijing is building a large and growing number of weapons which can carry either conventional or nuclear payloads —the DF-26 ballistic missile, for instance—and have a range covering most of the Asia-Pacific. It has not revealed, even obliquely, how many of these systems are assigned nuclear roles. As a result, U.S. experts often assume that China designates most of such missiles as nuclear ones, generating expansive assessments of China’s regional nuclear capacity and readiness. This in turn reinforces concerns about China’s using nuclear weapons first in a regional conflict. American officials fear it might find ways to do so that are technically exempt from its prohibition. Beijing could conduct a wartime nuclear test, send a demonstration shot over the ocean, or even carry out a high-altitude nuclear detonation designed to disable military hardware without casualties and claim that the action did not constitute first use.

But despite these concerns, Washington still has strong incentives not to use nuclear weapons first, even in the face of Chinese threats. For starters, nuclear first use is not necessary for defending the American homeland. The United States does not face any credible existential threat from its adversaries, China included. Nuclear first use, which entails a deliberate and highly risky escalation, is also not a sustainable or credible substitute for Washington’s weakened conventional military power when it comes to defending allies and partners in other parts of the world. Washington has already shown a reduced appetite for risking a conventional war with China over Taiwan and the South China Sea, which U.S. officials increasingly view as economically important but not strategically essential. Using nuclear weapons first in such a scenario would face even greater political constraints amid a declining U.S. willingness to incur risk for others.

Washington thus has little reason to risk pushing Beijing toward an even more expansive and sophisticated nuclear buildup. China has already improved its precision, short-range nuclear forces, giving it options for flexible responses in a limited regional nuclear conflict. But if the PLA concludes that Washington has gained meaningful advantages from pursuing dominance at higher levels of nuclear exchange, it might push to develop a larger, more diverse nuclear arsenal in order to match U.S. warfighting capabilities at every nuclear step—what political scientists call escalation management. A wiser course for Washington would be to steer Beijing away from a nuclear race to the bottom by focusing competition below the nuclear threshold.

DEALING AGAINST DESTRUCTION

It is time for Beijing to recognize that its campaign against nuclear first use is not credible, thanks, in part, to its nuclear program’s expansion. A larger Chinese arsenal hardens threat perceptions in Washington, producing aggressive U.S. countermeasures that destabilize bilateral relations and risk a nuclear arms race. But by using its policy statements to emphasize preventing any nuclear use rather than managing escalation after it begins, Washington could open the door for both sides to explore reciprocal measures of restraint. Beijing could, in turn, increase transparency around its nuclear forces that are capable of regional strikes, which would reduce American anxieties about Chinese first-use.

The upcoming meetings between Trump and Xi are an opportunity for the two sides to tackle these tensions. Xi might signal a willingness to resume broad security dialogues with Washington as part of his effort to stabilize bilateral relations with the United States. Trump, in response, should propose discussions on what a credible commitment to preventing nuclear first use would require. The goal should not be to negotiate an immediate, near-term agreement against nuclear first use, but rather to begin by clarifying what concrete reassurances—on force structure and deployment posture—each side considers necessary to make both its own commitment and the other’s credible. Framing the discussion around the prevention of nuclear war offers the best chance of engaging Xi—and, by extension, the Chinese bureaucracy—in a substantive nuclear dialogue. Such exchanges would also reveal just how seriously Beijing takes its own pledge against first use and how committed it is to avoiding nuclear conflict. Should Beijing prove open to moving forward, Washington could propose more concrete measures, including a U.S. limit on nuclear deployment in the Asia-Pacific in exchange for constraints on China’s short-range systems. Specifically, Washington might link future decisions on the necessity, scope, or configuration of its forward-deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Asia to similar limits on China’s comparable assets.

If China and the United States succeed in constraining their nuclear competition, they will break a long-standing pattern. Since the nuclear age began, when one nuclear power’s conventional forces are weaker than its rival’s, it tends to compensate by leaning more heavily on its nuclear arsenal. The United States, for example, relied more heavily on nuclear threats to deter a conventionally stronger Soviet Union in Europe during the Cold War, just as Russia has increased its reliance on its nuclear arsenal to offset NATO’s conventional advantages in recent decades. But now, Washington has a chance to prove that it can protect its interests without resorting to greater nuclear threats. Doing so would not only elevate U.S. standing within the international nonproliferation community but would also strengthen deterrence vis-à-vis Beijing. China has staked its global nuclear reputation on its no-first-use policy, maintaining this pledge even during periods when its conventional military power was weaker than that of its primary rivals. It would face domestic questioning and strong international backlash were it to abandon this long-standing policy, even if the United States succeeds in restoring its own conventional advantages. By clearly prioritizing its conventional military deterrence and raising the bar for nuclear war, the United States can make the political cost of resorting to nuclear threats particularly significant for China, and thus decrease the risk that Beijing will issue them.

The United States’ nuclear buildup is of dubious value, and a close reading of Chinese views suggests Washington’s existing nuclear capabilities remain more than sufficient to deter China. Further U.S. nuclear expansion would risk diverting resources that U.S. officials could spend on developing more critical conventional weapons and munitions. It is thus very much in the United States’ interest to clearly signal that preventing first-use is its priority and to find common ground with China on that objective. Trump’s recent statement that “a nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used against anybody” underscores this point. Neither country wants nuclear war, so the two sides should make careful choices to establish limits on their arsenals and operational policies. It is in their strategic interest, and it is a responsibility they bear for the rest of the world.

Loading…