China, Nuclear Weapons, and Arms Control: a Preliminary Assessment

Parameters, Spring, 2002 by Carmel Davis

By Robert A. Manning Ronald Montaperto, and Brad Roberts. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2000. 106 pages. $10.00 (paper).

As co-chairs of a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, National Defense University, and the Institute for Defense Analysis bringing together academics and government experts, the authors have written a short book aimed at the policy community. The authors contend that China's choices about nuclear weapons may be as important to the United States as Russia's over the next decade because China views itself as a rising power and is sensitive to its perceptions that the United States is attempting to contain it. China is pursuing a strategy of modernizing its forces and may be increasing their size. Chinese doctrine, however, is in flux, and China's interest in arms control is unclear. The authors also argue that these issues are poorly understood in the United States because current expertise on nuclear weapons issues is based on our experience with Russia, while most US experts on China are unfamiliar with nuclear weapons. Additionally, our current experience with nuclear weapons is drawn from the bipolar US-Soviet relationship; as US, Russian, and Chinese arsenals converge, we will be entering the unknown territory of a tripolar relationship. Finally, US national missile defense (NMD) initiatives are a complicating factor.

This is a preliminary assessment, and the authors point to several issues without fully developing them. First, they are generally troubled by Chinese modernization of its ICBM force. However, as they observe, force modernization may be benign. From an American perspective, Chinese forces today are sufficient for minimal deterrence. This is primarily because the United States is easily deterred: We do not want to lose Los Angeles, and we are unlikely to rely on NMD. The United States views itself as a status quo power, and nuclear weapons work well for maintaining the status quo and poorly for changing it. However, the Chinese leadership may have little confidence in China's forces because they lack a secure second-strike capability and quite possibly possess only a limited ability to manage any forces that survive a conventional or nuclear attack. Given these limitations, they may have even less confidence in their capability for intrawar deterrence and still less if the United States builds an NMD system. China's modest modernization for deterrence, particularly of intercontinental forces, may be a solution to Chinese perceptions of a problem rather than something requiring an American response.

Rather than the capability on which the authors focus, what may really be the problem is how China might use it. The ongoing debate about doctrine, especially with regard to the role of nuclear weapons, is a second underdeveloped theme. China developed nuclear weapons for reasons of deterrence and prestige after (perhaps) being subjected to US threats over Korea and the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s. China apparently had little nuclear doctrine until the late 1980s. The doctrine that emerged in the mid-1990s was a concept of limited deterrence that sought countervailing capabilities across the spectrum of possible nuclear conflict, particularly at a regional level, and pre-war and intrawar deterrence. Importantly, a theme running through this book is that the Chinese intend their force modernization both to deter US attempts at nuclear coercion and to coerce others, especially Taiwan. This is profoundly different from American views that nuclear weapons are primarily useful for deterrence.

Unfortunately, this issue is obscured by the authors because they do not sufficiently distinguish their voices from the Chinese in their text. Do the authors believe that nuclear weapons can be used to coerce, or is it only some Chinese? Which Chinese? Why might Taiwan be coerced, and why has deterrence failed? How might Chinese deterrence of the United States and coercion of Taiwan interact with US deterrence of China? These issues are not directly addressed, although some believe they may solve themselves: China may discover that attempts at coercion fail, and China and the United States both may be restrained by mutual deterrence. Indeed, China may find that it, too, is easily deterred inasmuch as nuclear war might be a disaster for the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party.

A third underdeveloped theme linking forces and doctrine is that of command and control. The authors may be forgiven here because of the difficulty attending this particular issue, but it is critical to understanding the subject. A fourth underdeveloped theme is how others might respond to Chinese modernization and doctrine. There is a real probability that a modernizing force with a doctrine possessing a coercive element may frighten Japan, Korea, Russia, and others, thereby undermining the Chinese aspirations in the region.

Finally, there is a gap between how the authors present the problems they see and their earnest recommendations. These authors at times treat those involved in the US and Chinese policy processes as rational unitary actors, when both are comprised of multiple competing parties that solve problems rather than carefully crafting policies. That said, the authors' advice to work on mutual understanding rather than pursuing a broader agenda is probably reasonable.