Understanding China’s Perceptions and Strategy Towards Nuclear Weapons
ASIA SOCIETY
APLN member Rakesh Sood co-wrote a paper with Lyle J. Morris and examined Chinese writings and analyses regarding past crises between nuclear weapons states to understand what lessons Beijing took from them and how those lessons inform its thinking in future crises.
Key Findings
- Nuclear deterrence mattered little in China’s use of force calculus. China assesses that the historical role of nuclear weapons, for the most part, played a minor factor in its calculus to use force and, similarly, in other countries’ decisions to use force.
- Nuclear coercion against China was ineffective after the onset of hostilities. In conflicts involving China, Chinese scholars are fairly uniform in their assessment that after the initial use of force in a conflict, nuclear coercion, or “saber-rattling,” by the adversary was generally not effective in managing escalation.
- Strategic balance calculus was influential in the outcome of certain conflicts. Chinese assessments of the Cuban Missile Crisis stand out for their realpolitik flavor, suggesting that the strategic balance between two adversaries before and during a military conflict matters.
- Fears of nuclear “blackmail” remain a powerful narrative in modern Chinese thinking. Preventing the nuclear “blackmail” of China closely followed the deterrence of nuclear aggression as a strategic objective, in large part because Beijing felt itself victimized by U.S. and Soviet nuclear threats at various moments during the early Cold War when it did not have nuclear weapons.
- Retaining a “minimum means of reprisal” matters to deter adversary behavior. After 1964, Chinese scholars assessed that a minimum nuclear deterrent, by its very presence and irrespective of specific vulnerabilities, serves to induce caution on the part of stronger rivals like the United States and the Soviet Union even during serious crises.
- China’s lack of experience in nuclear escalation may lead to miscalculation. Most Chinese historians conclude that China successfully emerged from crises having achieved its limited war aims while controlling escalation in the nuclear domain. However, such confidence may be misplaced and may fail to account for the myriad factors influencing the decision of foreign actors not to retaliate with nuclear weapons.
- The potential to misread nuclear signals remains worrisome. Several assessments by Chinese scholars who expressed skepticism that Chinese leaders received the intended nuclear signaling by the United States raise questions over a “perception gap” within China’s strategic bureaucracy.
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