Two recent high-profile analyses in the United States of U.S. nuclear planning have triggered a round of commentary and concern in the Chinese media. The first U.S. review was contained in testimony on March 1, 2006, by Ambassador Linton Brooks, head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), on the need to both maintain and strengthen the U.S. nuclear arsenal and, specifically, to develop a new generation of reliable nuclear warheads to replace those currently in the U.S. stockpile. [1] The second review is contained in an article by two university professors, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, entitled, “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy,” which appeared in the March/April 2006 issue of the influential U.S. journal Foreign Affairs. [2] Together, the analyses have drawn renewed Chinese media attention to U.S. nuclear strategy and nuclear weapons development plans, and to the implications of these developments for Chinese security.

A March 6, 2006, article authored by Editor Ma Jun, in Shanghai’s popular online Dongfangwang’s (“Eastday’s”) section on military affairs, for example, laments the fact that the United States, under the Bush Administration, has all but given up on nuclear disarmament. Ma states that he is deeply concerned over the specter of a renewed international nuclear arms race, as other countries react to the perceived U.S. attempt to achieve absolute nuclear dominance. [3]

The Chinese media is focusing on three aspects of nuclear developments in the United States. The first revolves around the overall strategic orientation of U.S. nuclear forces. An unsigned commentary also published in Dongfangwang’s military affairs section on March 9, 2006, for example, borrows heavily from Lieber and Press. It argues that the end of the Cold War has resulted in a unique environment in which the United States is gradually achieving unchallenged nuclear dominance, as the result of declining Russian nuclear arsenals and still-limited Chinese nuclear capabilities. In other words, the Chinese commentary states, MAD (mutually assured destruction) is coming to an end and an era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun. [4] The alarming consequence of this new-found U.S. nuclear primacy, the Chinese commentator writes, is that Washington may be emboldened to pursue policies of unilateralism and preemptive attack more aggressively than in the past.

Second, Chinese analysts have expressed considerable concern about perceived U.S. efforts to develop new types of nuclear weapons. An unsigned commentary on March 20, 2006, in the International Herald Leader, a paper published three times a week in Beijing by the Chinese Xinghua News Agency, argues that the United States has already achieved unchallenged conventional weapons dominance and nuclear primacy, but is still pursuing research and development programs that will eventually make nuclear weapons more readily usable and capable of penetrating hardened underground facilities. U.S. efforts to develop new-generation, low-yield nuclear warheads, as has been proposed by the Bush Administration in its “Advanced Concept Initiative,” are driven, the commentary notes, by the need to undertake surgical strikes against small targets using limited destructive power to avoid widespread damage from blast and radioactive fallout. In this sense, the commentary continues, the Bush Administration is seen as changing the concept of nuclear weapons as weapons of last resort and largely for deterrence purposes, as it contemplates their actual use on the same terms as conventional weapons—fighter aircraft, tanks, and warships. This, the article concludes, would lower the nuclear threshold, with serious consequences. [5] (Editor’s note: Given that Congress has declined to authorize funds for work under the proposed Advanced Concepts Initiative, the commentator’s mention of the program refers to an earlier proposal by the Bush Administration, not to an on-going activity.)

Third, Chinese media is also paying attention to the Bush Administration’s nuclear weapons replacement program. (Editor’s note: This is a reference to the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which would develop a new warhead for the U.S. stockpile of a simplified design that could provide confidence in the reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent over an extended period, without the need for nuclear testing.) They observe that this program, when fully operational, plans to produce 125 new nuclear warheads annually up to the year 2022 to maintain a sizable U.S. nuclear arsenal that is reliable, safe, and available for use. These new nuclear warheads would also be easier to maintain and have a longer service lifetime than existing systems. [6] At present, the three U.S. national nuclear weapons laboratories have sought to ensure the reliability of U.S. nuclear arms by conducing computer-simulated nuclear tests to assess the reliability and safety of existing nuclear warheads, Chinese analysts note. The program to design a new, more reliable warhead is meant to reduce the costs of maintaining the current nuclear arsenal, in which a growing number of nuclear warheads are past their expected service lives and hence of increasingly questionable reliability. But the most important reason for this initiative, in the eyes of Chinese analysts, is to advance the ability of the United States to implement its strategy of preemption, especially through the use of low-yield, low-radiation nuclear weapons for precision attacks. Chinese analysts argue that the U.S. attempt to change the nuclear balance of power in this way could lead to renewed nuclear arms races between nuclear weapons states, induce threshold states to openly pursue nuclear weapon capabilities, and fundamentally undermine global nuclear nonproliferation efforts. [7]

Jing-Dong Yuan, Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies