The Revival of Nuclear Competition - Specialized Research AI at MIT

The Revival of Nuclear Competition
in an Altered Geopolitical Context:
A Chinese Perspective

Li Bin

The U.S. government considers “power competition” to be the nature of the rela-
tions among big powers, and that it will have an impact on the evolving nuclear
order in the near future. When big powers worry about power challenges from their
rivals, they may use the influence of nuclear weapons to defend their own power and
therefore intensify the danger of nuclear confrontation. We need to manage the nu-
clear relations among nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-armed states to avoid the
risk of nuclear escalation. The fact is that big powers including the United States
have neither the interest nor the capability to expand their power, and understand-
ing this might cause big powers to lose their interest in power competition. If we
promote dialogue among nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-armed states on their
strategic objectives, it is possible to reduce the power competition that results from
misperceptions and overreactions. Some other factors, for example, non- nuclear
technologies and multinuclear players, could complicate the future nuclear order.
We therefore need to manage these factors as well and develop international cooper-
ation to mitigate nuclear competition.

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A central element of the Cold War was the nuclear arms race between the

United States and the Soviet Union, both superpowers seeking nuclear
quantitative superiority and the ability to offer nuclear umbrellas to their
allies, vying for leading influence in the world. Among states and observers to-
day, there is a growing concern that nuclear competition will once again shape the
global order.

In its 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS), the United States accused Rus-
sia and China of challenging American power, influence, and interests and of ex-
panding their own influence. According to this report, “great power competition
returned. China and Russia began to reassert their influence regionally and global-
ly.”1 The position of the United States was that China and Russia were expanding
their power (and influence) and the United States had to respond.

To understand the future of nuclear competition, this essay considers the evo-
lution of the pattern of power in the world since the end of the Cold War. If the
United States, Russia, and China plan to expand their power as indicated in the
NSS, nuclear weapons and other strategic capabilities would become tools for
power expansion and a Cold War–type nuclear arms race would return.

Even if the United States, Russia, and China do not plan to expand their pow-
er, misperceptions could still cause a power competition: worrying or assum-
ing the others are seeking to expand their power and reacting accordingly. In this
case, nuclear-armed states may have new nuclear competition, but it would not
be directly associated with power expansion. The patterns of nuclear competition
would be qualitatively more complicated while quantitatively less intensive than
the Cold War nuclear arms race.

T he end of the Cold War three decades ago brought enormous and immedi-

ate changes to the world, including shifts in the global conventional mil-
itary force structure and the geopolitical landscape. The changes came so
unpredictably, the international community spent years absorbing the end of the
war’s long-term effects, some of which extend into today: for instance, a struggle
between a unipolar U.S. dominance on general political and economic issues and
bipolar nuclear arrangements between the United States and Russia.

In this period, the global power distribution experienced significant changes,
including: 1) Russia’s dramatic drop in military resources; 2) the United States’
emergence as the only superpower; and 3) the growth of the number of nuclear-
armed countries. Still more elements of the power distribution are changing now
or may change in the coming decade. These changes necessitate different ap-
proaches than before or during the Cold War.

First and most important, Russia’s dramatic loss of its military resources at the
end of the Cold War caused significant declination of Russia’s military capabil-
ity, forcing them to withdraw most of their military deployments from Eastern
Europe and other parts of the world. Many of Russia’s former allies left or even
became its rivals. Most of Russia’s international influence was lost. Its nuclear
force, however, fared differently than its conventional force. In the last three de-
cades, Russia has labored to keep at least a symbolic nuclear parity with the Unit-
ed States. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) signed by the United
States and Russia in 1991 set limits on the comparable numbers of operationally
deployed nuclear warheads in the two countries.2 But Russia does not have the re-
sources to compete against the United States in other nuclear aspects, for exam-
ple, keeping a backup strategic nuclear arsenal.

Second, the end of the Cold War left the United States as the only superpow-
er in the world. The U.S. military machine had been built mostly to counter So-
viet military capability; after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United

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149 (2) Spring 2020Li Bin

States suddenly gained a huge military surplus over all other countries. As a con-
sequence, the United States began its three-decade expansion of power.

Some of the expansion was conducted through peaceful military means, for
example, absorbing former Soviet allies into the North Atlantic Treaty Organi-
zation (NATO). The U.S. power expansion in this way has been quite successful
and sustainable. The United States also attempted to use war as a way to expand
its power, for example, in the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, but most of
these efforts failed. The major resistance to U.S. power expansion by war, as not-
ed in the 2017 NSS, came from the social instabilities of targeted countries, rath-
er than a counterbalance by other big powers, with the exception of Syria. There
is no evidence that China ever supported any proxy war against the United States
during this time.3 The United States has spent trillions of dollars prosecuting
those wars, with civilian casualty estimates in the hundreds of thousands, but has
little to show for it in terms of expansion of power.

Third, three more countries, namely, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, have
publicly announced their nuclear weapon capabilities by detonating nuclear de-
vices in tests, adding new nuclear relationships and concerns to the world.

M ore recently, and continuing into today, three other major develop-

ments have cast influence over behaviors in and perceptions of glob-
al power structures. The first is the significant growth of political and
economic costs of power expansion. With more clearly defined national identi-
ties and political structures, many societies would not want to become long-term
allies of any big power or join its spheres of economic or military influence. And
as the United States has shown, it is not so simple to prop up and sustain friendly
governments, even after you have invaded and militarily defeated its predecessor.
The growing costs are changing the attitudes of big players toward the ex-
pansion of their power. Even if some national decision-makers have ambitions
of power expansion, the huge costs should eventually discourage and constrain
them from doing so. The consequence is that big powers are losing interest in ex-
panding their influence.

The second changing element is that the United States now has adopted a pol-
icy on power competition with two faces. One is that the U.S. government defines
its relations with China and Russia as a power competition, meaning that these
countries try to undermine the United States’ influence, which prompts the Unit-
ed States to respond. The United States has issued various documents planning
for power competition; nuclear weapons and other strategic military capabili-
ties are considered tools of power competition; and power competition has once
again become a major paradigm in security studies in the United States. The sec-
ond face of the U.S. policy is that the United States has become much more reluc-
tant to pay the costs of expanding its sphere of influence: it is withdrawing from

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Revival of Nuclear Competition: A Chinese Perspective

some important nuclear arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation insti-
tutions; it has been considering withdrawing from some military deployments
abroad; and it threatens its allies with the removal of military protections if they
do not pay higher prices for them. This double-faced policy shows that the United
States is losing interest in expanding its power, but is also allergic to any sign that
other countries may actively challenge the U.S. hegemonic position.

The two faces of U.S. policy on power competition may lead to two different
paths. If the United States, Russia, and China each believe the others are challeng-
ing their power and thus engage in a power competition, the world situation in the
coming decade would become more confrontational and dangerous and the role
of nuclear weapons may grow. If they come to understand that power expansion
is not a major problem among them, the shadow and the paradigm of power com-
petition would recede from the center of big-power relations. Before taking one
of these divergent paths, we need to manage carefully these nuclear weapon rela-
tions to avoid nuclear confrontation and conflict.

The third changing element is that various non-nuclear technologies–includ-
ing space and cyber technologies and artificial intelligence–are becoming more
important at the strategic level and complicate the nuclear calculation.

C hina began to experience quick changes in 1978, one decade before the end

of the Cold War. China’s policy of reform and openness unleashed its eco-
nomic vigor, and its economy has expanded quickly ever since. Its GDP
grew from $149.5 billion (USD) in 1978 to $12.23 trillion (USD) in 2017.4 In the last
forty years, China’s GDP has surpassed many industrial countries and is now sec-
ond in the world, after the United States.

Besides the size of its economy, the contents of its economy have also changed
dramatically. China has made big progress in machinery, electronics, telecommu-
nications, and other sophisticated high-tech industries. Technology-intensive ex-
ports have gradually replaced a significant number of labor-intensive ones. Chi-
na’s economic performance has made it one of the most active economic drivers
in the world.

China also began in 1978 to engage substantially with the international society
at various multilateral forums. In the 1980s, China entered a peak period of par-
ticipation with international institutions on nuclear and other security subjects.
It sent representatives and technical experts to international organizations and
they brought international standards back to China. For example, China joined
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1984 and signed important
documents in the following years on nuclear security and safety. In 1992, China
participated in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)
and worked with other countries to extend this treaty indefinitely without any
conditions. From 1993 to 1996, China was involved fully in the negotiation of the

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149 (2) Spring 2020Li Bin

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and signed it after the treaty was
concluded. During the Obama administration, China was an active participant and
supporter of the four nuclear security summits led by the United States.

The NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in the former Yugoslavia in 1999
significantly changed the debates in China, which for the first twenty years of re-
form had undoubtedly prioritized economic development over security.5 China be-
gan to invest more in its military after the incident. In the twenty years since the
bombing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has made great efforts to deploy new
technologies in its conventional force so it can shift away from its reliance on man-
power alone. The ongoing reform and reorganization of the PLA is part of the same
efforts. China’s growing conventional military strength is a changing element al-
though it still lags behind that of the United States.

Another changing element in China is its growing overseas interests. Original-
ly, China’s openness policy was largely about hosting investments from abroad,
but eventually covered import and export of goods, international services and in-
vestments, and technology cooperation. China has since become an integrated
part of the international economic system and relies on international resources,
markets, investments, and technologies.

Yet China’s growing overseas interests do not necessarily lead to a revisionist
policy. China has made great contributions to and has received tremendous ben-
efits from the international system, and has no reason to change it. China fully
understands that its economic interests are very relevant to the performances of
other economies. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, for example, seeks more op-
portunities for openness in a larger area of the world. There is no evidence that
China is using its military capability to control any other country or has a plan to
do so. At a conference organized by Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2019, Chi-
nese Vice President Wang Qishan reaffirmed that “China has constantly adhered
to the path of peaceful development and will never seek hegemony, expansion or
a sphere of influence.”6

China has also invested in its nuclear arsenal, but its nuclear weapon policy and
capability are unchanged. According to Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute (SIPRI) statistics, China has zero deployed nuclear weapons, while the
United States has 1,750; China has 280 nuclear weapons in total, the United States
has 6,450.7 While the total number of Chinese nuclear weapons has increased in
the last few decades, compared with the United States, the number is still very
small. There is no chance that China will increase the size of its nuclear force to
the level of either the United States or Russia.

The small number of Chinese nuclear weapons in total is derived from a cri-
terion developed by the first-generation leaders of the People’s Republic of Chi-
na. They believed that if China had a small number of nuclear weapons for retalia-
tion, it would be enough to deter a nuclear attack from nuclear superpowers.8 The

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Revival of Nuclear Competition: A Chinese Perspective

calculation behind this number is that most Chinese nuclear weapons would like-
ly be destroyed by a preemptive nuclear strike or stopped by rival missile defense,
but the few surviving nuclear weapons would be sufficient for deterrence. The cri-
terion is much smaller than the criterion for deterrence set by then–U.S. Secre-
tary of Defense Robert McNamara, which requires a few hundred surviving retal-
iatory nuclear weapons to threaten unacceptable damages. The Chinese criterion
of a few retaliatory nuclear warheads is accepted by most Chinese strategists and
has been a guiding principle in China’s nuclear weapons policy.

A problem with this criterion, however, is that it does not have any redundancy
or hedge. Damages caused by a few detonated nuclear warheads may be unaccept-
able, but it is possible that an adversary could believe it had the power to contain
the threat. The situation could encourage China’s rivals to think about undermin-
ing the few Chinese retaliatory nuclear weapons: that if China only had a few sur-
viving nuclear weapons following an attack, then with a bit more effort, that num-
ber could effectively be reduced to zero. In the United States, some nuclear experts
believe that damage limitation vis-à-vis China is a feasible and desirable strategy.9
Some Chinese strategists therefore worry about the possibility that China’s very
thin nuclear retaliatory capability would be denied by some U.S. damage limita-
tion approaches, such as missile defense or conventional strikes.

In the United States, China’s nuclear parity is not an important topic of debate.
The real lasting point is whether the United States should recognize that China
has nuclear deterrence capability against it. The Obama administration tried to
use the language of “strategic stability” to end the debate, but the effort failed:
American strategists continue to suggest that China has some nuclear deterrence
vis-à-vis the United States, but the deterrence is not obvious or reliable.

China has struggled to build creditable nuclear deterrence, in which a few Chi-
nese retaliatory nuclear weapons could survive a U.S. first strike and penetrate
U.S. missile defense. China also needs to add some redundancy so its few retal-
iatory nuclear warheads would not be denied by new U.S. countermeasure ef-
forts. With its nuclear force at its current level, it would be impossible for China
to seek nuclear parity with the United States or use its nuclear weapons for pow-
er expansion.

China’s no-first-use policy not only stops some of its choices in nuclear weap-
on development and deployment, it also constrains itself from using the coercive
influences of its nuclear weapons. In a no-first-use framework, China cannot ex-
ercise the influence of its nuclear weapons unless it first receives a threat of nucle-
ar attack.

T he existing nuclear order was developed largely in the latter part of the

Cold War and early years after its end. Now the order may be changed
due to four factors: 1) a country using its nuclear weapons for power

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149 (2) Spring 2020Li Bin

expansion; 2) big powers seeking to expand their power; 3) the importance and
use of non-nuclear factors, such as space and cyber technologies; and 4) the pres-
ence of multiple players in the new nuclear order.

If big powers want to use their nuclear weapons to expand their power, there
will be an intensive nuclear arms race as we saw in the Cold War. If nuclear weap-
ons are treated only for security purposes, the world nuclear order would be very
different. However, there is no explicit demarcation between nuclear weapon pol-
icies for power and those for security because the two policies have some overlap.
But it is still possible to find useful characteristics for one of the two policies. The
Cold War gives us a lot of experience and lessons on this issue.

The number of nuclear weapons in a country is an important indicator of the
weapons’ purpose. Nuclear weapons have nonlinear effects of destruction, so the
security meaning of the total number of nuclear weapons is not important when
the number of retaliatory warheads is larger than the McNamara criterion. If a
country regards its nuclear weapons as tools for a hegemonic purpose, it would
not tolerate other countries (whether allies or rivals) having more nuclear weap-
ons than it does. This was the situation between the United States and the Soviet
Union during the Cold War: neither wanted the other to have quantitative nucle-
ar superiority, resulting in an intensive nuclear arms race. After the United States
and the Soviet Union began their strategic limitation and reduction process in
1972, a parity has always been a number-one requirement in their negotiations.
If nuclear-weapon states–the five states officially recognized as possessing nu-
clear weapons by the NPT, including the United States, Russia, the United King-
dom, France, and China–or other nuclear-armed states do not have the ambition
to expand their power and to seek a hegemonic status in the world, they would
not have the ambition to increase the size of their nuclear arsenal to such a level.
Another way to expand power over a country’s sphere of influence is by offer-
ing nuclear umbrellas to allies. During the Cold War, both the United States and
the Soviet Union provided extended nuclear deterrence to their allies and there-
fore strengthened their own influence. After the Cold War, under its expansionist
policy, the United States continued to develop more military alliances and to offer
more extended nuclear deterrence to new allies. This trend seemed to end recent-
ly, however. If any nuclear-weapon state or nuclear-armed state offers nuclear um-
brellas to more allies, it is an indicator that the state may want to expand power.

Today, the United States maintains a hegemonic position; it does not have
to increase the number of its nuclear weapons. But a concern that other coun-
tries might challenge its hegemonic position keeps the United States sensitive to
the numbers of nuclear weapons in other countries. Russia is a declining former
super power. It is difficult for Russia to wield the influence of its nuclear weapons
to expand its power because it does not have the necessary conventional military
or economic resources to support such an expansion. Russia may consider a large

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Revival of Nuclear Competition: A Chinese Perspective

number of nuclear weapons as a way to protect its shrinking sphere of influence,
but that has not stopped NATO growth eastward.

China has repeatedly stated that it would not engage in a nuclear arms race
with any country. The number of Chinese nuclear weapons is far below the num-
bers in the United States and Russia, and there is no possibility for China to reach
a nuclear parity in the coming decades, even if it had the ambition to do so. The in-
terpretation is that China will not seek a large number of nuclear weapons for he-
gemonic purposes.10

After the end of the Cold War, the United States offered a nuclear umbrella to
its new allies and expanded its power. In recent years, the United States has not
developed any new military alliances or offered any new nuclear umbrellas. Its
extended nuclear deterrence is now more about maintaining its power than ex-
panding it. Conversely, Russia lost most of its allies after the end of the Cold War.
Its nuclear umbrellas cover very few countries and are only useful in maintaining
Russia’s influence over a very small region. China does not offer a nuclear umbrel-
la to any foreign country. It does not have any intention to do so in the future. This
suggests that China has no interest in power expansion via the influence of its nu-
clear weapons.

Nuclear weapons may naturally have some deterrent influences useful to main-
taining the status quo, but they do not necessarily generate influence to change the
status quo. If a country wants to use the influence of its nuclear weapons for com-
pelling purposes, it must develop a strategy to link its nuclear weapon use to con-
ventional conflicts. The idea is to use its conventional military force to compel the
enemy and use its nuclear weapons to deter possible conventional responses from
the enemy. The United States formally issued its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review to
threaten the use of low-yield nuclear warheads in conventional conflicts.11 The
same document accuses Russia of taking an escalation and de-escalation strategy
that would have similar compelling effects for other countries. The U.S. and Rus-
sian nuclear strategies suggest that they may use their nuclear weapons for com-
pelling purposes in regional situations. China’s no-first-use strategy constrains it-
self from linking its nuclear weapon use to conventional conflicts. Therefore, it
cannot make use of the compelling effects of nuclear weapons.

The United States is becoming reluctant to further its power expansion; Russia
and China do not have such ambitions either. If these countries understand one
another, they would not seek competition for power. Yet they may worry about
power challenges from their rivals and perceive some behaviors of their rivals as
power expansion, whether accurate or not. They may take defensive measures to
resist perceived power challenges. As a consequence, their competition may esca-
late, following the pattern of power competition. This is similar to a security di-
lemma: a country takes a measure to defend its power while other countries see it
as power expansion and respond to it with countermeasures.

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149 (2) Spring 2020Li Bin

The evolution of power competition in the future may proceed in the following
two stages: In the first stage, big powers worry their rivals will challenge their pow-
er and react to misperceptions. In the second stage, big powers understand that no
one has either the ambition or capability to expand its power. They either maintain
or withdraw the scope of their influence. There would be different nuclear dangers
in the two stages. In the first, big powers may create roles for their nuclear weap-
ons to counter the perceived challenges to their power, as expressed in the U.S. 2018
Nuclear Posture Review. Some nuclear confrontations and crises may develop when
countries rely heavily on nuclear weapons for power competition. In the second
stage, big powers withdraw their power, leaving a power vacuum for regional ac-
tors. This would increase the risk of regional nuclear proliferation.

N on-nuclear factors can also shape future nuclear calculations. China be-

gan to worry about missile defense and space weapons in the 1980s. The
primary concern was that the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative would
promote the revolution of new military sciences and technologies. This concern
was not so much relevant to the nuclear weapons issue. China worried that it
would either fall much more behind the developed countries on military technol-
ogy or would have to exhaust its resources to deal with a new arms race. For this
reason, China has repeatedly criticized missile defense and proposed to prevent
space weaponization, while working to better understand these technologies.12

Another Chinese concern that developed in the later 1990s was that a nationwide
missile defense would undermine China’s nuclear retaliatory capability. This con-
cern also applied to precision conventional strikes. These two technologies do not
directly involve nuclear weapons, but they change calculations on nuclear stability.
Chinese and American scholars have had many dialogues at different levels on this
issue, and have not yet found a solution. The 2019 Missile Defense Review explains
that the U.S. homeland missile defense system is not designed to counter missile
threats from China or Russia but would be used in an event of nuclear conflict, yet
this is little reassurance to China.13

Space technologies are also relevant to nuclear weapon issues in three ways.
First, some space technologies may be used as tools to change strategic nuclear sta-
bility: intelligence satellites may be used to locate mobile missiles or space-based
interceptors may be deployed to stop them.14 Second, space-based early-warning
systems are important in nuclear decision-making processes and are vulnerable to
attacks.15 Third, some space assets are considered as important as nuclear weap-
ons in the theory of cross-domain deterrence. According to the theory, an attack
against space assets may trigger nuclear retaliation.16

Cyber weapons could also be used to attack nuclear weapons, nuclear com-
mand and control systems, and other elements in the nuclear force structure. The
United States is developing the Left of Launch Operation, for example, which may

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Revival of Nuclear Competition: A Chinese Perspective

involve cyber weapons.17 On the one hand, cyberattacks may disable some or all
nuclear weapons and therefore change calculations about strategic stability; on the
other hand, the effects of cyber weapons are uncertain, so cyberattacks may cre-
ate misunderstandings and encourage early or accidental use of nuclear weapons.
Some vehicles under development may become new delivery systems for nu-
clear weapons. One example is the hypersonic vehicle. The performance and uses
of these new vehicles are not yet clear, but their potential to fly great distances at
low altitude, beneath traditional radar, and maneuver to avoid interception would
certainly complicate calculations on strategic stability.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will also complicate future nuclear calculations. AI
technologies may help locate nuclear targets and help improve the stealth of nucle-
ar weapons. The result of competition between offense and defense might be very
complicated. The technologies could also contribute to nuclear decision-making
in stabilizing or destabilizing ways, depending on how people use the technologies.
As the number of nuclear players has grown, the new nuclear multipolarity has
changed the nuclear order. After the end of the Cold War, Russia lost significant
military resources, but has since made efforts to maintain a nuclear parity with the
United States. Previous U.S. administrations at least acknowledged nuclear pari-
ty with Russia in their bilateral nuclear reductions, but the Trump administra-
tion may not have an interest in maintaining parity with Russia. No other nuclear-
weapon state or nuclear-armed state has the capability to increase the size of its
nuclear force to the level of the United States or Russia. The bipolar nuclear order
will be abated. The new nuclear order will be a hierarchy: the first level is the Unit-
ed States; the second level is Russia; the third level is China, the United Kingdom,
and France; and the fourth level is India, Pakistan, and Israel. The position of North
Korea will depend on efforts to halt its nuclear weapons program. Nuclear thresh-
old countries–countries that possess the technology to build nuclear weapons but
have not yet done so–and nonstate actors could also cause proliferation dangers.
This all suggests that the global nuclear order may experience two future stag-
es. In the first stage, the risks of nuclear confrontations and crises will mostly
come from nuclear competition due to misperceptions and overreactions about
power competition; in the second stage, the risks of nuclear dangers will mostly
come from new non-nuclear technologies and new nuclear players.

I nternational cooperation is necessary to stabilize the current and future nu-

clear order. Nuclear-weapon states and other members of the internation-
al community need to develop dialogues to explore possible cooperation on

their strategic objectives and on concrete arrangements about nuclear issues.

The most important topic would be the strategic objectives of different coun-
tries. Strategic experts and governmental officials from nuclear-weapon states
and other international members should meet to explain the strategic objectives

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149 (2) Spring 2020Li Bin

of their countries, to express their concerns over power challenges from other
countries, and to clarify misunderstandings. This would help explain the nature
of competition among countries. If power competition is not a central element in
the relations among nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-armed states, they would
have a better chance to develop cooperation on nuclear issues.

The nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-armed states may develop or revive
their cooperation in the following four categories. The first category of cooper-
ation would be on nuclear security against nuclear terrorism. President Obama
proposed and developed international cooperation on this issue, and it is far from
gone. The nuclear-weapon states and other international members should con-
tinue to make joint efforts to secure nuclear materials and facilities around the
world to prevent nuclear terrorism. China would be happy to join the cooperation
if it can be maintained or revived.

The second category of cooperation would be the prevention of accidental nu-
clear war. Various new technologies may add difficulties in nuclear decision-making
and increase the risks of accidental nuclear war. For example, a cyber operation that
aims to disable an enemy’s nuclear weapons could mistakenly trigger the launch of
the enemy’s nuclear weapons instead. Cyber operations could also create false alerts
in the rival’s decision-making process and the rival may mistakenly launch a nucle-
ar attack in retaliation. Nuclear-weapon states should have discussions at govern-
mental or nongovernmental levels to understand the risks and thereby develop mu-
tual understanding and a code of conduct to avoid accidental nuclear war.

A variety of non-nuclear activities run the risk of causing accidents. For exam-
ple, some space activities may be identified as nuclear attacks; some AI technolo-
gies may misdiagnose signals as nuclear threats. Thus, multidisciplinary experts
are needed to explore and fix potential problems. The efforts are in the interests
of all nuclear-weapon states, and all of them, including China, should encourage
their experts to join such discussions. The P5 states, which include China, France,
Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, should share useful codes of
conduct they develop with other countries, especially nuclear-armed ones, so they
can become more careful and aware of participants in the nuclear community.

The third category of cooperation would be on nuclear nonproliferation. This
includes general nonproliferation arrangements, for example, the strengthening
of the NPT and other nuclear nonproliferation regimes. This class of cooperation
includes joint efforts on specific nonproliferation cases, such as in Iran and North
Korea. The United States should consider returning to the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action. We also need more efforts in designing a road map of denucle-
arization and peace-building in North Korea. Nuclear-weapon states may have
some difficulties in reaching a consensus on some of the nonproliferation issues,
but they need to exchange views and positions. China should continue to play an
important role in all these efforts.

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Revival of Nuclear Competition: A Chinese Perspective

The fourth category of cooperation would be on strategic stability. This in-
cludes many topics, such as strategic reductions and missile defense. The P5 had
some good cooperation in this category. For example, the P5 states have a working
group on nuclear disarmament terminology and one on the verification of deep
nuclear reductions. The two working groups had good cooperation and produced
some important products.18 China should work with other nuclear-weapon states
to explore new solutions on possible limits on missile defense and on deep strate-
gic nuclear reduction. The limits on missile defense could be about the number of
interceptors or about the size of the protection of the missile defense systems.19 So
far, the counting rules in the U.S.-Russia strategic reduction treaties cannot apply to
China. The Chinese experts should work with their counterparts in other nuclear-
weapon states to explore new counting rules that are universally useful.

about the author

Li Bin is a Professor of Tsinghua University’s Department of International Rela-
tions. He is the author of Arms Control Theories and Analysis (2007) and has been pub-
lished in such journals as Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Science & Global Security.

endnotes

1 The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington,
D.C.: The White House, 2017), 2, 27, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/
uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.

2 For an explanation of this counting rule, see Treaty between the United States of Ameri-
ca and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Stra-
tegic Offensive Arms, Moscow, Russia, July 31, 1991, Article III, accessed via Federation
of American Scientists, https://fas.org/nuke/control/start1/text/start1.htm.

3 Some research suggests that when it followed an expansionist policy, the United States
did not receive a hard balance (challenging U.S. military preponderance), but might
have received some soft balance (using international institutions, economic state-
craft, and diplomatic arrangements to delay, frustrate, and undermine U.S. policies).
See Robert A. Pape, “Soft Balancing against the United States,” International Security 30
(1) (2005): 7–45.

4 World Bank and OECD National Accounts, “GDP (Current US$)–China,” https://data

.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CN.

5 See the speech of Jiang Zeming after the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yu-
goslavia. According to Zemin, “经济建设是中心，国防建设也要不断加强” [“Econom-
ic development is still our focus, while the construction of national defense should
be strengthened gradually”; author’s translation]. “Jiang Zemin Speaks after Bombing

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149 (2) Spring 2020Li Bin

of Chinese Embassy in 1999,” People’s Daily Online, September 3, 2014, http://history
.people.com.cn/n/2014/0903/c372327-25595103.html.

6 “China Calls for More Equitable, Stable Int’l Order,” China Plus, July 8, 2019, http://

chinaplus.cri.cn/news/politics/11/20190708/313879.html.

7 “Modernization of Nuclear Weapons Continues; Number of Peacekeepers Declines:
New SIPRI Yearbook Out Now,” Stockholm International Peace Research Insti-
tute, June 18, 2018, https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2018/modernization
-nuclear-weapons-continues-number-peacekeepers-declines-new-sipri-yearbook
-out-now.

8 Sun Xiangli, “Mao Zedong’s Strategic Thinking on Nuclear Weapons Is Always Brilliant
[毛泽东关于核武器的战略思想永放光芒],” Chinese Journal of Military Conversion to Civilian
Purposes 10 (2014): 16–20.

9 See the debates in Charles L. Glaser and Steve Fetter, “Should the United States Reject
MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China,” International Secu-
rity 41 (1) (2016): 49–98; and Matthew Kroenig, “Correspondence: The Limits of Dam-
age Limitation,” International Security 42 (1) (2017): 199–201.

10 On the relation between a quantitative nuclear arms race and power competition, see
Li Bin, “Differences between Chinese and U.S. Nuclear Thinking and Their Origins,”
in Understanding Chinese Nuclear Thinking, ed. Li Bin and Tong Zhao (Washington, D.C.:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2016), 11–13.

11 U.S. Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Sec-
retary of Defense, 2018), xii, https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/
-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.pdf.

12 Li, “Differences between Chinese and U.S. Nuclear Thinking and Their Origins,” 7–8.
13 U.S. Department of Defense, 2019 Missile Defense Review (Washington, D.C.: Office of the
Secretary of Defense, 2019), xii, https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/17/2002080666/
-1/-1/1/2019-MISSILE-DEFENSE-REVIEW.pdf.

14 Li Bin, “Tracking Chinese Strategic Mobile Missiles,” Science and Global Security 15 (2007):

1–30; and U.S. Department of Defense, 2019 Missile Defense Review, xi.

15 Tong Zhao and Li Bin, “The Underappreciated Risks of Entanglement: A Chinese Per-
spective,” in Entanglement: Russian and Chinese Perspectives on Non-Nuclear Weapons and
Nuclear Risks, ed. James M. Acton (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for Inter-
national Peace, 2017), 51–53, https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Entanglement_
interior_FNL.pdf.

16 King Mallory, “New Challenges in Cross-Domain Deterrence,” PE-259-OSD (Santa Mon-
ica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2018), 7, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/
PE259.html.

17 Riki Ellison, “Left of Launch,” March 16, 2015, https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/

alert/3132/.

18 Andrea Berger, “The P5 Nuclear Dialogue–Five Years On,” occasional paper (London:
Royal United Services Institute, 2014), https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201407_op
_the_p5_nuclear_dialogue.pdf.

19 Li Bin, “China’s Attitudes toward Missile Defense and Its Limitation,” Bulletin of the

Atomic Scientists 74 (4) (2018): 243–247.

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