China's Assertive Nuclear Posture

State Security in an Anarchic International Order

Baohui Zhang

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317629313
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Sous-sujet: Relaciones internacionales

China's nuclear capability is crucial for the balance of power in East Asia and the world. As this book reveals, there have been important changes recently in China's nuclear posture: the movement from a minimum deterrence posture toward a medium nuclear power posture; the pursuit of space warfare and missile defence capabilities; and, most significantly, the omission in the 2013 Defence White Paper of any reference to the principle of No First Use. Employing the insights of structural realism, this book argues that the imperatives of an anarchic international order have been the central drivers of China's nuclear assertiveness. The book also assesses the likely impact of China's emerging nuclear posture on its neighbours and on the international strategic balance, especially with the United States. The book concludes by examining China's future nuclear directions in the context of its apparent shift toward a more offensive-oriented international strategy.

1 Analyzing China’s nuclear posture

This chapter challenges the “status quo bias” in existing studies on Chinese nuclear deterrence, which typically suggest that state-level factors, such as strategic ideas, organizational politics, and technologies pose powerful constraints on the evolution of both the capabilities and doctrines of China’s nuclear posture. This “status quo bias” has failed to predict recent developments in China’s nuclear behaviors. Both the capabilities and doctrines of Chinese nuclear deterrence have been undergoing significant changes in recent years.

The chapter then advances an alternative structural realist approach to interpret the changing nuclear posture of China. It argues that structural realism, which emphasizes the effects of anarchy and polarity on state behaviors, is able to provide a dynamic account of the changes regarding the Chinese nuclear deterrent.

The status quo bias of existing studies

As a major nuclear power, China’s nuclear posture has long been followed by the academic and security communities in the West. There is a rich literature on the force capabilities and doctrines of Chinese nuclear deterrence. Western studies tend to focus on two core features of China’s nuclear posture, which are the minimum deterrence policy and no-first-use policy. The former dictates a small but sufficient nuclear capability that can protect China from nuclear blackmail and enable it to launch a counter-strike after being attacked by nuclear weapons. The latter pledges that China would not use nuclear weapons first in war scenarios, unless it is attacked by nuclear weapons. Moreover, China will never apply its nuclear weapons in conflicts with non-nuclear countries. In general, existing studies tend to emphasize the stability of China’s nuclear posture while under-estimating the dynamics of change.

For example, Jeffrey Lewis suggests that by choice China has maintained just a small and limited nuclear capability and a passive nuclear doctrine in the form of its no-first-use policy.

China has the most restrained pattern of deployment: the People’s Republic of China (PRC) adopts just eighty or so operational warheads exclusively for use with land-based ballistic missiles. China’s declared nuclear doctrine rejects the initiation of nuclear war under any circumstance. The PRC does not maintain tactical nuclear forces of any kinds, and its strategic forces are kept off alert, with warheads in storage.¹

As Lewis argues, “The stability of this posture over time and through changes in threat perception suggests that restraint is the result of choice and not expediency. China has long had the economic and technical capacity to build larger forces.”² Lewis further criticizes predictions made by some American security experts who see possibilities of rapid expansion of China’s strategic capabilities. As he points out, “This choice, evident in Chinese declaratory policy and consistent with China’s deployment history, contradicts the typical strategic assessments of outside observers, especially those that have been most prominently advanced within the United States.”³

In a 2006 study by the Federation of American Scientists, Hans Kristensen, Robert Norris, and Matthew McKinzie also emphasize the stability of China’s nuclear posture. As they point out:

A decade ago, several Western analysts suggested that Chinese thinking about nuclear strategy might be moving toward limited deterrence, which would mean a more dynamic targeting policy with the potential of using nuclear weapons first. Since then, however, Chinese nuclear policy does not appear to have changed noticeably, nor has it affected operational nuclear weapons deployment in any important way. Chinese declaratory policy has always been one of “no first use” with a retaliatory minimum deterrence force aimed at countervalue (i.e. population centers) targets with forces maintained on very low alert or no alert at all.⁴

Kristensen, Norris, and McKinzie do see persistent Chinese efforts to modernize its strategic nuclear forces. However, due to their emphasis on the stability of China’s nuclear posture, they predict limited change in the overall size and structure of Chinese nuclear forces in the future. As they emphasize:

It is true that China is modernizing its conventional military forces and its nuclear systems. This is hardly surprising given it is every military’s goal to improve itself. What is evident in the Chinese case is that the pace of the effort is taking a long time… Once China’s current upgrade of long-range missiles is completed, the Chinese nuclear arsenal will not be significantly bigger than it is today.⁵

In a joint 2000 study by the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Defense University, Robert Manning, Ronald Montaperto, and Brad Roberts argue that while there are possibilities of significant changes in China’s nuclear posture, largely due to Chinese concerns for US ballistic missile defense, the core doctrines of Chinese nuclear deterrence will continue to restrain the emerging size of Chinese nuclear forces. According to them:

If the essential original purpose of the force was political – to prevent blackmail, to have a seat at the table – then an elaborate force structure is not likely to be seen as necessary. If it had to plans to launch nuclear wars but only to retaliate if attacked, then China needed only a secure retaliatory force, one sufficient to reach out to a few large urban centers in the attacking country, to satisfy its deterrence requirements. Thus the assumption that it does not need large numbers of strategic weapons goes hand-in-hand with a doctrine that targets cities and not opposing forces.⁶

Based on this understanding of the underlying dynamics of Chinese nuclear deterrence, Manning, Montaperto, and Roberts predict that “Minimum deterrence apparently remains the foundation of Beijing’s intercontinental doctrine at this time.”⁷ For these analysts, key supporting evidence of a limited Chinese nuclear posture is that “Beijing can deploy multiple warheads atop its current long-range missiles, although it has not chosen to do so.”⁸

The above status-quo perspective on China’s nuclear posture is also reflected by Taylor Fravel and Evan Medeiros’ 2010 study, which seeks to explain why China has consistently maintained “such a small and vulnerable nuclear force structure for so long.”⁹ They argue that China merely desires to achieve secure second-strike capability against the enemy’s population centers and this limited requirement negates the need for a large offensive nuclear capability. As they suggest:

In sum, developments in the past two decades indicate that China seeks the capability to hold at risk enough of an enemy’s valued assets – with the threat of unacceptable damage – that adversaries are deterred from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against it. Thus, China desires a capability for assured retaliation, not the kind of assured destruction capabilities that characterized US and Soviet approaches.¹⁰

Based on this understanding, Fravel and Mediros argue that China’s nuclear modernization will not fundamentally change its current posture. According to them:

Even as the financial resources allocated to China’s armed forces have increased rapidly over the past two decades, nuclear modernization has been gradual and measured… There is little evidence that China has plans to expand significantly the size of its nuclear arsenal, such as to levels of more than 500 warheads.¹¹

Instead, China has merely focused on “improving the reliability, survivability, and penetrability of its nuclear arsenal.”¹²

It should be noted that some experts have discussed possibilities of more significant change in the nuclear doctrines of China. For example, based on reading of numerous internally circulated Chinese language materials, Alastair Iain Johnston argues that Chinese strategists have never genuinely accepted minimum deterrence, which defines China’s nuclear posture. Instead, toward the late 1980s, they began to preach some form of limited warfighting or flexible response. According to Johnston:

Chinese strategists now explicitly distinguish “limited deterrence” from “minimum deterrence” and from what they sometimes call “maximum deterrence” (e.g., counterforce war-fighting doctrines of the United States and the Soviet Union). In limited deterrence, nuclear weapons play a critical role in the deterrence of both conventional and nuclear wars as well as in escalation control (intrawar deterrence) if deterrence fails. In other words, nuclear weapons have a wider utility than proponents of minimum deterrence would suggest.¹³

As Johnston observes, after 1987 limited deterrence became “the preferred descriptive term used by Chinese strategists.”¹⁴ Overtime, Chinese strategists began to draw sharper distinctions between minimum and limited deterrence. They argued that “a limited deterrence means having enough capabilities to deter conventional, theatre, and strategic nuclear war, and to control and suppress escalation during a nuclear war.” To achieve these goals:

Chinese strategists argue that it requires a greater number of smaller, more accurate, survivable, and penetrable ICBMs, SLBMs as countervalue retaliatory forces; tactical and theatre nuclear weapons to hit battlefield and theatre military targets and so suppress escalation; ballistic missile defense to improve the survivability of the limited deterrent; space-based early warning and command and control systems; and anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) to hit enemy military satellites.¹⁵

Inevitably, as noted by Johnston, limited deterrence creates tension with China’s no-first-use policy. As he points out, “Very often one finds strategists arguing abstractly in favor of first strikes in conventional and nuclear war, even while claiming that China is committed to a second strike posture.”¹⁶

Chinese discussions on a limited deterrence posture would suggest the possibility of a major departure from China’s traditional minimum deterrence posture, which requires only a countervalue second-strike by a handful of nuclear warheads. In contrast, limited deterrence would also require warfighting capabilities in the form of tactical and theater nuclear weapons to perform first-strike missions.

Bates Gill, James Mulvernon, and Mark Stokes also recognize the possibility of China moving away from its minimum deterrence posture toward a limited warfighting posture. According to their study, “the Chinese force has grown to encompass more than simply minimal deterrent forces, including theater and tactical systems.”¹⁷ However, they argue that it is unlikely that China will make a formal doctrinal shift toward limited deterrence, as “such a shift must await shifts in the domestic political hierarchy and its view of the outside world, factors which have consistently driven Chinese doctrinal choices.”¹⁸

As seen by Gill, Mulvenon, and Stokes, instead of a stark analytical choice between either a doctrine of “minimal deterrence” or one of “limited deterrence,” it is better to adopt a tiered approach for understanding China’s future nuclear posture. According to them,

For the future, the doctrine and force struc...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• 1. Analyzing China’s nuclear posture
• 2. China’s nuclear forces and doctrines
• 3. Balance of power and China’s expanding offensive nuclear capabilities
• 4. Balance of power and new dimensions of China’s strategic capabilities
• 5. Balance of threat and China’s changing NFU policy
• 6. China’s nuclear assertiveness and East Asian security
• 7. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index