Was the revelation shocking or not? It’s hard to say. On the face of it, the new satellite evidence should have all of us gasping. China appears to be building between 100 and 200 silos to store and potentially launch intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads. We previously knew of only about 20 sites.
The obvious inference is that China under President Xi Jinping is bent on building out its nuclear arsenal even faster than we thought. America’s Pentagon works on the assumption that China, which is estimated to have between 320 and 350 nukes already, will double its stockpile this decade. Depending on your assumptions about missiles per silo and warheads per missile, the new information means that the actual objective could be not a doubling but a quintupling or more.
That would bring China roughly within range of the two incumbent nuclear superpowers, the US and Russia, which each have about 1,600 nukes that are deployed — that is, ready for use, either on the tip of a missile or near a bomber. (Both countries have thousands more warheads in deep storage).
Since Moscow and Beijing are buddies these days — the Russian and Chinese armies are in joint exercises again this week — Beijing’s bogeyman can only be Washington. US President Joe Biden has framed the geopolitical standoff of our time as democracies on one side against autocracies on the other. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin see it largely the same way, except that they’re the ones standing up to an American-led and bullying West.
The horrifying upshot appears to be that we are in another nuclear arms race. As the US and the Soviet Union went to the brink in the original version, America and China may do so again in the sequel. If you thought the Cuban Missile Crisis was fun, you’ll love the replay over Taiwan or the South China Sea.
Fortunately, the meaning of those silos needn’t be too ominous. The new images were picked up by commercial satellites, and the Pentagon, with its own and more discreet birds in space, almost certainly knew about the situation already. It demonstratively chose not to panic.
One theory is that China doesn’t necessarily intend to fill most of those silos with missiles. As James Acton, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, points out, Beijing may instead use them as decoys and could even shuttle missiles between silos in the hope that the Americans never know where the warheads are, and thus where to strike.
Even so, the silos are disconcerting, because they show how Beijing views its own strategic situation. The Chinese are most afraid of a preemptive American attack that could one day take out their own ability to retaliate. Recent US breakthroughs in defensive technology exacerbate these fears — if, after being hit, China has only a few missiles to strike back, the Americans might be able to shoot those down.
The Chinese must therefore contemplate — remember, this is game theory — a scenario in which the Americans, during an escalating conflict, feel immune to a counterstrike and begin pondering a first strike. To deter any such temptation, Xi wants to make sure he has enough missiles, launchable from enough places, and with enough warheads on each tip to confuse American countermeasures.
More generally, the build-out confirms how minds are hardening in this contest, which has been compared to those between Sparta and Athens or Imperial Germany and Britain. The Chinese are increasingly convinced that some form of conflict with the US is inevitable, and that they need to arm to the teeth to get respect. That’s why they’re unlikely to join existing disarmament talks such as New START, the only remaining arms-control treaty between the US and Russia.
All this means Biden must think bigger to get the pieces moving. In this (and only this) context, one of his predecessors, Richard Nixon, may be a model. He realized that the Soviet Union and Maoist China were comrades only on paper but actually rivals in practice. So in 1972 he did what seemed unthinkable and met Mao Zedong. Nixon’s objective was to pry Beijing away from Moscow to have more sway over the latter. It was a turning point in the Cold War.
Similarly, Biden should realize that today’s public protestations of lovey-dovey anti-Western fraternity between Putin and Xi mask deep animosities and insecurities. The anxieties, moreover, are disproportionately on Putin’s side. As Charles Kupchan at the Council on Foreign Relations argues, the relationship is too obviously asymmetrical, with China ascendant and Russia stagnant. Putin must fear becoming Xi’s understudy.
As hard as it will be psychologically, Biden should therefore make an overture to Putin for a joint approach to Xi, offering the Chinese leader new and comprehensive nuclear talks. These should encompass strategic nukes (that is, those aimed at the enemy nation) as well as tactical ones (for possible use on some battlefield), and offensive as well as defensive systems. They should also offer incentives for other members of the nuclear club to join in, perhaps even the North Koreans and Iranians one day.
Morally, Biden’s framing of world politics is correct. We really are in a clash of open and closed societies, one in which liberal nations should generally stick together to stand up for our values.
And yet, we must acknowledge that there are menaces that transcend politics and threaten our common humanity. A pandemic is one, climate change is another. Nuclear war, by design or accident, is a third. It’s time for those near the red buttons to talk.
Bloomberg
