Dangerous Confidence? Chinese Views on Nuclear Escalation

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona S. Cunningham ◽  
M. Taylor Fravel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Force Structure ◽  
Alternative Sources

Chinese views of nuclear escalation are key to assessing the potential for nuclear escalation in a crisis or armed conflict between the United States and China, but they have not been examined systematically. A review of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with members of China's strategic community suggest that China is skeptical that nuclear escalation could be controlled once nuclear weapons are used and, thus, leaders would be restrained from pursuing even limited use. These views are reflected in China's nuclear operational doctrine (which outlines plans for retaliatory strikes only and lacks any clear plans for limited nuclear use) and its force structure (which lacks tactical nuclear weapons). The long-standing decoupling of Chinese nuclear and conventional strategy, organizational biases within China's strategic community, and the availability of space, cyber, and conventional missile weapons as alternative sources of strategic leverage best explain Chinese views toward nuclear escalation. China's confidence that a U.S.-China conflict would not escalate to the use of nuclear weapons may hamper its ability to identify nuclear escalation risks in such a scenario. Meanwhile, U.S. scholars and policymakers emphasize the risk of inadvertent escalation in a conflict with China, but they are more confident than their Chinese counterparts that the use of nuclear weapons could remain limited. When combined, these contrasting views could create pressure for a U.S.-China conflict to escalate rapidly into an unlimited nuclear war.

The continuing threat of nuclear war

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Cirincione
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Nuclear Winter

The American poet Robert Frost famously mused on whether the world will end in fire or in ice. Nuclear weapons can deliver both. The fire is obvious: modern hydrogen bombs duplicate on the surface of the earth the enormous thermonuclear energies of the Sun, with catastrophic consequences. But it might be a nuclear cold that kills the planet. A nuclear war with as few as 100 hundred weapons exploded in urban cores could blanket the Earth in smoke, ushering in a years-long nuclear winter, with global droughts and massive crop failures. The nuclear age is now entering its seventh decade. For most of these years, citizens and officials lived with the constant fear that long-range bombers and ballistic missiles would bring instant, total destruction to the United States, the Soviet Union, many other nations, and, perhaps, the entire planet. Fifty years ago, Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, On the Beach, portrayed the terror of survivors as they awaited the radioactive clouds drifting to Australia from a northern hemisphere nuclear war. There were then some 7000 nuclear weapons in the world, with the United States outnumbering the Soviet Union 10 to 1. By the 1980s, the nuclear danger had grown to grotesque proportions. When Jonathan Schell’s chilling book, The Fate of the Earth, was published in 1982, there were then almost 60,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled with a destructive force equal to roughly 20,000 megatons (20 billion tons) of TNT, or over 1 million times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile system was supposed to defeat a first-wave attack of some 5000 Soviet SS-18 and SS-19 missile warheads streaking over the North Pole. ‘These bombs’, Schell wrote, ‘were built as “weapons” for “war”, but their significance greatly transcends war and all its causes and outcomes. They grew out of history, yet they threaten to end history. They were made by men, yet they threaten to annihilate man’.

War and Peace

2019 ◽  
pp. 230-260
Author(s):  
Jean Drèze
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
The United States ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Logical Fallacies ◽  
General Strike

This chapter is concerned with the abolition of violence, or at least of armed conflict, as an aspect of social development. While nuclear strategists pride themselves on being “realists”, their realism is collectively self‐defeating and creates a dangerous world where minor conflicts could easily escalate into a nuclear war. The chapter exposes the logical fallacies of “mutually assured destruction” and related doctrines, as well as the illusions behind India's “nuclear deal” with the United States. Two essays deal with the Kashmir conflict. In 2016, a massive popular uprising took place in Kashmir, mainly in the form of an extended general strike. This event, however, was barely reported in the mainstream Indian media, except for occasional reports of stone pelting. A first‐hand account of the strike brings out that the real purpose of India's massive military presence in Kashmir is to control the civilian population and suppress all protests, however peaceful.

scholarly journals The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 126-166
Author(s):  
Scott D. Sagan ◽  
Allen S. Weiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Law Of Armed Conflict ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
Chain Of Command ◽  
The Law ◽  
Principle Of Proportionality ◽  
The Military

Abstract In 2013, the U.S. government announced that its nuclear war plans would be “consistent with the fundamental principles of the Law of Armed Conflict” and would “apply the principles of distinction and proportionality and seek to minimize collateral damage to civilian populations and civilian objects.” If properly applied, these legal principles can have a profound impact on U.S. nuclear doctrine. The prohibition against targeting civilians means that “countervalue” targeting and “minimum deterrence” strategies are illegal. The principle of distinction and the impermissibility of reprisal against civilians make it illegal for the United States, contrary to what is implied in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, to intentionally target civilians even in reprisal for a strike against U.S. or allied civilians. The principle of proportionality permits some, but not all, potential U.S. counterforce nuclear attacks against military targets. The precautionary principle means that the United States must use conventional weapons or the lowest-yield nuclear weapons that would be effective against legitimate military targets. The law of armed conflict also restricts targeting of an enemy's leadership to officials in the military chain of command or directly participating in hostilities, meaning that broad targeting to destroy an enemy's entire political leadership is unlawful.

The Hazards of Operations Involving Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milton Leitenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This article provides an overview of the perils of U.S. and Soviet nuclear war planning during the Cold War. In particular, the article discusses instances of false alarms, when one side or the other picked up indications of an imminent attack by the other side and had to take measures to determine whether the indicators were accurate. None of these incidents posed a large danger of an accidental nuclear war, but they illustrate the inherent risks of the war preparations that both the United States and the Soviet Union took for their immense nuclear arsenals.

Counterforce Revisited: Assessing the Nuclear Posture Review's New Missions

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Glaser ◽  
Steve Fetter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
Damage Limitation ◽  
The Cold War

Current U.S. nuclear strategy identifies new nuclear counterforce missions as a means of impeding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The strategy appears to overvalue these counterforce missions. U.S. conventional weapons can destroy most targets that can be destroyed with nuclear weapons; only moderately deep and precisely located targets can be destroyed only by nuclear weapons. In addition, the benefits of nuclear counterforce-which could include deterrence, damage limitation, and the continued ability of the United States to pursue its foreign policy objectives-are relatively small, because the United States possesses large nuclear forces and highly effective conventional forces. Finally, nuclear counterforce would bring a variety of costs, including an increased probability of accidental war and unnecessary preemptive attacks in a severe crisis. Nevertheless, the case for nuclear counterforce is stronger than during the Cold War, when the enormous size and redundancy of U.S. and Soviet forces rendered counterforce useless. When facing a small nuclear force, the United States may decide to use counterforce to limit damage. Although complex trade-offs are involved, if there are critical targets that can be destroyed only with nuclear weapons, then under a narrow set of conditions the benefits of planning for damage limitation might exceed the dangers. The United States must not, however, rely on nuclear counterforce to support a more assertive foreign policy; doing so would unjustifiably increase the probability of nuclear war.

The Window of Survivability

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-96
Author(s):  
Edward M. Geist
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Institutional Goals ◽  
Official Ideology ◽  
Technological Developments

Prior to the introduction of thermonuclear weapons in the mid-1950s, civil defense to protect civilian populations appeared relatively plausible. Despite these apparently favourable conditions, both U.S. and Soviet civil defense failed to actualize their ambitious institutional goals. This chapter examines the political and institutional reasons for this failure. Even after the death of Stalin enabled a reappraisal of the USSR’s stultifying strictures on permissible discussions of nuclear weapons, official ideology and obsessive secrecy still crippled civil defense. The insistence that the highest level of Party leadership approve assumptions about nuclear war made it impossible for the program to respond to rapid strategic and technological developments. In the United States, the opposition of a handful of well-placed opponents in Congress limited funding to a small fraction of that which civil defense officials sought.

The Nuclear Necessity Principle: Making U.S. Targeting Policy Conform with Ethics & the Laws of War

Daedalus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 145 (4) ◽  
pp. 62-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey G. Lewis ◽  
Scott D. Sagan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Collateral Damage ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Policy ◽  
Law Of Armed Conflict ◽  
Probability Of Success ◽  
Just War Doctrine

In 2013, Obama administration spokesmen stated that all U.S. nuclear war plans “apply the principles of distinction and proportionality and seek to minimize collateral damage to civilian populations and civilian objects.” We analyze U.S. nuclear policy documents and argue that major changes must be made if U.S. nuclear war plans are to conform to these principles of just war doctrine and the law of armed conflict. We propose that the U.S. president announce a commitment to a “principle of necessity,” committing the United States not to use nuclear weapons against any military target that can be destroyed with reasonable probability of success by a conventional weapon. Such a doctrinal change would reduce collateral damage from any nuclear strike or retaliation by the United States and would, we argue, make our deterrent threats more credible and thus more effective.

scholarly journals L’évolution de la doctrine nucléaire américaine de contreforce

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-31
Author(s):  
Charles-Philippe David
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Strategic Consensus ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
Central Purpose ◽  
The U.S

There has been a tendency lately in the United States to talk about the breakdown of the domestic consensus on the purpose of American nuclear strategy. The Reagan administration policies have been largely responsible for the growing felt need by many to question the doctrine and plans underlining that strategy. Why did the erosion of the strategic consensus take place ? One explanation examined in this paper is that the U.S. government has appeared in its nuclear strategy to emphasize more and more counterforce and limited nuclear war plans as its nuclear weapons policy, and therefore has become increasingly receptive to the idea that atomic bombs can be treated like conventional weapons and thought in ways characteristic of the pronuclear world. The central purpose of this article is to analyze how those two phenomenons - the attractiveness of counterforce and the erosion of the strategic consensus - are related to one another. The evolution of the doctrine of counterforce is assessed through a survey of the literature from 1974 to 1984, and particularly from 1980 with the coming to power of the Reagan administration.

The Dual Problems of Peace and National Security

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 18-23
Author(s):  
Robert G. Gilpin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
Political Spectrum

The strategic consensus that has characterized American official and popular thinking about nuclear weapons since World War II has greatly eroded in recent years. That consensus consisted not only of an American determination to use nuclear weapons to deter a direct Soviet attack on the United States but also of a commitment to extend the American deterrent to cover a Soviet nuclear or large-scale conventional attack on America's principal allies. In the face of the recent massive and continuing growth of Soviet nuclear and conventional capabilities this consensus has come under growing challenge.This challenge to the consensus on the policy of nuclear deterrence has come from both ends of the political spectrum. On the political “right,” the Reagan administration has argued that deterrence alone is too weak a reed to forestall a Soviet attack on the United States or one of its allies; the prevention of a Soviet attack requires the development of a nuclear war-fighting strategy similar to that which the Soviets themselves are presumed to possess. On the political “left,” a large and highly vocal antinuclear movement largely under the banner of the “freeze,” challenges one aspect or another of the deterrence strategy and demands a deemphasis on, if not the complete elimination of, nuclear weapons. Both of these positions, I believe, are flawed and fail to provide a satisfactory solution to the difficult situation in which the United States finds itself in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Iraq's Chemical Weapons Legacy: What Others Might Learn from Saddam

2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Richard L. Russell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Weapon ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Nation States

Iraq's experience with chemical weapons provides ample lessons for nation-states looking to redress their conventional military shortcomings. Nation-states are likely to learn from Saddam that chemical weapons are useful for waging war against nation-states ill-prepared to fight on a chemical battlefield as well as against internal insurgents and rebellious civilians. Most significantly, nation-states studying Iraq's experience are likely to conclude that chemical weapons are not a “poor man's nuclear weapon” and that only nuclear weapons can deter potential adversaries including the United States.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document