As the top-secret US nuclear strategic plan shows, the US is shifting its deterrence strategy towards China. Beijing has already commented on the plans, which were revealed by the New York Times. Mao Ning, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, expressed “serious concern” on Wednesday.
As the “NYT” writes, Joe Biden has ordered the US military to prepare for a possible coordinated nuclear confrontation with Russia, China and North Korea.
The document, updated approximately every four years, is the first to analyze in detail whether America is prepared to respond to potential nuclear crises that could erupt simultaneously or sequentially, using a combination of nuclear and conventional weapons.
The president recently issued updated guidelines on the use of nuclear weapons to include multiple nuclear-armed adversaries. (…) In particular, they took into account the “significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal. – quoted Vipin Naranga, a nuclear strategist at the University of Massachusetts (MIT), who worked at the Pentagon before returning to his scientific career in early August, as saying to the “NYT”.
The newspaper also cited a statement by the director of the National Security Council for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, who noted that the new strategy emphasizes “the need to simultaneously deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea.”
According to the “NYT”, the growing partnership between Russia and China and the conventional weapons that North Korea and Iran are supplying to Russia for the war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed Washington’s thinking.. Intelligence agencies are trying to determine whether Moscow is backing North Korean and Iranian missile programs.
The New York daily also quotes Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department and National Security Council official and retired chairman of the influential Council on Foreign Relations think tank. He stressed that given Russia’s radicalization, the assumption that nuclear weapons will not be used in a conventional conflict is no longer safe.
The paper also noted that the expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal is proceeding at a faster pace than US intelligence predicted two years ago. President Xi Jinping is abandoning his long-standing strategy of “minimum deterrence” and has ambitions to match or exceed the size of Washington and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex, the paper notes, is now the fastest growing in the world.
The United States spreads the narrative about China’s nuclear threat, looking for an excuse to gain a strategic advantage – said the spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, responding to a question about the “NYT” reports.
She also called the United States “the greatest nuclear threat and risk of strategic importance.” She justified this by stating that, unlike China, the United States “possesses the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal, stubbornly adheres to a policy of nuclear deterrence based on the principle of ‘nuclear first use,’ and continues to invest enormous sums of money in modernizing the ‘nuclear triad’ (a concept that presupposes the use of strategic nuclear weapons with three components – land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based missiles and strategic bombers – editor’s note).”
According to a Pentagon report last year, China has more than doubled its nuclear arsenal in three years and is developing it at a faster pace than expected.. The Pentagon estimates that by 2030 Beijing will have 1,000 warheads and by 2035 – 1,500. The US and Russia currently have about 5,000. warheads, including approximately 1,500 – deployed.
The spokeswoman added that China calls on the United States to “further significantly reduce its nuclear arsenal and stop negative actions such as the ‘nuclear sharing’ program, ‘extended deterrence’ and the expansion of nuclear alliances that undermine global and regional peace and stability.”
