Fiona Cunningham is to be commended for her report Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications Systems of the Peoples Republic of China (Nautilus July 18, 2019). Ms. Cunningham relies on unclassified sources to provide a well-researched summary of the mainstream view of academics, China scholars and even many military professionals of the PRCs nuclear doctrine and C3 arrangements.
Unfortunately, this mainstream view is almost certainly wrong.
Western analysts consistently fail to understand that, for both Beijing and Moscow, nuclear war plans and C3 to execute those plans are national security crown jewels that they try to protect and conceal behind a bodyguard of lies and disinformation. Trusting open sources and commentary especially when they are intended to cast nuclear doctrine and C3 in the most benign possible way is a big mistake.
For example, during the Cold War the USSR went to extraordinary lengths to disinform Western policymakers and the public that Moscow had a nuclear No First Use doctrine. This was intended to conceal their real nuclear war plans that we now know entailed a massive nuclear first strike early in a conflict. The NFU disinformation campaign was also intended to mobilize Western anti-nuclear activists, in and out of government, to constrain U.S. nuclear programs and operational plans.
Chinas alleged nuclear NFU doctrine, like the USSRs during the Cold War, is almost certainly disinformation.
NFU for China does not withstand the test of common sense. No conservative military planner would adopt NFU when, as Ms. Cunningham correctly observes, China lacks BMEWS and satellite early warning systems that would enable China to launch on tactical warning. NFU would doom Chinas nuclear deterrent to certain destruction by a U.S. or Russian conventional or nuclear first strike, or to a nuclear first strike by India.
Chinas nuclear posture, especially the lack of early warning radars and satellites, is use it or lose it which logically should drive PRC military planners toward nuclear first use indeed toward surprise first use early in a crisis or conflict, based on strategic warning.
Regardless of the PRCs declaratory NFU policy, it strains credulity Beijings political leaders would adhere to NFU if confronted with compelling political and military intelligence of an imminent U.S. attack. Such strategic warning was the basis for the former USSRs secret plans for a disarming nuclear first strike under their VRYAN (Surprise Nuclear Missile Attack) intelligence program, that nearly resulted in a nuclear apocalypse during NATOs theater nuclear exercise ABLE ARCHER-83.
Just as Ms. Cunninghams report would have benefitted from greater skepticism about NFU, greater humility about what we know, and dont know, about Chinas nuclear posture is also advisable.
For example, do we really know that Chinas nuclear warheads are in storage, not mounted on missiles? This would be a very grave vulnerability. Chinas ICBMs and IRBMs are in cold launch cannisters we cannot see if they are armed, or not.
Ms. Cunningham seriously proposes that China gives such high priority to safeguarding against unauthorized nuclear use that their very costly ballistic missile submarine fleet may, in peacetime, carry no SLBMs. Perhaps she means they would carry no SLBM nuclear warheads. In either case, this defies common sense as it would render useless Chinas SSBN fleet as a deterrent against surprise attack. The SSBNs would also become an escalatory liability in a crisis or conflict, as the process of uploading missiles or warheads would be very lengthy, highly visible, and so provocative as to invite a disarming first strike.
Undoubtedly, China will operate its SSBNs in peacetime as they are being tested now loaded for bear, with SLBMs armed with nuclear warheads aboard.
For decades, Western analysts have almost certainly grossly underestimated Chinas number of nuclear weapons as about 300 (compared to about 1,500 operational strategic nuclear weapons for the U.S. and Russia, or five times as many). This seems based more on wishful thinking than a realistic appraisal of Chinas nuclear capabilities.
Russian Gen. Viktor Yesin, former commander in chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, provided a more realistic estimate of Chinas nuclear capabilities in an article published seven years ago Third After the United States and Russia: On Chinas Nuclear Capabilities Without Understatement or Exaggeration (April 30, 2012).
Gen. Yesin calculates China could have 10,000 nuclear munitions based on the PRCs estimated production of up to 40 tons of weapons uranium and about 10 tons of weapons-grade plutonium manufactured as of 2011.
However, based on Chinas strategic and tactical delivery systems, Gen. Yesin concludes there may be up to 1,800 warheads in Chinas nuclear arsenal.
Contrary to the title of Gen. Yesins article, this would make China, with 1,800 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, the second most heavily armed nuclear power, after Russia (3,500 operational strategic and tactical nuclear weapons) but before the U.S. (1,700 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons).
Chinas nuclear capabilities are clearly underestimatedsignificantly higher than commonly believed in the Western expert community, concludes Russian Gen. Yesin.
As the New Cold War heats up in the Pacific the United States had better not bet its security on Chinas No First Use pledge and a presumed five-to-one U.S. advantage in nuclear weapons.
This story was originally published here. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry served as chief of staff of the congressional EMP Commission and in the CIA.
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