Fred Kaplan writes that US efforts to modernize its nuclear arsenal in line with China and Russia’s plans is likely to set off a new spiraling nuclear arms race, The US should avoid this by abandoning its plans and hold nuclear arms talks with China.

The United States is on the verge of relaunching a nuclear arms race—this time, not just with Russia but with China as well—and we need to snuff it out now before it takes off. This means restarting nuclear arms control talks—not with Russia (almost no talks of any meaning can be held with Vladimir Putin at the moment) but certainly with China, difficult as that will be.

All three countries are in the process of “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals. China is alone in seeming to expand the size of its arsenal as well. (The US and Russia are, for the moment, abiding by the numerical limits set by the New START treaty, signed by Presidents Obama and Medvedev in 2011.) If the Pentagon’s predictions are accurate and Beijing doubles its arsenal by 2027 (from 500 warheads to 1,000) and ups it to 1,500 by 2035, American generals—and probably Russian ones as well—will make a strong case for responding in kind, and their political masters will probably succumb. (Presidents Biden and Putin renewed New START in 2021, but the treaty could expire in 2026.)

The US would likely respond in kind because its nuclear strategy is heavily geared to a “counterforce” policy. This means many of its nuclear weapons are aimed at adversaries’ nuclear weapons. This is especially true of US ballistic missiles, which can fly halfway across the globe in a half hour and hit their targets with sufficient accuracy to destroy enemy land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in their silos. (Russian nuclear strategy is almost certainly geared toward counterforce as well.)

Counterforce

Counterforce inherently promotes an arms race. If Country X deploys more nuclear weapons, then Country Y feels compelled to deploy more nuclear weapons as well—if just to continue being able to destroy X’s arsenal. (One can see how each country might feel that it is acting from purely defensive motives while the other country is the aggressor.)

So, if China is projected to double or triple its nuclear arsenal, mainly by building more land-based ICBMs, then—the planners at Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, will argue—the United States needs to expand its arsenal as well, so that it can continue targeting those ICBMs. Once the US expands its arsenal, the nuclear commanders in Moscow will feel a need to order more nukes as well. And onward and upward both sides—all three sides—spiral.

The easiest and cheapest way for the US to do this is also the most dangerous. Many years ago, the US had 1,000 Minuteman ICBMs; 550 of them were fitted with three nuclear warheads, each of which could hit widely separated targets. (The multiple warheads were called MIRVs, for Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles.) Over the years, thanks to arms-control treaties and unilateral restraints, the US cut back to 400 Minuteman missiles, none of which carried MIRVs. (The US also has 970 warheads on submarine-launched ballistic missiles as well as 300 heavy bombers, which can carry a variety of gravity bombs and cruise missiles.)

However, those extra warheads weren’t discarded entirely; they were placed in reserve. They could be re-mounted on the Minutemen (or on the next generation of ICBMs, known as Sentinels.) The ICBM force could be re-MIRVed. This means that 400 ICBMs could be aimed at 1,200 targets. These ICBMs would be, at once, the most capable of launching a counterforce strike—and the most vulnerable to an adversary’s counterforce strike. Thus, by their very existence, they are thought to be “destabilizing”—meaning that, in a crisis, they could provide incentives for Country Y to launch a first strike, if just to preempt Country X from launching its own first strike.

“170503-F-DB969-0001” (Public Domain) by US Department of Defense Current Photos

Ways out of the new nuclear arms race

There are two ways out of what seems to be an inevitable renewed arms race. First, the US could abandon counterforce strategy. (If so, it would be nice if Russia would do that as well and if China, which currently doesn’t have such a strategy, would forego adopting one.) However, this is unlikely. Several presidents, most notably Obama and Biden, have privately expressed doubts about the wisdom and effectiveness of counterforce; but when it comes time to issue guidance to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who in turn send it to StratCom, they have bought on to its premises. Meanwhile, Congress has no say whatever over such matters—nor are many lawmakers eager to exercise oversight on any aspect of nuclear weapons. (They have approved spending for modernizing the entire nuclear arsenal—new ICBMs, submarines, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, bombers, bombs, and cruise missiles—with very little dissent. The nuclear budget alone amounts to about $60 billion a year, with costs rising as the new weapons, now just in development, start being produced.)

The other way out of this trap is to revive the nearly lost art of arms control negotiations—which, for purposes of holding talks with China, means establishing a Washington-Beijing nuclear arms control forum for the first time. This is a challenge, to say the least. Talks between US and Chinese military officers, on any subject, have only recently been revived after a long impasse. On the subject of nuclear weapons, Xi’s regime is particularly opaque. There was a time, not long ago, when the Beijing government would consult Chinese scientists on nuclear matters, but even they seem to be left out in the cold for now.

In the past, Beijing kept to a strategy of “minimum deterrence”—hang on to just enough nuclear weapons to destroy an enemy’s largest cities in a second strike; that would deter a first strike; there was no need for any more weapons, or for any of those weapons to be accurate. Now China is modernizing and expanding its arsenal. Are Xi and his generals doing this because they believe US missile defenses are effective (in which case China would need to launch twice as many warheads to make sure that the number it deems necessary for deterrence penetrate the defenses)? Are they adopting a counterforce strategy? Do they believe they need “nuclear parity” with the US and Russia in order to be taken seriously as an emerging superpower?

We don’t know, and that’s a problem.

In any case, the Chinese are new to this game. They need to be informed that Washington will match them in any buildup and match them again if the race goes on. I’m not saying it’s a good idea for the US to do this. In fact, my view is that doing so would be a colossal waste of money. Deterrence can be maintained with a much smaller arsenal. Even a counterforce strategy can remain feasible because the Trident II missiles onboard most US submarines are just as accurate—just as capable of destroying “hard targets,” such as enemy ICBM silos—as the Minutemen missiles. However, as a practical matter, it’s predictable that Washington would respond to a Chinese buildup by building more of its own warheads or by re-MIRV’ing or both.

One of the most valuable aspects of arms control treaties over the decades is that they instill a sense of confidence. With adequate verification measures, they let each side’s leaders know what the other side can do; they “bound the threat.” They minimize the need for “worst-case scenarios,” which provide rationales for the largest military buildup that the generals can get away with. Without arms control, worst-case scenarios reenter the political dialogue; the case for building up becomes compelling, and the other side responds by building up too.

The scenarios are already being crafted in the Pentagon and in Omaha. Yes, China isn’t due to double or triple its arsenal for several years, but it takes several years to build new strategic nuclear missiles; you have to set the schedule, and get the funding, ahead of time. If we want to nip a new nuclear arms race in the bud, we have to take out the clippers now.

Listen to an interview with Fred Kaplan for The Ballpark podcast

In May 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Fred Kaplan about his 2020 book, The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War.

• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics. 
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