The Price of Supremacy

Unlike the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China isn't anything resembling a peer of the United States when it comes to nuclear weapons. Yes, the PRC has nukes. And, yes, the PRC even has nukes capable of hitting the United States. But it doesn't have all that many, nor as they particularly sophisticated. What's more, as Kier Lieber and Daryl Press note in the current Atlantic, the gap appears to be growing, "the United States is pursuing capabilities that are rendering MAD obsolete, and the resulting nuclear imbalance of power could dramatically exacerbate America’s rivalry with China."

America's "counterforce" capabilities -- the ability to "win" a nuclear war -- are much, much, much more advanced than China's. This means China can't be confident that it's second-strike nuclear deterrent would prevent us from nuking China. But that means China may, in a tense standoffy moment, feel the need to be much more proactive with its own arsenal than you would expect in a MAD situation. If the Chinese believe an America first strike would result in victory, then launching a first strike looks like a good idea for the Chinese. And if Americans think a Chinese first strike makes sense from a Chinese perspective, but that an American first strike will result in victory, then a US first strike looks like a good idea for Americans. But if the Chinese knows that . . . and if the Americans know the Chinese know that . . . and the Chinese know the Americans know they know that . . . etc., etc., etc.

At any rate, it's a fascinating -- and disturbing -- article. For more on this see Benjamin Schwarz's column written where their academic study was completed, this post from Brad Plumer and this one one Robert Farley both from back in 2006, and Lieber and Press' March '06 article in Foreign Affairs.

National Archives photo of Operation Ivy via PINGNews.

Comments

Escher Armageddon.

Posted by steve duncan | July 17, 2007 8:33 AM

I'd propose the alternative theory that Chinese made dog food will take out a president's dog and cause a dramatic increase in tensions that will wrongly be interpreted as being caused by strategic imbalance.

Posted by ChrisB | July 17, 2007 8:57 AM

One advantage in nuking China would be that it would render moot our concerns with Global Warming and thereby diminish concerns that Al Gore might stage a political comeback.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | July 17, 2007 9:34 AM

Look, Lieber and Press are both really smart dudes but they are hideously threat inflating here. We have had massive nuclear superiority over china since the inception of nuclear weapons. The development of MIRVs and very precise gyroscopes has given us a splendid first strike capability over the chinese shortly after they GOT nuclear weapons. We have had several crises with China during this time. Press and Lieber do not account for why the chinese have suddenly changed their minds about how threatening they find out arsenal, or why they will now act on different beliefs during a crisis. They obsfucate this point by nodding in the direction of the reciprocal fear of surprise attack, which was a really interesting idea back when thomas schelling first wrote about it, but which has never happened as far as we can tell in any sort of crisis. Schelling's only example was WWI, and his account has since been discredited.

Everything we know about nuclear weapons leads us to believe that they induce intense caution on the part of national leaders. Everything we know about Russia and China leads us to believe that they don't give a hoot about our nuclear superiority, perhaps because they understand how useless it is (as Press and lieber concede, if Russia wanted to solve their problem they could just start driving around their SS-25's again, or send their submarines out from port more often). None of this makes our nuclear policies, good, wise, or necessary. Neither does it justify a hue and cry.

Posted by brendan green | July 17, 2007 9:58 AM

We're already in an economic war with China. And they're winning.

Posted by Peter | July 17, 2007 10:08 AM

a nice exposition of rationalizability

Posted by Lanks | July 17, 2007 11:02 AM

Peter, are U.S. economic interactions with China negative sum, zero-sum, or positive sum?

Posted by washerdreyer | July 17, 2007 11:19 AM

These "possibilities" that the millitary is "pursuing" are bullshit. None of them will work. We all know what they're talking about here, and it's missile interception. We've all known that wasn't going to work for going 30 years now, yet the press repeatedly pretends that theres some kind of chance that someday, it will. Nor should it. Fear of nuclear weapons is the only thing that prevents our half-insane generals from using nuclear weapons.

All China needs is enough power to either blanket the US, or to kick up a dust cloud long enough to put us into a localized ice-age. This idea that because we have 200 missiles that can hit a quarter in the middle of Beijing, that we have a 'real' superiority is absurd. You don't need accuracy with nukes. You don't need an immense number of them. You only need them to work. I am far more skeptical than most that military estimations as to our ability to destroy their arsenal with a first strike is accurate. The military will always lie about it's effectiveness, because it always has.

Brendan, nobody needs to say why China suddenly finds our arsenal so frightening, when they didn't before. We all know why they find our nukes so frightening. George W. Bush has created a vastly different country than the one that existed in the 1960's, your whole paragraph is rendered moot by that one simple point.

Posted by soullite | July 17, 2007 11:40 AM

All this guessing about full nuclear war is BS. The only rational policy is to never use your nukes first and maintain a credible power to retaliate.

You can't control other nations. You can only control yourself.

Or, there is always the old cold war gambit proposed by (I believe) Kenneth Boulding. Launch everything you have w/o warning targeted to destroy all other nations. Maybe the doomed will realize that their counterstrike will end mankind and therefore not respond so the species will survive.

Lots of luck with that.

Posted by K | July 17, 2007 3:37 PM

Nah ... all this Strangelovian nuclear war logic was important to think through during the Cold War precisely because the Soviets had a massive land army that was a credible threat to invade Western Europe across the flat and vastly important Northern European plain.

In contrast China already extends out pretty close to or beyond its natural boundaries. The one dangerous territorial dispute is over Taiwan, which is far less important to us than West Germany and far harder to get to. Without a plausible World War III-sized land war in the offing, nuclear war for its own sake is implausible.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 17, 2007 5:39 PM

soullite: read the article.

I have read the previous article on the topic (also in Atlantic? Harpers'?). The idea is to destroy the silos with missiles with very accurate first strikes, BEFORE they are launched. This is not bullshit, and we have that capability.

There exists a relatively simple countermeasure, but not that cheap. You have to build a network of thousands of launching sites, connect them with roads, and engage in a gigantic shell game, trucking missiles and their look-alike copies from place to place. If you can make a silo and, say, 5 miles of a road, many times cheaper than a missile, you got the ticket. It also helps to have a piece of desert that you can spare.

Yet another countermeasure is much cheaper and available to large countries like China. You
disperse the silos to make it difficult to strike them at exactly same time, and put all of them on "hair-trigger" alert. If one cluster is hit, other will launch. Even ballistic missiles need ca. 3 minutes for 1000 miles. If several bunches of rockets are observed, launch. The problem with this is that say, software malfunction, can cause a nuclear war.

The best scenario I see for the future war between superpower is destroying satellites of each other. GPS will stop functioning, and a lot of telecommunications etc., but humanity should survive it with stride.

Posted by piotr | July 17, 2007 5:55 PM