Now, Suddenly, China's Nuclear Buildup Negates All Previous Reality About Strategic Warfare -- NOT!

There is nothing new under the sun, except an increasingly scared Xi Jinping

Jim and Sara Nuttle illustration from “America’s New Map”

I feel too strongly about this one to put it behind the paywall.

NYT piece entitled, “Fear and Ambition Propel Xi’s Nuclear Acceleration” both epitomizes and captures a dynamic that has long existed within the strategic nuclear realm: that of a new generation of thinkers somehow talking themselves into believing that some weapon or some new player suddenly invalidates the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

As I wrote in America’s New Map:

Nuclear powers are existentially incentivized to stick with the fundamental strategic ruleset that says these weapons are for having and not using. Once employed in a “first strike” (even as a tactical demonstration), the deterrent value of nuclear weapons evaporates. One seeks membership in the nuclear club to rule out strategic warfare, not trigger it. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate get-out-of-jail card regarding superpower military interventions in smaller states, Russia invading Ukraine being just the latest example.

Nuclear weapons thus establish mutually recognized boundaries for any conflict involving nuclear powers, which is an exceptionally good thing and a key pillar of the US-created international order now defined by globalization.

I mean, good God! We're running the experiment in real-time with Russia-Ukraine and what have we seen?

Does Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling actually limit what aid we offer Ukraine? Honestly, no, it doesn’t. We wouldn’t be offering some amazing package to Ukraine if Russia had no nukes; we’d still be offering just enough to thwart a great power’s aggression without triggering a direct war that we’d not care to wage.

Has Russia’s nukes offered it any great advantage over Ukraine? Not that I’ve seen. Which side has been more frustrated and lost more troops? Russia. So why hasn’t Russia just pulled out its nukes and escalated so successfully that both Ukraine and NATO totally backed off and accepted Russia’s complete annexation of Ukraine — lest we suffer nuclear Armageddon?

Because that’s not how nukes work. Again, from America’s New Map:

As proven yet again in Ukraine, superpowers can wage whatever forms of conventional (i.e., non-nuclear) war they want, while opposing nuclear powers similarly limit their responses to non-strategic means. A bloody fate for Ukraine, but an incredibly positive ruleset for the world.

The same logic has held for Taiwan for decades. China hasn’t postponed its Taiwan invasion because of American nukes; it hasn’t done it up to now because it hasn’t had the conventional capacity to do it in some fell swoop — and it never will at the rate we’re arming Taiwan or the rest of the region’s powers are arming themselves (usually buying our good stuff).

And yet, because China is bolstering its nuclear strike capacity, all of a sudden we have experts on our side, citing experts on their side, promulgating the notion that these long-proven realities no longer matter when it comes to Xi Jinping. From the NYT story:

Now, as China’s nuclear options have grown, its military strategists are looking to nuclear weapons as not only a defensive shield, but as a potential sword — to intimidate and subjugate adversaries. Even without firing a nuclear weapon, China could mobilize or brandish its missiles, bombers and submarines to warn other countries against the risks of escalating into brinkmanship.

Where has this journalist lived all this life? On another planet? I’m reading remedial logic here — stuff so far past its due date that it stinks on my screen, and yet it’s being offered here like some new analytic discovery!

If this dynamic works so well, then why hasn’t any nuclear power successfully pursued it across all these decades?

Name one situation where a nuclear power totally got its way because the non-nuclear entity bowed to the threat of nuclear annihilation.

You can’t.

Take China-v-Philippines over sea territorial claims: Give me the scenario where China says, “Back off or we nuke you!” And then gets what it wants — just like that! Because, hey, nuking the Philippines ain’t no thing! It happens all the time in our world, which is why the threat is so COMPELLING!

This is not a new phenomenon: when both the USSR and the US were ramping up their stockpiles and platform fleets during the Cold War, military and strategic planners on both sides fantasized about such “escalation dominance.”

It’s just that nobody has ever succeeded in doing it.

So now, new generations of Chinese strategists somehow believe they’re going to dominate crises by yelling out loudly, “Hey buddy, check out my nukes!”

“A powerful strategic deterrent capability can force the enemy to pull back from rash action, subduing them without going to war,” Chen Jiaqi, a researcher at China’s National Defense University, wrote in a paper in 2021. “Whoever masters more advanced technologies, and develops strategic deterrent weapons that can leave others behind it in the dust, will have a powerful voice in times of peace and hold the initiative in times of war.”

What a complete load of crap.

Post-Soviet Russia has always had more enough of a nuclear package for this to be true throughout the post-Cold War period and what has it yielded? Stop any former client state joining the EU or NATO? Given it a powerful voice?

Not one time? OMG!

So, when such defections got really close to home, didn’t the Kremlin just brandish some nukes and that’s why Georgia and Ukraine backed off? Or was Putin forced into cross-border hostage-snatching (Russian enclaves) in both instances? At huge cost with incredibly little to show for it?

I mean, if this stuff works so well, how come Russia has seen almost its entire empire defect to the West? Why is it losing upwards of 300,000 troops in Ukraine? Wouldn’t the Kremlin naturally make some nuclear threats and thus regain the escalation dominance? Geez, we’re supporting a countering force RIGHT ON RUSSIA”S BORDER, supplying at-will a FORMER SOVIET REPUBLIC and a country CONSIDERED A BIRTHPLACE OF MUCH OF RUSSIAN CULTURE!

If all that is on the line (and frankly, it far outweighs Beijing’s BS claim on Taiwan) and Russia has everything or more than China possesses or aspires to, then why hasn’t this magical nuclear advantage yielded ANYTHING OF VALUE to the Kremlin?

Ah, but it will be different with China because … [crickets].

But we are told!

Mr. Xi has expanded the country’s atomic arsenal faster than any other Chinese leader, bringing his country closer to the big league of the United States and Russia. He has doubled the size of China’s arsenal to roughly 500 warheads, and at this rate, by 2035, it could have around 1,500 warheads — roughly as many as Washington and Moscow each now deploy, U.S. officials have said. (The United States and Russia each have thousands more warheads mothballed.)

Well then, that must change everything, yes?

I mean, look at how the Houthis quiver in fear over America’s nuclear arsenal! You can make people do ANYTHING if you’ve got nukes!

China and Russia will double-threat us and we will be forced to cave on every global or even regional crisis, because, as we look back throughout history … we spot times where super-nuked America just told much-less-nuked China to back off or else? And it worked?

Reread your Korean and Vietnam War histories, because no such dynamic ever unfolded. [And no, direct conventional combat between a nuclear US in Korea and a non-nuclear China in Korea is not a valid datapoint because China was just playing proxy for the USSR then.]

But we are also told!

A major shift in China’s nuclear power and doctrine could deeply complicate its competition with the United States. China’s expansion has already set off intense debate in Washington about how to respond, and it has cast greater doubt on the future of major arms control treaties. All while U.S.-Russian antagonism is also raising the prospect of a new era of nuclear rivalry.

Arms racing? Arms control? Nuclear rivalry?

Wake me up when you have something new, because none of these signals some awesome new nuclear escalation dominance. Instead, it’s the same-old, same-old.

Ah, but what about Taiwan?

Crucially, China’s growing nuclear options could shape the future of Taiwan — the island democracy that Beijing claims as its own territory and that relies on the United States for security backing. In the coming years, Beijing may gain confidence that it can limit the intervention of Washington and its allies in any conflict.

Just like Russia did with Ukraine, am I right? We totally backed off on that one. It’s not like we poured weaponry into that situation.

Furthermore, it’s not like we de-globalized Russia’s financial system after it invaded Ukraine DESPITE nuclear saber-rattling out of the Kremlin. That would be inconceivable to take such a provocative action. Putin could blow up the world!

But it will be different with Taiwan because … [crickets again].

Here’s China’s pitch:

In deciding Taiwan’s fate, China’s “trump card” could be a “powerful strategic deterrence force” to warn that “any external intervention will not succeed and cannot possibly succeed,” Ge Tengfei, a professor at China’s National University of Defense Technology, wrote in a Communist Party journal in 2022.

Again, I cry complete bullshit.

What is succeed here? We don’t have to succeed. We just have to stop China from succeeding, which is a whole lot easier than China actually succeeding.

Trump card, my ass.

Are we succeeding in Ukraine? Has it cost a lot to stop Russia from succeeding? Is Russia succeeding?

So, again, where is the big difference with Taiwan — as island fortress?

Here is some truly bad thinking:

Official Chinese accounts of history reinforced that fear. People’s Liberation Army studies often dwell on the Korean War and crises over Taiwan in the 1950s, when American leaders hinted that they could drop atomic bombs on China. Such memories have entrenched views in Beijing that the United States is inclined to use“nuclear blackmail.”

What exactly did we stop with such intimations? Did China just run away and hide during the Korean War? Does anyone think that, in the 1950s, our answer to Chinese aggression against Taiwan would have been nuking China writ large? When we had then, just as we do now, the capacity to thwart any such outright success through conventional means?

Why didn’t we use nukes in the Korean War when it went badly? Why was MacArthur fired by Truman? Why didn’t we use nukes in Vietnam when it really went bad? Why did we abandon the field instead, suffering a total loss?

Yeah, if Xi is willing to nuke Taiwan, he can have it. But, if anyone on either side thinks that Xi nuking Guam and killing several thousand US troops is going to get the US to back off and run home, then they should lay off the magic mushrooms because that ain’t happening.

None of the MAD logic is altered by any of this loose talk or capacity building on China’s side. We can buy into this fear-mongering (and alarmist reporting from the NYT lacking any serious broad-framing of either the history or the issue), or we can discount it for the nonsense it is.

We need to get used to this sort of BS from the Chinese as they decline as a power. These signals will be all about their fear — not about their growing power nor any new and magical influence it is perceived (or just promoted by them) as accruing.

It’s seems far more clear, when you read this piece, that the PLA is deathly afraid of our being able to wipe-out or negate their nuclear deterrence arsenal — thus all the whack-a-mole tunneling with missiles designed to fool our satellites. This is actually far more about preserving a second strike capability, with all the bold talk being bravado.

But still, we must deal with dubious analysis such as this:

“The ladder of escalation that they can apply now is much more nuanced,” said Bates Gill, the executive director of Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “The implicit message is not just: ‘We could nuke Los Angeles.’ Now it’s also: ‘We could wipe out Guam, and you don’t want to risk escalation if we do.’”

So, get this: somehow by adding Guam to LA, now we’re going to be really DETERRED!

I get it: nobody likes Hollywood, so bomb if you must.

Again, anybody nukes US territory — anywhere, gets a nuclear reply. It’s as simple as that, because, tell me, which US president just backs down in that situation because the future (particularly their political future) looks brighter that way.

But hey, now let’s go wild with it:

“That’s going to be a really tough decision for any U.S. president — to trust that whatever advice he’s getting is not risking nuclear escalation for the sake of Taiwan,” said John K. Culver, a former C.I.A. senior analyst who studies the Chinese military. “As soon as the U.S. starts bombing mainland China, no one is going to be able to tell the U.S. president with conviction exactly where China’s line is.”

Again, OMG! What was I thinking? Of COURSE we’re going to be bombing the Chinese mainland just like we are bombing the Russian mainland over Ukraine. I mean, how many bombs have we dropped so far on Russia?

None?

But certainly we’ll be dropping bombs and killing Chinese citizens en masse in the case of Taiwan, right? Because that will get Beijing to back off — duh!!!

Or maybe that’s just crazy-bat-shit nonsense!

Could be, could be.

Could be there’s a pretty firm ruleset that says nuclear powers don’t directly target one another — even conventionally.

Could be that rule has held for roughly seven decades now.

Could be nuclear powers have waged all manner of proxy wars over the decades and have NEVER done that.

But, what the hell, let’s discount all that reality and history and START with the logic that, “as soon as the U.S. starts bombing MAINLAND CHINA”… Then whoa! Buddy! Then it’s going to get blurry alright!

Bad article, bad reporting, bad analysis — just plain bad.

If and when I ever write anything that goofy, stop reading me.