global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report

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GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESdelivery vehicles. China formally subscribes to nuclear disarmament– it has since 1964 – and takes seriously its obligationsto Article VI of the NPT.China’s interest in <strong>global</strong> de-alerting begins with the factthat it sits at the epicenter of nuclear danger, surrounded bymore nuclear-armed states and threats than any other country.Besides Russia, it neighbors include the newest proliferators(India, Pakistan and North Korea). Neighbor Japanis a virtual nuclear weapons country by dint of its massiveholdings of stocks of separated plutonium. Neighbors Taiwanand South Korea have secretly pursued nuclear weaponsin the past. U.S. nuclear-armed submarines lurk off itsshores in patrolling strategic submarines. Proliferation tomore neighboring countries is around the corner if the securityenvironment deteriorates. And terrorists with nuclearambitions populate the region. The prospects of terroristsgetting hold of a nuclear weapon and exploding it nearbyif not on Chinese territory are non-trivial. With radical extremistsoperating in the vicinity, and a vast Russia arsenalnot far away, the specter of loose nuclear weapons and nuclearterrorism in China’s backyard is cause for concern.A de-alerting regime that locked down the world’s nucleararsenals and removed them from combat deployment wouldalleviate a multitude of direct and indirect threats to China.These threat scenarios range from nuclear terrorism to regionalconflicts such as an Indo-Pakistani war escalating into a nuclearwar, spilling widespread radioactive contamination into China.They range from an irrational act of nuclear desperation byNorth Korea, to an inadvertent nuclear exchange between Russiaand the United States, to a deliberate nuclear attack by India,Russia, or the United States during a crisis. De-alerting wouldremove the constant threat of sudden nuclear attack posed bylaunch-ready Russian and U.S. forces and greatly reduce thelikelihood of China’s exposure to the dire consequences of anuclear exchange on its periphery.Against this backdrop, China has good reason to want to join– and possibly lead – multilateral negotiations to prohibit placingnuclear forces on high alert status. Several other factors areconducive to its participation. First, the regional and <strong>global</strong>circumstances are still conducive to restraint and to avoiding acostly no-win arms race. Although there is a steady expansionof nuclear arms in South Asia with nuclear late-comers Indiaand Pakistan substantially building up their arsenals, an armsrace in the region is just beginning to get underway. 79 Second,China can effectively protect its national interest against its chiefregional rival, India, without having to rely on nuclear weapons.The same is true of India. In their bilateral relationship, bothenjoy the good fortune of having comparable national power,conventional military strength, and fortuitous geography in theform of a high mountain barrier between them. Third, nuclearweapons are less and less the currency of the realm. As growingpublic opinion worldwide repudiates nuclear weapons and demandstheir elimination, the prestige and “great power status”gained from possessing them will diminish everywhere thatpublic opinion matters, including China. In fact nuclear weaponsare fast acquiring an image-problem – they are increasinglyseen as weapons of the weak rather than the strong, and as asource of discomfort rather than pride. 80 Fifth, the cross-Straitsentente between Beijing and Taipei in recent years, coupledwith their growing economic interdependence, suggests a waningof the primary contingency for Chinese nuclear weapons– deterring conflict with the United States over Taiwan.China’s ascent in the international system also promises tosolve China’s problem of conventional deterrence vis-à-visthe United States without nuclear weapons, particularly indealing with the narrow security challenge of managing aTaiwan contingency through the use of force if that wouldever come to pass. Although the resort to force in dealingwith this contingency seems increasingly remote, a China-U.S.conflict over Taiwan no longer looks like a one-sidedmatch in conventional terms. Certainly over the longterm there is little doubt that the United States will lose its79 This <strong>commission</strong>’s Indian members doubt that an arms race willensue. They point out that India’s nuclear policy defines a static requirementfor deterrence that is insensitive to the size of the Pakistani nucleararsenal, and that India’s no-first-use doctrine suppresses the motivationfor arms racing and promotes stability in its relations with China.80 In the 1980s and ’90s in China, nuclear weapon and satellite technologywere touted by Chinese leaders like Deng Xiaoping and JiangZeming as achievements that demonstrated China’s entry into the toprungs of world scientific and economic prowess. That was true then –but in 2015 and beyond, China’s high international standing flows fromits many other impressive achievements, not from its nuclear weaponslegacy.44
GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESconventional hegemony in the region. Therefore the role ofChina’s nuclear forces in its national security strategy shouldactually shrink over time and, if so, China will have less reasonto resist de-alerting obligations growing out of a multilateralnegotiation. It would make good sense for China tomaintain its de-alerted status quo for its own forces whilewelcoming comparable obligations on the part of other nuclearweapons countries at the same time that China movesinto conventional military balance in the region and gainsnational power on par with the United States. 81C. UNITED KINGDOM AND FRANCEThe United Kingdom should be amenable to a <strong>global</strong>de-alerting agreement because it would substantially solvea security conundrum that has perplexed and disorientedU.K. decision-making on the future of its strategic nuclearsubmarine force. France is basically in the same boat andwould benefit equally from <strong>global</strong> de-alerting.No other nuclear weapons country has professed a strongercommitment than the United Kingdom to reducing the roleof nuclear weapons in its national security strategy. Puttingthis commitment to the test, the United Kingdom is confrontingan imminent decision between unilaterally disarming,investing upwards of 40 billion dollars to replace itsaging fleet of ballistic missile submarines and their missiles,or building a different and less expensive nuclear weaponssystem. (A final decision on building a new submarine fleetis needed in 2016 so that new submarines could enter servicein the 2020-25 timeframe.)81 Chinese nuclear history further suggests a potential willingness toenter into a multilateral process to regulate nuclear arms on a <strong>global</strong>basis. In 1964, the year of its first atomic test, China advocated total<strong>global</strong> nuclear disarmament. In 1982, then Foreign Minister Huang Huapledged that China would be ready to join the process if Russia and theUnited States cut their weapons by 50 percent, ceased testing them, andstopped producing them. At that time there were 57,000 weapons inthe combined U.S.-Russian arsenals. Today there are 16,000, a cut of 70percent. The two Cold War rivals also have maintained a moratorium onnuclear testing and on fissile materials production for two decades. Thisdownsizing clearly meets Huang Hua’s criteria for China entering into anew multilateral process of arms regulation.Having long ago retired all tactical weapons and relinquishedall secondary roles and missions (in the “war-fighting”category) for its nuclear forces, the United Kingdom’snuclear policy and posture have been stripped down to bareessentials. The employment of U.K. nuclear weapons is reservedfor extreme situations that threaten its very survival– notably, a direct nuclear threat to the U.K. homeland. Suchimprobable threats can be partially countered by high-precisionconventional weapons in NATO-allied operations, andmissile defenses. The United Kingdom enjoys the luxury ofbelonging to a powerful alliance system that can defend thenation against practically any plausible current threat it faceswithout needing to resort to nuclear force. However, theU.K. consensus appears to see a continuing need for nuclearweapons to deter nuclear blackmail or cold-blooded nuclearattack, and appears to endorse maintaining a strategic submarinefleet to satisfy this need. The country is not preparedto disarm unilaterally in the face of residual nuclear threat,however remote and declining it has become.The nuclear conundrum facing the United Kingdom stemsfrom the fact that while it strongly desires to further shrinkthe size of its four-boat submarine fleet, in part for budgetaryreasons, it has no margin to eliminate even a single submarinewithout losing the capability to maintain continuoussea patrols. Its fleet has reached a point of near indivisibility– an irreducible minimum – that does not lend itself tofurther cuts unless the it adopts a practice of discontinuousalert patrols. This would mean that a three-boat fleet wouldbe anchored in port much of the time, where it would bevulnerable to a sudden nuclear (and possibly conventional)strike. This notion of unilateral de-alerting – maintaining anuclear “deterrent” force that is not survivable much of thetime and that in fact seems to invite an attack – rouses scantsupport, although the United Kingdom has flirted with theidea of coordinating alert sea patrol schedules with Francein order to ensure that, jointly, they could keep either a U.K.or French submarine at sea at all times.If the United Kingdom chose to abandon submarines altogether,it does still have the technical capacity to develop anddeploy nuclear weapons delivered by sea- or air-launched45
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