Psychology, Strategy and Conflict: Perceptions of Insecurity in International Relations by James W. Davis

Author:James W. Davis [Davis, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, International Relations, General, Security (National & International), Political Freedom
ISBN: 9780415643290
Google: VgWfnAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 18172678
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

China’s nuclear modernization: revolution or evolution?

China’s 2006 Defense White Paper argues that the purpose of China’s nuclear forces all along has been to “deter other countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against China” and subsequently, China “upholds the principles of counterattack in self-defense and limited development of nuclear weapons.”8 The 2008 Defense White Paper similarly notes: “China remains committed to the policy of ‘No First Use’ of nuclear weapons, pursues a self-defensive nuclear strategy, and will never enter into a nuclear arms race with another country.”9 In line with this declaratory doctrine, China developed the capability to level significant nuclear destruction against the US homeland in the early 1980s. In 1980 China tested and then, in the following year, deployed its first missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States;10 eight years later, China conducted its first successful submerged test launch of the JL-1 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), a system that was 24 years in the making.11 Although China had nuclear weapons capable of attacking forward-deployed US bases since the late 1960s, these systems were the first to be able to strike the US homeland. Table 7.1 details the publicly available information about the current Chinese nuclear and conventional missile arsenal, with the longer-range missiles – CSS-2, CSS-3, DF-5 (CSS-4), DF-31, DF-31A, and some portion of the DF21 (CSS-5) – likely making up the bulk of those tipped with nuclear weapons (the nuclear-capable JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile is under development but has experienced test failures).12 In the early 1980s, as the Chinese deployed the liquid-fueled CSS-3 and CSS-4, capable of reaching American targets, the good news for the Sino-American relationship at that time was that both countries were in active opposition to the Soviet Union and even cooperated in that effort in important ways, particularly in Afghanistan and in China’s Northwest regions. Since even conventional war between the two partners was extremely unlikely at that time, one did not need to worry much about nuclear attacks against each other, either as a conscious decision of either capital or as a result of inadvertent escalation from the conventional to the nuclear level.

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