Towards Nuclear Zero by Raimo Väyrynen David Cortright

Author:Raimo Väyrynen, David Cortright [Raimo Väyrynen, David Cortright]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Strategy, Political Science, Political Freedom
ISBN: 9781135874001
Google: 4MhCphvjLJMC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-13T15:55:41+00:00

Reassuring China

China has proclaimed a policy of so-called ’peaceful rise’ and asserts that its growing power does not threaten any nation. China's record on nuclear-weapons policy is mixed, however. On the one hand, China has adopted a restrained policy towards its nuclear capabilities, consistently maintaining a relatively small arsenal estimated to be in the range of 250 warheads. On the other hand, Beijing has steadily modernised and upgraded its conventional military and nuclear-weapons capabilities. In the past China provided support for nuclear proliferation, aiding the development of Pakistan's missile and nuclearweapons programmes. In recent years Beijing has improved its non-proliferation record and has been admitted to the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Chinese government leaders provide reassurances to other leaders of their peaceful intensions, but military officials have at times issued bellicose statements and engaged in provocative acts.24

China has cooperated in some non-proliferation efforts, helping to host the Six-Party Talks on North Korea, but generally it has adopted an independent line. In the UN Conference on Disarmament it has insisted on linking discussion of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty to negotiations for a treaty banning the deployment of weapons in outer space. It has supported sanctions against Iran on some occasions, but not on others. Chinese officials and experts reflect an ambivalent attitude towards non-proliferation and disarmament. The country has traditionally supported the goal of disarmament, and recently endorsed Obama's call for a world without nuclear weapons. Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons is in Beijing's interest because it helps to preserve its superiority over potential regional rivals. It also advances its goal of a more ‘harmonious world’, and provides leverage with the United States and Europe. Yet Chinese officials are highly critical of the inequalities in the NPT regime and global power relations generally. Some see the spread of nuclear weapons as inevitable and a way to balance the hegemony and growing military and nuclear superiority of the United States.25

Bates Gill, an expert on Chinese foreign policy, has argued that the United States should adopt a more conciliatory and cooperative policy towards China, acknowledging its rise to global power as an unavoidable fact and seeking to engage it as a global partner rather than strategic rival.26 Some in Washington see China as a global competitor, the principal rival to US primacy and a power to be contained. The 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States calls for ‘dissuading future military competition’ to prevent the rise of global rivals.27 Accompanying this doctrine is Washington's global-strike capacity, which gives the United States unprecedented means to launch remote-control strikes anywhere in the world with conventional or nuclear weapons. This strategic capacity and the US reluctance to ban weapons in space are not only deeply worrying to China, they impede security cooperation.

To gain greater Chinese cooperation for non-proliferation and disarmament, the United States will need to provide security assurances, making clear that it has no intention of challenging or attacking China militarily so long as it does not threaten US security or that of US allies.

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