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American Perspectives about Chinese Nuclear Policy *

-----Report of the Interviews in Washington D.C.

Wu Rui

Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R.China, 100084

Introduction

Under the support of the Arms Control Program at Tsinghua University, I conducted some interviews with American security experts in Washington D.C. on Chinese nuclear policy on June 12-13, 2003 after I attended the 14^th Women in International Security Symposium. The goal of the visits is to understand American perspectives about Chinese nuclear policy. This is part of the Project on Sino-US Nuclear Relations coordinated by China Foundation for Strategic and International Studies and the Arms Control Program at Tsinghua University.  The project, cooperating with Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, tries to explore the nature of the relations between the United States and China in nuclear area and to make policy recommendations to stabilize the relations. 

To get a balanced understanding about the American views, I try to cover the American political spectrum as widely as possible in selecting the interviewees. The organizations I visited include both official organizations (e.g. the Institute for Defense Analysis, a government institution reporting to the Office of the Secretary General of Defense directly) and non-government organizations. And they have quite different political positions, for example, the National Institute for Public Policy is associated with the Republic Party on security policies and the Center for Strategic and International Studies is more associated with the Democratic Party. The interviewees include former officials in both Republican and Democratic administrations and professional researchers.  This report tries to find out the focus of American security elites concerning China-U.S. nuclear issues, and to understand their perspectives and attitudes toward China’s nuclear capability and strategy.

The Roles of Nuclear Factor in the Overall Sino-U.S. Relationship

Almost all interviewees do not believe that nuclear weapons play a central role in the relationship between China and the United States although their opinions diverge on other matters. They believe that there are many other more important factors in the Sino-U.S. relationship, such as trade, educational exchange.

It is noticeable that most interviewees consider China’s nuclear development vital in determining the importance of nuclear weapons in the Sino-U.S. relations. They believe the United States will certainly react if China continues to develop its nuclear weapons and as its consequences it is China, not the United States, who will suffer more in the competition. In order to develop the Sino-U.S. relationship in a more favorable direction, they suggest, China should be more transparent in the nuclear field so as to reduce U.S. suspicions. Their conclusion is that China plays a driving role in shaping the future Sino-U.S. nuclear relationship and the U.S. nuclear policies are more responsive to Chinese changes.

This judgment includes two concerns. First, they worry that China’s growing nuclear capability would restrict the U.S. freedom of action on Taiwan matters and would even change the nuclear relationship between the two states; second, they also worry that China’s nuclear modernization would reduce the security perception of Russia, which could slow down its pace of nuclear reductions between the Untied States and Russia. Furthermore, one expert even predicts that China would become the terminator of U.S.-Russian nuclear disarmament process.

It sounds that the key issue these experts worry is the direction of China’s nuclear modernization. However, the interviewees also indicated that the United States will be sure to react no matter what China would do in nuclear modernization, i.e., the United States will make its effort to deny any progress in China’s nuclear modernization.

The above observations about the current roles of nuclear weapons in Sino-US relations seem to be reasonable. Besides nuclear nonproliferation which is about cooperation instead of confrontation, nuclear weapons have rarely been the central topic of the summits between China and the United States. The rapidly growing trade and cultural exchanges between the two countries have generated a lot of energy in stabilizing Sino-US relations. This is quite different from the US-Soviet relations that significantly relied on the balance of nuclear weapons and the lubrication of nuclear arms control. However, some of the above worries about Chinese nuclear modernization are inexplicable because the gap between the sizes of the nuclear arsenals of the two countries is so huge. Most U.S. references indicate that China has about 20 ICBMs that can reach the continental America while the United States has about 6,000 such weapons. Such a huge gap, along with the limits of China’s economic strength, makes it so unrealistic for China to change the nature of Sino-U.S. nuclear relationship. Moreover, the size of China’s nuclear arsenal has been quite stable in the past a few decades while the portion of US nuclear weapons targeting China varied significantly during the same period. So it does not seem to be true that China plays a driving role in shaping the Sino-US nuclear relation.

The American worries about significant Chinese nuclear buildup partially comes from the fact that the United States is losing a strong nuclear rival – the former Soviet Union, partially from the rapid economic growth in China and from the lack of explanation about future nuclear strategy by China. During the interviews, all experts expressed their concerns about the direction of China’s nuclear modernization and considered the lack of explanation about Chinese nuclear strategy as a subversive factor in the China-U.S. nuclear relationship. 

As analyzed above, the roles of China in shaping the Sino-U.S. nuclear relationship are limited. The United States significantly changed the number of nuclear weapons targeting China while the size of Chinese nuclear arsenal was quite stable and it could further adjust its nuclear policy toward China without seeing any significant change in the Chinese nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, the U.S. changes in its nuclear policy may also affect the Chinese government’s decision. For example, U.S. development of NMD could make China worry about the effectiveness of its nuclear deterrence and therefore pose pressure for China to enlarge its nuclear arsenal.

On the other hand, China’s nuclear modernization aiming at higher survivability of its nuclear weapons could be interpreted as military competition against the United States and cause hostile reaction. This is a typical security dilemma and the mutual suspicions make both sides nervous and trigger negative interactions. Although it is unrealistic for China and the United States to have an arms race as that between the former Soviet Union and the United States, the accumulation of mistrust is still worrisome and needs to be carefully clarified. 

For China, it is important to provide some transparency to remove the distrust and exaggerated guesses of the American security elites. But it does not seem to be true that all US negative actions against China would be stooped if China provides enough transparency in the nuclear realm as the interviewees required. The reason is that some American security experts do not accept the Chinese nuclear deterrence at all. Their goal is capturing the Chinese nuclear deterrence rather than knowing it. 

One interviewee said that nuclear weapons would be very important in the bilateral relationship if China were going to be the U.S. opponent; otherwise, nuclear weapons would not be so important. Hence, a more important task is to improve the overall Sino-US relationship while preventing the destabilizing factors in nuclear realm from growing. 

Perspectives about China’s Nuclear Capability and Nuclear Strategy

Regarding to the question about China’s nuclear capability, the main view is that China now has had a minimum deterrent capability and the secondary view is that China does not have a deterrent capability at all. When asking about China’s nuclear strategy, the answers seem to be much more ambivalent.  Almost all interviewees believe that the Chinese nuclear strategy lacks core goals and it is difficult to define the scope of the strategy because it includes too many choices and levels. They request China to provide more transparency in the nuclear realm so as to promote better communication between the two states.

The ambiguity of Chinese nuclear strategy leads to two very different perceptions in the American security elites. The first perception is that the ambiguity is to supplement the weakness of Chinese nuclear capabilities. As China does not have a creditable retaliatory capability, the uncertainties in the quantities and locations of the Chinese nuclear weapons can reduce their vulnerabilities and help maintain the Chinese nuclear deterrence. Another perception is the ambiguity serves China’s intention to develop a more offensive nuclear strategy, and to gain more time for such a development. These experts believe that in order to avoid other countries’ concern about its nuclear arsenal, China needs to hide its real intention until it has a stronger nuclear capability.

 The two different guesses about Chinese nuclear strategy are coupled with two different attitudes toward China’s nuclear deterrence. A relatively extreme point believes that China does not have deterrence capability at all and it will be unwise for China to develop such a capability. The reason behind the point is that China will be sure to lose the competition with the United States if China chooses to do so. This shows that some American security experts are unwilling to accept China’s nuclear deterrence and they tend to trump China’s nuclear deterrent capability.

Another relatively moderate view believes that China in fact has the capability to go beyond minimum deterrence, but it does not seem that limited deterrence is appropriate to describe China’s current nuclear strategy. According to this view, China pursues a kind of “nuclear sufficiency” principle. The security experts who hold such a view would like to determine U.S. policies toward China based on how many nuclear warheads China is going to develop. They would suggest the US government to adopt some measures to deny the increase if they foresee and worry about possible increase of China’s nuclear warheads. If the number of Chinese nuclear weapons is in the “acceptable range” of the United States’, they would suggest tolerating China’s nuclear deterrence.

It is difficult for China to seek a common ground with the first attitude described above. For the latter attitude, China should be able to find a middle point. The key problem here is to figure out the US “acceptable range”, which is ambiguous and could be altered along with the changes in the U.S. capabilities and interests. So a cooperative solution is possible in this line but great patience and carefulness are needed. 

The Potential Impact of NMD on China

With respect to the potential impact of U.S. NMD (National Missile Defense) development on China, most interviewees surprisingly have an agreement. They believe that the U.S. NMD is not aimed at China but it provides China more impetus to undertake nuclear modernization. NMD has been a hot topic in the China-U.S. nuclear relationship. Many Chinese experts believe that U.S. NMD would deny China’s nuclear deterrence and therefore destabilize the bilateral relationship. The interviewees hold an opposite viewpoint. They argue that it would be fruitless for China to respond to NMD because it is not aimed at China and the United States does not worry about Chinese nuclear weapons except their little constraint over U.S. freedom of action on the Taiwan issue.

Additionally, U.S. decision about NMD deployment would not change because of China’s objection. A few interviewees eschewed the question whether U.S. NMD is aiming at China and instead claimed that China would be sure to react and this would be one of the main impetuses for China to further its nuclear development. At the same time, the interviewees all believe that if China increases its nuclear warheads as a response to U.S. NMD deployment, it would be a waste of money. The arms race would give China a heavy burden and would damage China’s further economic construction and national development.

It is worthy pointing out that the above views do not seem to represent those of the whole security elites. When doing literature review, I found that there are quite different views besides the above ones. Some American security experts claim that the United States should increasingly make NMD aimed at China. And some experts believe that China’s threat will finally be larger than that from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, and the United States had made some severe mistakes on not designing NMD to defend against China. This shows that there are divergent views on whether U.S. NMD is or should be aimed at China. To convince China that NMD is not aimed at it, the United States could put some constraints over NMD capability and explain the constraints to China. This could help wipe off the Chinese concern over the negative impact of NMD on China’s nuclear deterrence.

On the other hand, the view that China does not have the financial capability to respond to NMD deployment may encourage the United States to take more unilateral actions in destroying global arms control regimes. As Russia cannot afford its nuclear parity with the United States, the United States has lost its interests in maintaining bilateral nuclear arms control framework with Russia and abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The view about US unparallel economic and technical strengths seems to be an origin of its theory of unilateralism.

The Taiwan Issue

Though the experts have different attitudes on the Taiwan issue, they all believe that if China uses forces on Taiwan, the United States will be sure to defend Taiwan. All the interviewees consider the Taiwan issue as a noticeable destabilizing factor in the China-U.S. nuclear relationship because they all believe that China might resort to nuclear weapons in dealing with this problem. Some interviewees claim that though China does commit “no first use” of nuclear weapons, it only applies to foreign territories; as China does not promise not to use nuclear weapons on its own territory and Taiwan is considered by China part of it, this commitment does not apply to Taiwan.

The interviewees do not worry about China’s use of nuclear weapons against the United States because they believe that the US retaliation will deter such use. They all suggest that China should not be anxious to resolve the Taiwan issue, especially by force. They believe that the Taiwan issue will be resolved peacefully only if the Chinese government does not use extreme measures. Additionally, they emphasize that the United States will not support Taiwan’s independence and will not accept Taiwan as a sovereignty country apart from China. Still, the Taiwan issue is considered by the United States as one of the “emergencies” for using nuclear weapons. The suspicions about the other side’s actions on Taiwan make this problem the most destabilizing factor in the China-U.S. nuclear relationship.

In the future, this destabilizing factor will not disappear until Taiwan problem is solved and the Sino-U.S. relationship will fluctuate along with it.  In order to prevent a crisis, China and the United States should make efforts to establish a crisis management mechanism and improve understanding and communication by means of security dialogues. Though both sides give importance to security dialogues, China and the United States still do not have an institutionalized channel for crisis management. What is the main point of the problem here? Each side has a different view. Nuclear transparency was always mentioned by the US side as a basement for improving communications. But on China side, there are doubts about the real U.S. intention in urging China to announce the number of its nuclear weapons. Therefore, it is important to have some more exploration on this regard to find a solution so that we could find a good way to foster better China-U.S. communication and dialogues.  This would be a critical step toward improving the Sino-U.S. nuclear relationship.

Conclusion

Alexander Wendt, the distinguished theorist of constructivism, argues that material factors alone have limited meanings, and only through social structures, can material factors have significant impact. The example he used when elaborating on this view is appropriate for China and the United States. Britain and China both have nuclear weapons. Yet it is China, not Britain, that makes the United States feel threatened. This indicates that because the United States holds different perceptions and expectations about the respective nuclear intentions of China and Britain, the two countries’ nuclear weapons engender completely different meanings.

The most important role of perception is its constructive but not causal function: perceptions construct the meaning of power and interests. The Chinese nuclear capability has not changed substantially since the last a few decades, but U.S. nuclear policies toward China have had a few significant changes during this period. This illuminates that U.S. national interests are determined by the U.S. understanding of the Sino-U.S. relationship. Because American security elites have very divergent perceptions about China’s nuclear capability and divergent evaluations about China’s nuclear strategy, the nuclear relationship between China and the United States could be more variable than before.

Nonetheless, some of the American perceptions might be based on insufficient evidences and guesses. This will actually cause improper U.S. policies, based on incomprehensive and unclear information. How can the American perceptions about Chinese nuclear policy be changed? Wendt’s theory might provide one solution. He points out that common social perceptions build the structure of international system and give momentum to it. This view is important in that states could be friends in principle.

       However, what we find is that China and the United States always have frictions and the good times for the two countries were very transitory.  If we explain this phenomenon by using constructivism, it can be considered that China and the United States are still in “Lockian culture”, in which countries’ identities are naturally opposed to each other. They might use force to resolve conflicts, but the degree of using force will be limited. Theoretically, “Lockian culture” can be changed to “Kantian culture”, in which countries are friendly with each other. However, if they do not make great efforts to do so, they will still stay in “Lockian culture”. This seems to be the sticking point of the China-U.S. relationship. Based on this theory, China and the United States could change their relationships by changing their identities.

APPENDIX: Schedule for Interviews

Thursday, June 12, 2003

9:30 a.m.--12:00 a.m.        National Institute for Public Policy

              Ambassador David J. Smith, Chief Operating Officer

              Willis A. Stanley, Director, Regional Studies

              Joanne Tompkins, Senior Analyst

1:00 p.m.---2:00 p.m.    Institute for Defense Analysis

              Brad Roberts

2:30 p.m.--4:30 p.m.          The Henry L. Stimson Center

              Kathleen A. Walsh, Senior Associate

              Jeffrey W. Thompson, Research Associate

              Matt Martin

Friday, June 13, 2003

9:30 a.m. ---1:00 p.m.       Atlantic Council of the United States

              Banning Garrett, Director, Asia Programs

2:00 p.m. ---4:00 p.m.       Center for Strategic and International Studies

              Robert J. Einhorn, former Assistant Secretary of State for Proliferation in the Clinton Administration

              Bonnie Glaser, Consultant on Asian Affairs

              Derek J. Mitchell, Senior Fellow, International Security Program

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* In the report, the quotes are not specified to individual interviewees.  However, all interviewees are listed in the Appendix.