China’s Dangerous Nuclear Push

Since the 1990s, Beijing has spurned Washington’s invitations to participate in nuclear arms control negotiations. Instead, it has expanded and modernized its arsenal: the country’s estimated 500 nuclear warheads are on track to double by 2030. China’s advances, along with North Korea’s, has had knock-on effects in the region. Despite U.S. security assurances, a majority of South Koreans now want their country to have its own nuclear weapons, and Japan’s long-standing aversion to the bomb is also eroding. Asia is now on track to see a destabilizing arms race in the years ahead.

If it acts quickly, however, Washington can stem these worrying developments. In February, Beijing invited the world’s nuclear states to negotiate a “no first use” treaty. (The United States, which has more than ten times as many nuclear weapons as China, maintains a first-use option.) After so many rejected advances, the United States should welcome China’s overture to talk. If Beijing is prepared to negotiate in good faith, Washington should respond in kind—and press for a broader arms control agreement.

Washington must engage in tough, even coercive diplomacy, making it clear that Beijing faces a stark choice: participate meaningfully in substantive negotiations or brave a massive U.S.-backed nuclear buildup in its own backyard. And if Chinese leaders decline to do so, Washington could begin discussions with Seoul and Tokyo about nuclear-sharing arrangements, as well as move faster to update and enlarge its own arsenal, channeling investments to its nuclear weapons defense industrial base.

Some observers might object to this tough approach, arguing that it will contribute to nuclear proliferation. But there is an instructive precedent for Washington’s use of coercion to bring states to the arms control negotiating table. In 1983, Washington deployed nuclear-tipped Pershing II missiles in West Germany and ground-launched cruise missiles in Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands. Rather than prompting escalation, this aggressive move compelled Moscow to engage in diplomacy that led to the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated all intermediate-range forces from Europe.

Today, Washington should strengthen its missile defenses, and those of its allies, ramp up U.S. deployments of nuclear-armed submarines and nuclear-capable bombers, and pursue nuclear-sharing arrangements with Seoul and Tokyo. Just as such moves drove the Soviet Union to the bargaining table in the past, they could convince China to negotiate in the future.

UNTHINKABLE NO MORE

A coercive approach toward China would require the backing of South Korea and Japan. The South Korean public in particular wishes to move beyond U.S. reassurances of nuclear deterrence. Two national polls conducted this year found that more than 70 percent of South Koreans believe that their country needs its own nuclear arsenal. Although South Korean elites tend to disagree, a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that 61 percent of academics, experts, businesspeople, politicians, and officials surveyed would support a nuclear-sharing option with the United States “if necessary.” Such a middle-ground approach would see Washington redeploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea, which has not been nuclear since 1991, when the George H. W. Bush administration withdrew all U.S. nuclear weapons as part of a broader worldwide drawdown.

In Japan, the idea of developing nuclear weapons was once unthinkable, given its status as the only country in history to have been on the receiving end of a nuclear attack. But as early as 2002, Shinzo Abe, then a member of Japan’s House of Representatives and not yet prime minister, stated that “the possession of nuclear bombs is constitutional, so long as they are small.” Although a 2020 poll found that 75 percent of the Japanese public still supports a global ban on nuclear weapons, some Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leaders have adopted a more permissive stance. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Abe argued that Japan should consider a NATO-style nuclear-sharing agreement with the United States. A March 2022 survey found that 63 percent of Japanese were open to discussions of a nuclear-sharing option. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was even less circumspect about Japan’s nuclear ambitions, stating in 2023 that Japan was “heading towards becoming a nuclear power in five years.”

For now, Tokyo continues to champion nonproliferation, especially under the leadership of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is a member of the LDP but whose family roots are tied to Hiroshima. But Kishida’s political future is tenuous, and other LDP members who might replace him are more accepting of nuclear weapons. Soon, Chinese nuclear expansion and North Korean nuclear threats may nudge Japanese leaders to adopt nuclear views more akin to those of South Korean leaders. In recent years, some Japanese officials have even questioned whether the U.S. nuclear umbrella is enough, suggesting instead that the country should consider developing its own arsenal. “We respect the ideals of nonproliferation, provided that the U.S. nuclear guarantee is perfect,” Nobukatsu Kanehara, who had served as assistant chief of cabinet secretary under Abe, said in 2021. But he added an important caveat: “Is it? That is the great, great concern for us.”

ESCALATE TO DE-ESCALATE

The history of arms control demonstrates the value of coercive policies in getting states to agree to negotiations. During SALT I, the first round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, from late 1969 through the summer of 1972, the United States toyed with the idea of adding extra warheads to missiles, which convinced the Soviets to stay at the negotiating table. And U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, a project to build a missile-defense system in space, drove his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, to entreat the Americans to engage in a series of summits. In the face of such provocations, Moscow had to choose between accelerating the arms race and pursuing arms control. On these occasions, Washington’s gambles paid off, compelling Moscow to back down.

How would coercion work today? Although current U.S. policy discourages increased nuclearization, Washington could leverage the threat of arming South Korea and Japan to bring China to the negotiating table. If Beijing declined dialogue, it would risk a much greater nuclear threat in its own backyard. A nuclear Japan and South Korea would dial up the likelihood of misperception, miscalculation, and accidents, raising the stakes of nuclear catastrophe. Facing such a perilous reality, Beijing may well cave to U.S. pressure and enter into serious arms control talks. Of course, this strategy is not without risk. But low-risk efforts have failed to temper Beijing’s ambitions, requiring a new approach to arms control.

Even visions of dystopian nuclear futures have played a role in motivating leaders to engage in arms control in the past. (Reagan had shown little interest in arms control until viewing The Day After, a film depicting a nuclear holocaust in the American Midwest.) Laying out a nuclear future with severe security costs for Beijing may finally get the attention of Chinese elites, something that has eluded U.S. officials for decades, and draw Beijing to the negotiating table for serious discussions.

Washington could leverage the threat of arming South Korea and Japan to bring China to the negotiating table.

If such an approach is to work, Washington must clearly communicate to Beijing that China’s nuclear modernization, along with North Korea’s expanded nuclear program, will necessarily hasten U.S.-led regional proliferation. To that end, Washington must make clear to Seoul and Tokyo that it is open to discussing nuclear-sharing options should Beijing continue to expand its nuclear forces. And it should signal to Beijing that in the absence of substantive nuclear talks, calls from the right wing of the U.S. foreign policy establishment to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal will win out.

Dystopian nuclear futures may already be at play: Beijing’s February invitation arrived four months after the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which advises Congress on nuclear policy, issued its annual report, which envisioned a worst-case scenario of China and Russia colluding in a nuclear conflict in 2035. The commission’s recommendations for a nuclear buildup in response to the imagined scenario were undoubtedly viewed by Chinese leaders as a threat.

Of course, the current U.S. administration would prefer to uphold the United States’ commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which prohibits nonnuclear weapons states from developing an arsenal, and maintain its deterrence posture with fewer nuclear weapons. But if Beijing continues to develop its arsenal, Washington will have no option but to abandon those commitments. Paradoxically, its best chance of sustaining the treaty may be to first adopt a position of dramatically enhanced nuclear strength.

HARDBALL

By emphasizing the consequences that await China should it continue to develop its arsenal, Washington could convince Chinese leaders to come to the negotiating table for broader talks. If Beijing does agree to serious negotiations, it must demonstrate good faith by allowing for greater transparency into China’s nuclear arsenal, posture, and plans. Eventually, such an arrangement could include Russia, once conditions are conducive, as well as France and the United Kingdom.

In return, Washington might offer Beijing a commitment to help constrain proliferation in East Asia—for example, by working to persuade U.S. allies to abstain from developing their own nuclear capabilities. But for that to work, Washington must continue to demonstrate a firm commitment to extending deterrence through mechanisms such as the Nuclear Consultative Group, a forum for discussing nuclear issues with South Korea.

Ultimately, the United States’ goal should be to reframe the competition with China as a potentially positive-sum endeavor, with the two countries working together to support nonproliferation. Although there is no guarantee of success, starting a new U.S.-Chinese nuclear dialogue may ultimately protect East Asia from greater nuclearization. But first, Washington may have to play hardball.