China's Strategy and US Nuclear Weapons | CGSR Seminar

What should be U.S. strategic declaratory and employment policies to counter China's regional expansionism and growing nuclear, cyber, and space capabilities? An examination of different elements of China's strategy indicate an approach based on opaqueness rooted in Chinese tradition that emphasizes economic and political objectives with incremental expansionism at the conventional level. The careful strengthening of China's military capabilities is intended to counter and deter US forces while seeking to avoid a Soviet-style nuclear competition with the United States. Consequently, there is a limited role for US nuclear weapons except for alliance reassurance and with respect to Chinese threats or use of force against Taiwan.

Michael Nacht is the Thomas and Alison Schneider Professor of Public Policy at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy where he was Dean from 1998-2008. He served previously in two US Senate confirmed positions: Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs, for which he received the Distinguished Public Service Medal (the Department’s highest civilian honor); and Assistant Director for Strategic and Eurasian Affairs of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency where he participated in the Clinton-Jiang Zemin Presidential summit and four Clinton summits with Russian President Yeltsin. He is the author or co-author of six books and more than eighty articles and book chapters including “Strategic Latency and World Power” co-edited and co-authored with Zack Davis and Ron Lehman, CGSR, 2014.

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DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here do not represent LLNL or the U.S. government.

[Bobby-fjmk]

Please re-post this with the audio turned up 20db for the main speaker.

[DanielGomez-jxih]

Low yield kiloton-fission nuclear weapons call my attention, I don´t know why those titan ones in the megaton range never did.

[kschuman]

at some point hopefully it will be recognized that it would be much simpler just to become signatories to the UN's ban on nuclear weapons. Deterrence, extended deterrence, etc., assures long term destruction of civilization for the sake of an illusory short term security benefit. The permanent complete elimination of nuclear weapons is the only way to reduce the nuclear threat. Failure to do so simply allows the risk of global thermonuclear war to increase to a point of certainty. MAD is strategy that is exactly what it appears to be, a recipe for human extinction. Anyone with half a brain can see this, but it remains the fundamental defense policy of the US and most of the other nuclear weapons states.

LLNL, under Edward Teller, facilitated the development of the H-Bomb, to the complete disgrace of the University of California, science generally, and to the most extreme imaginable detriment of humanity.

[waynet]

You can't say that the approach with Russia has been very successful in terms of stable world peace. The US perspective is one of "us" versus them, which takes out the possibility of a win-win cooperative existence, which is required for the humans to evolve to the next level.

[robcalvert]

China's objective in its planned rise to dominate Asia is to win that goal without fighting, but to be prepared to fight. Actual conflict is the last thing the Chinese want, economic growth and regime stability are higher priorities. Yet, there are instances where Beijing might engage in warfare, especially if they were publicly made to look bad or there was a severe economic dislocation. Conventionally armed, accurate ballistic missiles and cruise missiles are a priority in these scenarios and that is where great efforts are apparently underway. The U.S. uses such weapons on foreign territory with impunity, for example and most recently in Syria and Iraq. China sees the U.S. attacking countries that lack a conventional weapons response and aims to close that gap in capabilities so that any potential conflict does not have to escalate to nuclear use. Btw, the Chinese specifically have said that they may use nuclear weapons first on their own territory. And it is very important to remember that they consider Taiwan and the huge South China Sea claimed areas as their national territory as you calculate specific scenarios of warfare in those areas.

[whtbobwntsbobget]

Who let this man near a microphone? He is so boring! What a terrible speaker!