Nuclear Security and Strategic Analyses Dr Marko Beljac

Will China Boost its Nuclear Deterrent in Response to a US Ballistic Missile Defence “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific?

When the GOP swept to power in Congress under Newt Gingrich Ballistic Missile Defence got a new lease on life. One prediction that was often made by critics of BMD was that China would respond to a continental scale US BMD system by augmenting its offensive nuclear forces both qualitatively and quantitatively.

There were always an important issue to be mindful of here. A too overt focus on force posture tended to obscure a much basic doctrinal issue. That is to say, any Chinese buildup in response to US BMD would not necessarily reflect a move away from minimum deterrence. A modest buildup in response could reflect a desire to maintain the credibility of minimum deterrence in the presence of a US BMD system.

Now the NTI Global Security Newswire has a potentially most significant small report on the matter

...The United States' expanding missile defense activities might lead China to boost its nuclear arsenal, a former senior Russian military official said yesterday.

"At present, China has a very limited nuclear potential, but my recent contacts with Chinese military representatives indicate that if the United States deploys a global missile defense system, in particular in the Far East, China will build up its offensive capability," said former Russian Defense Ministry deputy chief Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Buzhinsky in a RIA Novosti report...

These comments follow reports that Beijing feels as if the US is extending a Ballistic Missile Defence "ring of fire" across the Pacific.

A number of comments by Chinese strategic analysts, cited by China Daily, caught my eye

...Washington appears determined to surround China with US-built anti-missile systems, military scholars have observed.

According to US-based Defense News, Taiwan became the fifth global buyer of the Patriot missile defense system last year following Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Germany.

Quite a few military experts have noted that Washington's latest proposed weapon deal with Taiwan is the key part of a US strategic encirclement of China in the East Asian region, and that the missiles could soon have a footprint that extends from Japan to the Republic of Korea and Taiwan.

Air force colonel Dai Xu, a renowned military strategist, wrote in an article released this month that "China is in a crescent-shaped ring of encirclement. The ring begins in Japan, stretches through nations in the South China Sea to India, and ends in Afghanistan. Washington's deployment of anti-missile systems around China's periphery forms a crescent-shaped encirclement".

Ni Lexiong, an expert on military affairs with the Shanghai Institute of Political Science and Law, told the Guanghzou Daily yesterday, "The US anti-missile system in China's neighborhood is a replica of its strategy in Eastern Europe against Russia. The Obama administration began to plan for such a system around China after its project in Eastern Europe got suspended"...

The headline of the NTI GSN report is; "China Might Boost Nuclear Deterrent, Russian Expert Says". We must be careful to keep the above distinction in mind. Boosting nuclear deterrence implies moving a step beyond minimum deterrence, but that does not necessarily follow.

China's angry response to the Taiwan arms deal, which included a PAC3 deal, should be seen in this wider context.

Now Patriots and the like are not the same as the other more strategic components of BMD. But these comments from the China Daily report are worth citing

...Tang Xiaosong, director of the Center of International Security and Strategy Studies with Guangdong University of Foreign Studies noted that the ring encircling China can also be expanded at any time in other directions. He said that Washington is hoping to sell India and other Southeast Asian countries the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-3 missile defense system...

Tang Xiaosong makes a very important point. He is referring to the open architecture provisions of US BMD policy, first enunciated by the Bush administration and now accepted by the Obama administration. He is right of course.

Notice that under the framework of "dissuasion" Beijing should now be dissuaded from investing in further enhancing its MRBM and SRBM potential. Somehow I doubt whether this will come to pass.

The thing to worry about here is that any US boost, both to the qualitative capacity of its offensive and defensive strategic potential, I think is not necessarily qualitative Chinese modernisation or even a boost in its deterrence construct, but rather a shift towards a strategic posture consistent with Launch on Warning. The interesting link here is growing Chinese space capability.

As Beijing develops a mature space program this will give PLA strategic planners the option of creating a space based early warning system, enabling the adoption of something akin to Launch on Warning.

That would be bad for strategic stability, and would have the affect of decreasing US national security. Notice that this is the opposite of the pronounced objective of Ballistic Missile Defence.