At an August meeting with South Korea’s president, Trump again expressed his vision for drawing down U.S., China and Russia nuclear stockpiles. A few days later, the Chinese foreign ministry balked at this goal.
Trump reportedly has been talking to China about the TikTok deal; perhaps this openness to talks can eventually lead to serious denuclearization talks.
As with Russia, there are many reasons to commence negotiation with China. Given China’s growing nuclear stockpile, the window of opportunity is quickly closing.
The history of nuclear deterrence suggests that entrenchment effects — strategic, economic, political — make significant arms drawdowns extremely difficult. It is, therefore, foresighted and proactive to negotiate now.
China’s foreign ministry claims that Trump’s goal is “neither reasonable nor realistic.” One reason is that “China’s nuclear capabilities are not on the same scale as those of the U.S.”
While China’s nuclear posture is not currently on the same scale, in 2024, the Defense Department said China “will have over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, much of which will be deployed at higher readiness levels.”
Assuming this assessment is correct, China’s trajectory belies its claim about not being involved in an arms race. This gives reason to negotiate with China before the odds of success in doing so diminish further.
China’s foreign ministry also says the countries’ “nuclear policies and strategic security environments are … fundamentally different.”
“China adheres to a no-first-use policy, pursues a nuclear strategy of self-defense, and has always kept its nuclear forces at the minimum level required for national security.”
While no-first-use has been China’s official position, it is naïve to assume that China’s posture won’t change as its stockpile grows or that China will not use nuclear weapons in relation to an attack on Taiwan.
The Defense Department said “Beijing probably would consider nuclear first use if a conventional military defeat in Taiwan gravely threatened [Chinese Communist Party] regime survival.”
Second, the advent of a third nuclear superpower poses new permutational complexity and synergies. The risk of accidentally triggered war only increases. Additionally, two superpowers might gang up on the third, something concerning if the current China-Russia alliance further solidifies.
Also, while China may have disavowed “launch on warning” previously, we cannot assume it will continue to do so. A May Congressional Research Service report on Russian and U.S. launch policies warns to “prepare for the emerging two-nuclear-peer threat from Russia and China.”
There are other risk factors, such as difficulty distinguishing China’s conventional weapons from its nuclear delivery systems, verification issues surrounding nascent space technologies and the threat of a decapitation strike.
Those are all good reasons to negotiate, but somewhat abstract. In contrast, Jacobsen’s “Nuclear War: A Scenario” provides a narrative that viscerally hammers home why negotiation is crucial.
The book, based on extensive interviews, depicts the fragility of the nuclear deterrence system, such as the brief decision-making window, immense pressures on a leader to make a quick decision and the risk of communication breakdown.
A review quibbled about the book’s choice of scenarios, an attack by North Korea on the U.S. True, there are more likely scenarios for the outbreak of a nuclear war, but this does not distract from the book’s considerable value in visualizing what is at stake.
Finally, Jacobsen recounts history that underscores a final reason to negotiate. At a meeting at which top military brass reviewed 1960 work on a nuclear strike plan, participants glad-handed one another with accolades about work on the plan.
The only demur was from Marine commandant Gen. David M. Shoup, a World War II Medal of Honor recipient who, “spoke in a calm, level voice”: “Any plan that murders 300 million Chinese when it might not even be their war is not a good plan. That is not the American way.”
In response, “no one else said anything … everyone just looked the other way.”
Shoup expressed the moral problems of nuclear deterrence, well-entrenched and institutionalized long ago, more pointedly than decades of academic discussions.
The reasons for pursuing Trump’s goal are easily enumerated. But how to proceed?
- As with the Russia-Ukraine war, concerns of a Taiwan invasion should not dampen U.S. commitment to negotiate with China.
- The U.S. will need to make significant drawdowns to match those proposed in any negotiation, or the effort will go nowhere.
- Given questions about the state of its economy, the U.S. can roll back tariffs as a lever to negotiate with China, especially if, as Kevin Rudd’s “The Avoidable War” suggests, China depends on its ability to sustain economic growth.
- The Golden Dome defense project can figure into negotiations in a complex manner.
- Discussion about treaty verification protocols and technologies will be essential. A Sandia National Laboratories paper makes recommendations about how to cooperate with Chinese attitudes on verification.
Perhaps Trump’s relentlessness, his business background and his willingness to meet with U.S. adversaries will get him somewhere on nuclear negotiations with China, despite the daunting odds. Again, though, the window of opportunity is diminishing.
Brian Simboli, Ph.D., is a writer whose work focuses on the interface of ethics and public policy. He is a former Lehigh University research librarian whose work focused on the sciences, psychology and math.
