SUPERIORITY COMPLEX

Why America’s growing nuclear supremacy may make war with China more likely

BY KEIR A. LIEBER AND DARYL G. P RESS

.....

n the coming years, as China’s economy booms and its armed

forces grow, the United States will seek to curb Chinese military

power and influence. The U.S.-China rivalry is poised to become

the world’s most dangerous strategic relationship. Optimists mightcontend that the pacifying effects of economic integration will forestalloutright hostility and conflict between Washington and Beijing. Otherswould argue that the strategic competition itself augurs peace andstability between the superpowers, because each country’s ar-senal ofnuclear weapons constitutes a security blanket: Just as the danger ofmutual nuclear annihilation—or mutual assured destruction (MAD), asit was labeled then—helped prevent war between the United States andthe Soviet Union during the Cold War, so too will nuclear deterrencecool tensions between the United States and China.

But little about the emerging nuclear balance between the United Statesand China should lead anyone to assume a similar stabilizing effect.
The United States is pursuing capabilities that are rendering MADobsolete, and the resulting nuclear imbalance of power could dramatically exacerbate America’s rivalrywith China.

In the 1990s, with the Cold War receding, nuclear weapons appeared to be relics. Russian and Chineseleaders apparently thought so. Russia allowed its arsenal to decline precipitously, and China showedlittle interest in modernizing its nuclear weapons. The small strategic force that China built and deployedin the 1970s and early 1980s is essentially the same one it has today.

But meanwhile, the United States steadily improved its “counterforce” capabilities—those nuclearweapons most effective at targeting an enemy’s nuclear arsenal. Even as it reduced the number ofweapons in its nuclear arsenal, the U.S. made its remaining weapons more lethal and accurate. Theresult today is a global nuclear imbalance unseen in 50 years. And nowhere is U.S. nuclear primacyclearer—or potentially more important—than in the Sino-U.S. relationship.

China has approximately 80 operationally deployed nuclear warheads, but only a few of them—thoseassigned to single-warhead DF-5 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—can reach the continentalUnited States. (There is no definitive, unclassified count of China’s DF-5 ICBMs, but official U.S.
statements have put the number at 18.) China has neither modern nuclear ballistic-missile submarinesnor long-range nuclear bombers. Moreover, China’s ICBMs can’t be quickly launched; the warheadsare stored separately, and the missiles are kept unfueled. (Unlike the solid fuel used in U.S. missiles,

1 of 8 6/5/07 2:41 PM

The Atlantic Online | July/August 2007 | Superiority Complex | Kei... http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200707/china-nukes

the liquid fuel used to propel Chinese ICBMs is highly corrosive.) Finally, China lacks an advancedearly-warning system that would give Beijing reliable notice of an incoming attack.

This small arsenal fulfilled China’s strategic requirements in the 20th century, but it is now obsolete.
The current Chinese force was designed for a different era:when China was a poor nation with a limitedrole on the world stage, and when U.S. and Soviet missiles were too inaccurate to carry out a disarmingstrike—even against Beijing’s small force. But China’s international presence is expanding, andAmerica’s counterforce capabilities have soared. Moreover, one of the biggest constraints that woulddeter American leaders from contemplating a disarming strike is fading away. In the past, a U.S.
preemptive attack would have generated horrific civilian casualties, but that may soon cease to be thecase.

How the United States achieved nuclear dominance after the Soviet Union collapsed is an open secret.
The Navy refitted its entire fleet of nuclear-armed submarines with new, highly accurate Trident IImissiles and replaced many of the 100-kiloton W76 warheads on these missiles with 455-kiloton W88warheads. (One kiloton is the explosive energy released by 1,000 tons of TNT.) The result is anunprecedented combination of accuracy and destructive power, essential for an attack on hardened silos.
The Navy also recently tested a GPS guidance system that would dramatically boost the accuracy, andthus lethality, of the submarine missile arsenal.

For its part, the Air Force has improved the guidance systems of land-based Minuteman III missiles.
Many of these missiles are also being “retipped” with more-powerful warheads—and more-accuratereentry vehicles—taken from recently retired MX (“Peacekeeper”) missiles. The Air Force has alsoupgraded the avionics on B-2 bombers. These nuclear-mission-capable bombers are already “stealthy,”
but the upgrades improve the planes’ ability to penetrate enemy airspace secretly, by flying very lowand using the terrain to shield them from radar.

Perhaps as important, the United States is pursuing a slew of nonnuclear weapons that will provideofficials options they may find more palatable if they decide to attack an adversary’s nuclear arsenal.
These include precision “bunker buster” conventional bombs, high-speed long-range cruise missiles,
and conventionally armed ballistic missiles—each of which could be used to destroy enemy missilesilos. Furthermore, Washington is undertaking initiatives—including advances in antisatellite warfareand in wide-area remote sensing, designed to find “relocatable” mobile missile launchers—that willmake China’s nuclear forces vulnerable. Even a missile-defense system substantially boosts U.S.
offensive counterforce capabilities. Critics of this system are right in claiming that it could not shieldAmerica from even a modest nuclear attack (e.g., 25 warheads), because it would be easilyoverwhelmed by decoy warheads and the “penetration aids” that would accompany an adversary’smissiles. But it could enhance offensive nuclear capabilities, by “mopping up” a small number ofincoming warheads that survived a U.S. first strike.

America’s growing counterforce power reflects its concern about China’s emergence as what Pentagonplanners call a “peer competitor.” In 2006, the Pentagon warned: “Of the major and emerging powers,
China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States.” Not surprisingly, the U.S.
is pursuing dominance over China across the military spectrum—building up its conventional-warfare,
space-warfare, and information- warfare capabilities, as well as its missile-defense and offensivenuclear-strike systems.

Changes in war plans and shifts in the location of nuclear forces confirm that American nuclearupgrades are linked to the perception that China may become a threat. In 1997, the Clintonadministration made the first major change in presidential guidance for nuclear-war plans since the early1980s, broadening the spectrum of Chinese targets. Leaked excerpts from the Pentagon’s 2001 NuclearPosture Review called for the United States to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China. Andthe head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Lieutenant General Henry A. Obering III, acknowledgedthat his agency’s plans are not entirely focused on “rogue states” or the “axis of evil.” In fact, theMissile Defense Agency also plans for Chinese contingencies. Perhaps the most concrete sign of the

2 of 8 6/5/07 2:41 PM

The Atlantic Online | July/August 2007 | Superiority Complex | Kei... http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200707/china-nukes

increased prominence of China in U.S. nuclear-war plans is the transfer of five nuclear-armedsubmarines from their Atlantic base at Kings Bay, Georgia, to the Pacific base at Bangor, Washington;
two-thirds of the U.S. strategic submarine fleet is now based in the Pacific. Finally, in May 2006, itwas reported that the Pentagon had adopted a new war plan to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack bystriking Chinese targets, potentially with nuclear weapons. Of course, it’s difficult to ascertainWashington’s intentions, but as a 2003 Rand report on the future U.S. nuclear arsenal concluded,
“What the planned force appears best suited to provide beyond the needs of traditional deterrence is apreemptive counterforce capability against Russia and China. Otherwise, the numbers and theoperating procedures simply do not add up” (emphasis in original).

These changes do not mean that the United States is adopting a nuclear first-strike strategy—it stronglyprefers to fight any future wars without resorting to nuclear weapons. Rather, the United States ishoning its nuclear capabilities for three broad purposes: to deter conventional or nuclear attacks, tostrengthen its leverage against nuclear-armed adversaries during high-stakes crises or wars, and to giveitself better nuclear options in dire circumstances.

NUCLEAR WAR-FIGHTING OPTIONS

rom a military perspective, this modernization has paid off: A U.S. nuclear first strike could

quickly destroy China’s strategic nuclear arsenal. Whether launched in peacetime or during a

crisis, a preemptive strike would likely leave China with no means of nuclear retaliation against

American territory. And given the trends in both arsenals, China may live under the shadow of

U.S. nuclear primacy for years to come.
This assessment is based on unclassified information, standard targeting principles, and formulas thatdefense analysts have used for decades. (And we systematically chose conservative estimates for keyunknowns, meaning that our analysis understates U.S. counterforce capabilities.) The simplest versionof an American preemptive strike would have nuclear-armed submarines in the Pacific launch Trident IImissiles at the Chinese ICBM field in Henan province. The Navy keeps at least two of thesesubmarines on “hard alert” in the Pacific at all times, meaning they’re ready to fire within 15 minutes ofa launch order. Since each submarine carries 24 nuclear-tipped missiles with an average of sixwarheads per missile, commanders have almost 300 warheads ready for immediate use. This is morethan enough to assign multiple warheads to each of the 18 Chinese silos. Chinese leaders would havelittle or no warning of the attack.

During the Cold War, U.S. submarines posed little danger to China’s silos, or to any other hardenedtargets. Each warhead on the Trident I missiles had little chance—roughly 12 percent—of success. Notonly were those missiles inaccurate, their warheads had a relatively small yield. (Similarly, until the late1980s, U.S. ICBMs lacked the accuracy to carry out a reliable disarming attack against China.) But theNavy’s new warheads and missiles are far more lethal. A Trident II missile is so accurate, and thenewer W88 warhead so powerful, that if the warhead and missile function normally, the destruction ofthe silo is virtually assured (the likelihood is calculated as greater than 99 percent).

In reality, American planners could not assume such near-perfect results. Some missiles or warheadscould malfunction: One missile’s rockets might fail to ignite; another’s guidance system might bedefective. So a realistic counterforce plan might assign four warheads to each silo. The U.S. would“cross-target” the missiles, meaning that the warheads on each missile would each go to different silos,
so that a silo would be spared only if many missiles malfunctioned. Even assuming that 20 percent ofmissiles malfunctioned—the standard, conservative assumption typically used by nuclearanalysts—there is a 97 percent chance that every Chinese DF-5 silo would be destroyed in a 4-on-1attack. (By comparison, a similar attack using Cold War–era Trident I missiles would have producedless than a 1 percent chance of success. The leap in American counterforce capabilities since the end ofthe Cold War is staggering.)

Beyond bolstering the ability to conduct a first strike, the improvements to U.S. counterforce weapons

3 of 8 6/5/07 2:41 PM

The Atlantic Online | July/August 2007 | Superiority Complex | Kei... http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200707/china-nukes

also allow war planners to design nuclear options that will make the weapons more “usable” duringhigh-stakes crises. Nuclear planners face many choices when they consider striking a given target.
First, they must choose a warhead yield. The American arsenal includes low-yield weapons such as theB-61 bomb, which can detonate with as little explosive force as 0.3 kilotons (one-fiftieth the power ofthe bomb that destroyed Hiroshima), and high-yield weapons such as the B-83 bomb, which can yield1,200 kilotons (80 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb). For a military planner, high-yieldweapons are attractive because they’re very likely to destroy the target—even if the weapon misses bysome distance. Low-yield warheads, on the other hand, can be more discriminating, if planners want tominimize civilian casualties.

A second key decision for war planners is whether to set the weapon to detonate at ground level or inthe air above the target. A groundburst creates enormous overpressure and ground shock, ideal fordestroying a hardened target. But groundbursts also create a lot of radioactive fallout. Dirt and othermatter is sucked up into the mushroom cloud, mixes with radioactive material, and, after being carriedby the wind, falls to earth in the hours after the blast, spreading lethal radiation.

Airbursts create smaller zones of extremely high overpressure, but they also generate very little fallout.
If the detonation occurs above a threshold altitude (which depends on the weapon yield), virtually noheavy particles from the ground mix with the radioactive material in the fireball. The radioactive materialrises into the high atmosphere and then falls to earth over the course of several weeks in a far lessdangerous state and over a very wide area, greatly reducing the harm to civilians.

In the past, a nuclear attack on China’s arsenal would have had horrific humanitarian consequences.