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I'm Bonnie Glaser, Managing Director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. For many years, China's nuclear doctrine was widely described as minimum nuclear deterrence, which essentially means that the Chinese leadership believed that it could rely on a limited number of nuclear weapons to deter an adversary from attacking.
Authoritative defense white papers issued by the Chinese over a decade ago asserted that China sought to maintain a lean, effective, and credible deterrent force, that it was committed to the policy of a no first use of nuclear weapons, it pursued a defensive nuclear strategy, and would never enter into a nuclear arms race with any other country.
In recent years, however, China has begun to expand and modernize its nuclear forces. And Beijing is not transparent about its nuclear arsenal or its doctrine. And that creates uncertainty for the United States and its allies.
To help us decipher Beijing's rapid nuclear expansion, I'm delighted to have as my guest today, John Culver, who is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub and a former CIA senior intelligence officer. He's co-author of a recent report published by the Atlantic Council.
entitled, Adapting U.S. Strategy to Account for China's Transformation into a Peer Nuclear Power. Welcome back to the China Global Podcast, John. It's great to be here. I wish we had a happier topic, but I think it's an interesting one. Hopefully your guests will agree. Well, I think this is a topic more and more people are interested in. So let's get started.
The Atlantic Council report says that China's nuclear force modernization, which is it's referred to it as running faster to stay in the same place, so not staying very much to sustain, again, this sort of minimal retaliatory posture, that that has evolved. So can you briefly describe what are the key identifiable changes in China's nuclear forces?
Sure. Virtually everything we know that kind of then drove our research at Atlantic Council is from the three most recent DOD annual reports on the Chinese military, known colloquially as the CMPR, a China Military Power Report. Since 2021, they noted that Chinese nuclear forces are expected to expand at a great rate, to quintuple over the course of a decade and a half.
And since that was almost three years ago, there are already up to 500 warheads in
and expected to hit about 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, which would put them in the neighborhood of the new start limitations on U.S. and Russian ICBM forces. So in the span of the next decade or so, they're going to go from what had been the smallest nuclear force of any of the U.N. Security Council permanent members to
to the third largest on the planet. And there's no expectation that they will stop there. What's really troubling is, despite observables like new silo construction that's been shown on commercial imagery, the Chinese have not acknowledged their force expansion or tried to explain it or reconcile it with their previous doctrine, which, as you called, was minimum retaliatory capability.
The last China military power report, which was issued in 2023, indicated that China now possesses a nascent nuclear triad. So it sounds like it's getting close to something like what the United States has, or what are the gaps and why is this significant?
I'll get to the significance in a moment. I'll just characterize it. They used to have about a handful of ballistic missile submarines, the Jinn-class submarines.
each of which could carry 12 JL-2 nuclear arm missiles. Those were Unitary Warhead. It looks like they've managed to retrofit those with a new missile, the JL-3. So now their submarine-based deterrent can strike the United States from littoral waters rather than having to transit halfway across the Pacific. So they've gone from
really a nascent and not very effective maritime nuclear deterrent capability to an actual effective one that, according to the same DOD report, is now doing near continuous patrols. So that's a real nuclear submarine deterrent posture, not just occasional trips by single submarines, which may or may not even have been loaded with missiles.
The second thing that is still more nascent is the air leg of the Triad, which consists of a heavily modified B-6 medium or heavy bomber that can carry a ballistic missile underneath it and air launch that ballistic missile to strike targets, etc.
pretty far from China. You know, with refueled range, they could probably launch from about 4,000 to 5,000 kilometers from the Chinese coast and strike targets at least as far as the third island chain, including Guam and perhaps the Hawaiian Islands. Now, that force would have to be modernized considerably if considered a true part of a triad. And the Chinese evidently have plans to do that. There have long been rumors of this H-20 bomber being
that they're working on that various drawings that have appeared online suggested bear some resemblance to the USB2 with a highly stealth kind of flying wing fuselage. So their plans there are mostly in the future, but more importantly, what's really concerning to me about it is the,
It's one thing to operate a single force, the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, and exercise effective command and control for crisis or conflict deterrence or even nuclear strike operations.
There's a level of complexity to expanding that to two other services and then maintaining the same kind of political and operational control over air and naval forces. So it suggests to me that not only has their force expanded and evolved, but their concept of nuclear deterrence and nuclear warfighting is also rapidly evolving so that it can effectively wield a triad when it feels it needs to.
There's a lot of discussion among experts about the drivers of China's decision to expand and modernize its nuclear forces. And some people think it's a function of the overall deterioration in U.S.-China relations. I think others really tie it to preparation for invasion of Taiwan. What do you think is the most compelling reason, if you think there is one in particular, that
And what are some of the challenges when it comes to really understanding China's strategic intent, since they don't publish any real explanation as to why they are increasing and expanding their force? Right. If I had to really attribute motivation for this, I'd start with Xi Jinping, as all things must. And I think, you know, his...
really foundational statements about how he characterizes the era in which we live and China's current and then anticipated future role in its adversarial relationship with the United States. So when he says things like, the world is undergoing changes unseen in a century, he's saying that the world is closer to a point
In terms of geostrategic instability, that's more similar to, say, the era around the start of the First World War, which, of course, you could then draw a continuous line to the Second World War. In other words, that the political, economic, and especially technological foundations of great power status are rapidly evolving. And this presents opportunities and challenges for China. I think then linked to that is his view that...
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, great power conflict is now again a part of the strategic environment. And of course, that would be underscored by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, confrontation then with the United States and NATO powers.
And then, of course, China's own growing adversary relationship with the United States. So we had a good time, 40-odd years, where nuclear weapons were not wielded. Arms control seemed robust and permanent. And now we're back in an era more reminiscent of the Cold War, if not
previous global war eras where great powers are contesting, where military force between military conflict between them is is is conceivable.
And that China's previous nuclear minimum retaliatory doctrine no longer suffices to guard China's strategic interests. And so he intends to build a strategic force. Now, I say that with probably too much certainty because, as you noted, they haven't explained themselves. They've left a huge vacuum. They're not acknowledging the expansion of their nuclear forces. And until they do so, and especially, I think, until
other countries in the region of the Western Pacific and in the Indo-Pacific and even European allies of the United States start to make a priority of questioning China's intentions in this matter because China's the only major power that's actively building out nuclear forces, that's rapidly expanding. The only one that you could even point to might be North Korea and the scale just doesn't even compare.
China's building ICBMs with multiple independent warheads. They're expanding a sea-based deterrent. So they represent not only a much more formidable deterrent force, they represent potentially a nuclear warfighting force. And that's why it's important that
Other countries start to put pressure on China to explain why they're doing this, to give us some insight into their logic. Because otherwise, analysts like me, though mostly retired now, we're going to be forced to do worst case scenario planning.
What conclusions can you draw about China's evolving nuclear doctrine and strategy from its military exercises? So, for example, there was this recent ICBM test. It was on September 1st.
25th and the dummy warhead landed in the Pacific Ocean. Now, usually the PLA is test fire ballistic missiles westward into the desert into Xinjiang. Was that a specific signal China was sending? Did they need to test over the ocean? And what are the implications of them doing that? Do we expect we will see more nuclear signaling from China in the future?
Well, I think that there is engineering value in doing a full range test of a relatively new system. Most of the experts on the internet are saying that that was a 31 AG, which is a modified version of the original mobile ICBM that they first deployed in 2007. This one has extended range, probably also has enhanced guidance so it can strike targets more accurately.
So there probably is an engineering reason behind it. Although, as I said, that system's been deployed in one form or another for going on 20 years. So it does seem a little interesting that they chose to do it at this time. It would have made more sense in that domain of what they'd fired was a DF-41, which is a larger multiple warhead system that hasn't gone through the same extensive testing as the DF-31 system.
But, you know, since I mentioned worst case scenario assumptions, let's do a little bit. It was very interesting that when they did their launch of that ICBM, they moved the launch unit apparently to northern Hidon Island, where such missiles normally are not based.
probably so that it wouldn't overfly sensitive landmaps, including internal in China, so that it could strike a target at full range of about 11,000 or 12,000 kilometers for that weapon, demonstrating it's a full-range ICBM that could hit anywhere in the continental United States. The timing is interesting because around the time they fired it, they were also doing naval exercises and other ballistic missile training,
This seemed more relevant to a Taiwan scenario. And of course, that was followed two weeks later by this declared exercise around Taiwan, Joint Sword 2024 Bravo, which, of course, has some very menacing attributes, including for the first time Coast Guard involvement. So if you were mapping the actions of the Chinese over the span of about three weeks, it looked like they were executing a war plan, at least in an exercise.
that they were conducting deterrence operations. Perhaps that's what the DF-31AG launch was. And then they included at-distance sea naval operations by a carrier strike group on the east side of Taiwan. Of course, Coast Guard and naval patrols around the island simulating a blockade.
And so you could read it if forced to in the darkest light as an integrated war plan. And what aspect that bothered me then about if the ICBM launch was part of that war plan, was it a deterrent operation or were they conducting nuclear fires to deter or perhaps even degrade U.S. entry into conflict?
That's a lot of information from one test. So you're actually...
So maybe you could provide other insights into how China might use nuclear weapons. Do they have tactical nuclear weapons that they might use now?
The Atlanta Council report has this sentence that says that it's more likely China will use its upgraded nuclear power to more actively deter or compel its opponents and safeguard its core interests. I mean, that's obviously a very sort of general statement.
Talk a little bit about how you think China might be thinking, given its evolving nuclear arsenal and its international environment, which they see as deteriorating. How might they think about using their evolving capabilities? Well, as stated, I don't know, because the Chinese have provided absolutely no insight into their actions or their intentions. So
In the tabletop exercise that really formed the cornerstone of our Atlantic Council study, though, we set it in 2032. We had a bad outcome from a Chinese perspective, yet again, of an election on Taiwan.
And apparently Xi Jinping got out of bed in a very bad mood that morning. So what I instructed our red team, it wasn't elaborate. We had excellent experts, people you know who played China in this on the red team. And I gave them one simple instruction. Assume that you've expanded your nuclear forces for a reason.
And they took that and ran with it. So what it meant was much more aggressive deterrence operations early in conflict. So, for example, they launched conventionally armed ICBMs. Once the war was underway and the U.S. was already intervening, they launched two intercontinental range ballistic missiles with conventional warheads at the United States. One was directed at San Diego, the other at Los Angeles.
That's consistent with what DOD has said in their most recent China military power report, that China is developing conventional intercontinental strike capability. So our red team ran with that and played it. They also did a fractal orbital bombardment launch early in our notional conflict. So they fired nuclear warheads into space in an orbital posture that couldn't be defeated by U.S. national missile defenses.
Now, in the game, they elected not to use it for their own warfighting reasons. The other aspect, too, that didn't come through as clearly, perhaps, was while they were doing very aggressive nuclear deterrence signals, including fully alerted nuclear force, submarines going to sea, et cetera, air launch ballistic missile carrying, etc.
H6s flying out from China and then returning. They also were conducting very aggressive counter space and cyber operations. So it wasn't just nuclear deterrence. It was these other two realms of, if you will, strategic deterrence that were being employed. They were hitting satellites on orbit. They were
shooting at satellites from the ground with high-powered lasers and other weapons. They were using cyber effects to destroy U.S. critical infrastructure and try and degrade the flow of U.S. forces into the Western Pacific. So it wasn't just nuclear. It signaled, of course, from a Chinese perspective, absolute deterrence mindset that they were going to and prepare to risk everything in order to win their war for unification of Taiwan.
And a little later in the game, I'll come back to it, they then crossed the line into nuclear weapons use. So I want to ask you about your view of China's no first use pledge, which has existed since I think China first tested a nuclear weapon in 1964. And that, of course, pledge includes a commitment not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
And I think observers have long dismissed this as either disingenuous or at least unreliable. Do you expect that we will see a change in China's declaratory nuclear doctrine in the future? Maybe
We know that the China Military Power Report says that they will have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035. Is that like the end state you think that China wants? And at that point, we will see a new nuclear doctrine? Or do you think China is just going to continue to be completely silent about what it has and what its intentions are?
Remind me to come back to the last question because it's important, but on no first use. I think it actually was their underlying doctrine, their bottom line for, and the thing is that aligned perfectly with the scale of the force they had. You know, before around 2007, China only had 18 ICBMs that could reach the United States.
These were kept in a non-ready position. In other words, these were missiles that were not fueled. They didn't have warheads baited. And all of their warheads were stored centrally for political security. You know, they never had an elaborate technical security apparatus around their nuclear deterrent. It was physical security and then division of command guaranteed to them that there would be no rogue launches or accidental launches whatsoever.
of their ballistic missiles. You know, today they're, they have 500 nuclear warheads as I noted earlier on a triad. So no first use, I think hung together very well prior to the creation of the people's liberation army rocket force in 2016 and
But with each passing year, with each new revelation by DOD about China's nuclear weapons posture, it seems to wear thin. Now, it's important to acknowledge what the NFU statements by China said and what they didn't say, right? They said they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. So that already had a loophole in it if they were entering into combat with the United States or at that time with the Soviet Union or Russia, if you will.
It also has to do with nuclear weapons use on their own territory. Well, by their definition of nationality, Taiwan is Chinese. And so while I don't think China would use nuclear weapons on Taiwan, NFU was never the ironclad guarantee that they had pledged not to do so.
I think today it's evolved and NFU doesn't cover intermediate scenarios like launch on warning. It previously was a moot point because China had no means to detect nuclear weapons being launched on ballistic missiles by adversaries. Today they do. They have early warning satellites on orbit, a pretty robust constellation. So they have the means to detect in inbounds missile launch.
And they have the means to respond to that without waiting for mushroom clouds to appear around their ICBM bases or their cities. And so, again, until China explains itself further, it's going to be hard to know how relevant no first use is, whether it has any real applicability in a kind of scenario like the one we envisioned for the Atlantic Council exercise.
And you want to comment on whether you think when they build out their arsenal, whether they will actually change that posture or declaratory statement? Well, again, our assumptions about the ultimate scale of their nuclear force is based entirely on DOD reports. Now, they stopped at, you know, last year at 1500.
Now, that's an interesting number because the new start limits for the U.S. and Russia for ICBM, nuclear warheads based on ICBMs is 1550. So there may be some optimism lurking that as they approach that new start number, they're going to suddenly be interested in arms control.
But again, they've said nothing about this. They haven't acknowledged they're doing this. So I think we should, you know, husband our optimism and not just assume that it will end there. I mean, the more interesting thing, and I no longer have the means to do it as a retired former analyst of the government, but...
But if they build out a fissile material production capacity that's consistent not only with building a larger force, but maintaining a larger force. You know, there are some elements that need to be made almost constantly, like tritium, which has a very short half-life. So if you can scale China's tritium production to an inventory size, I think that would tell you whether they intend to stop around 1,500 or build on.
Also on tactical weapons, China, to my knowledge, has never announced or demonstrated it has tactical nuclear warheads. Now, it's a definitional problem because...
People use that term very imprecisely. To me, a tactical nuclear warhead is a warhead with a yield of one kiloton or less used to destroy specific point targets, usually militarily significant targets and not, you know, to use as part of a counter value attack by nuclear force. I don't think there's an engineering reason why they couldn't build a warhead that small and mount it to smaller delivery systems, whether they're,
2,000 kilometer range land attack cruise missiles or short range ballistic missiles. But so far, no one's identified that they have a need for weapons with that kind of more limited range with small yield. If they do go that route, then I'd start to worry that they're actually considering the utility of tactical nuclear weapons on Taiwan in the event of a conflict over the island.
The report says that China's relationship with Russia may shape China's decision-making calculus on nuclear first use, but doesn't really go into detail on that. So I'm hoping you can unpack it a little. How do you think the China-Russia relationship could influence Beijing's decision-making in a crisis?
Partly because Russia has sort of set the example that great power conflict is conceivable again in the post-Cold War era. I think also Russia has a much more aggressive verbal, you know, official deterrence posture, which amounts to if Russia is attacked by a strong power, then Russia will use nuclear weapons early in conflict again.
to offset conventional weakness of Russian armed forces relative to, they don't say it usually, but NATO or the United States. So there's already a use doctrine that Russia's apparently established
That's a lot more forward leading than anything that the Soviet Union did during the Cold War or that we would do today. So China is going to be drawing lessons both from the war in Ukraine, as they have already, but also in the reactions. Now, one of the other things that is going to guide this is, you know, the nature of the strategic relationship with Russia, this no limits partnership that Xi Jinping and Putin have announced.
It's not clear, you know, then what the actual internals are of that. We haven't seen, obviously, major Chinese armed deliveries to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Apparently, they're helping mostly through the industrial capacity and critical components.
I don't know what the nature of their intelligence relationship is. Russia could play a major role or concurrently China could also assist. Um, if they were willing to share a relevant intelligence from space collection or signals intelligence or cyber, um, that could be mutual advantage, mutually advantageous. So that's something that I worry about. Um, I think also that, uh,
Russia is, you know, the one thing that really unites Russia and China today is they both have this shared antipathy toward the United States. And so to the extent that two can
negotiate, and then bring a common position if there is future arms control. One thing I'd be sure to see, you know, it wouldn't just be limits on nuclear arms. It would be limits on anti-ballistic missile capabilities and the continued U.S. build-out of ballistic missile defenses.
would be subject to negotiation. And that would probably be at the insistence of both Moscow and Beijing. So at the end of the Atlantic Council report, there are some recommendations that you put forward, you and your colleagues,
for how the United States and its allies should respond to China's nuclear modernization efforts. So maybe you can summarize a bit about how we can mitigate risks for misinterpretation, inadvertent nuclear escalation in a potential crisis in a Taiwan contingency.
I mean, there's some that are, you know, straightforward, but probably hard to achieve, like re-engage with China on strategic dialogue. That's largely a process that was ended by the Chinese. And so it's really the ball is in their court if they want to talk about this.
Since they apparently up to now don't want to seem to talk about it, I would encourage not only our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, but also around the world in NATO, in the European Union, to start to raise this issue with China. That is, you know, they're the only country in the world, especially one of the major declared nuclear powers, that's building out at a massive scale their nuclear arsenal. They haven't explained themselves.
And I think it shouldn't just be on the back of the Department of Defense once every year to publish a China military power report and have people raise their eyebrows. I think it requires follow-up in almost every interaction with the Chinese in multilateral fora at the United Nations, at even side dialogues like the Shangri-La dialogue annually, is that this should become a key issue
Not only for the United States with China, but for our allies and partners, because this is fundamentally destabilizing. You know, arms control has had a very tough couple of decades. The IBM Treaty is no longer in effect. The Theater Nuclear Forces Treaty is no longer in effect.
The only treaty really left constraining both Russia and the United States is New START Treaty, which has a terminating date of 5 February 2026. Russia, prior to its invasion of Ukraine, was interested in extension, but now says it's no longer going to allow either inspections and is not talking about extending that treaty. So we're on the threshold of unrestricted nuclear arms racing potentially.
if this issue doesn't get greater attention on the global stage, and if countries other than the United States don't start to speak up and register to something of concern to them. - That's good advice, John. I hope we can convince the Chinese that there is a downside for them of not engaging in these conversations. I think there was some window going back in the Obama administration
where both sides, at least experts, were talking about what strategic stability might look like in the relationship, but never got to track one talks. And it seems to me that the Chinese are even less interested today than they were then. Yeah, I think that's fair to say, given all that's gone past in the post-Obama era.
Well, fantastic to have you, even though it's a bit of a depressing topic. But we've been talking with John Culver, who's a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, and hope all of you listeners will go and read the Atlantic Council's report. Again, it is called Adapting U.S. Strategy to Account for China's Transformation into a Peer Nuclear Power. Thanks for joining us, John.
Thanks for having me, Bonnie. I'm sorry to depress you.