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A new study from the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution urges the Biden administration, in a conflict over Taiwan, to abandon decades-old—and successful—nuclear weapons policy, thereby effectively accepting capitulation to Beijing's threats to use tactical nuclear weapons.
What does this recommendation from an influential think tank tell us? A dangerous defeatism, which increases the likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwanese shores, pervades the American policy community. The report, not surprisingly, has attracted attention in China.
"Credible nuclear threats on behalf of allies and partners, or extended deterrence, will be hard to achieve in a world where China's nuclear weapons pose an increasingly robust threat to the U.S. homeland," Michael O'Hanlon, Melanie Sisson, and Caitlin Talmadge write in "Managing the Risks of U.S.-China War: Implementing a Strategy of Integrated Deterrence."
"In fact, China may believe that its more robust nuclear arsenal endows it with greater freedom to engage in aggression as its conventional capabilities also continue to grow, knowing that the United States' long-standing nuclear trump card is likely off the table," they write.
The Brookings trio, as a result, recommends that Washington not issue a firm commitment to defend Taiwan.
Extended deterrence—the threat of American nuclear retaliation to deter attacks on friends and allies—is precisely what kept the peace in, particularly, Western Europe during the Cold War and the Korean peninsula since the mid-1950s. In both locations, adversaries had substantial advantages in conventional forces over the U.S. and its allies. It was, however, the threat of America launching intercontinental ballistic missiles that kept Soviet armor from pouring through the Fulda Gap in Germany or North Korean tanks from racing through the Demilitarized Zone to Seoul.
In short, American presidents put—and continue to put—the American homeland at risk to protect European and Asian allies.
Now, in the post-Cold War period, America faces the prospect of a combined Russian and Chinese nuclear threat, as Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center tells Newsweek.
Can Washington deter both aggressive powers?
At the moment, the United States is obligated to limit the number of deployed nuclear warheads and launchers by the Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, better known as the New START agreement. The pact is effective through February 4, 2026.
The Brookings report does not recommend that the United States withdraw from the pact, because withdrawal would not be in line with Biden administration nuclear policy. The Biden policy, however, is deeply misguided because, among other reasons, China is not a party to New START but is effectively in an alliance with Russia. The pair declared their "no-limits" partnership in a 5,300-word joint statement on February 4.
The Russia-China partnership gives America's adversaries a substantial advantage in warhead count, and China is rapidly building up its nuclear arsenal while America is not. The disparity in warhead count, although not especially consequential now, will eventually become so. The report's failure to recommend an immediate withdrawal from New START to permit a buildup of the American arsenal, Fisher correctly notes, is "myopic."
Even more myopic is the failure of the report to recommend that the United States match China's development of "theater nuclear capabilities." Brookings correctly states such capabilities "seem tailor-made" for "limited use"—in other words, actual war-fighting.
For decades, China's regime has been warning that it was prepared to use nuclear weapons to take Taiwan, and it has been ramping up such threats since July of last year, when it began making veiled and not-so-veiled statements about incinerating Japan, Australia, and any party coming to the aid of Taiwan.
The primary deterrent to a Chinese first strike with tactical nuclear weapons is the threat of a second strike with American nukes.
U.S. nukes, however, are not much of a deterrent to China. It's true that America has low-yield theater nuclear weapons, in the form of bombs delivered by plane.
Not one of the bombs is based in the Indo-Pacific theater, however. Therefore, these weapons can be destroyed in transit. Furthermore, once in theater they can be destroyed on the ground. Any bombs that survive have to be flown through contested airspace to reach their intended targets.
The United States can launch intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), but as a practical matter these missiles are not a credible deterrent in this case, either. ICBMs can completely destroy China, but almost nobody thinks President Joe Biden would risk the destruction of the American homeland to impose costs on China for its use of low-yield weapons.
In short, the U.S. needs to base in the Indo-Pacific tactical nuclear weapons delivered by cruise missile—the only class of weapons that, as a practical matter, can deter a strike by China's cruise missile-delivered nukes. Yet as Fisher points out, "The Brookings authors fail to mention that a robust theater nuclear capability, as it did for the U.S. during the Cold War, can go far to sustain both strategic- and theater-level deterrence."
Americans should ask why their country is so ill-prepared to counter a threat that has been known for decades.
The American arms-control community, arguing that low-yield weapons would make nuclear war more likely, in recent years persuaded American presidents not to build them. But instead of making nuclear war less likely, arms-controllers have made it more likely.
President Donald Trump authorized the development of low-yield weapons, but Biden canceled the program. Congress at the moment looks like it will fund a Navy sea-launched, nuclear-capable cruise missile, but the Biden administration is opposed to the funding.
As Peter Huessy of the Hudson Institute tells Newsweek, "The Pentagon has told Congress that America does not achieve its objectives in any war game where the Chinese employ nuclear weapons to take Taiwan."
President Biden, therefore, is absolutely committed to a nuclear strategy that can only result in catastrophe for Taiwan—and defeat for the U.S.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on Twitter: @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
