On the "Changing Nuclear Balance."

A response to Peter Heussey's, September 29. article in The National Interest, "The Nuclear Balance is Changing- and Not for the Better" *

* https://nationalinterest.org/feature/nuclear-balance-changing%E2%80%94and-not-better-194526

The US proclivity to entertain the use of nuclear weapons when its conventional military campaign is in jeopardy in an actual confllct is ignored in the Heussey article. Ostensibly, the US motives are pure, and it is the other who would resort first to nuclear weapons. It was the US that considered the use of nuclear weapons in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. During WW II of course, the US did use nuclear weapons. During the second Iraq War, the US adopted a nuclear strike response doctrine that would apply if it were to suffer unexpected battlefield reversals or if its forces experienced any sort of special weapons attack.

Part of the current problem is the decreasing relative dominance of US forces in the Chinese theater usually characterized as the rise of China. While think tanks readily entertain the vision of US conventional superiority in armed force projection, it is at least, in part, an illusion based on assumptions such as the ability to shut off Chinese lines of communication, choking its industrial infrastructure with naval and air blockades and so forth. This conventional military view, as conceived in the US think tank studies, is convincingly disputed by a few US experts on Chinese military capabilities. The US tends to take a static or very mechanical view, which fails to entertain the disadvantages the US has, such as its distance from the battlespace, numerical force limits, the possibility of even partially effective Chinese blockades of strategic straits to its own near seas, the possibility of successful Chinese interdictions in aerospace and open Pacific waters, and the prospect of potential destruction of US forward bases in Japan and elsewhere. It also rules out Chinese strategic depth, and the eventuality of a long war which will attrite US forces and national resources. While Chinese losses would be great also, if not catastrophic, as the defender of its home territory, their level of commitment would be much higher than that of the US. Far from harming CCP legitimacy and cohesion, a long conflict will enhance the bond of party and people. Many historical studies confirm this phenomenon in major wars where civilian populations are subject to attack by a foreign enemy.

Pursuing the natural US inclination to regain a decisive initiative in war with China, the US leadership will entertain using nuclear weapons to extract themselves from a prolonged conventional conflict from which they otherwise would be unable to withdraw, except at great political cost. It is unlikely that Russia would be a deterrent to US use of nuclear weapons on Chinese targets. In US game theory, the Chinese would presumably back down because of the overwhelming US advantage in nuclear weapon delivery systems. Therefore, unless the current Chinese buildup and improvements in their nuclear weapon delivery capability are stopped in the near future, the US will be faced with the inability to exert nuclear blackmail, and be effectively deterred from initiating tactical nuclear first strikes. Then the US would have to live with a growing inability to successfully end a conventional conflict which, as time goes by, will also become more unfavorable to the forces fighting far from home. It is doubtful that the US will find a technological fix in the form of new weapons systems or countermeasures to resolve this situation, so the diplomatic route of seeking nuclear arms control with China is sought.

What's in it for the Chinese? Nothing, so far. What can the US offer? The last two administrations worked the US into a corner, surrounding the Chinese with the modern version of gunboat imperialism, ostensibly giving the US insurmountable conventional warfare advantages, that it enjoyed in the 19th and 20th centuries. It's another tragic case of US illusions about China leading us on a path to another disastrous war, one on a scale probably not seen since WW II. A much weaker China fought a conventional conflict with a nuclear armed US during the Korean War. If its own territory or armed forces are attacked by the US (and any misguided allies), it will do so again.

In terms of the Peter Huessey article, US determination to maintain a "nuclear firebreak" rings hollow, as it the US that has developed smaller and smaller yield "precision" nuclear weapons. The US has an extensive arsenal of sophisticated "tactical" and arguably first use nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. It is the US that has created a pneumbral zone where the boundary between conventional and nuclear strikes is blurred. Moreover, US reluctance to tolerate substantial losses of high value conventional forces makes it more reliant on the nuclear option. The notion that the US can indefinitely maintain a conventional force advantage against a major power like China in its own backyard is just fundamentally mistaken. At some point US diplomacy is going to have to conform to the strategic reality that China is reaching peer power status, and that proposed military solutions are just futile. The US will only succeed in weakening itself further by its pathologically disproportionate allocation of resources to the business of war which may give rise to a horrible conflict. The goals and attitudes of the gunboat imperialist and the nuclear arms contol advocate are innately contradictory and cannot be "compartmentalized."