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Sipping coffee one morning during winter break, David Kahn of St. John’s University was scanning the day’s list of notes and papers when a new paper caught his eye.
The title was “The Role of Nuclear Weapons in a Taiwan Crisis.”
It was published by the Atlantic Council in late November. Reports We discussed how a US-China war over Taiwan would play out and how the Pentagon would win with tactical nuclear bombs.
Khan was astonished. This was coming from a serious analyst at a prestigious organization.
“Oh my gosh,” the government and political science professor told Business Insider, “this seems like a really radical change of direction even for the defense think tank world.”
In his 20 years working on nuclear weapons, including working at the RAND Corporation and as an adviser to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he said he had never seen such an overt stance on nuclear weapons toward China.
The study’s author, Greg Weaver, is a man of great influence and experience: former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also served as the Pentagon’s chief director of U.S. nuclear and missile defense policy during the Obama administration.
According to his paper, potential targets for a nuclear attack could be Chinese ground forces across the Taiwan Strait.
A week later, the Atlantic Council published a separate, similar paper by political scientist Matthew Kronig, one of 12 experts appointed by Congress to advise U.S. nuclear strategy. The title of Kronig’s report begins: “Intentional Use of Nuclear Energy in a War over Taiwan”
Neither author explicitly advocates a preemptive nuclear attack on China, but they urge the United States to seriously consider the option of war with Taiwan, primarily as a deterrent, and to let Beijing know it is an option.
Several startled US nuclear scientists rushed to criticise the paper, with Kahn decrying: He criticized the move in a scathing commentary, calling it “strategic myopia.”
Months later, the November report continues to attract the attention of leading academics who see it as inflammatory and extreme rhetoric that has spread rapidly in the U.S. But Kronig and Weaver’s case has been backed by other prominent academics in the nuclear research community, who say the outrage is unjustified.
Their discussions underscore a growing desire among U.S. leaders to adopt a far more aggressive nuclear posture toward China, which the U.S. sees as a rival nuclear superpower by 2035, but has so far refused to engage in key talks.
Business Insider spoke with nine nuclear weapons experts and experts on US-China relations about the November report and its implications for the two countries, whose economies and influence are intertwined.
“The threat of first use of U.S. nuclear weapons comes even more to the fore now that China has become a major conventional power,” said James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“I feel that what Greg and Matt have written very closely reflects what’s already going on within the U.S. military,” he added.
“The Chinese are reading everything we write about them.”
To be sure, U.S. nuclear policy does not rule out a first strike, but scholars who disagree with Kronig and Weaver, working closely with Chinese experts, caution against the idea of ​​making such a threat.
“This is dangerous thinking and extremely reckless,” said Lyle Goldstein, director of the China Initiative at Brown University.
He said such threats would only increase tensions and would not shock China into withdrawing from Taiwan, as Kroenig and Weaver hoped.
Goldstein said China has known for decades that the Pentagon could launch a nuclear first strike. Nuclear retaliation When China invaded Taiwan in 1958, it closed off the Taiwan Strait and stationed nuclear weapons on the island until 1974.
When Goldstein visited China in early 2023, local experts reiterated that China sees Washington as becoming extremely aggressive and is still actively discussing the possibility of the United States launching a nuclear attack.
“Maybe Kronig is right, and China will say, ‘OK, we don’t want nuclear war, forget all about this, we’re not interested in Taiwan at all,’ but I don’t think that’s the case at all,” Goldstein said. “In fact, I think the opposite is going to happen.”
Acton, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also disagreed that the U.S. should prioritize offensive capabilities.
“China already thinks so. Chinese experts have written a lot about what they see as the U.S.’s very low threshold for nuclear weapons,” he said.
Francesca Giovannini, executive director of the Nuclear Control Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School, worries that all sides are becoming less clear about the mutual boundaries that would prevent a major nuclear war.
“It’s clear that there’s a perception in China that the United States treats Taiwan the same as South Korea or Japan,” she said. “And all of a sudden, to be talking about using nuclear weapons in the Taiwan Strait is clearly a blurring of the commitments we’ve made.”
Taiwan is not a formal U.S. ally, but Giovannini said U.S. thought leaders are conflating a loss of primacy in the Indo-Pacific with an existential threat.
She believes China is closely watching what Kronig and Weaver say, even if their reporting doesn’t reflect U.S. policy.
“The Chinese read everything we write about them. Everything,” she said.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its embassy in Washington, DC, did not respond to BI’s requests for comment.
The case for nuclear weapons in the Taiwan Strait
Kronig, a professor at Georgetown University, was commissioned last year by Congress to advise U.S. nuclear strategy.
He believes that if Taiwan falls, so will the US’s credibility as a major power, and that Taiwan is a core US interest, so the US should consider defending it with nuclear weapons, he said.
There are growing concerns that China is catching up with conventional weapons, including missiles capable of destroying aircraft carriers and long-range attacks that could threaten Guam.
Some observers speculate that if Beijing truly believes the gap has narrowed, it might invade, gambling that the U.S. would not risk conflict. After all, if the U.S. went to war and couldn’t win it easily, world confidence in Washington would crumble.
“One way deterrence could fail is if Xi Jinping thinks, ‘Maybe this is easy, maybe I can get away with it,'” Kroenig said.
That’s why the November report suggested the United States move beyond strategic ambiguity and declare Taiwan part of the U.S. nuclear umbrella — essentially telling Beijing that an invasion of Taiwan would risk nuclear war, he said.
To back up that threat, he said, the United States would need to demonstrate the capability to launch nuclear attacks on targets such as naval vessels, military installations in the South China Sea and even mainland China.
“What benefit is there in reassuring President Xi Jinping that our nuclear weapons are irrelevant?” he said.
Weaver’s report was based on projections up to 2027, when China is expected to have 700 nuclear warheads. Weaver also told BI that deterrence was the main goal, and that his report did not call for the US to resort to tactical nuclear attacks against Taiwan.
But they could be useful as a fighting tool if open conflict breaks out, he said.
“A Chinese amphibious landing force would be an immobile target offshore for hours, if not days,” he said, “so a relatively low-yield nuclear weapon could be used to destroy that force with little or no collateral damage ashore in Taiwan.”
The nuclear policy heavyweight said his intention was to advocate for more strategic options for the U.S. president, with concerns that if the U.S. were to straddle two theaters at once — likely Russia and China — it would need solutions like nuclear weapons to deter or fight either of those wars.
“This is not a preferred option, but the Chinese side needs to understand that it is an option and take it seriously,” he said.
A State Department spokesman declined to comment on Kronig and Weaver’s report but said the United States “holds to very high standards with regard to nuclear-related uses.”
“The United States would only consider using nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners,” they said.
“It’s important that the Chinese understand this.”
Marshall Billingslea, a former US presidential envoy for arms control, told BI he didn’t understand why the report had caused such an uproar.
“We are already tracking and planning for Chinese targets and have the capability to strike them if necessary. It is important that China understands this,” Billingslea said. Led negotiations between the US and Russia in 2020 Regarding the New START Treaty.
And it’s China’s actions that are of concern, he added.
U.S. intelligence agencies predict a sharp acceleration in Beijing’s nuclear arsenal, with the country’s warheads expected to rise from 400 in 2022 to 500 in 2023. China denies any expansion, sparking fears in the United States that China could soon become a rogue nuclear superpower.
“We haven’t seen a three-way nuclear arms race since the dawn of the nuclear age, but China is creating just that, creating an unpredictable and unstable dynamic,” Billingslea said.
Rebecca Heinrichs, director of the Keystone Defense Initiative at the Hudson Institute, agreed with Kronig and Weaver, calling Taiwan a “clear threat to vital U.S. interests.”
“It would be foolish to not give the US president and his military the most effective means to convince China that it will not seize Taiwan at an acceptable cost,” she said.
Asked whether more aggressive U.S. rhetoric could be used by China to justify building up its nuclear arsenal, Weaver said Beijing’s nuclear buildup was happening anyway.
“They were already doing it,” he says, “long before Matt and I wrote their analysis.”
Some experts worry about wider implications
Meanwhile, Jake Warner, acting director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible National Strategy, expressed concern that the November report would empower anti-American parties in China.
“The American public doesn’t understand that there are many different positions on the China debate. Some are very aggressive, some are very cautious,” he told BI.
“There is a very high threat perception on the Chinese side, so this kind of rhetoric is bound to be used in a way that creates fear, if not among officials, then among the Chinese public,” he said.
St. John’s Khan said there are other countries besides China to worry about if the U.S. makes threats, noting that the U.S. could lose credibility with allies such as South Korea and Japan if they believe the U.S. is threatening them.
“On what basis can we pretend to have credibility in diplomatic and political relations when we are threatening to use nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945?” he said.
He added that threatening war, much less nuclear war, over Taiwan would be extremely unpopular at home.
“Every poll I’ve seen shows the American people don’t think that way,” he said.
Kroenig believes the escalation and devastation of a nuclear war would make Beijing hesitate to even consider invading Taiwan.
“Even if they suspect it’s a bluff, if they think there’s even a 10 percent chance of nuclear war, that would be a pretty big step in strengthening deterrence,” Kronig said.
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