China's New "Old Thinking": The Concept of Limited Deterrence

In the last five to ten years, Chinese military strategists have developed a concept of limited deterrence that is now used to describe what China`s nuclear forces ought to be able to do. Limited deterrence rests on a limited war-fighting capability aimed at communicating China`s ability to inflict costly damage on the adversary at every rung on the escalation ladder and thus denying the adversary victory in a nuclear war. It is this capability, Chinese strategists argue, that will deter such a war in the first place. Limited deterrence therefore requires the development of a greater number of tactical, theater, and strategic nuclear weapons that are accurate enough to hit counterforce targets, are mobile, can be used in the earliest stages of a nuclear crisis, and in a world of THAAD are capable of penetrating ballistic missile defense systems. These forces would thus require effective space-based early warning, and some configuration of BMD capabilities. Given that China does not now have such capabilities, the straight-line prediction would be that over the next decade or so, we should expect to see a discernible effort to shift the forces away from a minimum strike-back assured destruction posture, which China now has, towardmore » limited war-fighting. This may or may not entail a dramatic short-run increase in the absolute numbers of warheads and delivery systems: the pace will depend in part on whether the United States proceeds with TMD deployment. The speed of change in China`s nuclear capabilities will also depend in part on whether the implementation of START II leads to a steep relative increase in the size of the Chinese arsenal and reduces the relative number of counterforce targets. The primary constraints on any such efforts are exogenous, namely, budgetary and arms control constraints. It is an open question whether endogenous constraints-a shift in doctrine toward minimum deterrence-might be encouraged. 120 refs.« less