Socialization and assimilation have also influenced the nuclear thinking that underlines China’s modernization policy, which shows increasing similarities to those of other major nuclear countries. This influence is apparent in the changing views of some Chinese experts as to the value of keeping nuclear forces on alert. Many of the authors in this book point out that China has long believed that its nuclear weapons need not be kept on high alert in peacetime. Given that the purpose of its nuclear arsenal is to deter nuclear attacks by retaliation, China does not believe that slightly delaying nuclear retaliation would weaken deterrence. In other words, China does not think it is necessary to retaliate immediately after a first nuclear strike. Studies show that in wartime scenarios, China is likely to wait days or even longer to launch a nuclear counterstrike after being first attacked with nuclear weapons.2 This is very different from the policy of the United States and Russia (and previously, the Soviet Union). Even during peacetime, the United States and Russia still put a sizable share of their strategic nuclear weapons on high alert. The United States, especially, maintains an effective early-warning system, which can send warning signals soon after an enemy launches a missile so that U.S. nuclear missiles can be launched in a retaliatory strike immediately and before they are destroyed. This nuclear counterattack policy is called launch on warning or launch under attack. It can create many risks. If the warning system were to send out incorrect signals because of technical glitches, a nuclear counterattack to what is thought to be a nuclear strike might be initiated by mistake, resulting in a nuclear war breaking out inadvertently. During the Cold War, such technical problems occurred multiple times with U.S. and Soviet earlywarning systems—and brought the two countries to the brink of nuclear war. If a country adopts a launch-on-warning posture, its top leadership must make a quick decision about whether to launch a nuclear counterattack immediately after receiving a warning signal. Generally speaking, the time that elapses between a launch warning and enemy missiles hitting their targets is less than thirty minutes. Within this time frame, the country’s leadership must verify the accuracy of the warning, identify the nature and scale of the coming strike, evaluate the threat, assess the enemy’s intention, and finally decide whether to launch a nuclear counterattack; and if so, on what scale. In such a scenario, time constraints and high psychological pressure make prudent decisionmaking extremely difficult. And the stakes are enormous: wrong decisions would lead to dire consequences. Unlike the United States and Russia (and previously, the Soviet Union), China has never subscribed to this nuclear-weapon deployment posture. Studies show that China’s nuclear weapons are put on low alert in peacetime, with warheads unmated from missiles and stored in separate locations.3 In its 2008 national defense white paper, the Chinese
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UNDERSTANDING CHINESE NUCLEAR THINKING