From the Mindanao Examiner (May 26):
China to send nuclear-armed submarines into Pacific amid tensions with US – The Guardian
The Chinese military is poised to send submarines armed with
nuclear missiles into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, arguing that new US weapons systems have so undermined Beijing’s existing
deterrent force that it has been left with no alternative.
Chinese military officials are not commenting on the timing
of a maiden patrol, but insist the move is inevitable.
They point to plans unveiled in March to station the US Thaad
anti-ballistic system in South Korea, and the development of hypersonic
glide missiles potentially capable of hitting China less than an hour after
launch, as huge threats to the effectiveness of its land-based deterrent force.
A recent Pentagon
report to Congress predicted that “China will probably conduct its
first nuclear deterrence patrol sometime in 2016”, though top US officers have
made such predictions before.
China has
been working on ballistic missile submarine technology for more than three
decades, but actual deployment has been put off by technical failures,
institutional rivalry and policy decisions.
Until now, Beijing has pursued a cautious deterrence policy,
declaring it would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict and
storing its warheads and its missiles separately, both strictly under the
control of the top leadership.
Deploying nuclear-armed submarines would have far-reaching
implications.
Warheads and missiles would be put together and handed over
to the navy, allowing a nuclear weapon to be launched much faster if such a
decision was taken. The start of Chinese missile patrols could further
destabilise the already tense
strategic standoff with the US
in the South China Sea.
The two countries’ navies have also come uncomfortably close
around disputed islands in the same region, and the chance of a clash will be
heightened by cat-and-mouse submarine operations, according to Wu Riqiang, an
associate professor at the School of International Studies at the Renmin
University in Beijing.
“Because China’s SSBNs [nuclear missile submarines] are in
the South China Sea, the US navy will try to send spy ships in there and get
close to the SSBNs. China’s navy hates that and will try to push them away,” Wu
said.
The primary reason Chinese military officials give for the
move towards a sea-based deterrent is the expansion of US missile defence, which Moscow also claims is disturbing the global
strategic balance and potentially stoking a new arms race.
The decision to deploy Thaad anti-ballistic interceptors in South Korea was taken after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test,
and the stated mission of the truck-launched interceptors is to shield the
south from missile attack.
But Beijing says the Thaad
system’s range extends across much of China and contributes to the
undermining of its nuclear deterrent. It has warned Seoul that relations between the two
countries could be “destroyed in an instant” if the Thaad deployment goes
ahead.
“No harm shall be done to China’s strategic security
interests,” the foreign ministry declared.
Behind the ominous warnings is growing concern in the
People’s Liberation army that China’s
relatively small nuclear arsenal (estimated at 260 warheads compared with 7,000
each for the US and Russia), made
up mostly of land-based missiles, is increasingly vulnerable to a devastating
first strike, by either nuclear or conventional weapons.
Missile defence is not their only worry. They are anxious
about a new hypersonic glide missile being developed under the US Prompt Global
Strike programme, aimed at getting a precision-guided missile to targets
anywhere in the world within an hour.
China is
developing a similar missile but officials in Beijing
fear that the Chinese nuclear arsenal is so small it could be almost completely
wiped out without notice, with the few missiles launched in reprisal being
destroyed in mid-air by US
missile defences.
Without that capability to respond with a “second strike”, China would
have no meaningful deterrent at all. The government of President Xi Jinping
insists the country has no plans to abandon its “no first use” principle but
military officials argue US
weapon developments give it no choice but to upgrade and expand its arsenal in
order to maintain a credible deterrent.
There seems to have been some discussion of moving to a
“launch on warning” policy, to fire Chinese weapons before incoming missiles
land and destroy them. That appears to be a minority view, however.
The dominant approach is to stick with the current deterrent
posture, which relies on hitting back in a devastating manner once China has been
attacked. The core aim is to have a second strike capacity that is “survivable”
and “penetrative”. Submarines, on patrol in the ocean depths, fulfil the first
requirement, they say.
It has tested a missile, the Ju Lang (Giant Wave) 2, for
that purpose, and each Jin submarine can carry up to 12 of them. Partly to help
penetrate US missile defences, China has in recent months also started putting
multiple warheads on its largest missile, the DF-5, another development that
has set alarm bells ringing in the Pentagon, where some analysts view it as the
first step towards a massive nuclear armament drive aimed at obliterating the
US arsenal.
Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Non
Proliferation Programme at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at
Monterey,
argues there is a danger of the two sides fatally misunderstanding each other’s
intentions.
“Given China’s
apparent desire to overwhelm US
missile defences, it is not surprising that multiple warheads – whether
independently targeted or not – would become a feature of Chinese deterrence.
The surprise is that it took so long for them to be fielded,” Lewis writes in a
book on multiple warheads (Mirvs) published last week by
the Stimson Centre
thinktank.
“What western strategic analysts might view with alarm,
their Chinese counterparts might view as modest increments necessary to
strengthen deterrence … Chinese strategic analysts, unlike their western
counterparts, have so far adopted a surprisingly relaxed view of nuclear
threats, while some of their US
counterparts are inclined toward envisioning worst-case scenarios.”
Evidence for China’s
more “relaxed” approach is the length of time it took to deploy multiple
warheads, two decades after developing the necessary technology. China has
similarly taken decades to deploy nuclear missile submarines.
Part of the reason has been technical: it is a hard
technology to master. Wu Riqiang argues China’s Jin submarines (known in the Chinese
military as Type 094) are still not ready, as they are too noisy and could
easily be located by US attack subs. They would never get past the first island
chain off China’s coast and into the mid-Pacific, where they would have to be
to hit the continental US.
“My argument is that because of the high noise level of the
Type 094 and China’s lack of experience of running a SSBN fleet, China cannot
and should not put 094 in deterrent patrol in the near future,” he said.
The slow pace has not just been for practical reasons.
China’s guiding principle has been to have a capacity for “minimum means of
reprisal” while minimising the chance of accidental or unauthorised launch.
Deploying ballistic missile submarines poses a huge dilemma
for Beijing. If it can only launch its weapons on receiving orders from the
top, they risk being rendered unusable by a surprise “decapitation” strike on
the Chinese leadership.
However, to follow the British Royal Navy model – in which
each Trident submarine commander has a signed letter from the prime minister in
his safe, to open in the event of a strike on London – would entail a huge leap
in the alert status of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, and a similarly huge
delegation of responsibility to one of the armed forces.
Wu argues Beijing would be better off sticking to its
present policy of hiding its land-based ICBMs in more ingenious ways.
Under Xi’s assertive leadership, China seems determined that
the Chinese nuclear deterrent will take finally to the ocean, and it has
already taken thestep of putting multiple warheads on its missiles. Those steps
are mostly in response to US measures, which in turn were triggered by unrelated
actions by the North Koreans.
The law of unintended consequences is in danger of taking
the upper hand. “The two sides may thus be stumbling blindly into severe crisis
instability and growing competition by China with respect to strategic forces,”
Lewis argues. “A competition between unevenly matched forces is inherently
unstable.”
http://mindanaoexaminer.com/china-to-send-nuclear-armed-submarines-into-pacific-amid-tensions-with-us-the-guardian/
