School of War - Ep 167: Dan Blumenthal and Kyle Balzer on China’s Nuclear Buildup

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Dan Blumenthal and Kyle Balzer, co-authors of The True Aims of China’s Nuclear Buildup for Foreign Affairs, join the show to discuss the geopolitical implications of China’s increasing and diversifying nuclear arsenal.  ▪️ Times      •      01:24 Introduction     •      02:40 China’s buildup      •      05:05 American perception       •     07:28 What is nuclear strategy?        •      11:49 Geopolitical vision      •      16:28 Shaping the world order      •      18:41 Restoring American credibility       •      25:10 Imagining failure      •      30:24 Prospects Follow along on Instagram or YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

China is building nuclear weapons, lots of them. Why? What does it mean for American interests in the Western Pacific? And how should we respond? Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war. This Milwaukee invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in history.

A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the grave situations in grand. We can't fight down the beach. for the landing ground, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today, Dan Blumenthal and Kyle Balser, both of the American Enterprise Institute, and co-authors most recently of the

true aims of China's nuclear buildup, Beijing's growing arsenal is meant to dissolve America's alliance system in Asia, an article that appeared in foreign affairs just a few weeks ago. Dan, Kyle, thank you so much for joining the show. Pleasure to be here, Aaron. Thank you. Thanks for having us, Aaron. Great to be here. And Dan, welcome back. I don't know how many times this is for you at this point, but Kyle's going to have some work to do to catch up. You're becoming a regular. I'm trying to get that equivalent of what Martin Short got on Saturday Night Live. We We should get some robes, too, some sweet school of war robes. So we've talked a lot on this show about nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy.

We've talked a lot about geopolitics. We've talked a lot about China. I'm excited for this episode because for the first time, we're really going to directly tie all three together in ways that are maybe a little bit counterintuitive for some listeners. I found your article really interesting because I don't think of, I think for most people thinking of nuclear strategy in classical geopolitical terms is not a normal way of thinking of things. I think it requires some mental exercise that most people, to include me before I read your

piece, don't normally engage in. But before we get to all that in the sort of geopolitical meaning of China's growing nuclear arsenal, which is what your piece is about, can we just start with what's actually happening? Kyle, I don't know if you can. Could you walk us through the nature of the Chinese nuclear buildup? When did we notice it? What's, different from sort of standard Chinese nuclear practice. They've had nuclear weapons for a very long time. What's actually going on here? Sure, Aaron. So since the late Cold War through the 90s, China has largely held to what was referred to as a minimum deterrence posture, where they operated something like 20 fixed silo launchers, which carried housed intercontinental ballistic

missiles that were relatively inaccurate compared to what the United States had. add they were less sophisticated. And as a minimum deterrent posture conveys, it is a small, rudimentary posture that is largely designed to absorb an attack and still have the capability to retaliate and inflict catastrophic damage on the United States. In the late 2010s, early 2000s, it's been clear that China has most likely abandoned this posture when we, overhead reconnaissance unveiled, something like three new silo fields being built in the China's northwestern desert. These house something like 300 new ICBM silos, all of which are more accurate than those 20 fixed silos China operated in the late Cold War, all of which have extended ranges and all of which can conduct precision strike attacks against military targets instead of cities.

And so these are now militarily useful weapons of war for China that can also hold the continental United States at risk and can allow China to, as our article suggested, wrap up its course of campaign in the Western Pacific without drawing an American response. So maybe you could walk us through, and Dan, feel free to chime in here as well, about the way in which the American conception of what's going on has a evolve because I recall reading pieces about this buildup and some of them began by saying there was no buildup. I remember that being the conventional line for a while that we were seeing things somehow. And then I remember the account for it being, well, this is somehow a sort of reasonable response to American behavior. Like there's sort of a series of rationales that were, or, you know, it's not happening.

Then that became, it is happening, but you're at fault. And just walk us through the different stages of the American conception of what's going on here until we get up to the present day. So the American conception largely there's a debate that is China's buildup is simply responding to our own actions. China is largely maintaining its minimum deterrence posture to assure that it can absorb a U.S. first strike and still respond with catastrophic damage. Now, the other side of the debate in which I come down on is China's trying to do more

than just a sure its ability to respond, absorb a first strike and respond to catastrophic damage. And all the telltale signs of this is that they're building extraordinarily sophisticated missiles that can't conduct precision guided attacks. If you're just trying to inflict catastrophic damage on the United States, you don't need extremely accurate missiles. You don't need 300 ICBMs, for instance. you don't need to build road mobile launchers that can scoot around and also conduct persistent strike capabilities. You don't need to plow enormous resources into your nuclear posture, which Xi Jinping is so clearly doing. China could, for instance, spend much more of its resources on building out a mature blue water navy. So just the fact that China is willing to

sacrifice resources and build a highly sophisticated nuclear posture that can do more than go after cities. There's really, to me, the telltale sign that China wants more than what in the Cold War we would have called a nuclear posture to conduct assured destruction against the adversary. I want to get to in a second, you know, what has changed in China's thinking to lead to these decisions and Dan may be your best position to address that but for either of you just a really basic question before we get into this and maybe for listeners who are new to thinking about these things what do you guys even mean when you're talking about nuclear strategy like isn't it kind of like like dr strangelove and you push the button and all the all the missiles go into the sky and

it's like kind of all over at that point and you're basically trying to use these things to prevent that from happening but once it fails it fails like i don't understand i like help me understand nuclear strategy issue that is sort of a premise of the broader conversation that we're having. So the nuclear strategy issue in terms of the American conception of a nuclear strategy, I suppose you could delineate two clear goals, which is one, obviously, to assure the security of the American homeland, to assure that nuclear adversary is not, and to conduct a strike against the U.S. homeland. At the same time, the United States, as a global power, has to extend deterrence to our far-flung allies. So this creates a challenge there because it's much

easier to assure the security of the homeland than it is to extend deterrence to, say, a West Germany during the Cold War or today, Japan in the Western Pacific. So it's nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, the American grand strategy is far more difficult than simply a homeland defense. Now, the Chinese conception of nuclear strategy, appears to be fit into China's conception of deterrence, which is far more forward-leaning than the American understanding of deterrence. Our understanding of deterrence in the United States School of Thought is to dissuade an adversary from taking a particular course of action. China appears to abide by that, but China also appears to have a more forward-leaning

understanding of compelance as well. So there's deterrence and compelance. Compeillance would be to actually shape the adversary's behavior to prevent, to modify its ongoing behavior. So this is very concerning for us in terms of if we're operating in the Western Pacific, could China see its nuclear weapons as a compelance tool to change our behavior in the Western Pacific, to change our support for Taiwan, for instance, or our ongoing support for Japan, South Korea? So that's kind of the thinking behind our piece in terms of what China views for its nuclear strategy. I would just add to that, Aaron, when it comes to China and its evolution of thinking about strategy in general is that. So if you are prepared to get into a conventional war in the Western Pacific as China is obviously preparing to do, not that it's decided to do so.

It gives you a lot of political leverage over your adversaries, which in the Asia-Pacific includes the U.S. Allied system. If you're prepared, then, to get into conventional war with a group of allies that is backed by a nuclear power, but they themselves don't have nuclear weapons, it gives you even more potential political and coercive leverage over that ally system. as Kyle said, to compel them either to dissolve the alliance system, as we argue, in the peace or to do other things, you know, to defer to you. You can essentially dominate the level of violence that is employed and inflicted for your to meet your political ends, particularly when you're

building out this type of nuclear weapon system and structure that actually has a war-fighting utility. So if I'm sitting in Beijing and I'm on the poll up bureau, I'm senior in the CCP hierarchy one way or the other, the PLA hierarchy, what is my geopolitical vision of the world? What does the world look like to me? And then obvious follow-up is, and, you know, what do these nukes do for me geopolitically? We've already sort of addressed that. But what's so interesting and unusual about your argument, your article in your argument, I think, is the way in which it fuses these two conceptions, one of nuclear strategy. and two of geopolitical vision.

Because there's a way in which the kind of classical geopolitical thinking of, you know, offshore balancing and first island chain and, you know, the Rimland versus the heartland and all these kind of classical geopolitical categories that we've talked about on the show a lot seem to be sort of overridden by the existence of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons just sort of upends all of that and upends all the questions of distance in time that sort of gave, that were the necessary preconditions for thinking in those terms. So what's the Chinese geopolitical vision? And then we'll come back to how Newx fit into it.

Yeah, I'll take the first stab, and then Kyle, who has done a lot of academic work and in classical geopolitics can chime in. So the geopolitical vision is you want to lead the world order and you want to bend it to your ideological and political vision if you're Xi Jinping and the CCP. So the U.S. Democratic order and the alliance system have got to go. And it's a pretty zero-sum proposition. And the order, the political order itself needs to be reshaped along the lines of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the Chinese system. But then you run into the geographic and strategic geographic realities. So it's one thing to be busy at work, try to reshape the UN system and the global

government system and so on. But to actually create spheres of influence, you have to overcome the fact that if you're sitting out and looking from Beijing's perspective, you can't really dominate anything, you know, if you don't overcome the fact that there is this maritime alliance system sitting, abutting your coast. And so you need to resolve that dilemma. So, you know, you want to remake the world order, but you need to actually control things and control countries. to do so, or else it just becomes kind of an abstract exercise or a marginal exercise in terms of your manipulation of the global governance system. So the fact that China is a continent with one coastline that abuts Japan and South Korea and the Philippines and other U.S. allies and partners

in the U.S. Navy provides or exposes it to a geopolitical dilemma that it has to overcome, which is that it can be contained in and not expand and create this kind of political military sphere of influence unless it neutralizes that alliance system. If it can do so in two ways, it can start a big war to do so. And as Kyle pointed out in our peace, there are continental forebears who have started big wars in order to overcome their continental conundrum that didn't work out well for them, including Germany in the beginning of the, you know, through the mid-20th century. So you can start a big war, which would be difficult because of your geographic position and because of the fact that the United States is the hegemon of global alliances.

Or you can Finland dies, coerce, force countries to give up and do your bidding without actually going to war. And we believe that the nuclear posture tied to political warfare, tied to coercive campaigns, hybrid warfare, tied to a conventional capability, is evidence that for now China is opting for the latter, which is dissolve the alliance system, resolve your continental, you know, your continental conundrum, the fact that there's this maritime flank you have to deal with through coercion and the threat of more violence. rather than starting a big war that might actually exacerbate your geographic position. Could I ask you to make the case for something you asserted early in your comment just now? I mean, before the geopolitical realities part, you asserted essentially that the Chinese seek to be, to upend the existing order of things and to, they're in pursuit of a political vision that looks more like socialism with Chinese characteristics. you know, I could see someone arguing that actually a lot of the behavior, if not all of the

behavior that we've seen so far could be explainable by less grandiose goals that, for example, you know, a little over 100 years ago, the United States, well, well, well, well over 100 years ago, but a little over 100 years ago in an effective way, the United States began a march to regional hegemony. It asserted it in the Monroe Doctrine very early in the 19th century, but then kind of really worked to make it a reality around the turn of the 20th century with some real capabilities at that point. Is it really so unjust and so wrong for China to be doing the same thing in East Asia, seeking the same kind of regional hegemony that the United States has long enjoyed in the West? And are we, you know, sort of who are we to object to that, A, and B,

what evidence is there that their concerns are broader than that, that they have a global vision or they even have a regime-oriented vision, which you sort of intimate there? Yeah, so two quick points on that. So the evidence, you know, there's this joke in China watching circles that the first line of encryption for China is the fact that people don't read Mandarin, right? And, you know, so Xi Jinping himself is clear as day in his 19th party Congress report in 2017 and in other communications he has to make to communist leaders in order to give them their marching orders. He's clear as day that a new. order is necessary. And in fact, we're in a new era where China can shape this new order. So his actual, you know, primary sources and speeches and directions to the communist cadre are very clear about a world order with China at the center. And then logical deduction, you know, behavior in other regions, obviously the bulk of Chinese effort is in the Indo-Pacific, you know, but behavior throughout the world in terms of reshaping and

international governance institutions, Chinese interests and facilities, military, and others throughout Latin America, throughout Africa, throughout the Gulf, and so on. You know, this is a country that has defined its interests broadly, has broad commercial interests that it is pursuing, is trying to defend those commercial interests. So I think, again, you know, statements and communications that the Chinese leader makes, as well as activities that the Chinese are engaged in that we slowly uncover over time to reshape governance institutions and so forth. How do you see the insights that you guys are writing about here shaping American policy, if in fact you guys were emperors for a day and could direct American policy as you saw fit?

Whether that is, there's two obvious ways to break that down, the way in which we are managing our relationships with places like Japan or Korea or the Philippines, etc. like how should this affect how we are dealing with them and talking to them and working with them? So sort of a diplomatic question. And then what does it mean for our own nuclear posture? How should we think about that? In terms of our diplomatic posture, it should be focused on restoring our credibility within the region to convey to our allies and partners that we have a stake in the game in the region. I think as Dan and I laid out on the piece is there's an economic dimension to this, the economics,

geopolitics, if you will, which is getting back into the business of constructing some sort of free trade regime in the region to show that our economic security is indivisible from the status quo in the region. And the easiest route to doing this, given the politics of domestic politics of the United States today, would be high standards bilateral trade agreements. The region wants access to the American market. The American market is one of our greatest, I believe, asymmetric advantages along with the fact that we have these far-flung allies. And I think recoupling ourselves, both strategically and economically to the region, will show our allies that we will have their back because the American economy is tied to the region, and it will show Beijing

that we have a stake in the game, that our economic security is indivisible from the region. And so I think that should be the forefront of our diplomatic posture in the region, is getting the economics of it right. So far, we haven't been able to have done that. We've made gains in the last four years. I think restoring economic trade deals with the region following the demise of the Trans-Pacific economic partnership, I think that would be the first place to start diplomatically, diplomatically. In terms of our nuclear posture, the big gap is the fact that we have no regionally based nuclear response option within the region. In 2010, the Obama administration decided to retire. The submarine launched Tomahawk cruise missile,

and this was well before we had signs that China was moving in a very adverse direction in the nuclear domain. This was well before, you know, Chinese silo fields start sprouting up in its northwestern desert. So this all seemed safe and this was all eminently sensible to retire. the Tomahawk land attack nuclear option. Japan, though, at the time was very uncomfortable with this decision. They've always, Tokyo has always considered the fact that we'd have a prompt in-theater response option as what extends nuclear deterrence and, in effect, our nuclear umbrella to the region. And so the fact that we no longer had a regionally based prompt nuclear response option is very unnerving to especially Tokyo. And we've seen this

in South Korea as well, where President Yun has said that North, South Korea could even spring to develop its own independent nuclear arsenal. So they're clearly unsure of whether or not the American nuclear umbrella extends over them as well. So I think the first move in terms of our nuclear posture would be getting our theater nuclear posture, right? We spend so much time thinking about our ICBMs, our heavy bomber fleet, our SSBNs, that we, it's too easy to look over the fact that we need to get the theater dimension right, because that's what Japan cares about most. And since deterrence is more state of mind, as opposed to any scientific, you know, rationale and any sort of definable quantitative metric, deterrence as much depends on what our

allies think as it does American strategic thinking things. So I think redeploying a C-Lons cruise missile would be the first step to recoupling our nuclear deterrent to the region. And I would just add two things. You know, one is the purpose of the peace and of subsequent work is to get the United States thinking again about imposing costs on China rather than and taking advantage of the fact that China, too, has finite resources and needs to make choices, which I think is getting a little bit lost in the debate today. So if the United States goes ahead and does what Kyle just said, in terms of a prompt, regional response, China will have to react and change its funding and resource allocation in terms of missile and air defenses and so forth. Same is true as some of

the other things we suggest, which include more comprehensive missile defenses around, you know, the allied system, U.S., Japan, and Korea. Again, the idea is not only protect the alliance system, but also, you know, get back into the game like we got into in the late Cold War of finding Chinese vulnerabilities and imposing costs. You know, we did not mention in this piece, but there will be follow-on work, the fact that we're no longer in the INF Treaty. And there are all kinds of opportunities for different kinds of crews and ballistic missile

deployments that force China to spread around its own missile defenses and so on. So, you know, I would say, you know, if I was advising policymakers or a policymaker myself, I say, of course, we have to do all kinds of things to protect the United States and its allied system. But let's remember that China has finite resources and we want them spending on things that are less threatening to us. And that's one, you know, that's one part of the debate we're trying to get started again. Can you guys help me understand what failure looks like here? Help me picture the world where we're not doing the sorts of things that you prescribe, which means that China does have this option of using its nuclear arsenal to weaken the American system of relationships along the first island chain.

Obviously, one possible iteration, as we all know, and as you alluded to earlier, is there could be a Chinese military game. gambit over Taiwan or something that happens in the South China Sea. And that's that's one iteration. But I'm actually more interested in the iterations where China avoids war, avoids direct high-end military confrontation, but uses the weapons to compel or coerce, sort of as you're describing what just paint a picture of the next 10 years. Like what are the sorts of things that happen? Why would they matter to Americans?

I mean, do why should Americans care about the sorts of things that you're describe it. Yeah. So if you can picture, so if the status quo continues as it's continuing, you know, here's what will happen. So right now, the Chinese pretty much unanswered have developed over the course of the last 20, 24 years, what we call this anti-access area denial bubble, where essentially, you know, they can operate in ways around the U.S. Maritime Allied system with more or less a free hand, you know, very weak responses from the United States. Territory has been lost. The Philippines has lost territory. Vietnam has lost territory. Japan is facing a daily incursion into its own territorial waters around the Sincocko Islands.

Taiwan is now used to, it's normalized to have Chinese incursions into its airspace and increasingly into its maritime space, you know, with very little response. Now, imagine that circumstance with a nuclear umbrella around it and imagine, you know, kind of halting U.S. responses. And five, six years from now, the Chinese go to Tokyo and say, come on, guys, really? The United States is going to protect you? I mean, let's cut a deal here. Get the U.S. military out of Japan and you don't have much to worry about. You know, same thing is true in South Korea.

Same thing is true in the Philippines. And of course, Taiwan, you know, it becomes less and less credible to say that the U.S. is going to mount a conventional defense in the face of a nuclear-armed superior A2-A-D bubble. So it essentially creates this sphere of influence where the Chinese can start to pressure countries to cut deals to get the United States military out of the region. And that's the pact we're headed on, headed towards. And just continue to spell it out, if you would. okay, so the U.S. military has left Japan. Why should that matter to the folks in Wichita?

Well, so because the United States is so far from East Asia, Japan is the gateway. Without military access, the U.S. loses political and economic access to the world's most important, most vibrant economic region. Chinese start to make the rules and exact prices and costs on the United States economy in order to do business on their terms on the region, I'd say, you know, that's incredibly important. The other thing I would say is that once the alliance system starts to unravel, the U.S. is put in a position where it's back to its pre-World War II position, or maybe worse, because we wouldn't have access to the Philippines. You know, eventually somebody in the United States, usually what happens, reasons war is actually.

started, somebody in the United States says this has gone too far. It's just, you know, once we make that decision, we make that decision on much less favorable terms than we would have otherwise had had we really bolstered our forward-based position closer to China. And that's the path we're headed down. So it has real material implications for U.S. economic well-being. It has real material implications for whether or not we're headed to war with China or not. It also has global strategic implications insofar as an unraveling of our alliance system in the Western Pacific, surely, almost surely means that South Korea will go nuclear and build an independent arsenal themselves, Japan, and this would have cascading effects throughout the

world. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has already expressed an interest in a civilian nuclear program. I believe it's also expressed an interest given Iran's behavior in an independent nuclear arsenal if the United States doesn't extend a security guarantee, a more formal security guarantee over Saudi Arabia. So, you know, the collapse, the global collapse of the nonproliferation regime would severely constrain Washington's freedom of maneuver in the world. So much for our ability to act and project power comes from our far-flowing alliances, but also the fact that nuclear weapons and NATO in the Western Pacific is under our central control. And I believe we'll be living in a much more difficult world in terms of projecting power

if the global non-proliferation regime breaks down, which I think would be a result of, the dissolution of our alliance system in the Western Pacific. Yeah. And with the incoming Trump administration and what looks like will be a moment of unified Republican control of government, albeit with extremely narrow and apparently quite volatile margins in the House, you know, what do you think the prospects are, whether on the trade agenda side, these high quality bilateral agreements that you mentioned in the piece, or on the nuclear modernization front and the ability to build capacity on the tactical

nuclear weapons run. I'll take the economic piece. So on the, there's no going back, you know, to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, nor do we advocate for that. But there is a real possibility. We've got to remember that Donald Trump and his trade team actually negotiated a few trade deals, including the USMCA, which was by all accounts of better trade agreement than NAFTA and certain limited trade agreements with Japan and had notified intent to negotiate. Philippines. I think these have to be done in the context of these are these are counter China initiatives, that these are supply chain security initiatives, that in order for us, it's an interesting race right now. The Chinese are trying to decouple the alliance system for the United

States. The United States has to race in order to make the alliance system work to decouc-it it needs to race to decouple its economic system from China. But in order to decouple, you need these high-quality trade agreements in order to get supply from elsewhere. And I think that has chance of passage. So sectoral agreements focused on supply chain security, very limited, has a chance for passage. And I'll let Kyle speak to the nuclear modernization piece.

In terms of nuclear modernization, I think in the past two years, it's been clear that there's now a bipartisan consensus on the need to adjust our nuclear posture to this two-peer-threat environment we find ourselves in today. The big question, though, the big if is funding it. And so I think in the months ahead, we're going to see a debate, a fight between Republican budget hawks and Republican defense hawks that will decide on the future. of American nuclear modernization program. If the defense hawks win,

we will surely see something like a slickaman in the Western Pacific, I believe. We will see at least a modest buildup and expansion of our strategic nuclear capabilities. And President Elect Trump himself has expressed an interest in how he termed it as an American Iron Dome after the recent Iranian Israeli missile exchanges. He's definitely interested in,

missile defense. The big question, though, is where will the administration's priorities lie when the defense budget debate picks up steam and will interest remain in such a thing as an American Iron Dome or a strategic nuclear expansion? All right. Kyle Balzer, Dan Blumenthal, really, really interesting article, the true aims of China's nuclear buildup in foreign affairs. I recommend it to all our listeners. And I appreciate you gentlemen for making the time. Thanks so much, Aaron. Thanks, Aaron. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.