MOSCOW – The early warning missile system that Moscow is currently helpingBeijing set up will drastically boost China’s defence, securing it againstany possible “strategic surprise” from the United States, experts say.
Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed these plans while speaking at theValdai Discussion Club last week. Russia finished making a similar system,which covers its entire territory, back in 2017, Sputnik has reported.
Experts noted that the new Chinese system would ward off the risk of anyunexpected first strike from the United States, albeit remarking that suchan attack seemed purely theoretical.
“The system will first of all reduce the risk that China will suffer a‘strategic surprise’ from the United States, for example a nuclear firststrike out of the blue which would not permit China to launch its nuclearweapons in retaliation before they are destroyed (For other reasons, therewas not a great chance that this could occur anyway, but it does reduceit),” Miles Pomper, a senior fellow at the Washington DC office of theJames Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the MiddleburyInstitute, said.
The system, he said, also “opens the door to the deployment of Chineseballistic missile defence and integrated anti-satellite capabilities.”
Nikolai Sokov of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation, inturn, noted that the early warning system was “particularly important forChina, whose arsenal is small compared to the US and which can lose itsweapons if it were forced to ride out an attack.”
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“With robust early warning systems, it will be able to launch them beforeincoming warheads reach targets,” he explained.
In addition, the new system will also likely enhance China’s conventionaldeterrencelink.
“If – as appears possible – that capability includes warning about attacksof cruise missiles, this would be even more important for China, which isseriously concerned about US conventional strike capability. Cruisemissiles are the main tool for conventional attacks … and thus ability todetect them with sufficient warning would strengthen not only China’snuclear deterrence but also conventional deterrence,” Sokov concluded.
