BEIJING – China must strengthen its nuclear deterrence and counter-strikecapabilities to keep pace with the developing nuclear strategies of theUnited States and Russia, the official paper of the People’s LiberationArmy (PLA) said on Tuesday.
US President Donald Trump’s administration may be pursuing the developmentof new nuclear weaponry and could explicitly leave open the possibility ofnuclear retaliation for major non-nuclear attacks, according to a draft ofa pending Nuclear Posture Review leaked by the Huffington Post.
This “unprecedented” move by the United States, combined with continuousquality improvements of nuclear arsenals in both the US and Russia, meansthat both countries place greater importance on deterrence and real combatusability, the commentary in the PLA Daily said.
“In the roiling unpredictability of today’s world, to upgrade thecapability of our country’s deterrence strategy, to support our great powerposition… we must strengthen the reliability and trustworthiness of ournuclear deterrence and nuclear counterstrike capabilities,” it said.
The article was written by two researchers from the PLA Academy of MilitaryScience, a top research institute directly responsible to China’s CentralMilitary Commission.
A change was necessary despite China having developed nuclear weapons toavoid bullying from nuclear powers, the paper said, adding that China wouldalways stick to the principle of “no first use” and a final goal ofeliminating nuclear weapons.
Neither Russia nor the United States is abandoning nuclear weapons as eachadopts new high-tech weapons capabilities, the paper said, pointing to theUS Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of maintenance and modernisationof the US nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years costing more than $1.2trillion.
This spend, the paper said, has led to a corresponding Russian militarymodernisation program, aiming to boost the share of advanced armaments inits nuclear triad to at least 90 percent by 2021.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is overseeing an ambitious militarymodernisation programme, including developing advanced nuclear-capablemissiles. China carried out its first nuclear weapons test only in 1964.
Trump’s strong embrace of his predecessor President Barack Obama’s nuclearmodernisation programme has led some former senior US government officials,legislators and arms control specialists to warn of risks from the USstoking a new arms race.
A US national defence strategy released on Jan. 19 shifted priorities toput what Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called a “great power competition”with China and Russia at the heart of the country’s military strategy. -Agencies