Why the Next Shooting War Could Go Nuclear
Nuclear expert James Acton believes that we are entering into an era of what he calls “nuclear entanglement,” one that promises to be different from anything we’ve seen before. Its main characteristic: an increasingly blurry line between nuclear and conventional weapons.
The evidence is easy to spot. China and Russia are deploying greater numbers of “ambiguous,” dual-use ground-launched ballistic missiles. At the same time, the United States’ pursuit of conventional hypersonic missiles of very high speed and accuracy might enable even these non-nuclear weapons to hold nuclear arsenals at risk.
Neither trend is good for crisis stability. In the case of warhead ambiguity, the lack of clear distinctions between nuclear and non-nuclear systems greatly complicates any attempt at escalation management. “Imagine that the U.S. and China are in a shooting match, and China deploys conventional DF-26 missiles with non-nuclear warheads,” Acton explained. “But imagine U.S. intelligence gets that wrong and thinks they are nuclear versions of the DF-26.” “From a U.S. perspective, that represents a big escalation of the crisis: China has just deployed nuclear weapons. But that kind of escalation is inadvertent because China hasn’t, in fact, deployed nuclear weapons. We just misidentified it.“From a U.S. perspective, that represents a big escalation of the crisis: China has just deployed nuclear weapons. But that kind of escalation is inadvertent because China hasn’t, in fact, deployed nuclear weapons. We just misidentified it.” More... “The other way around is a problem, too,” he continued. “Imagine that China does deploy nuclear-armed DF-26s, and we think they are conventional and try and hunt down and attack these missiles. If we’re successful, we’ve inadvertently destroyed nuclear weapons, which from a Chinese perspective is extremely escalatory.”
No comments:
Post a Comment