China is again calling on the US and Russia to significantly reduce their nuclear arsenals to begin a path towards complete nuclear disarmament. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the call on Thursday after President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin said they would pursue new arms control talks.
Zhao said the US and Russian decision to engage in “strategic stability” dialogue was a “welcomed” development. He said the US and Russia should “substantively slash their nuclear stockpile in a verifiable, irreversible, and legally-binding way to create conditions for the ultimate comprehensive and complete nuclear disarmament.”
While China hawks in the US hype up Beijing’s nuclear arsenal, it is only a fraction of what Washington and Moscow have. Current high-end estimates put China’s arsenal at around 350 warheads, while the US and Russia both have about 6,000.
Zhao said China also has plans to engage in dialogue on strategic stability. The US wants China to participate in trilateral arms control agreements, but that won’t happen until the US and Russia dismantle some warheads. Last week, during the UN-backed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, China also urged the US and Russia to reduce their arsenals.
Putin and Biden released a joint statement after their summit in Geneva on Wednesday that said the two countries could never fight a nuclear war. “Today, we reaffirm the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the statement said.
Great that DeCamp called attention to this. China has a small deterrent nuclear arsenal not capable of First Strike, a No First Use policy and has not put its delivery systems on Hair Trigger Alert as have the US and China, which can lead to Accidental Armageddon.
China is correct on this, of course. Best thing to do is for the US and Russia to take all systems off hair-trigger alert and separate warheads from delivery systems and secure them appropriately. Then negotiations can begin to reduce stockpiles. Only when the two powers have reduced their stockpiles to less than 1000 warheads each should negotiations open for other nuclear powers to join, and there have to be some carrots and sticks to get Israel, to my knowledge the only nondeclared nuclear power, to the table. Other issues that need to be negotiated are how to allow nuclear power while preventing proliferation.