On Tuesday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to begin discussions on arms control during virtual talks on Monday night that lasted over three hours.
“The two leaders agreed that we would look to begin to carry forward discussions on strategic stability,” Sullivan said at a Brooking Institute event when asked about China’s nuclear arsenal.
Sullivan signaled that while the two leaders agreed to begin a dialogue, the plans are still tentative. “It is now incumbent on us to think about the most productive way to carry it forward from here,” he said.
With China as the Pentagon’s main focus, there has been a lot of hype over its nuclear arsenal, which is estimated to be around 300 warheads, vastly smaller than the US’s arsenal of 5,750 warheads. In a recent report, the Pentagon claimed China could potentially bring its arsenal up to 1,000 warheads by 2030.
Until now, the US has called on China to engage in trilateral arms control talks with Russia. But Moscow has over 6,000 warheads, giving Beijing little motive to sign arms control treaties with the two major nuclear powers. Engaging directly with China could result in agreements about the deployment of nuclear weapons or other types of missiles in the Asia Pacific region if the US is serious about the dialogue.
Averting conflict appeared to be the main focus of the Xi-Biden talks, and Sullivan said there will be more engagement to this end. “You will see at multiple levels an intensification of the engagement to ensure that there are guardrails around this competition so that it doesn’t veer off into conflict,” he said.
Again with their “good cop-bad cop” routine. Except their “good cop” isn’t very convincing. And it’s all gotten as tiresome and annoying as a TV commercials during a football game.
Actually it’s more like commercials during the military’s recruiting blitz(pun intended)passed off as football games.
Fredrick Douglas and I say a melancholy amen. The ritual of testosterone and blood infallibly inspirits the lads to war.
And what’s more makes a profit center of their mindless victimhood for the Massa.
Here is what China has to say about a war with the United States over Taiwan:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2021/11/priming-world-for-war-with-china.html
Washington’s ruling class with its Cold War mentality still believes that it can win a conflict anywhere in the world, however, China’s massive and technically advanced military, its close links to both North Korea and Russia and its geographic proximity to any conflict in the East and South China Seas give it a significant advantage
“guardrails” = recent addition to the lexicon.
The danger in nuclear discussions is the very different outcomes about which the US and China dissemble.
China has a far smaller nuclear arsenal. It may already be vulnerable to a first strike. It will become far more vulnerable as the US does the many things it is already doing to seek precision guidance and even limited defensive systems.
China dare not let itself be vulnerable to a US first strike, because the US might do it. It has threatened to do so many times since MacArthur in 1950. The threat has become routine, especially linked to anything in Korea or Taiwan. It was even discussed regarding Vietnam, and that more than once.
So how would China limit that vulnerability? First off, every single US proposal ever made public was designed to ensure that China remains vulnerable to a first strike. We can not expect to get anywhere with that.