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The thought of war in Asia is scary enough; the thought of nuclear war is even more dire. But someone has to think about it. So Andrew Metrick, Philip Sears, and Stacey Pettyjohn of the Washington think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS) recently brought together experts to conduct a tabletop exercise — a kind of war game — to explore how a nuclear war between the U.S. and China might break out. The results were disappointing.
In the exercise scenario, the year is 2032, and a war over Taiwan lasts for 45 days. China shortens the war by forcing the US to submit using “theater” nuclear weapons, which have shorter range and less power than city-destroying “strategic” missiles. Targets include Guam and Kwajalein Atoll, both of which are crucial to the US military position in the Pacific, as well as US aircraft carrier strike groups.
That's distressingly plausible. One reason is the geography of the Asian battlefield. During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union planned to use large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy large forces scattered around towns and cities. “In today's Pacific Ocean, naval vessels at sea and military bases on small islands are very different targets,” the study notes. Fewer nuclear weapons would be needed, and fewer civilian casualties, than a Cold War attack.
This has to do with the second reason: the evolution of weapons. Most people consider conventional weapons to be less escalatory than nuclear weapons and therefore more usable. But today's low-yield nuclear weapons (20 kilotons, roughly the size of the Hiroshima bomb) can be delivered with extreme precision and cause less collateral damage. “The line between low-yield tactical nuclear weapons and precision-guided conventional weapons is blurring, both in terms of operational effectiveness and perceived impact,” CNAS says.
A third factor is the impact of a protracted war. Weeks into a conflict, both sides will have scarce conventional weapons. Theater nuclear weapons become more attractive. “On a weapon-by-weapon basis, nuclear weapons are effective at destroying wide ranges of targets,” the authors note. Their immense power means they will continue to function even if weeks of war degrade the command, control, and information systems that conventional weapons rely on.
The result of all this was a strange nuclear war in war games: China was incentivized to use its nuclear weapons first, despite officially pledging not to be the first to do so. But in reality, it did not necessarily escalate into a catastrophic exchange of strategic nuclear weapons, in contrast to expectations of how a US-Soviet war would play out in Europe. In the world of nuclear strategists, that is considered good news.
The exercise suggested that China had more reason to be happy. Chinese experts and officials had a wide range of military targets to consider. Asia is teeming with U.S. facilities and naval assets. (There is little evidence, however, that China currently possesses low-yield nuclear weapons.) In contrast, the U.S. team was troubled by the fact that many of the most attractive targets for retaliation were on the Chinese mainland; striking them with tactical nuclear weapons would carry a much higher risk of escalating to all-out nuclear war.
Moreover, officials noted that the U.S. does not have the weapons necessary to strike a “very small” number of low-risk targets, primarily warships and Chinese bases on disputed reefs in the South China Sea. America's most advanced non-nuclear missiles will run out by the 45th day. The U.S., unlike Russia, no longer has nuclear-tipped anti-ship missiles. New submarine-launched nuclear cruise missiles are planned for the 2030s. But they cannot be used as a signal to preempt a Chinese nuclear use without revealing their location. It would also tie up scarce attack submarines in the middle of a naval battle.
Nuclear strategy has its own eerie grammar, steeped in Cold War assumptions and experiences, and reshaped by advances in military technology. But it is ultimately a political question. If 5,000 American sailors on an aircraft carrier were annihilated by nuclear attack, or if a US territory such as Guam was attacked by nuclear weapons, would the US president respond with nuclear weapons, or would he give up his conventional arsenal, or would he just give up? The authors acknowledge that this is a “fundamental and unknown factor.”
