Commentary
China’s nuclear arsenal is getting more powerful. On Feb. 7, the public learned from U.S. Strategic Command that the number of China’s land-based intercontinental ballistic missile launchers exceed those of the United States.
Lawmakers in Washington raised the revelation as a “wake-up call.”
“We have no time to waste in adjusting our nuclear force posture to deter both Russia and China,” several Republicans said in a joint statement. “This will have to mean higher numbers and new capabilities.”
The U.S. military is already modernizing its nuclear forces, but the discovery of China’s production speed will quicken the pace.
Another factor in U.S. nuclear modernization is Russia’s violation of the New START Treaty of 2011. Russia has refused to fully honor the treaty’s inspection requirements, making it unverifiable.
China refuses to join the treaty altogether, claiming it has a smaller number of nuclear weapons than either the United States or Russia. According to the Pentagon, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had more than 400 nuclear warheads in 2021, trending toward 1,500 by 2035.
However, this number is hard to verify, and there are suspicions that the PLA has many more.
Paul Dibb, an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, claims China has 2,000 shorter-range nuclear missiles that could reach much of the Indo-Pacific.
