Though China remains a relatively weak nuclear power, it has in recent years become central to US strategic policymaking. What explains this shift? How is the US-China strategic nuclear relationship evolving? What role do other states play in shaping it? To address these questions, the authors of US-China Nuclear Relations examine a series of strategic triangles involving China, the US, and one or more key third actors (among them, Australia, India, Iran, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, and Taiwan). Their work also critically highlights the challenges and opportunities facing Washington and Beijing in this increasingly complex security arena.
The global implications of China's rise as a global actor In 2005, a senior official in the George W. Bush administration expressed the hope that China would emerge as a “responsible stakeholder” on the world stage. A dozen years later, the Trump administration dramatically shifted course, instead calling China a “strategic competitor” whose actions routinely threaten U.S. interests. Both assessments reflected an underlying truth: China is no longer just a “rising” power. It has emerged as a truly global actor, both economically and militarily. Every day its actions affect nearly every region and every major issue, from climate change to trade, from conflict in troubled lands to competition over rules that will govern the uses of emerging technologies. To better address the implications of China's new status, both for American policy and for the broader international order, Brookings scholars conducted research over the past two years, culminating in a project: Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World. The project is intended to furnish policy makers and the public with hard facts and deep insights for understanding China's regional and global ambitions. The initiative draws not only on Brookings's deep bench of China and East Asia experts, but also on the tremendous breadth of the institution's security, strategy, regional studies, technological, and economic development experts. Areas of focus include the evolution of China's domestic institutions; great power relations; the emergence of critical technologies; Asian security; China's influence in key regions beyond Asia; and China's impact on global governance and norms. Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World provides the most current, broad-scope, and fact-based assessment of the implications of China's rise for the United States and the rest of the world.
How the United States and China can avoid future conflict and establish stable cooperative relations After forty years of largely cooperative Sino-U.S. relations, policymakers, politicians, and pundits on both sides of the Pacific see growing tensions between the United States and China. Some go so far as to predict a future of conflict, driven by the inevitable rivalry between an established and a rising power, and urge their leaders to prepare now for a future showdown. Others argue that the deep economic interdependence between the two countries and the many areas of shared interests will lead to more collaborative relations in the coming decades. In this book, James Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon stake out a third, less deterministic position. They argue that there are powerful domestic and international factors, especially in the military and security realms, that could well push the bilateral relationship toward an arms race and confrontation, even though both sides will be far worse off if such a future comes to pass. They contend that this pessimistic scenario can be confidently avoided only if China and the United States adopt deliberate policies designed to address the security dilemma that besets the relationship between a rising and an established power. The authors propose a set of policy proposals to achieve a sustainable, relatively cooperative relationship between the two nations, based on the concept of providing mutual strategic reassurance in such key areas as nuclear weapons and missile defense, space and cyber operations, and military basing and deployments, while also demonstrating strategic resolve to protect vital national interests, including, in the case of the United States, its commitments to regional allies.
Global power is shifting to Asia. The U.S. military is embarking on an American "pivot" to the Indo-Pacific region, and the bulk of global arms spending is directed toward Asian theaters. India and Pakistan are thought to be building up their nuclear arsenals while questions persist about China's potential to "sprint to parity." China remains by far the world's largest market for new nuclear energy production, and India aspires to be on a similar trajectory. Despite these trends, The China-India Nuclear Crossroads is the first serious book by leading Chinese and Indian experts to examine the political, military, and technical factors that affect Sino-Indian nuclear relations. In this book, editor and translator Lora Saalman presents a comprehensive framework through which China and India can pursue enhanced cooperation and minimize the unintended consequences of their security dilemmas.
This report addresses the increasingly important set of issues surrounding the nuclear forces of the United States and China. It focuses on a series of policy and posture recommendations for the United States, but it does so with an eye toward U.S. allies in the region and Chinese audiences. For over a century, the United States has maintained a strong and enduring presence in the Asia-Pacific region, buttressed by a number of alliances and partnerships and undergirded by a robust military capability, ultimately including U.S. nuclear forces. It remains committed to this approach to the Asia-Pacific region and has redoubled its focus through its recent "rebalance" toward the region. The United States has long seen China as a central factor in its strategy in Asia. Since the 1970s, U.S. policy has sought to encourage China's economic reforms and development and to integrate China into the existing international political and economic order. While hopeful that China will develop into a constructive stakeholder, the United States and much of the Asia-Pacific region share continuing concerns about some aspects of China's behavior that, it is feared, could undermine regional stability and U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific. Unfortunately, significant sources of tension and disagreement between the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and China, on the other, remain. These sources of discord could, in the worst case, lead to conflict. Needless to say, a large-scale conventional war between the United States and China would be incredibly dangerous and likely tremendously damaging. Nuclear war between the two would be devastating for all involved. Even though a conventional war between the two nations currently seems unlikely and nuclear war even more so, the possibility that war could break out, posing dramatic dangers and damage, clearly indicates that active steps should be taken to avoid conflict and successfully manage U.S.-China nuclear dynamics.
