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China and Russia Issue Nuclear Warnings

CEPA. By Michael Sheridan, May 28, 2024

The leaders of Russia and China have jointly shifted their stance on nuclear weapons, signaling a move away from decades of cautious Chinese thinking.

The Chinese-Russian accord is significant because it was accompanied by a joint challenge to the West’s buildup of its alliances and military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

While the nuclear element of the joint communique following the May 16 summit of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin was not trumpeted and received little media attention, the two countries spelled out points of agreement on issues of significance.

The backdrop is China’s accelerated expansion of its nuclear forces and new fields of missile silos, leading the Pentagon to predict it may more than triple its capability to 1,500 weapons by 2035.

While Beijing is believed to adhere to a historical pledge that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons, its actual doctrine remains obscure, there is a worrying absence of military dialogue with its rivals and recent purges at the top of its nuclear forces add to the uncertainties.

Nonetheless, it is clear that President Xi sees nuclear weapons as pieces on the global chessboard in a way that no previous leader of the People’s Republic thought necessary or desirable. Mao Zedong himself dismissed the atomic bomb as “a paper tiger.”…………………………………………………………………………….

Xi and Putin expressed “serious concern” that the US “under the pretext of conducting joint exercises with its allies that are clearly aimed at China and Russia” was acting to deploy land-based intermediate-range missile systems in the Asia-Pacific region (possibly a reference to plans to sell 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles to Japan and defend the so-called first island chain that rings China’s coasts.)

They did not specify the systems referred to but warned the US and NATO against providing “extended deterrence” to individual allies. They also singled out the AUKUS pact tightening defense cooperation between the US, Britain, and Australia.

In unusually specific language, the two leaders warned against “building infrastructure in Australia, a signatory to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, that could be used for US and British nuclear forces to conduct operations and to carry out US-UK-Australian nuclear submarine co-operation.”………………………………….. https://cepa.org/article/china-and-russia-issue-nuclear-warnings/

May 31, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, politics international, Russia