Abstract
Targeting China
I was having a conversation with a nuclear insider recently, inquiring about an air force proposal to retire B-2 and B-52 bombers from the nuclear triad. “The B-2s are essential for attacking China,” the insider told me. “Land-based missiles would have to overfly Russia, and we can't leave the China role solely to Pacific-based submarines.”
Let me get this straight: In the hallowed halls of nuclear war planning, China, which has just a few dozen nuclear-equipped intercontinental missiles, causes U.S. nuclear officials anxiety? Russia and the United States have thousands of missiles pointed at each other, but Washington still needs nuclear bombers simply to avoid annoying Moscow in the event of a war with Beijing?
The Bush administration's missile defense plan may be doing all the annoying these days. But before people jump to conclusions about U.S. nuclear war plans for China, it should be made clear that they are a Clinton administration invention.
Two recent reports by the Nautilus Institute's Hans Kristensen recount how China made its way back into U.S. Strategic Command's (Strat-com) bull's-eye. Based on a close reading of the specialist press—as well as on numerous documents released under the Freedom of Information Act—the reports (published in November 2000 and May 2001; www.nautilus.org/nukestrat/index.html) offer a rare glimpse into the contemporary world of nuclear war planning.
In 1998, Kristensen shows, China was reinserted into the Slop—or Single Integrated Operational Plan—after a 16-year hiatus. The reinsertion was the result of Presidential Decision Directive 60, signed by then-President Bill Clinton in November 1997, which codified the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review and followed from a little known Stratcom study called “Sun City Extended.”
Although Kristensen's copy of the Sun City Extended study is heavily redacted, 13 pages of it clearly deal with various future “China Scenarios.” The document outlines two potential “U.S.-China adversarial scenarios”—one resulting from a conflict with North Korea, and the other, a “China/coNUS [continental United States] confrontation,” presumably from a Chinese first strike against the United States.
Kristensen also obtained a document from a January 2000 air force meeting about the “Chinese Integrated Strategic Operations Plan” (or chisop), a Joint Chiefs plan meant to simulate what a Chinese nuclear strike would look like. Chisop joins the venerable “Red Integrated Strategic Operations Plan”—or risop—which although the wrong color these days, is an attempt to demonstrate how Russia would attack the West (see “The Last Word,” July/August 2000).
Perhaps by coincidence, siop expert Bruce Blair of the Center for Defense Information says there are now two “Limited Attack Options” in the siop involving a handful of Pacific-based Trident submarines and bombers assigned to attack China's nuclear forces, leadership, and industrial infrastructure.
Last May, Adm. Richard Mies, commander of Stratcom, told the Senate that any effort to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal would have to take China into account, noting that there had been several “recent statements by senior Chinese officials [about] an increased role for nuclear weapons in their foreign policy.”
The attitude of U.S nuclear officials toward China should come as little surprise to anyone who follows nuclear weapons issues. Regardless of what one thinks about the purported Chinese “threat,” the country does have a nuclear arsenal that is capable of striking the United States.
But if China's inclusion in the siop is merely meant to deter a Chinese attack in the distant future, then it shouldn't be kept a secret. That way at least, China would know the score—and the U.S. public would be able to debate the wisdom of allowing military officials in an Omaha bunker to determine the course of U.S.-China relations.