China MAD option

bajingan said:

Hi this is my first thread here
as you all have realized that China possess only mininum nuclear deterrece force
of only 100 - 400 nuclear warhead with only a dozen currently capable of striking continental USA
while the US and russia has more than 1500 nukes, those small arsenal is highly vulnerable to

massive nuclear first strike, not to mention US missile shield that is constantly getting better
threatening to neutralize China small nuclear retaliation.

So my question what is China plan in ensuring MAD?
is it possible for China to unleash armageddon by striking non US targets in the unlikely case of

US first strike?
For example by striking US neighbour of mexico, and let the radioactive wind does it job to ensure

texas is no longer habitable
or by striking world rainforests for example amazon rainforest that produces 25% or world oxygen

or perhaps by striking russia in which some experts thinks will unleash its massive nuclear

missiles not only to China but to the all of the nuclear armed states in retalation
what is your opinion on this? because for the life of me I cannot think of any logical reasoning
why China insist on minimum deterrence doctrine

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chuck731 said:

China certainly has not embraced mutual assured destruction because China has not developed, even though it could come much closer than it actually did, the capacity to destroy the United States.

Mutural assured destruction between the US and USSR may seem like a precedent, but it is not an appropriate one. During the cold war, both sides fervently believed the other side was not merely out to reduce its influence on world affairs, or to change its form of government. Both sides absolutely believed the other would utterly destroy it, exterminating its people, and wiping it off the face of the earth through complete nuclear annihilations under certain not implausible circumstances. In other words, any defeat has high likelihood of being not just bad, but unsurvivable.

The worst possible outcome of having mutural assured destruction capability is no worse than not having that capability. If anything it can make you safer. Hence MAD.

In the contest between the US and China, neither side seriously believe the other is out to utterly destroy it, exterminate its people, and wipe it off the face of the earth. Each side believes even if the worst come to worst, the other side will stop at rolling back its own international influence to its own borders, and maybe attempt to change its government. That's it. In other words, defeat is survivable.

In this circumstance, the worst possible outcome of an MAD arrangement is much worse than the worst possible outcome of not having that capability. MAD won't make your safer. It increases the chance that a survivable defeat will turn into an annihalation.

Hence, it is irrational for China to pursue MAD.

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mike_wilde said:

We need to agree on what MAD is first, chuck. Most are happy with minimum, mutual deterrence. MAD essentially has three main precepts - 1, no first-strike, 2, target cities not weapons, and 3, no BMD or NMD stuff. In terms of doctrine, current Chinese policy looks very similar to traditional MAD, even though their force is question. With the DF-31 the PLA are deploying a fairly credible minimal deterrence force that could in theory survive first-strike, and many people consider than for this reason China has almost established a credible MAD force.

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chuck731 said:

Chinese nuclear arsenal is far from credible as a tool of mutural assured destruction because American can absorb china's best shot and remain a superpower, to say nothing of just surviving.

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chuck731 said:

MAD has the additional precept that each power can annihilate the other and is at risk of being annihilated by the other. There is an implied underlying dynamic that makes it plausible for each to want to a annihilate the other if given the opportunity.

Minimum deterrence is a policy suitable for a second rate power whose influence upon world events and whose capacity to hinder the designs of a superpower is limited. It's implementation is design to give the second rate power just enough retaliatory power so that the cost it could inflict upon a superpower is slightly greater than any benefit the superpower might obtain by attacking and defeating it.

Mutual assured destruction is a policy adopted by a superpower and suitable only under the situation when there is mutual conviction that each is the only major factor standing in the way of the other side attaining all of its designs and achieve complete safety. As a result the other side could plausibly attempt to launch a preemptive annihilating strike to get you out of the way.

Mutual assured destruction and minimum deterrence would both involve targeting cities. For minimum deterrence target cities maximizes the pain small deterrence can inflict. For mutual assured destruction targeting cities is essential part of annihilation.

Not targeting cities is a policy called counter force. It is practicable for the Us but impracticable for china lack of symmetry in the sizes of forces to be countered.

China is pursuing something more than minimum deterrence. China is pursuing the capacity win a local war against the US. But china is also not pursuing mutural assured destruction. Chinese nuclear arsenal is far from credible as a tool of mutural assured destruction because American can absorb china's best shot and remain a superpower, to say nothing of just surviving. There is no assured destruction. These is also no evidence china is trying.

China might be preemptively posturing herself for mutural assured destruction against Japan, but that's a different story.

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A nuclear war between India and Pakistan would set off a global famine that could kill two billion people and effectively end human civilisation, a new study has found.

Even if limited in scope, a conflict with nuclear weapons would wreak havoc in the atmosphere and devastate crop yields, with the effects multiplied as global food markets went into turmoil, the report said.

The Nobel Peace Prize- winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility released an initial study in April last year that predicted a nuclear famine could kill more than a billion people.

In a second edition, the groups said they widely underestimated the impact in China, which they calculated would face severe food insecurity.

"A billion people dead in the developing world is obviously a catastrophe unparalleled in human history. But then if you add to that the possibility of another 1.3 billion people in China being at risk, we are entering something that is clearly the end of civilisation," said Ira Helfand, the report's author.

Helfand said that the study looked at India and Pakistan due to the long-standing tensions between the nuclear-armed states, which have fought three full-fledged wars since independence and partition in 1947.

But Helfand said that the planet would expect a similar apocalyptic impact from any limited nuclear war. Modern nuclear weapons are far more powerful than the US bombs that killed more than 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

"With a large war between the United States and Russia, we are talking about the possible - not certain, but possible - extinction of the human race.

"In this kind of war, biologically there are going to be people surviving somewhere on the planet but the chaos that would result from this would dwarf anything we've ever seen," Helfand said.

The study said that black carbon aerosol particles kicked into the atmosphere by a South Asian nuclear war would reduce US corn and soybean production by around 10 per cent over a decade.

These particles would also reduce China's rice production by an average of 21 per cent over four years and by another 10 per cent over the following six years.

The updated study also found severe effects on China's wheat, production of which would plunge by 50 per cent the first year after the nuclear war and would still be 31 per cent below baseline a decade later, it said.

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