US, China to discuss nuclear arms control
Talks ahead of Xi-Biden summit are first step toward halting the new nuclear arms race in Asia.
China and the United States will discuss nuclear arms control next week, potentially a major development in the tense diplomatic engagement between the two countries.
Unlike with Russia, the US does not have a nuclear arms control regime with China.
Talks scheduled for Monday will be led by Mallory Stewart, a senior State Department official, and Sun Xiaobo, the head of the arms-control department at China's Foreign Ministry, according to reports by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg citing Biden administration officials.
The talks are part of the advance work being done before a likely summit meeting later this month between US President Joe Biden and China President Xi Jinping.
China is in the midst of the largest peacetime nuclear buildup in history. It has more than 500 operational nuclear warheads and is expanding its arsenal to 1,500 warheads by 2035, faster than previously expected, the Pentagon said in an October report.
The purpose of the talks, described as low-level, is to give the US a better understanding of China’s plans, according to Bloomberg.
Stewart joined the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance at the US State Department in 2022, after serving on the White House National Security Council since January 2021.
Prior to joining the NSC, she was the Senior Manager for Global Nuclear Security and Nonproliferation at the Center for Global Security and Cooperation in Sandia National Laboratories.
In recent months, Sun has held consultations with arms control officials from the United Nations, Germany, Iran and the Netherlands.
The world appears to have entered a new nuclear arms race with China, India, North Korea, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, as well as Russia, all increasing their stockpiles, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
On October 12, a congressionally mandated commission released a report calling for a new US nuclear build-up in response to China and Russia’s large-scale modernization programs.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the US-China arms talks would likely focus on promoting greater transparency of each countries' nuclear doctrines and more effective crisis-communication channels.
"I don't think we should expect breakthroughs in the near term. That's going to take time and give-and-take from both sides," Kimball told Reuters.
China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin had said on Monday the US and China would engage in “consultations on arms control and non-proliferation” ahead of an expected Xi-Biden summit in San Francisco on November 14, as reported in The East is Red.
Earlier this month, three scholars wrote in Foreign Affairs that the US needs to reevaluate its nuclear doctrine. The emergence of China as a nuclear peer and the prospect of military coordination between China and Russia against the US does not require the US to build more weapons in a straight numbers game.
“Expanding the US nuclear arsenal would not ameliorate the nuclear threats posed by Russia and China—and might even exacerbate them,” the authors wrote.
The US should “avoid overreacting to the arrival of China as a second nuclear peer, generating an unnecessary and futile arms race, and increasing the probability of nuclear war.”
Biden and Xi had broached the possibility of arms control talks when the two met by video conference in November 2021.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan noted at the time that US discussions with China on strategic stability were still formative.
"That is not the same as what we have in the Russian context with the formal strategic stability dialogue,” Sullivan said on a Brookings webinar in 2021.
“That is far more mature, has a much deeper history to it. There's less maturity to that in the US-China relationship, but the two leaders did discuss these issues and it is now incumbent on us to think about the most productive way to carry it forward."
Risks of nuclear escalation increasing
The Indo-Pacific region is on the cusp of a new missile age with nuclear proliferation intensifying already complex security dynamics, according to a new report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Inventories of short- to intermediate-range surface-to-surface missile systems have been growing quickly in the region, according to the report’s author Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at Carnegie.
While formal arms control is unlikely to emerge in the near term, the US, China and others should take unilateral steps to offer assurances and prevent misperceptions that could lead to a nuclear escalation, Panda argues.
Amid a worsening threat environment and intensifying geopolitical competition, policymakers continue to underrate the consequences of missile proliferation and escalation risks, he said.
William Roberts