The second part of Gertz' article speaks to China's (and the US) growing fascination with global strike. I have written elsewhere of my affinity for global conventional strike, only to be nay-sayed by those who believe it to be de-stabilizing (i.e, the other guys won't know if a NUKE is being shot or a conventional weapon). I don't mean to downplay the counter-argument--it is something we need to deal with. I would only say that I never hear ANYONE EVER raising this issue in relation to CHINESE weapons development. A DF-21 starts its flight path looking like any other ballistic missile, nuclear or not. There are obviously other factors that our systems would evaluate in order to determine what was shot--but there would almost certainly be some period of uncertainty after launch. Are we playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules while some other set applies to China?
I think that the answer would be thus; if a DF-21 is fired at a US carrier battlegroup during hostilities and a nuclear explosion results, we can reply by completely destroying China's military capabilities with our own nuclear reserve. Chinese ballistic missiles cannot threaten US nuclear second strike, even if they get in the first jab. The reverse, however, is not true; if the US were able to launch a coordinated first strike against China, there is at least a very reasonable likelihood that the entire Chinese retaliatory capability would be destroyed. Thus, the indistinguishability of conventionally armed ballistic missiles from nuclear represents a far greater threat to China than to the US, and is accordingly more destabilizing.
Make sense, or am I missing something?
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