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I spent a few days last summer in Sichuan Province — including Dujiangyan, close to the epicenter of the earthquake, and Mianyang, now the headquarters for the relief effort and also hit very hard.

I still haven’t heard from any of my friends there, which is worrying me.

The pictures from Sichuan are just heartbreaking. I thought I would post a few pictures of Dujiangyan from happier times.

A field along the road from Mianyang to Dujiangyan (above).

The river at Dujiangyan (above).

A bridge across the river at Dujiangyan (above).

Comment [5]

After provocative articles in Foreign Affairs (The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy), International Security (The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy) and The Atlantic (Superiority Complex: Why America’s growing nuclear supremacy may make war with China more likely), Notre Dame’s Keir Lieber and Dartmouth’s Daryl Press are brining their road show to the New America Foundation on Friday at 12:15 to talk whether the US-China nuclear balance is going to be stable or not.

I don’t agree with many (any?) of their conclusions, but they are both smart guys who like a good argument. It should be fun.

You can RSVP online

How Many Nukes Does it Take?
Deterrence Theory and Chinese-U.S. Nuclear Relations

Most scholars and policymakers favor stemming the tide of nuclear proliferation, even as they acknowledge the pacifying effects of established nuclear arsenals on great power relations. When it comes to nuclear arsenals, how robust must a country’s nuclear arsenal be—how much is enough? Some of the key variables in existing studies – e.g., the nuclear “balance of power” – have been poorly conceived, and the data used to measure the nuclear balance and its effect on policy has come from suspect sources. High quality declassified evidence began to percolate just as the Cold War ended and analysts turned their attention to seemingly more important topics.

With an eye toward future potential problems in the U.S.-China relationship, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press will evaluate four major schools of deterrence theory with some of the newly available evidence from the Cold War. Their preliminary findings indicate that we should not be complacent about the deterrent effects of the short-to-medium term nuclear balance between the U.S. and China.

Start: 04/18/2008 – 12:15pm
End: 04/18/2008 – 1:45pm
New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave, NW 7th Floor
Washington, 20009
United States

http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/how_many_nukes_does_it_take

Comment [3]

So say anonymous diplomatic sources to AP reporter George Jahn. Bearing in mind the usual caveats about anonymous sources, this is noteworthy on at least two levels.

First, it is an encouraging sign of China’s (too) slow but promising embrace of the responsibilities that come with being a global power. Remember, Beijing did not participate in NPT negotiations and once denounced the nonproliferation regime on the grounds that it was merely “a conspiracy concocted by the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. to maintain their nuclear monopoly.” This sentiment animated Chinese policy from the 1970s into the early 1990s, when, according to Bates Gill (whose book Rising Star I highly recommend), it actively proliferated to Iran and other countries to “undermine superpower influence while enhancing China’s strategic, political, and economic interests.” Today, however, China is a party to the NPT willing to pass along intel on Iran’s nuclear program!

Second, it further supports my argument from an earlier post that leading powers are not, as some pundits feared, exploiting the controversial U.S. NIE on Iran to avoid responsibility for upholding international nonproliferation norms. Precisely the opposite:

By effectively taking U.S. military action off the table for now, the NIE makes it easier, not harder, for countries like Russia to send Iran a stronger signal about its enrichment program. After all, Russia (and China, for that matter) do not want Iran to develop the capability to deploy nuclear weapons; until the Iran NIE, however, this concern was counterbalanced by a worry that the United States might launch another war in the Middle East.

Now if only CIA Director Hayden would stop second-guessing the judgments of the intelligence professionals…

Update: As many of you know, China has denied this story. The plot thickens…

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I often observe that I am a lousy imagery analyst. Sean O’Connor, it seems to me, is a very, very good one.

After an earlier post on my blog, he’s gone out and, in a very nice piece of research, identified what appears to be the DF-31 deployment area near Nanyang, China:

Nanyang is located in east-central China, approximately 850 kilometers southeast of Beijing and 180 kilometers south of Luoyang. Analysis of the surrounding area has led to the location of six DF-31 launch sites approximately 30 kilometers northwest of Nanyang. The six DF-31 launch sites can be found at the following coordinates:

33°16’33.80“N 112°20’06.49“E
33°14’23.78“N 112°17’50.82“E
33°12’46.96“N 112°18’55.43“E
33°12’02.03“N 112°18’49.17“E
33°09’44.19“N 112°15’47.01“E
33°11’48.95“N 112°18’38.92“E

[snip]

Further evidence that these locations are DF-31 launch positions can be found in the characteristics of the DF-31 TEL itself. The DF-31’s Hanyang HY4301 TEL consists of a missile launch canister mounted on a trailer which is towed by a four axle tractor. This configuration is clearly not off-road capable. That being the case, DF-31 deployed launch sites would have to be near major roads in order to facilitate dispersal of the TELs. This fact, when combined with the information that Brigade 813 is based in Nanyang, supports the conclusion that the sites identified above are in fact DF-31 ICBM launch positions.

There are at least two policy implications of his research, if this is the right area.

• First, the road-mobile DF-31 may not be truly survivable because the launch positions appear to be pre-surveyed. (If you think about inertial guidance, errors in the initial position of the missile will degrade accuracy.)

• Second, Nanyang is located in Central China. It’s 7,250 km range would not be enough to target the continental United States (Even Juneau, Alaska is out of range.)

Comment [14]

I’ve read Chinese Military Power and I don’t agree that it says China increased the size of its nuclear force by 1/3. When I do the math, I get basically 110-160 warheads — about the same size as last year or a little larger depending on how many DF-21s have a nuclear role.

Not that number of warheads is the really interesting information, but I digress.

Before that post, though, something that matters is where the DF-31 is being deployed. I have two hypotheses:

(1) China will deploy the DF-31 to units operating the DF-4, replacing the older missile on a one-to-one basis and keeping a similar force structure.

(2) China will deploy the DF-31 to new units in new places, presumably to cover targets in the US of A.

Of course, one might imagine a combination of (1) and (2), say new DF-31 replaces the DF-4 and new units to operate the DF-31A.

I say all of this to draw your attention to the image at the top of the post.

The image, captioned Fig 3. (S) Probable Launch Crew Training and TEL Checkout at Kangzhuang, is from a classified November 1996 report by NAIC, leaked to Bill Gertz, and published it in the appendix of his book, Betrayal.

NAIC (now NASIC) placed the DF-31 TEL at a place called Kangzhuang (I found it at 40°22’6.16 N, 115°35’51.59 E). As far as I can tell, no one else has linked the DF-31 to Kangzhuang in any other public reports.

I’ve been watching the area in GoogleEarth for a year or so. Today, I notice that GoogleEarth recently replaced some lousy pictures with a lot of very good ones. And there is a lot evidence that Kangzhuang houses a missile base including:

• Two valleys with buildings nestled in them that look very much look like other suspected missile deployment areas (Area 1 and Area 2).

• A surface-to-air missile site at 40°18’10.45“N, 115°38’19.90“E.

• A collection of strange looking buildings (Area 3) that seem military to me.

Anyway, I’ve saved them all in a GoogleEarth file for you.

Then again, I am a lousy overhead analyst. My readers, however, are pretty awesome. Anon nailed the Iranian Space Center at 35°23’20.46 N,53°44’11.05 E and Siwema used ground truth photos to place Egypt’s ETRR-2 at 30° 17’ 34.02 N, 31° 24’ 35.45 E.

Have at it.

Comment [16]

Another picture of China’s new SSBN, this one said to be at Sanya, Hainan Island.

I am psyched! My Nuclear Strategy Initiative is hosting an open-to-the-public roundtable on China’s Boomers: Implications if China’s Deterrent Goes to Sea here at the New America Foundation on Wednesday (January 9 @ 12:15).

We have a great line-up of speakers:

• Christopher Twomey, Assistant Professor and Associate Chair for Research, Department of National Security Affairs and Co-Director, Center for Contemporary Conflict, Naval Postgraduate School

• Andrew Erickson, Assistant Professor, China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI), Strategic Research Department, U.S. Naval War College

• Christopher Yeaw, Associate Professor and Senior Strategic Researcher, U.S. Naval War College

• Michael Glosny, Fellow, John. M Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University

• Michael Gerson, International Affairs Group, Center for Strategic Studies, Center for Naval Analyses

I will be moderating.

Afterwards, please join us for a celebratory happy hour at the Big Hunt (1345 Connecticut Ave. NW), starting around 6 o’clock. Our speakers are attending. Seriously, it is going to be awesome.

(I will also try to finally post the long-awaited third post in my series on China’s SSBN force that began with Will China’s Deterrent Go to Sea? and How Capable is the 094?.)

Comment [21]

Hey, remember that front page Washington Times story by Bill Gertz reporting that “China’s intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service”?

Well, according to Chris Nelson, DoD officials who have read the investigation documents are calling the story “patently false” and “pure crap.”

Here is the full-text of the relevant section from the Nelson Report.

CHINA DOD SPY STORY “PATENTLY FALSE”

DOD/CHINA SPY…dramatic front page story in The Washington Times this morning claims a DOD investigation has revealed Chinese spy penetration thru a “front company” in Hawaii involved in teaching Chinese language.

Informed sources who have read the DOD investigation documents have expressed themselves in the language used in our headline…the follow-on quote actually said “pure c—p”, but we fear for various spam guards, so will be delicate about this.

Informed sources say the DOD investigation found (their paraphrase), “not surprisingly, people involved in Chinese language training do have personal contacts with Chinese from time to time. And it will not surprise you that perhaps a few of these individuals have personal relationships”.

But for the Washington Times version of the DOD report? “Patently false, it’s absolute total c—p. It’s not even close. It’s just not true that there is a PRC ‘front company’ doing translation services in Hawaii…”

OK…guess that clarifies that!

Comment [6]

The China Academy of Engineering Physics has a new website.

Make sure the sound is on.

Comment [1]

By the way, this whole Kitty Hawk visit fiasco just breaks my heart.

Holding aside the bureaucratic bungling that led China to approve, then cancel, and then — too late — finally permit the Kitty Hawk to visit Hong Kong and the importance to international security of good relations between the United States and China, I just feel terrible for the families that traveled to Hong Kong only to have their loved ones have to go back to Japan.

Despite the improvements in life for many Chinese over the last twenty years, Chinese nationals are used to getting treated in this Kafka-esque manner. Of course, all governments — including our own — are capable of bureaucratic cruelty, but the virtue of a representative democracy is to provide a remedy short of violence.

So, although, the cancellation is particularly cruel on Thanksgiving, it also reminds me of our form of government for which I am thankful.

Comment [4]

Apparently Space News — I haven’t seen a copy yet — has a write up of Gregory and my talk, with a very misleading headline:

Upcoming story in Space News: Nov. 19, 2007 issue

SCHOLARS: NO PROOF CHINESE A-SAT TEST A THREAT TO U.S.

By TURNER BRINTON, WASHINGTON

In the latest volley in the ongoing debate over the meaning of
China’s anti-satellite test early this year, scholars from a pair of
Washington think tanks said there is no conclusive evidence that the demonstration represents a growing threat to the United States.

Speaking at a Nov. 13 event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here, Greg Kulacki and Jeffrey Lewis challenged assertions that the Jan. 11 test is part of a Chinese effort to counter U.S. military satellite capabilities. Kulacki, a senior analyst and China project manager in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Lewis, director of the New America Foundation’s Nuclear Strategy Initiative, based their findings on discussions with Chinese technical experts.

Kulacki and Lewis dispute claims made in two recent reports that the test, in which China destroyed one of its own satellites with a ground-based missile, is part of a larger goal to defeat superior U.S. defenses that are too reliant on space-based systems.

“Punching the U.S. Military’s ‘Soft Ribs’: China’s Anti-satellite Weapon Test in Strategic Perspective,” is an analysis of Chinese counterspace programs since the early 1990s written by Ashley J. Tellis and published in June 2007 by the Carnegie Endowment.

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Space Warfare,” written by Larry Wortzel based on analysis of Chinese military literature, was published by the American Enterprise Institute in October 2007.

Gee, if I said that you could accuse me of lewder acts than just hugging pandas.

That is absolutely, positively not what we said. What we argued was that Chinese participants all describe the decision-making process as driven by technology, not operational requirements (or a negotiation strategy). The important thing — the headline, as it were — was that the Chinese leadership was surprised at the strength of the international reaction and might be willing to back off the program as part of a broader dialogue on civil space cooperation.

We did not say that ASAT technology was not a threat. I think ASATs are quite threatening, which is precisely why I support rules to constrain their development.

If I had to guess — and I haven’t looked at the video yet — I think the author was responding to Gregory explaining the official Chinese statement that the test was “not targeted at any nation.” Gregory might have paraphrased, saying “threaten” instead of “targeted”. “Any nation,” however, is the important phrase that suggests the failure of the Chinese leadership to understand how the test would be perceived.

So, how about “SCHOLARS: CHINESE LEADERS MISCALCULATED REACTION TO A-SAT TEST.”

On a related note, Gregory recommended the Wortzel paper, he didn’t disagree with it. I am sure, because he’s been a royal pain in my ass, telling me to read it. I haven’t, so I can’t either recommend or disagree.

Comment [15]