China MIRVs Some Missiles

Jeffrey Lewis 0:10

You are listening to the Arms Control Wong podcast, the leading podcast on arms control disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wong blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in the foggy bit of California.

Aaron Stein 0:25

And I'm Aaron Stein. I'm an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, a doctoral fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and as of last week, a non-resident fellow at the Rafiq Hariri Centre at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., although still based here in now sunny Geneva.

Jeffrey 0:41

Sunny with the jet. Yep. The Pentagon's annual report on Chinese military power describes for the first time China's CSS-4 Mod 3 intercontinental range ballistic missile, which is equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, MIRVs. Hans Kristensen noticed the passage, and over the weekend, David Sanger and Bill Broad published a nearly 1,000-word piece in The New York Times that includes quotes by several experts, including yours truly.

Aaron 1:11

And there's a big brouhaha about it because there's this perception that China has adopted something called minimum deterrence premised on no first use. So MIRVing in this context seems like a big deal and rather out of context or ahistorical with Chinese nuclear posture, right? No! No?

Jeffrey 1:31

I'm wrong? You're not wrong, but I think it's – yeah, I don't think it's – I don't think it's a big change, but we should talk about why.

Aaron 1:42

Well, you did write two books on China's nuclear posture, so let's just start there. Why is this not a big change? Tell us why.

Jeffrey 1:49

Well, I mean, I think the first thing we have to do is we have to think about what the Chinese missile force looks like and talk a little bit about what the Chinese are actually doing. And the way that I think of their ICBM force, the stuff that can reach us, is they really have two missiles. You know, they have this series of liquid-fueled missiles.

The DF used to be two, but we don't see the two anymore. But the DF-2, 3, 4, and 5, and those were all stepping stones to this DF-5, which the U.S. calls the CSS-4, which is, like, super annoying. But the DF-5 is a big... Liquid-fueled missile with a lot of throw weight, and it's kind of the culmination of China's 1960s missile program.

They didn't finish it until the 1980s, but, like, that's that missile. And then they have the second series of missiles, which are solid-fueled, which are more advanced, a program that they – They had all along, but they really started in earnest in the 1980s, and that's given us the DF-21, the DF-31, the DF-31A, which can reach some parts of the United States and will eventually, I think, give us something called the DF-41.

And basically what's happened is that the Chinese have taken the DF-5, which I have a very small number of those, right? There's something like 18 DF-5s, and they have replaced some of those missiles with With this Mod 3. And so some of those 18 missiles now have a smaller warhead that was supposed to go on the DF-1, and they put them on the DF-5, and they can fit several.

So there are probably three or maybe four warheads on some number of the DF-5. So the number of DF-5 warheads goes from something like You know, I think some people have divided it in half. I'm not actually sure it's half, but let's just say if it were, you know, you'd go from 18 to 9 plus, like, 9 times 3, right?

So 18 plus 27. So, you know, it would take you from, like, 20 to, yeah, kind of maybe 50 or something.

Aaron 4:07

Right, yeah. So it's not a huge incremental increase, Increase in the number of warheads that they've deployed on missiles that, let's say, can reach us. And the missiles, let's call them the liquid fuel one, are slow to fuel versus the more, let's say, whirring ones, which are the solid fuel ones.

Jeffrey 4:25

Right, and they aren't actually even armed usually in peacetime. So what they really have is they have the ability to put multiple warheads on some of the DF-5s if they chose to fuel them and arm them.

Aaron 4:40

Right. And so this raises the rather obvious question. So maybe it's not like enough to go all panicky on the MIRV issue, but rather ask, why are they MIRVing a select number of DF-5s? When it looks to me, I mean, that this doesn't seriously alter their nuclear posture in any way, shape or form.

Jeffrey 5:02

Yeah. So I think the reason is I think in the West, we have these strategic concepts. And for us, we have this idea of minimum deterrence. And I think Westerners tend to use that to describe the Chinese arsenal. And so we think of MIRVs as being incompatible with minimum deterrence in our concept because they're more survivable if you... Not that they're more survivable.

If you put A bunch of warheads on a single missile, it creates the incentive to use that missile early. Right? So we tend to think of MIRVs as being destabilizing, which I think they probably are, but we also think of them as being incompatible with minimum deterrence, right? We think if you have minimum deterrence, what you'd really want is to have one warhead on a bunch of missiles, so more of them might survive.

But I don't think that's the right way to think about it, because that's basically asking what Chinese intentions are based on our strategic concepts, And they don't talk about their arsenal that way, right? They don't say that they have a minimum deterrent. You know, what they say is that their deterrent is, and they actually don't really use deterrent very much although more now when they talk to Westerners, but they say that their nuclear force is lean and effective.

So, so for them you know, they don't have a treaty that prohibits putting multiple warheads on, on missiles. And I, I, I don't think that they You know, they don't think about stability in quite that same way. And so I think for them, this is just kind of a normal, natural technological progression where, you know, all the big powers can do this and they can do that too.

I don't think it changes their conception of their deterrent being lean and effective.

Aaron 6:47

Well, let me back you up here. I mean, just for the listeners, I mean, You said it yourself. I mean our nuclear targeting is far different. So our minimum deterrent, the way we conceptualize it, is far different because I think we have different targeting policies in terms of what we would hit for minimum deterrence versus what they would hit for their lean and – what is it?

Lean and – Effective. Effective nuclear force.

Jeffrey 7:10

Yeah, and I sometimes see the targeting issue come up because people will look at how the Chinese talk about targeting. And they'll get a little frustrated because in the United States we have this clean distinction between what we would call counter-value targeting, which is that you target cities because they are valuable and destroying them hurts the enemy, and counter-force targeting, which is the idea that you target military forces and that the nuclear weapons are supposed to play some role in a coherent war plan that's linked to a theory of victory.

But James Acton has made this point generally. That may not be the right distinction to think about. A different way to think about it is there's deterrence by punishment, which is you think about the role of your nuclear forces as being to punish someone for attacking you. And then there's deterrence by denial, which is you think about your nuclear forces as being a tool of war fighting and the way that you deter your adversary is by using them in a way that allows you to win.

And I just think the Chinese are firmly in the deterrence by punishment camp. But for them, when they talk about – they don't use punishment, but when they talk about striking things of value – For them, hitting an airbase or hitting a smaller city is part and parcel of punishment. I think that makes a lot of sense when you look at them historically, that they...

They might not be able to reliably deliver, at least early on, a nuclear warhead to Washington, so they had to be happy with maybe busting up Tokyo and knocking out Okinawa. Not in a counterforce sense, but just in a, like, that was the valuable target that they could hold at risk.

Aaron 9:05

Right. I mean, exactly. And so I guess the question is now is that by MIRVing the DF-5 or at least some of their DF-5s, does that really indicate a shift in posture? I mean, I think we sort of hit on that a little bit, but I'm still not, besides it being like sort of the next technological leap in terms of how you would outfit your missiles, how would that affect their targeting, if anything?

Jeffrey 9:27

Well, so I don't think it changes the targeting at all. No, I don't either.

Aaron 9:31

But I'm just curious then why you MIRV other than just to learn technical issues or is this for the other missiles down the road?

Jeffrey 9:36

So I think it's two things. I think one is that it's actually an issue of swapping out the warhead. The DF-5 had this giant thermonuclear warhead that was developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And may have been tested as late as the late 80s, but it's still a pretty, it's like a vintage warhead, right? That's from the period before China's reform and opening really improved the quality of their nuclear arsenals.

And so it's a really big thing. In the 1990s, the Chinese developed this much smaller warhead for their solid-fueled missile series, the 2131, 31A, and so on. And that warhead is probably about 500 kilograms in mass.

Aaron 10:21

That's a more modern in terms of weight rather than – maybe not being comparable, but it lends itself to Mervic is what I'm trying to say.

Jeffrey 10:32

But the point is if they swap out the big giant warhead off the DF-5 and you put on like a DF-31, then you've got a ton of extra space. You know, it's got like 3,000 kilograms of throw weight. So if you assume that like half of that goes to a fancy post-boost vehicle, you still have literally a ton of throw weight left over.

And so, you know, it just makes sense to, I think, churn out the more modern warhead and put multiple ones on. Rather than like, you know, I mean, you could put pen aids, but it would be a lot of penetration aids. So like, there's just this room and like, what are you going to do? Put like ballast on it?

Like, that's weird. They're not, you know, they're not obligated to not put MIRV. So, you know, why not?

Aaron 11:27

Why not? Right. Well, I mean, well, you brought up pen aids, you know, and some of the things that could do with it. I mean, one of the arguments, I think it was in the Sanger piece, if I'm remembering correctly, that was floating out there is that this is a reaction to improved American missile defenses. And basically increasing the survivability of the second strike, keeping in mind that the second strike is very small.

Jeffrey 11:48

Yeah, I just don't think it is. I mean, I'm sure it is vaguely part of it in the sense that we have the strategic relationship that we do, and they feel the need to modernize, and we feel the need to modernize, and our way of modernizing is to build missile defenses and conventional strike systems. So I think it's baked in in some abstract way, But I don't think they sat down and did a calculation.

I don't think anybody sat down and said, okay, they have this many missile defense interceptors, so we need this many warheads, and so the only way to get there is MIRVing the DF-5. That doesn't seem very plausible to me. Really? Yeah. I just – I don't think they – I mean I think they're sort of abstractly aware.

But I really do think that they're swapping out the warhead, and when you have all that leftover space – It's just a natural thing to do is to want to put multiple warheads on it because otherwise what are you going to do with all that space? We have this idea, and that's kind of what I wanted to get at with the first point is we have this idea that there's something wrong with MIRVs, that there's something kind of morally compromised about them.

But they don't feel that way. It's like they don't have a treaty. They're under no obligation. So you've got space. You stick some warheads on it.

Aaron 13:06

I tend to actually go with the simplest answer probably, and that's a very simple answer. Although I can't get it past in my head that these are – they take a long time to fuel, like the F5s.

Jeffrey 13:17

By the way, they're totally not survivable. We've been going through Google Earth and picking out the silo covers.

Aaron 13:24

Well, that's my point. You know, like Dennis Gormley wrote this piece a couple of years ago. I read it in graduate school. So I don't remember where he wrote where and when he wrote it, but we'll put it in the bottom about how this, you know, this Russian obsession with the Tomahawk or conventional strike could render their ICBM force could undermine second strike in combination with missile defense.

So I tend to think that there was probably some thinking there, but I'm not trying to expert But – and so this improvement in conventional strike may have played a role, particularly if you could pick these things out off of Google Earth. I've never looked because I always just focus on the Middle East.

Jeffrey 14:05

Yeah. Well, so I was remiss in not getting to the second point, which was – so I think one is it's mostly driven by swapping out the warhead. Yeah. But I think there is a technological piece, which is all of the major states put multiple warheads or at least have the ability to put multiple warheads on a missile.

And I think the Chinese like to be able to do things that other states can do. And they may be thinking about doing that for the DF-41, although we'll see how much throw weight it really has. But when I look at the survivability issue, there's kind of an issue of timing. Like this is in the news now.

Because DOD has said this in a report. But there have been rumors of this program for a very long time. And last year, there were reports that there had been a DF-5 test with multiple warheads.

Aaron 15:01

That was my next question. Has it actually been tested?

Jeffrey 15:03

Yeah, there were reports. How reliable those reports are, I don't know. But... You know, normally the way the Chinese do things is they replace a missile and they do like a flight test cycle, right? So there was the DF-5 that they really deployed in the late 80s, early 90s. Sometimes you'll see people say they deployed it in 1980, but they deployed like two, right?

I mean, they didn't really deploy big numbers into the late 80s, early 90s. Those missiles got a... Pretty substantial turnover. So they went from the mod ones to the mod twos in the mid 2000s, 2005, 2006. And we're like now another 10 years on. So it's like not surprising that there's a mod three. I mean, that's kind of the more or less cycle.

Yeah. And so, you know, the program you see now, you see now because it's in the press, but there have been reports in other documents. Of a program existing for 10 years. And, and so the real question is like, when did they make the decision? And, and, and, and I just think that that's probably a long time ago, right?

They probably, so, you know, is it really about missile defense? Hey, it's like, well, yeah, I don't know. I don't think it's like Bush withdraws from the ABM Treaty and then they decide. I think it's more diffuse than that. I think it's a long-running thing that they've thought about doing.

Aaron 16:37

It's a well-established bureaucratic program with the funding mechanisms in place, the people there, and a life cycle in terms of renewing these specific ballistic missile mods on a set trajectory.

Jeffrey 16:50

Well, there's a famous example of that, which is about 10 years ago, the Chinese did an anti-satellite test, right? Right. And the question is, what message are they sending now? And when we went and talked to people who were involved with the program, they would all talk about how, well, after the embassy bombing in Belgrade in 1999, there was a big surge in funding.

And this program was one of the things that got the surge in funding and now it's ready to be tested and you know, it's done and you test it. And so it's it's kind of like, it's not really about what's happening now. It's about what happened years ago when the money got turned on. And so I think without really knowing specifically and just have to talk to people and just haven't done that yet.

When did they really make the decision to do this? It's going to be impossible, I think, to speculate.

Aaron 17:50

Yeah. I mean, just transitioning to the bigger point. I mean, I think the report also mentioned the possibility of the DF-31 being able to carry MIRVs. And I mean, does that cause any issues for you? I mean, with the way that, you know, it's a solid fuel, I believe it's road mobile. I mean, does that change the equation?

Jeffrey 18:07

Not the 31 or the 31A, the 41, the thing that they're testing now.

Aaron 18:13

The 41, excuse me.

Jeffrey 18:14

Yeah, I still think the answer is no. I mean, there, when you, again, I think we have to take their posture seriously. Not on the terms that we set for it, but on the terms that they set for it themselves. So they say lean and effective. And what I take them to mean by that is they want a small but technologically modern force, some small number of which would survive a first strike so that an adversary, the United States, and actually I think Moscow is still in their calculation, Hesitate to threaten them in the first place with nuclear weapons.

I think they see nuclear weapons being pretty political and that they're the kind of thing that big power brandishes to threaten a smaller power. And to say, well, if you don't comply, then we'll use nuclear weapons, which is kind of how they interpret the Korean War and other historical events. You don't have to agree with their interpretation, just sort of stipulating that that's how they That's how they interpret those events.

And so from their perspective, they want a modern, capable force. And so the idea that they would have a small number of mobile missiles, some of which would survive and which might have multiple warheads, doesn't seem to me to be incompatible with that idea.

Aaron 19:48

I guess let me push you a little bit here. I mean there are concerns about – Their activities in the South China Sea, particularly just creating man-made islands. And what you just said sort of triggered something in my mind because you said that if they view nuclear weapons as tools of coercion, political tools, well, they have a whole bunch of neighbors that don't have nuclear weapons and they're all of a sudden – what if they all of a sudden become more, let's say, aggressive in pursuing what they think are their own strategic interests in their sort of near abroad?

Jeffrey 20:19

Yeah, I always think it's a fascinating question because – So much of the way that they talk about nuclear weapons is rooted in this historical construct where they're a communist society and they are dealing with the United States. And then they kind of layer on that, that they're dealing with this, I guess you'd call it a neo-imperialist Soviet Union.

Yeah, whatever Putin's up to. But I mean, that's how they really conceived of themselves. And so they thought of their little nuclear force as the way that they kept those big powers from threatening them with nuclear weapons. And to me, that's always why they had no first use in the first place. It wasn't to make us feel better.

It's that they really needed to articulate the idea that you couldn't credibly threaten to use nuclear weapons first. So it was like less a promise and more an insurance policy that they took out in sort of how they conceived of nuclear weapons, right? Yeah. But you're right. I mean, they could come to think of nuclear weapons in a totally different way.

Right. They they could come to think of nuclear weapons as being these great things for coercion that they use to push other states around with. You know, I don't I am not. I'm not really a China expert, so I don't. I sort of content myself with just observing how they do talk about nuclear weapons. But yeah, they could change.

Right. They could change and they could change in a. Heartbeat. And I guess one of the interesting questions is what causes states to change the way that they talk and think about nuclear weapons? Is it entirely a function of wealth? Are there ideological or bureaucratic components? It's hard to say. I mean, I suspect, well, I think it always makes sense to bet against dramatic change because it rarely happens.

But, you know, when it does, you know, if you're not nimble, you end up looking silly.

Aaron 22:18

Yeah, well, one last question with respect to the DF-41. It's something that, you know, if you look at North Korea and what we're trying to do in relation of, let's say, reassuring the Asian allies, I think I just saw a report today that THAAD for South Korea is something that's basically on the table and the deployment of a longer-range missile defense system in South Korea.

This is to augment what we already have with the Japanese, What if we applied that same logic to a rising China with more nuclear warheads? But doesn't that just incentivize to build more nuclear weapons, build warheads to do things like outfit the DF-41 with multiple warheads to make them more survivable? So I'm just curious about like what are the policy implications of this and sort of like projecting down the road?

Is conventional like greater conventional precision missile defense, cruise missiles, precision strike, how does that affect the nuclear balance? It's something that I'm fascinated by.

Jeffrey 23:19

Yeah, I think there are two things. I mean one is there's an arms race question. Even though I think that this development would have happened – More or less regardless of what the US and China were doing at any particular moment, like I really do think of it as being fundamentally technologically driven. You know, having said that, you can pour fuel on a fire.

And we do have the kind of relationship we do, which is adversarial, and we don't have a great dialogue with them. And so I certainly think Over time, you could watch the two countries' nuclear forces become more entangled in terms of the type of things that each side deploys. Although I have to say, I'm less worried about MIRVs, and I'm still way more worried about anti-satellite weapons.

I still think that If I'm the Chinese and I want to deal with missile defenses, the things I want to take out are the command and control assets in space so that you can't see my launch or that you can't – And that becomes destabilizing. And I think, yes, once they have a bunch of anti-satellite weapons – and you saw General Cartwright say this.

When someone asked him, like, why is it that you want conventional strike on ballistic missile submarines – You know, he was like, I want to go kill Chinese anti-satellite lasers in central China. So that seems highly escalatory to me. So I worry about the arms race piece where each side starts deploying these new capabilities. Like right now, I think they're pretty unlinked, but they're getting more linked.

And I think over time that those linkages could become tighter. And then I worry about crisis stability and escalation because, you know, as I mentioned earlier, the Chinese keep those warheads off those missiles. And you read the stuff they write, and they talk about how in a crisis, when they feel like they're being blackmailed, that they're going to – they don't say it quite so directly, but I interpret it as they're going to alert their forces.

They're going to go ahead and put the warheads on the missiles, and they're going to fuel the liquid-fueled missiles, and they're going to put the solid-fueled missiles out in the field, and maybe they're going to flush those ballistic missile submarines out into the ocean. And I really worry that a U.S. president is going to look at that and instead of seeing that as a signal to stop the blackmail that he doesn't think he's engaged in.

Or she. Or she. I was just about to say he or she is going to interpret that – they're going to interpret that as a – As a signal for a first draft. Well, as a prelude, right? As launch preparations, right? Yeah. You know, I, so I, I worry about crisis stability a lot.

Aaron 26:01

I do too. And I'll, I'll throw one more monkey wrench before we go up, before we wrap up here. It's It's at lower numbers. Look, I'm an advocate for lower numbers. I think our nuclear force is too high, but we conceptualize in counter force targeting, not in counter value targeting. I mean, I even heard nuclear weapons designers telling me that counter value targeting is dehumanizing and that we have to keep a high number because otherwise we can't fight a real war.

We're just killing innocents. But we're moving towards an era where we're going to have less warheads and we're going to come down closer to the Chinese numbers. How does that affect strategic stability, again, with just the introduction of conventional weapons? We'll talk about anti-satellite on the Chinese side and even our assets, which, by the way, dwarf that of the Chinese, but nevertheless introduce a level of, let's say, complexity that wasn't there in the 1960s, 1970s with the Russian.

Jeffrey 26:53

So I think complexity is the right word. I mean, when you look at like classic nuclear on nuclear threats, the reduced numbers of Should be enhancing to stability because your confidence in using your nuclear forces to eliminate another country's nuclear forces declines. But as you point out, there are all of these really Amazing conventional systems that are coming online.

And I know Dennis concluded ultimately you couldn't use a Tomahawk to break open a Soviet silo.

Aaron 27:27

No, yeah, that's what he concluded. But nevertheless, the perceptions.

Jeffrey 27:30

Well, and like, is that true forever? You know, like cruise missiles will continue to become more accurate. And I think other kinds of systems like boost glide systems will be more accurate. And the thing I really think about is what about persistent surveillance? There are three companies at this moment looking at putting up flocks of satellites that would provide continuous global imaging.

So it's not the old system where you have a satellite that passes overhead a couple of times a day. It might be really quite expensive, but if you're into counterforce targeting, it's probably worth paying for it. The idea of having continuous imaging and continuous video from space – It's really useful. And like how survivable is a mobile missile system, a land-based mobile missile system in a situation where you have a satellite constellation like that?

God, let alone three. So, yeah, it's really complicated. And I don't – nobody is thinking about how hard I think stability is going to be. Except for us. We're going to have a meeting on this in the fall.

Aaron 28:48

At Monterey?

Jeffrey 28:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm calling it the impact of new technologies on strategic stability.

Aaron 28:54

Oh, maybe we'll have the live podcast, like a certain episode.

Jeffrey 28:57

It's going to freak some people out.

Aaron 29:00

I guess it's the final thing just to wrap up here. So what should the U.S. do about this, if anything, other than just putting in the report?

Jeffrey 29:05

Yeah, I think – well, I would say three things. One is – the first thing is we have got to get to the point where we have a reasonable – With China about its strategic forces and our strategic forces. I think it is bizarre that that dialogue just really doesn't exist. I wrote an article for Foreign Policy criticizing the quality of our Track two conversations with the Chinese.

And a colleague of mine got like annoyed with me because he really dedicates a lot of time and effort to it. And I think he felt that I was like being unfairly critical and I didn't, but the way he ended up describing it, I've just adopted because I think this is exactly right. So I'm stealing this, but he would say like, I would go to these meetings and I feel like we work very hard and we build a very nice foundation for a future meeting.

And then I come back six months later and we have to rebuild that same foundation. And so he feels like every meeting is productive in that they build this foundation, but that cumulatively the house never gets built. And like we got to build the house. So I mean my proposal is I think at a track two level and then at a track one level, we have to – I think we need like a joint statement on strategic stability.

Like we need a work product. So like we can't talk past one another. We have to work through some of this stuff. So that's one thing.

Aaron 30:33

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 30:34

You know, the second thing is I think you gotta, you gotta bake in the new higher warhead numbers. So for me, that's mostly an intelligence response. We just got to keep an eye on it, figure out what the nature of the program is. Like I have my hypothesis. This is really just about swapping out for more modern work at warhead.

But that's a, that's a, that's a hypothesis that like we need to like follow up on and figure it out. Tested. Yep.

Aaron 31:05

You know, and the third thing is, there's an allied piece to this.

Jeffrey 31:10

I don't know if you saw, but the Chinese being... Ever so charming. The Japanese wanted the NPT review conference, which is meeting in New York right now, to call on world leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I did see this, but tell the listeners. Yes. Something I support, mind you. I think that that's a very good idea.

I'm on the governor of Hiroshima's round table. And the Chinese objected to it. And, you know, the Chinese ambassador basically said, like, well, there was a reason you got atomic bombed.

Aaron 31:50

Yeah, it was pretty crude.

Jeffrey 31:52

It was not nice. And honestly, I have seen that behavior in other contexts where, you know, I think – You know, Japanese people who are working very hard for a better world in which there is a smaller risk of nuclear weapons try to persuade their Chinese colleagues to come along. And and sometimes Chinese colleagues, you know, throw Nanjing in their face, you know, which the Japanese should be sorry for, you know.

But you end up with this kind of, I think, very destructive interaction. And as I said to one of my Chinese colleagues, if you keep this up, we're going to have an entire world of memorials to horrible massacres and no people left. Yeah.

Aaron 32:45

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I know the statement is crude, but it's a good point. They should go on a trip.

Jeffrey 32:50

So, I mean, I do think that there's an allied piece, which is even though I think the strategic impact of the Mervyn is quite small. And, you know, that I do think we have to be attentive to how some of our allies, particularly Japan, are going, are going to feel. So, you know, when you roll out a report like this, I hope Tokyo didn't...

I hope Hans' blog was not the first place policymakers in Tokyo heard about the CSS4. Right. With multiple independently targetable nuclear warheads.

Aaron 33:28

I hope they were. And assuming that this was not the first time they heard about the report, is it wrong for me to advocate a policy of just taking a deep breath and just sort of taking a step back from this one and not collectively freaking out?

Jeffrey 33:40

Hey, I'm never in favor of collectively freaking out. I mean, I think the... The Chinese nuclear posture is – well, I think it's an occupational hazard. When you study something full-time, it just becomes normal. Yeah, true. And so as like odd as it is that the Chinese are increasing the number of nuclear warheads, which they should stop, by the way.

Again, I can't say where, but I was involved in the writing of a joint statement with some – Foreign colleagues, including some Chinese, and Scott Sagan and I actually were the pains in the butt who really gave our Chinese colleagues a hard time about calling on them to stop increasing the number of nuclear weapons. But we can balance wanting them to stop with not acting like this is the end of the world.

Aaron 34:37

Right. I mean, I think with that, I think we covered this. I mean, everybody needs to calm down. This is not a massive increase or even a major change to Chinese nuclear policy, but something to watch. I mean, something definitely to watch. And hey, Chinese colleagues, if you listen, we want to engage on dialogue.

Jeffrey 34:55

And stop building so many nuclear weapons.

Aaron 34:58

Even though you have a tiny number, you don't need any more. Right.

Jeffrey 35:02

So with that, Jeffrey, any books this week? I kind of want to plug my two books, right? I just wrote a book for IISS, an Adelphi book on China's nuclear posture called Paper Tigers. Hey, you know, the old deal was for the Adelphi series, you went to London, spent a year and wrote a paper about And the new deal is you stay home and write a book.

Aaron 35:33

It's not – I like that.

Jeffrey 35:34

Yeah.

Aaron 35:35

No, no. I mean – no.

Jeffrey 35:37

So I like the old deal better but it was like a life goal of mine to write an Adelphi text and I'm happy even though I'm in the era of the book and not the monograph.

Aaron 35:52

All right. Well, we'll put two links at the bottom. I'm not even going to plug the book. Read Jeffrey's books on these two topics.

Jeffrey 35:59

And thanks everybody for listening.