Page 9 - AEI Insights Vol. 7 2021

Savelyev, 2021

the United States is guided by in its policy on the issue. One is that Washington may be looking
for a way to obtain necessary information about the current state of China’s nuclear potential
and plans for its development in the future in order to be able to adjust its own modernization
programs accordingly. Another explanation is that the United States may be reluctant to go
ahead with the nuclear disarmament policy and hopes to use China’s unequivocal refusal to
participate in negotiations as a chance to blame it for the disruption of this process and for
dismantling the nuclear arms control system as such. I believe both explanations may be true,
but their analysis lies beyond the scope of this article.

Options of engaging China in nuclear arms control talks
“Americans performed three very different policies on the People’s Republic: From a total
negation (and the Mao-time mutual annihilation assurances), to Nixon’s sudden cohabitation.
Finally, a Copernican-turn: the US spotted no real ideological differences between them and
the post-Deng China. This signalled a ‘new opening’: West imagined China’s coastal areas as
its own industrial suburbia. Soon after, both countries easily agreed on interdependence (in
this marriage of convenience): Americans pleased their corporate (machine and tech) sector
and unrestrained its greed, while Chinese in return offered a cheap labour, no environmental
considerations and submissiveness in imitation.

However, for both countries this was far more than economy, it was a policy – Washington
read it as interdependence for transformative containment and Beijing sow it as
interdependence for a (global) penetration. In the meantime, Chinese acquired more
sophisticated technology, and the American Big tech sophisticated itself in digital
authoritarianism – ‘technological monoculture’ met the political one.
But now with a tidal wave of Covid-19, the honeymoon is over” – recently wrote professor
Anis H. Bajrektarevic on a strategic decoupling between the biggest manufacturer of
American goods, China and its consumer, the US.
Indeed, Washington has not formulated in detail its official stance on engaging China in
negotiations yet. Disarmament experts consider a number of options that may be proposed in
principle. These options may be grouped into three main categories. The first one is putting
pressure on China with the aim of making it change its mind regarding arms control. The
second one is the search for proposals China may find lucrative enough, which the Chinese
leadership might agree to study in earnest. And the third one is a combination of these two
approaches.

As far as pressure on China is concerned, the United States is already exerting it along several
lines. For one, China is criticized for the condition and development prospects of its nuclear
arsenal. Specifically, it is blamed on being the only nuclear power in the Permanent Big Five
that has not reduced its nuclear potential. Moreover, as follows from a statement made in May
2019 by Robert Ashley, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, “over the next decade,
China is likely to at least double the size of its nuclear stockpile in the course of
implementing the most rapid expansion and diversification of its nuclear arsenal in
China’s history” (Adamczyk, 2019). Both officials and many experts have been quoting this
postulate as an established fact requiring no proof.
China is also accused of the lack of transparency, that is, refusal to disclose the size and
structure of its nuclear forces, programs for their upgrade, and other nuclear policy aspects.
The U.S. leadership argues that this state of affairs by no means promotes strategic stability
and international security. Some experts believe that China’s involvement in negotiations
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