Let’s call China’s bluff on nukes and plutonium

Late last week, the Biden administration announced it was working toward “a common vision of a world without nuclear weapons,” a commitment put on public display with senior U.S. officials being filmed in their offices unfolding origami paper “peace” cranes.

It’s uncertain what impact, if any, this vision has had. What is clear is that America’s fastest growing nuclear rival — China — is focused on something far more concrete. It wants Washington to remove U.S. nuclear weapons from bases in NATO and pledge never to redeploy nuclear arms outside America’s borders. 

Beijing is busy expanding its own nuclear arsenal with a renewed plutonium production effort. Nonetheless, it has repeatedly demanded Washington withdraw its forward-deployed nuclear weapons at Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review sessions, the most recent of which concluded Aug. 11. Chinese diplomats insist the NPT should prevent states from placing nuclear weapons on other nations’ soil. Beijing even protested Vladimir Putin’s redeployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus last March.

Putting aside diplomatic legalities — U.S. experts believe the NPT allows nuclear sharing — Washington should call Beijing’s bluff by offering to freeze U.S. nuclear weapons redeployments to Asia in exchange for China freezing its plans to produce explosive plutonium.

China might not immediately embrace the offer but it would be foolish not to. Here’s why.

In the early 1950s, the United States and its allies feared they lacked armies large enough to contain Russia and China. Their fix was to hold Moscow’s and Beijing’s forces at risk with American nuclear arms. In the early 1950s, though, the United States lacked intercontinental missiles or bombers. It had to “forward base” thousands of its nuclear weapons overseas — i.e., on NATO soil, U.S. Pacific bases, and bases in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines.  

With the advent of accurate, long-range cruise and ballistic missiles, Washington withdrew almost all of these weapons. The reason why is simple: It’s much safer to launch U.S. nuclear warheads from secure bases in the United States or from submerged U.S. submarines than it is to protect them at bases in potential war zones. Still, America has plenty of nuclear weapons: Even with only 100 warheads now forward deployed in Europe, America has more than four times as many nuclear weapons deployed on planes and missiles than China. 

China, of course, is doing all it can to close this gap. Meanwhile, it’s deathly afraid Washington might redeploy some of its 2,000 spare, stored warheads to U.S. bases in South Korea or Japan. Beijing’s worries may seem overwrought — but it’s hardly crazy. 

Before his assassination a year ago, Japan’s most popular former president, Shinzo Abe, made a public case for the U.S. to redeploy nuclear weapons to Japan. President Yoon Suk-yeol made a similar case for South Korea earlier this year. The Biden administration responded by bringing Tokyo and Seoul further into America’s nuclear war planning confidence, but it’s unclear how well and how long this might allay Tokyo’s and Seoul’s nuclear anxieties. 

A key reason why is China’s own nuclear weapons expansion efforts. Two years ago, the Pentagon estimated China had slightly more than 200 warheads and that it might double its arsenal by 2030. It and others now peg Beijing’s holdings at more than 400. The U.S. Defense Department estimates that by 2030, China’s nuclear arsenal will exceed 1,000 warheads. 

The key ingredient that the Pentagon says will fuel China’s nuclear ramp-up is plutonium, which Beijing has launched a crash program to produce with two fast breeder reactors and two large plutonium reprocessing plants under construction. Perhaps as a nuclear security hedge, Japan has stockpiled nearly 2,500 weapons’ worth of plutonium for “peaceful” purposes, plans to open a reprocessing plant in 2025 that will make nearly as much annually, and just announced plans to build a fast breeder reactor too. South Korea also has plutonium fast reactor aspirations. The United States has fast reactors but no plans to fuel them with plutonium — yet. 

All of this suggests a tightening nuclear knot best cut by calling Beijing’s bluff. It’s China’s nuclear build-up that’s fueling its neighbors’ nuclear fears. If Beijing is serious about blocking U.S. nuclear redeployments, the fix is for China to freeze its plutonium plants’ construction program. Washington should hurry this conclusion along by offering a moratorium on nuclear redeployments in Asia in exchange for an explosive plutonium production freeze that China and United States would adopt and encourage Japan and South Korea to embrace as well.

If Beijing blinks, Washington shouldn’t. At the 10^th NPT Review Conference, President Biden noted that China was failing to live up to its obligation under the NPT to negotiate nuclear limits. He’s right. Officials are already preparing for the next NPT review conference, slated for 2026. The Biden administration should give President Xi, and the world, something to talk about — a plutonium production and nuclear redeployment freeze. 

Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, served as deputy for nonproliferation in the Defense Department and is the author of “Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future.”