FPI / June 12, 2024
By Richard Fisher
Just one year ago, on June 2, 2023 the Biden Administration’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told the Liberal-Left and virulently anti-nuclear weapons Arms Control Association that:
“…the United States does not need to increase our nuclear forces to outnumber the combined total of our competitors in order to successfully deter them. We’ve been there. We’ve learned that lesson. Nor does the United States need to deploy ever-more dangerous nuclear weapons to maintain deterrence.”
The latter was a reference to new tactical nuclear weapons.
But on June 7 before Arms Control Association, Biden Administration National Security Council Senior Director for Arms Control, Pranay Vaddi, admitted for the United States, “more nuclear weapons are required to deter our adversaries and protect the American people and our allies and partners.”
This was a stunning reversal, but also a three-year late mind-boggling admission from an administration that has beat the dead horse of nuclear arms control as it watched China and Russia rapidly increase their strategic and regional nuclear forces.
In early 2021 private think tanks with access to high resolution commercial satellite imagery revealed to the world that China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) was in the process of building about 300 new ground-based silos, that would field about 300 new nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The former Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, stated on Aug. 12, 2021, “We are witnessing a strategic breakout by China…. The explosive growth in their nuclear and conventional forces can only be what I described as breathtaking.” He then added that “…frankly, that word ‘breathtaking’ may not be enough.”
As the Chinese silos were building there was great concern that China might place in them the 10-warhead capable and 15,000-kilometer range DF-41 ICBM, raising fears that China could seek nuclear superiority over the United States, which still limited its nuclear warheads to 1,550 as stipulated by the 2010 U.S.-Russia New START Treaty.
It was also clear that China was building up its strategic submarine launched nuclear ballistic missile (SLBM) force, developing new Type 096 nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) and new multiple warhead capable long-range JL-3 SLBMs, and completing its “nuclear triad” with by developing the Xian Aircraft Corporation H-20 stealthy flying-wing intercontinental bomber.
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