Nuclear No-How: What Treaty Difficulties With Russia Mean for China

August 16, 2021 Topic: Nuclear Region: Americas Tags: NuclearWeaponsRussiaChinaTechnology

Nuclear No-How: What Treaty Difficulties With Russia Mean for China

Why a “peace through strength” strategy may not work with Beijing.

Now critics of Reagan’s proposed policies warned Reagan would reignite an arms race and would increase the cost of war. During Reagan’s first press conference, he was asked whether he was going to continue a policy with the USSR of détente and peaceful coexistence even though he had campaigned on ending both policies. Some four decades later, the Soviet empire did collapse due to U.S. and allied policies that challenged Moscow rather than seeking to maintain the status quo. 

What lessons can be drawn for informing current U.S. policy with respect to China? It is markedly true that the U.S. economy is connected to the Chinese economy in a way that greatly exceeds the connection maintained between the United States and Russia in 1981. But the rationale behind détente and peaceful coexistence was not unlike the long-held U.S. policy toward China. Most people assumed that trade, investment and the growth of the Chinese middle class would generate such change in China as to make the country less of an adversary and generally acceptive of the world international liberal order.   

Would a similar “peace through strength” strategy work against China? After all, China like Russia decades ago has some serious challenges: (1) A demographic demolition coming soon with a birth rate of less than one per couple. (2) A hugely overextended Chinese exchequer to the tune of $42 trillion. (3) An emerging elderly population greater in number than the entirety of the U.S. population, and an equal number of people addicted to smoking. (4) Growing industrial pollution and respiratory illness. And (5) an Achilles heel of energy deficiency—China has five times the U.S. population but one-fifth the energy production of the U.S. economy.  

Should the United States seek to partner with China and assume its growing economic and military power is going to follow a “peaceful rise?” Or should it assess the dangers that may be gathering and seriously examine its assumptions, much as it did in 1980 when it debated over whether to continue down the road of détente and peaceful coexistence with the USSR or switch to a policy of “peace through strength.” 

Peter Huessy is the president of Geo-Strategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland. 

Image: Reuters