Washington
\nPresident Biden\u2019s nominee to take over the U.S. military\u2019s nuclear arsenal anad missile-defense operations warned on Thursday that China\u2019s rise as a nuclear power poses historic threats and challenges requiring a reevaluation of current policies.
\nAir Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, told lawmakers reviewing his nomination to lead U.S. Strategic Command that the military\u2019s assessment of China\u2019s nuclear mettle had changed dramatically since 2018 when Beijing was judged as requiring \u201cminimal nuclear deterrence.\u201d At that time, the Pentagon\u2019s nuclear posture review assessed China\u2019s ambitions as being focused on \u201cregional hegemony,\u201d he explained.
\nThat impression started to shift in recent years, as China made concerted efforts to expand its nuclear capabilities, and stepped up its aggressive posture toward the United States and its regional allies.
\nThe Pentagon\u2019s latest nuclear posture review was transmitted to Congress in March and has not yet been made public, but Cotton appeared to foreshadow some of its top-line findings during Thursday\u2019s testimony.
\n\u201cWe have seen the incredible expansiveness of what they\u2019re doing with their nuclear force \u2014 which does not, in my opinion, reflect minimal deterrence. They have a bona fide triad now,\u201d Cotton explained, meaning the Chinese military has nuclear-capable forces that operate on land, and in the air and sea.
\nThe nuclear threat posed by China, he added, cannot be sufficiently addressed by duplicating the approach the United States has taken toward Russia, whose nuclear aims are familiar to the United States and date back decades to the Cold War. Beijing and Moscow, the general said, \u201cact differently, from a doctrine\u2019s perspective.\u201d
\nAfter racing each other for years to build up their nuclear arsenals, the United States and the former Soviet Union struck several arms reduction pacts in the later part of the 20th century. Only one of those treaties \u2014 the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which applies to intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and nuclear capable bombers \u2014 remains in effect.
\nHistorically, Beijing did not possess the arsenal of the two major Cold War superpowers, nor were its nuclear ambitions regarded in Washington with the same intensity as Moscow\u2019s. China was also never a party to the arms-control regimes that have defined the nuclear relationship between the United States and Russia \u2014 a fact that politicians and advocates insist must be remedied going forward.
\n\u201cWe need to seriously consider that we are entering a new, trilateral nuclear competition era,\u201d the committee chairman, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) told Cotton. \u201cYou will be responsible for continuing to ensure that the United States and its allies can deter not one, but two near-peer nuclear adversaries, something your predecessors did not face.\u201d
\nCotton did not detail his plans for updating the military\u2019s approach to China, but he acknowledged there was work to be done to correct the imbalance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington President Biden\u2019s nominee to take over the U.S. military\u2019s nuclear arsenal anad missile-defense operations warned on Thursday that China\u2019s rise as a nuclear power poses historic threats and challenges requiring a reevaluation of current policies. Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, told lawmakers reviewing his nomination to lead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-283897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n