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12 / Nuclear Coercion with Chinese Characteristics One of the most important yet murkiest aspects of the Taiwan Strait crisis is China's possible use of nuclear coerdon. Did China employ its nuclear arsenal during the crisis to deter u.s, intervention on behalf of Taiwan? OUr conclusions here must be tentative , for the evidence is ambiguous and circumstantial. Yet I believe we can conduct a preliminary investigation and make a tentative conclusion . I believe that the evidence suggests that Beijing did indeed undertake nuclear coerdon of the United States. American scholar Paul H. B. Godwin studied the role of China's nuclear weapons in its mUitary strategy. In 1985, according to Godwin, the CMC redefined China's basic military strategy. No longer would China's military prepareprimarilyfor a large-scale, protracted war with an invading superpower. The likelihood of such a "people's war" was now held to be very low. More likely were I'partial wars" (chubu zhanzheng) in which China would engage an adversary in regions around its periphery. Partial wars differed fundamentally from the old "people's war." They would not be won through a strategy of protracted attrition. Partial wars were short, intense, and fought for limited objectives. Belligerents would not have time to mobilize latent human and industrial resources, but would fight with forces in existence at the onset of fighting. To win suchwars, the PLA needed smaller, more highly trained and better-armed units with greater mobility and firepower. Those forces would seek to inflict decisive defeats on China's enemies in the opening stages of a partial war.1 Such was the type of war agaInst Taiwan that the PLA rehearsed in 1995 and 1996. Godwin concluded that one key role of China's nuclear forces in the event of a partlaI war was to deter hostile intervention by a nuclear power on behalf of China's immediate adversary. Several of China's potential adversaries in partial war were smaller, nonnuclear powers, but which were aligned with a nuclear superpower. Vietnam and india were 127 128 Nuclear Coercion aligned with the USSR, while Taiwan was aligned with the United States. In the event of partial war between China and one of those lesser powers , China would use its strategic nuclear forces to counter Soviet or American intervention on behalfof their local clients. If Washington or Moscow attempted to use their nuclear superiority to sway Beiting from a course of action on which it had decided vis-A-vis a third power along its periphery, China's own nuclear forces would counter superpower nuclear weaponry. This would assure that China would not be prevented by superpower "nuclear blackmail" from pursuing a course of action that China's leaders deemed essential to national interests. Thus, Godwin noted that with PLA maneuvers designed primarily to test conventional capabilities, there was usually a nuclear component in which China's strategic forces prepared for "nuclear counterattack operations." Similarly, another prominent analyst of China's strategic doctrines and forces suggested that the purpose of China's strategic nuclear forces was to cause a superpower to hesitate long enough so that its eventual intervention on behalf of a local client might come too late.z China's nuclear forces, as well as all China's rocket forces both nuclear and conventionally armed, are operated by the PLA Second Artillery Corps. Second Artillery units were involved in most of the exerdses against Taiwan in 1995 and 1996.3 While some of the Second Artillery operations were distinctly nonnuclear (e.g., the firing ofconventionally armed missiles off Taiwan),.others were probably in line with standard operatingprocedures for possible use of nuclear weapons: preparation of "nuclear counterattack operations" to deter intervention by a nuclear superpower. Even the firing of missiles into the seas off Taiwan may have involved nuclear contingendes. According to Hong Kong press reports, the mid-1995 tests were part of preparations for using tactical nuclear weapons against hostile fleets. China had made great strides in miniaturization of tactical warheads, these reports said, and such warheads would have far greater defensive power against an aggressor fleet than would either conventional artillery or antiship rockets. Enemy fleets of up to one hundred warships couldbe destroyed in an instant by several tactical warheads.4 Although use of nuclear weapons to interdict a u.s. fleet moving toward Taiwan from Japan or South Korea would from a u.s. perspective constitute "war fighting" rather than deterrence, Chinese planners may have felt it useful during...

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