Faced with a growing torrent of abuses from Beijing, Canberra should seek a much clearer commitment from Washington that its US ally will retaliate if China launches a missile attack on Australia.
As far as Australia is concerned, the growing torrent of threats and intimidation from Beijing means that we need to have a much clearer understanding from our American ally about widespread deterrence, not just nuclear deterrence but also conventional deterrence against theater missiles. long-range Chinese with conventional warheads.
In May, the editor-in-chief of Beijing's Global times newspaper, which generally reflects the views of the Chinese Communist Party, Australia threatened with 'retaliatory punishment' with missile strikes 'on military installations and relevant key facilities on Australian soil' if we were to send Australian troops to coordinate with the United States and wage war with China over Taiwan.
The specific threat made by Hu Xijin was as follows: "China has a strong production capacity, including the production of additional long-range missiles with conventional warheads that target military targets in Australia when the situation becomes very tense."
The key phrase here is "long-range missiles with conventional warheads." But it is virtually impossible, even with the most sophisticated intelligence methods, to reliably detect any difference between a missile with a conventional warhead and one with a nuclear warhead. This is made more difficult by the fact that China shares its nuclear and conventional theater missile forces.
But why the emphasis on "conventional warheads"? This may be Beijing trying to show that it still adheres to its declarative "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons. But it may also be aimed at restricting any US attack on China in retaliation for a missile strike in Australia.
However, Beijing is not only naive about how Washington could be persuaded to accept the difference between conventional and nuclear attacks. There is the additional problem that some of the 'relevant key facilities on Australian soil' would be important to the United States' understanding of the nature of such a conflict and whether the escalation could be controlled. For example, the removal of the joint US-Australian intelligence facilities at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, could be seen in Washington as an attempt to blind the US to any warning of a deliberate nuclear escalation by Beijing.
During the Cold War, this type of danger was well understood. In my experience in the late 1970s and 1980s, Moscow made it clear to us that the attacks on Pine Gap, Nurrungar, and North West Cape would only occur in the context of an all-out nuclear war. Soviet leaders knew that blinding Washington in the early stages of a nuclear exchange would be a foolish act, not helping the prospects for escalation control management.
The problem with Beijing is that it has no experience in high-level nuclear weapons negotiations with any other country. He does not understand the value of detailed discussions of nuclear war. This is a dangerous gap in China's understanding of the war, especially since its strategic nuclear warheads, which number around 200 according to the Pentagon, are barely credible as a second strike capability and its strategic nuclear-armed submarines are loud.
However, US estimates suggest that China plans to double its strategic nuclear forces and recent media reports claim that Beijing is building more than 100 new silos for ICBMs in the northwest of the country. If true, this is a strange development because ICBMs in fixed silos are becoming more vulnerable with increased precision from nuclear strikes. China's recent ICBMs have been road mobile for precisely this reason. The only rational explanation for the new fixed-silo ICBMs is that they are designed for a new launch posture on alert, suggesting new developments in China's early warning capabilities.
In addition to its strategic nuclear warheads, Beijing has around 2,000 theater nuclear missiles capable of targeting much of the Indo-Pacific. Most of them have nuclear weapons, but some of the optionally conventionally armed variants (such as the 4,000-kilometer-range DF-26) can reach northern Australia.
The main point here for Australia is that unless it acquires missiles with a range of more than 4,000 kilometers, we will not be able to retaliate against any attack against us. But in any case, for a country of our size to consider attacking the territory of a great power like China is not a credible option.
So solving the threat posed by the Global times It is up to Washington to make it clear to Beijing that any missile strike against Australia, as the United States' closest ally in the Indo-Pacific region, would elicit an immediate response from the United States on China itself.
The United States has overwhelming superiority in the ability to launch rapid global conventional precision strikes.
Beijing also needs to understand that due to the density and geographic distribution of its population, it is the most vulnerable among continental-sized countries to nuclear war. The virtual conurbation stretching from Beijing in the north through Shanghai to Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south would make it particularly susceptible to massive destruction in an all-out nuclear war.
The United States has 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads deployed and another 5,000 in storage or "withdrawn." (Russia has a similar number of strategic nuclear warheads, totaling around 6,800.) The United States has more than enough nuclear combat capabilities to take on both China and Russia. In the Cold War, the Pentagon planned to destroy a quarter of the Soviet Union's population and half of its industry. By comparison, a quarter of China's population is about 350 million. In such a nuclear war, China would no longer exist as a functional modern society.
It may be time we considered purchasing a missile system capable of defending ourselves against a ballistic missile attack. The first step could be to adapt this capability to air warfare destroyers, while noting that a nationwide capability should be much more extensive.
But in the final analysis, we depend on the United States, as the world's only military superpower, to deter China from escalating dominance and its threat of using ballistic missiles against us.
