Trump administration concerned about nuclear buildup in China

When negotiators from the United States and Russia met in Vienna last week to discuss renewing the last major nuclear arms control treaty that still exists between the two countries, U.S. officials surprised their counterparts with a classified briefing on new and threatening nuclear capabilities — not Russia’s, but China’s.

The intelligence had not yet been made public in the U.S., or even shared widely with Congress. But it was part of an effort to get the Russians on board with President Donald Trump’s determination to prod China to participate in New START, a treaty it has never joined. Along the way, the administration is portraying the small but increasingly potent Chinese nuclear arsenal — still only one-fifth the size of those fielded by the U.S. or Russia — as the new threat Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia should confront together.

Marshall Billingslea, Trump’s new arms control negotiator, opened his classified briefing, officials said, by describing the Chinese program as a “crash nuclear buildup,” a “highly alarming effort” to gain parity with the far larger arsenals Russia and the U.S. have kept for decades.

The American message was clear: Trump will not renew any major arms control treaty that China does not also join — dangling the possibility Trump would abandon New START altogether if he did not get his way. The treaty expires in February, just weeks after the next presidential inauguration.

Many outside experts question whether China’s buildup — assessed as bringing greater capability more than greater numbers — is as fast, or as threatening, as the Trump administration insists.

The intelligence on Beijing’s efforts remains classified, a senior administration official said, noting that sharing such data is not unusual among the world’s major nuclear weapons states. But that means it was given to an adversary with whom the U.S. is conducting daily, low-level conflict — including cyberattacks, military probes by warplanes and Russian aggression in Ukraine. And that was before reports surfaced that a Russian military intelligence unit had put bounties on U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan.

The U.S. official said the administration would try to declassify and make public some of the assessment about China.

Nuclear weapons have suddenly become a new area of contention between Trump and President Xi Jinping of China, and there are many reasons to believe that even if the three superpowers are not yet in a full-scale arms race, what is taking place in negotiating rooms around the world may soon start one.

The Russians have publicly offered a straight, five-year extension of New START, which would not require congressional approval. But Trump is clearly betting he can find common ground with Putin in confronting the Chinese.

Without question, the Chinese are improving their arsenal, and may be rethinking the idea of holding a “minimal deterrent” — just enough to assure if they were ever attacked, they could take out cities in Russia, Europe or the U.S. But they have only 300 long-range nuclear weapons deployed, compared with 1,550 each the other two superpowers are allowed under New START. So there is the very real possibility, experts say, that in any negotiation, Beijing will insist on quintupling its nuclear force before it agrees to any constraints. So far, China has said it is not interested in discussing any limitations.

“The notion of trying to pull the Chinese into that agreement is, in theory, a good idea. In practice? Impossible,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The Chinese have no incentive whatsoever to participate,” said Gates, who as CIA director confronted China over its sale to Iran of missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads. And if Trump continues on the current course, Gates said, he will end up essentially inviting “the Chinese to build dramatically more, far more, nuclear weapons than we think they have at the current time to get level with the United States.”