China’s Build Up of Nuclear Forces with Warfighting Capabilities Threatens U.S. Defense Strategy in the Pacific
China is currently embarked on a massive build-up of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. From a low-level force structure designed to support its strategy of minimum deterrence, China is now striving to establish a nuclear warfighting capability that would enable it to bolster its massive conventional forces with a substantial theater nuclear force, backed up by expanded nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). China’s objective, in the event of war, is to win a quick victory with its conventional forces, and to deter the use of U.S. nuclear weapons by threatening the employment of its large theater nuclear forces.
Chinese Geopolitical Offensive
Chinese President Xi Jinping is leading his country into a new era of geopolitical dominance. China’s goal is to establish maritime spheres of influence initially out to the First Island Chain (from the Kuril Islands through Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines), then to the Second Island Chain (from Japan through Guam to New Guinea), and eventually to the third Island Chain (Hawaii).
China is seeking to be the preponderant power in the western Pacific and to displace the United States as the region’s leading power, undermining U.S. security guarantees, and weakening America’s ties to its Asia-Pacific allies. To achieve this geopolitical dominance in the Western Pacific, China is altering its nuclear doctrine and undertaking a major buildup of its nuclear forces.
Chinese Nuclear Strategy – Moving from Minimum Deterrence to Limited Nuclear Deterrence
China’s longtime official nuclear strategy had been based on minimum nuclear deterrence. In its 2003 Defense White Paper—and repeated at the Second Preparatory Committee for 2005 NPT Review Conference—it said, “China has always exercised utmost restraint towards developing nuclear weapons, kept its nuclear arsenal at the minimum level only for self-defense.”
However, numerous Chinese military officials have advocated that China transition to limited nuclear deterrence. The contrast between “limited” and “minimal” deterrence is that minimum nuclear deterrence refers to “threatening the lowest level of damage necessary to prevent attack, with the fewest number of nuclear weapons possible,” while limited nuclear deterrence“ requires a limited war-fighting capability to inflict costly damage on the adversary at every rung on the escalation ladder, thus denying the adversary victory in a nuclear war.”
China’s adoption of limited nuclear deterrence, according to these advocates, would allow it to:
- Control and suppress escalation during a nuclear war;
- Create a nuclear ladder; and
- Prevent low-intensity nuclear war from further escalating.
By adopting limited nuclear deterrence and fielding forces to support it, China would move beyond threatening retaliation after U.S. nuclear use. It could instead be able to tailor nuclear responses, strike U.S. regional bases with limited attacks, attrit key U.S. military assets, win early battles, and deter further U.S. nuclear escalation. This approach could help China achieve regional political-military objectives while avoiding the large-scale damage that broader escalation could bring.
Chinese Deployment of Accurate, Warfighting Theater Nuclear Forces threatens Taiwan
Giving credence to the premise that China has changed its nuclear strategy from minimum to limited nuclear deterrence is by its development and deployment of the very accurate, low-yield, nuclear capable DF-26.
According to the 2024 DOD report Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, the DF-26 can conduct precision strikes against operational- and tactical-level targets in the Western Pacific while limiting collateral damage. This capability improves China’s ability to send deliberate nuclear signals and strengthens its coercive leverage across multiple domains.
The fear is that China, by establishing escalation dominance in the Western Pacific, specifically around a potential conflict over a Chinese conventional invasion of Taiwan, could erode/revoke an American extended nuclear deterrence guarantee to Taiwan, and make a conventional invasion attempt more likely.
Chinese Expansion of Nuclear Forces reduces the credibility of US nuclear commitment to its Pacific Allies
As of 2022, China has deployed 214 DF-21, DF-17, and DF-26 nuclear capable theater range missiles, while the United States has zero theater range missiles, having removed its nuclear Tomahawk Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles (SLCM) from the Pacific (and world-wide) in 1991. By 2036, China is projected to have deployed 350 nuclear capable DF-17 and DF-26 nuclear-capable theater range missiles.
Overall, China currently possesses over 600 nuclear warheads on theater and intercontinental land-based and sea-based missiles, and on bombers. By 2030, China is expected to field over 1000 warheads, 1500 in 2035, and is projected to reach strategic nuclear parity with the United States in that same year.[21]
The Chinese nuclear buildup will degrade the credibility of U.S. extended security guarantees in Asia. It was the Soviet achievement of nuclear parity with the United States by the time the SALT Agreement in 1972 that caused European allies to worry that the United Stares would not risk Detroit to save Dusseldorf. Soon, American Asian allies may doubt that the United States may be willing to risk Tampa for Tokyo.
Remedy
With the increasing Chinese nuclear threat reaching a critical point about 2035, it appears the United States has a just-in-time remedy to meet this existential danger. As part of FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the U.S. Congress directed the Department of Defense to produce the W80-4 nuclear warhead for the Tomahawk SLCM, and to ensure that the system achieves IOC no later than 30 September 2034.[22] Though planned as a conventional only weapon to be deployed in Japan, the Philippines, and Australia, the U.S. Army Typhon Laucher would be technically capable of firing a Tomahawk Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCM), with the same nuclear warhead as the sea-based version as well.
This projected U.S. deployment of nuclear missiles in response to the Chinese threat very much parallels an American success story in reaction to a nuclear threat 50 years previously from the Soviet Union.
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union
- had achieved overall nuclear parity with the United States;
- was unilaterally deploying SS-20 intermediate range nuclear missiles;
- was developing offensive nuclear war fighting plans to defeat NATO.
In the 2030s, China
- is projected to achieve strategic nuclear parity with the United States;
- will continue to unilaterally deploy DF-17, and DF-26 intermediate range nuclear missiles;
- will develop a nuclear war-fighting theater strategy in the Pacific.
The U.S. deployment of Pershing II and GLCM INF missiles in the 1980s eliminated the Soviet unilateral advantage in theater nuclear missiles. Subsequently, the Soviets agreed to sign the INF Treaty, which removed the nuclear war fighting capability danger posed by the SS-20 missiles.
The current Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby characterized the U.S. defense buildup in the 1980s, with the INF missile deployments, as a “most successful period”, and that the INF treaty effectively marked the end of the Cold War.
Regarding today’s situation, Under Secretary Colby specifically said in that the United States was “not seeking to accentuate or increase the focus on theater-range nuclear weapons” but added that “It’s not an exclusion of theater-range systems,” and that the United States should have rational “employable, limited options that advantage us and stand the chance of favorably managing escalation.”
The deployment of nuclear-armed SLCMs and possibly GLCMs to the Pacific region would be an outstanding counter to this aggressive Chinese nuclear expansion and adoption of offensive nuclear war-fighting plans. Perhaps lighting could strike twice, and the great success of the U.S. INF nuclear missile deployments in Europe against the Soviet Union could be replicated 50 years later with Tomahawk nuclear missile deployments against China.
MAJ Dennis S. Nelson (U.S. Army, ret.)
By Dennis S. Nelson, October 07, 2026
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire. https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/07/chinas_build_up_of_nuclear_forces_1210263.html
