In theory, China’s launchers of strategic nuclear missiles – jet or rocket-propelled weapons meant to strike targets far away and which are nuclear-armed – can be preventively taken out by the United States and its allies using conventional, non-nuclear firepower.

Even as the gap between US and Chinese strategic capabilities appears to be narrowing, the US is extending its superiority in one important category: strategic counterforce with conventional missiles.

Counterforce is a doctrine often associated with nuclear weapons, entailing pre-emptive strikes to disarm an adversary’s nuclear arsenal before weapons can be launched. In our study, “Masters of the Air: Strategic stability and conventional strikes”, we explore the feasibility of a US-led conventional counterforce against China and Russia.

We find that there are some 70 Chinese and 150 Russian launchers deep in central Asia that are harder to reach. Arrayed against these, however, are about 4,400 US Tomahawk missiles and 3,500 joint air-to-surface stand-off missiles (JASSMs). The numbers favour the US and its allies.

This complicates understanding of strategic stability between the US, China and Russia. Back in 2022, Beijing and Moscow released a joint statement to “express concern over the advancement of US … capacity building of high-precision non-nuclear weapons for disarming strikes and other strategic objectives”.

The extremely dangerous dynamic in the interaction of nuclear and non-nuclear strike forces is compounded by what appears to be an extraordinarily low level of awareness of the problem among governments and defence experts.

China tests ICBM capable of reaching US mainland with launch into Pacific Ocean

A strategic concern is whether Beijing and Moscow fear US military capabilities to the point where they justify a new arms race. US national intelligence has repeatedly highlighted Beijing’s fear of a US first strike as a motive for the Chinese nuclear arms build-up.

Washington’s strategic superiority in non-nuclear weapons lies in what we call the 3Ds: detection, defeat and defence. The US has superior detection through its satellites and strategic drones, including the RQ-4 Global Hawk and the new RQ-180, with operational ranges of 22,000km, likely capable of finding camouflaged and dispersed mobile nuclear launch systems.

The sheer scale of the stockpile held by the US and its allies of long-range missiles like JASSMs and Tomahawks, as well as the wide availability of delivery systems, from stealth bombers and jets to vessels and land bases, also makes US-led forces much harder to defeat.

Countries including Japan, Finland and Poland continue to increase their missile stockpiles. Other recent developments include the tested ability to launch JASSMs from unmodified standard military transport aircraft – traditionally the province of bombers.

Meanwhile, US missile defence systems such as the Aegis have shown, in successful but controlled testing, the capability to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from aboard a warship. It may explain Japan pouring billions into its sea-based missile defence. Over the next few years, as Aegis-equipped vessels enter the Japanese maritime force, they could potentially negate the threat of China’s ICBMs against the continental US.

Japan weighs bold era of militarisation as Tokyo races to meet defence spending goals

America’s deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) systems in South Korea is a case in point of the 3Ds, greatly increasing the detection, defence and potential defeat of Chinese missiles. Seoul’s decision to allow the US missile shield, which came under heavy Chinese criticism in 2017, remains a sore point.

In the event of conventional missile attacks on China, we find that only its deeply buried strategic systems – dubbed China’s “underground Great Wall” – may be considered at all survivable.

However, the rationale of a planner would probably not be to reach the missiles deep inside a mountain, but rather to block and impair potential launch openings. Raytheon’s bunker-busting tandem warhead system – a modern version of the “earthquake bombs” used in the second world war against Nazi Germany’s reinforced concrete and underground missile silos to great effect – may be enough.

A 2018 Princeton University study echoes the capabilities of modern US conventional weapons against most strategic nuclear targets, except super difficult targets such as China’s “underground Great Wall”.

A nuclear-powered Type 094A Jin-class ballistic missile submarine seen during a Chinese military display in the South China Sea in 2018. Photo: Reuters

Compared to their American counterparts, Chinese strategic submarines have a geographic disadvantage. The main port of Chinese strategic nuclear submarines on Hainan Island is essentially shadowed by the US and its allies. And Chinese conventional forces still lack the comparable ability to threaten the continental US.

For years, China has been expanding and modernising its nuclear triad: land-based ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. But it still lacks the long-range advanced bombers capable of reaching the continental US.

This aerial weakness, however, could eventually be mitigated – China recently acquired Y-20 refuelling tanker aircraft. And what looks to be the construction of missile silos in north-central China and expansion of its mobile ICBM forces suggests the potential for China to surpass Russia and the US in ICBM capabilities within the next decade.

In turn, the targets that such new weapons present may generate new US weapons requirements – such is the logic of arms races. The emerging strategic situation justifies a renewed focus on arms control, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for at this year’s Conference on Disarmament.

Countries including the US and China have stressed the importance of the United Nations as the most likely mechanism for promoting dialogue. China’s top diplomat Wang Yi has repeatedly called for cooperation to promote peace and security. US Assistant Secretary of State Mallory Stewart, who leads the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability, has also been calling for more tripartite engagement.

Disturbingly, the quiet revolutions in military affairs and subsequent changes in strategic military power come just as arms control is declining – and precisely when cooperation should increase.

Dan Plesch

Dan Plesch is professor of diplomacy and strategy at SOAS University of London, the founder of the British American Security Information Council in Washington DC, and a "door tenant" at the legal chambers of 9 Bedford Row, in London. He has acted as adviser to the UK and US governments, the BBC, CNN and Sky News.

Manuel Galileo

Manuel Galileo is a military analyst, Track II arms control diplomat and civil engineer. His research interests include coercive diplomacy, arms competitions, shifts in regional and global distributions of capabilities, and innovations in military technologies. He has an MSc in international relations from the London School of Economics (LSE) and an MA in diplomacy from SOAS.

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The leaders of China and North Korea marked 75 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries with a pledge on Sunday to develop a “new era” of relations.

In an exchange of messages, Chinese President Xi Jinping told North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un that the two countries had “marched hand in hand” over the decades to strengthen exchanges and cooperation and promote socialism, according to state news agency Xinhua.

They had also “collaborated closely” on advancing regional peace and stability and safeguarding international fairness and justice, Xi noted.

“Under the new era and new situation, China is willing to work with the DPRK to … strengthen strategic communication and coordination, deepen friendly exchanges and cooperation, and continue to write a new chapter of the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK,” Xi said, referring to North Korea by its official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

He added that China wished to jointly promote the steady and long-term development of the two countries’ socialist cause and to better benefit their peoples.

North Korea was among the first group of countries to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, formalising ties just five days after the PRC’s founding in October 1949.