…if the Americans can’t tell a nuclear ICBM from a non-nuclear one and also can’t be sure they could shoot down an incoming ICBM, then they have to treat every ICBM launch as a potential nuclear strike and respond accordingly – with ICBMs of their own. The alternative could be one-sided atomic annihilation.
It was that awful logic that grounded the earlier American effort to develop a non-nuclear ICBM. “If other nations are caught by surprise and fear they might be under nuclear attack, they might also decide to respond promptly, before the United States had the opportunity to convince them that the missiles carried conventional warheads,” the US Congressional Research Service explained in 2021.
If Beijing does indeed put a non-nuclear warhead atop an ICBM, the United States will be among those “other nations” that might fear it’s under nuclear attack whenever a heavy rocket blasts off from a PLARF base.
The danger is clear. What’s less clear is what anyone outside of the Chinese Communist Party can do about it. There are no treaty regimes governing China’s missile development. There are few if any diplomatic or economic levers the United States can pull to compel China not to pursue a powerful new military capability.
American Buddhist Net 