US nuclear buildup would not help deter China from using atomic weapons in Taiwan, an unclassified war game by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) showed.
The simulation was conducted in response to increasing talk among policy experts that the US should modernize its nuclear weapons to counter increasing Chinese capabilities, the CSIS said in a report on Friday last week.
The tabletop exercise — the first large-scale unclassified simulation of a potential nuclear war over Taiwan — found that US nuclear capabilities beyond current modernization plans would have little effect on Beijing’s willingness to use such weapons.
Photo: REUTERS
The war game did not measure the likelihood of nuclear arms use by the US or China, but explored the conditions under which commanders might be pressured to employ them, the Financial Times cited the report as saying.
The greatest pressure for using nuclear weapons came when teams playing China faced defeat, giving credence to US concerns that China could be backpedaling from its pledge to not use nukes first in a conflict, it said.
The researchers concluded that “favorable outcomes were possible, but complete victory was unachievable” if nuclear weapons were used.
The result formed a sharp contrast to the decisive US victory in last year’s CSIS-MIT exercise that did not permit the use of nuclear weapons.
In the nuclear games, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) retreated from Taiwan five times out of the 15 times the simulation was played, including four in which neither side used nuclear weapons.
The US team was the first to use nuclear weapons in only one iteration of the war games. In another iteration, Taiwan returned to the “status quo” after the US hit PLA forces in Taiwan with nuclear weapons following a Chinese nuclear strike on Taiwanese forces.
Three iterations of the war game ended in the US and China’s mutual annihilation in a nuclear exchange that destroyed cities and killed millions. This occurred after one side used nuclear weapons on the other’s tactical forces.
China gained a foothold in Taiwan after nuclear weapons were used in five iterations of the war game, and one iteration of the exercise did not culminate in a decisive result, the report said.
The report urged Washington to discuss with allies what concessions could be offered to China to prevent nuclear weapons from being used in the event of a conflict in Taiwan, the Financial Times said.
The US withdrew nuclear missiles from Turkey during the Cuban missile crisis to allow Soviet Russia an off-ramp at relatively little cost, said Mark Cancian, coauthor and senior adviser at CSIS’ Defense and Security Department.
“Our concern is that time will not be available when nuclear weapons are used,” he said.
The simulation did not align with the recommendation by experts for the US to obtain more tactical nuclear weapons and reactivate or develop new delivery systems, report coauthor and MIT researcher Eric Heginbotham said.
The one US team that employed tactical nuclear weapons used fewer than 12 weapons, in comparison with the more than 600 weapons the US currently has, he said.
No participant playing on the US team reported a need for a delivery capability the US currently does not possess, while the teams playing China did not perceive any limitation on the US ability to deliver nuclear weapons, Heginbotham said.
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