Andrew S. Lim and James D. Fearon
In 1959, the American political scientist Albert Wohlstetter argued in these pages that the United States did not possess a sufficient second-strike capability to provide stable nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union. A year later, the economist and strategist Thomas Schelling offered what has become the seminal definition of strategic nuclear stability. “It is not the ‘balance’—the sheer equality or symmetry in the situation—that constitutes mutual deterrence,” he wrote in The Strategy of Conflict. “It is the stability of the balance.” Schelling concluded that two nuclear powers can achieve a stable balance only “when neither, in striking first, can destroy the other’s ability to strike back.” This insight became a pillar of U.S. nuclear strategy, which is premised on the principle that large portions of the nuclear force must be able to survive and retaliate against any first strike by an adversary.
Today, the United States faces a parallel strategic challenge with its conventional forces in the western Pacific. Since the early years of this century, China has vastly expanded the quantity and quality of its conventional missile arsenal, especially precision-guided ballistic missiles, which it could use in a first strike to inflict grave damage on conventional U.S. forces in the region. To counter this growing threat, strategists in Washington have begun to consider the United States’ options for a preemptive conventional attack against China’s conventional forces, a strategy that appears dangerously reminiscent of the U.S. Cold War doctrines that Wohlstetter and Schelling argued increased first-strike incentives. For example, in February 2024, in response to questions from the Senate Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, stated that preventing China from using its conventional missile arsenal against U.S. forces was his highest priority. As he put it, the United States needs to be able to “blind” Chinese forces—in broad terms, to disable Beijing’s burgeoning conventional precision-strike capabilities before they can inflict significant damage on U.S. forces.
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