China slams US ‘cold war mentality’ amid nuclear policy shift

The U.S. has vowed to expand its nuclear capabilities citing concerns over China, although it has 20 times more nuclear warheads than China.

The Chinese government has criticized a Pentagon document known as the Nuclear Posture Review, which outlines the strategy to expand U.S. nuclear capacity and identifies China — along with Russia, Iran and North Korea — as potential nuclear adversaries.

Defense Ministry spokesperson Ren Guoqiang said “we hope the U.S. will abandon a Cold War mentality and earnestly shoulder its special and prior responsibility for its own nuclear disarmament.”

China holds the fifth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The U.S. unveiled the strategy on February 2, 2018. Soon after, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was “disappointed” by the document for its “confrontational and anti-Russian character”, while Iran claimed U.S. policy would bring the world “closer to annihilation”.
China joined international condemnation of U.S. nuclear policy.

U.S. military institutions believe their current nuclear arsenal is too powerful to serve as an effective deterrent to other nuclear powers. At its core is expanding low-yield nuclear weapons. The move has been criticized by many U.S.-based arms control experts and activists as a reckless move, likely to start a new arms race.

The U.S. Department of Defense said its nuclear strategy seeks to “prevent Beijing from mistakenly concluding” it could gain regional territorial advantage by using its nuclear weapons. However, in its public statement, Beijing reiterated their nuclear arsenal is the “minimum required” to guarantee the country’s security and pledged it would never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

yogaesoteric
December 9, 2018