China's as a Military Power: Peril or Paper Tiger

China remains a nuclear power, though it has just announced an end to its testing program. Although many of its delivery systems are by western standards primitive and unreliable, its nuclear weapons do work and China is capable of delivering them to targets within its region. Its ability to launch an effective intercontinental nuclear attack, however, is open to question. Very few intercontinental-range nuclear delivery systems have been deployed by China. In any event the nuclear issue is almost irrelevant when assessing China's capacity to undertake successful military operations against regional states. Since 1945, nuclear weapons have had little use except as weapons of last resort, to threaten an enemy when national survival is at stake. While they were sometimes used (by way of threat) to jockey for Cold War position, nuclear weapons are a blunt instrument of small value in disputes such as China has with Taiwan, or in the South China Sea. A Chinese nuclear attack on Taiwan, quite aside from any retaliation it might attract, would most likely destroy the assets Beijing seeks to regain. China’s military buildup, along with an aggressive foreign policy, has inspired a fair amount of alarm in the West. Some American policymakers consider Beijing to be Washington’s only “near-peer competitor”—in other words, the only country with the military might to actually beat the U.S. military in certain circumstances. As the book addresses this crucial issue quite deftly, it is hoped that it would prove to be a source of great information for the reader.