China Maritime Report No. 33: China\u27s Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent: Organizational, Operational, and Strategic Implications

China’s development of a credible sea-based deterrent has important implications for the PLAN, for China’s nuclear strategy, and for U.S.-China strategic stability. For the PLAN, the need to protect the SSBN force may divert resources away from other missions; it may also provide justification for further expansion of the PLAN fleet size. For China’s nuclear strategy and operations, the SSBN force may increase operational and bureaucratic pressures for adopting a more forward-leaning nuclear strategy. For U.S.-China strategic stability, the SSBN force will have complex effects, decreasing risks that Chinese decisionmakers confront use-or-lose escalation pressures, making China less susceptible to U.S. nuclear threats and intimidation and therefore perceiving lower costs to conventional aggression, and potentially introducing escalation risks from conventional-nuclear entanglement to the maritime domain.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/1032/thumbnail.jp