Other
- +18
James M. Acton, Saskia Brechenmacher, Cecily Brewer, …
Source: Getty
Article
The "Underground Great Wall:" An Alternative Explanation
When examining Beijing’s concerns about U.S. nuclear capabilities, it is important to understand the strategic challenges facing China and the ways the country’s leadership might try to resolve those challenges.
Published on Oct 26, 2011
You yourself may vividly feel the terrible fear that you have of the other party but you cannot enter the other man’s counter-fear, or even understand why he should be particularly nervous.
---Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations, 1951
It is tempting to dismiss the story in Monday’s Wall Street Journal claiming that China has around 3,000 nuclear warheads as the kind of reporting that could only be considered “fair and balanced” on Fox News and just ignore it. After all, as long ago as 2004, Jeffrey Lewis tracked down the origin of media reports cited by the Journal that China has 2,350 nuclear weapons. Embarrassingly, the source is an online essay based on bogus U.S. intelligence information that was posted by a Singapore University student. Moreover, it hardly seems worth wasting storage space on the Carnegie server explaining why it is invalid to estimate the size of China’s contemporary arsenal by taking a 1960s U.S. intelligence report that predicted how many warheads China would have in 1973 and then assuming that it has built up at a constant rate since then. What does make the article worth engaging with, however, is its inability to even try to understand China’s strategic challenges and why it might go to some fairly extreme lengths to try to solve them.
The purpose of the Journal article is to raise awareness of China’s nuclear modernization and the “immense strategic leverage” it would supposedly give China in a war. Now, I certainly don’t claim to know why China is modernizing its nuclear force. China’s modernization may be offensively orientated. Perhaps Beijing does wish to change the status quo in its favor by force of nuclear arms. The “facts” collected by the Journal, however, provide no evidence—for or against—these propositions.
The article focuses on the vast network of underground tunnels, the “Underground Great Wall,” that China has built to protect its nuclear forces. “For decades,” writes Bret Stephens in that knowing tone adopted by the Journal’s finest, “nuclear experts have understood that the key to ‘winning’ a nuclear exchange is to have an effective second-strike capability, which in turn requires both a sizable and survivable force.” Wrong. A survivable second-strike capability is the key to not losing a nuclear exchange. It ensures that an adversary cannot disarm you and then use nuclear threats to bend you to his will. Even if China had 3,000 warheads all mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles—which it doesn’t—it could still not disarm the United States. Apart from the inability of inaccurate Chinese missile to destroy hardened American silos, the four or more U.S. submarines (each of which is armed with about 100 warheads) that are at sea at any given time ensure the invulnerability of the U.S. deterrent.
By contrast, China does have reasonable grounds to fear that the United States is seeking a war-winning nuclear capability. The United States deploys something just shy of 2,000 strategic warheads with more in reserve. Its delivery systems are exquisitely accurate. It is developing conventional weapons designed to hunt down mobile missiles. And, on top of that, Washington has consistently refused requests from Beijing to explicitly state that the United States is not seeking the ability to eliminate China’s nuclear forces.
Whether China’s fears are justified or not is irrelevant (although, for the record, I think they are exaggerated). The point here is that they are understandable, especially from a military planning perspective, and most likely genuine. In fact, the crowning irony is that those who argue that the United States should pursue a war-winning capability against China (some of whom regularly opine in the Journal) generally show the least recognition that this would concern China and prompt to it to take countermeasures.
This brings us onto the Underground Great Wall. Given the extent of Chinese fears, the idea that Beijing might build 3,000 miles of tunnels to protect a small nuclear force should not be beyond belief. After all, it’s not exactly unprecedented for China to try to protect itself from external threats by building a gargantuan defense line, it is? Phillip Karber, a Georgetown University professor who conducted most of the research on which the Journal article is based, questions the scale of the project. He asks why China needs such a long network of tunnels if it only has the 300 or so warheads estimated by the U.S. intelligence community. To answer this question Karber should examine the United States’ own nuclear history.
Back in the late 1970s, many in the United States expressed deep concerns, sometimes in the Journal, that the Soviet Union was opening up a “window of vulnerability”; at some point in the 1980s—at the moment of “maximum danger”—the Kremlin would supposedly use its awesome force of land-based ballistic missiles (which, even then, were much more accurate than Chinese weapons are today) to annihilate U.S. missiles, rendering the United States defenseless.
One American response was the MX missile (later renamed the Peacekeeper, although, for some reason, the new name never caught on). The original plan was to put each new missile in one silo. However, worried about the vulnerability of silos, Congress blocked this plan in 1976. Three years later, after the U.S. military examined more than 40 options, President Jimmy Carter eventually approved an alternative: the “shell game.” The United States planned to construct 4,600 silos for the 200 missiles it was going build—yes, that’s right, 23 silos for each missile. The missiles would have regularly been shuttled back and forth between different silos so the Soviet Union would not have known where any of them were. Thus, if it had wanted to disarm the United States, Moscow would have had to target every single silo, requiring a staggering number of warheads (9,200, in fact, if it is assumed two warheads would have been assigned to each silo).
4,600 silos to protect 200 missiles… Not completely dissimilar from the Underground Great Wall, is it?
In the event, the shell game was never constructed. President Ronald Reagan rejected it in favor of the traditional one-silo-per-missile model. But, had the United States—like China today—not have had to bother with the “inconvenience” of democracy then perhaps not even the Journal could have professed such amazement at Chinese tunneling.
About the Author
James M. Acton
Jessica T. Mathews Chair, Co-director, Nuclear Policy Program
Acton holds the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
- Unpacking Trump’s National Security Strategy
- Trump Has an Out on Nuclear Testing. He Should Take It.Commentary
James M. Acton
Recent Work
Carnegie India does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
More Work from Carnegie India
- What Could a Reciprocal Defense Procurement Agreement Do for U.S.-India Ties?Article
India and the United States are close to concluding a Reciprocal Defense Procurement Agreement (RDPA) that will allow firms from the two countries to sell to each other’s defense establishments more easily. While this may not remedy the specific grievances both sides may have regarding larger bilateral issues, an RDPA could restore some momentum, following the trade deal announcement.
Konark Bhandari
- India Signs the Pax Silica—A Counter to Pax Sinica?Commentary
On the last day of the India AI Impact Summit, India signed Pax Silica, a U.S.-led declaration seemingly focused on semiconductors. While India’s accession to the same was not entirely unforeseen, becoming a signatory nation this quickly was not on the cards either.
Konark Bhandari
- The Impact of U.S. Sanctions and Tariffs on India’s Russian Oil ImportsCommentary
This piece examines India’s response to U.S. sanctions and tariffs, specifically assessing the immediate market consequences, such as alterations in import costs, and the broader strategic implications for India’s energy security and foreign policy orientation.
Vrinda Sahai
- India-China Economic Ties: Determinants and PossibilitiesPaper
This paper examines the evolution of India-China economic ties from 2005 to 2025. It explores the impact of global events, bilateral political ties, and domestic policies on distinct spheres of the economic relationship.
Santosh Pai
- NISAR Soars While India-U.S. Tariff Tensions SimmerCommentary
On July 30, 2025, the United States announced 25 percent tariffs on Indian goods. While diplomatic tensions simmered on the trade front, a cosmic calm prevailed at the Sriharikota launch range. Officials from NASA and ISRO were preparing to launch an engineering marvel into space—the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), marking a significant milestone in the India-U.S. bilateral partnership.
Tejas Bharadwaj
