The United States does not have a nuclear hotline. The two countries have never had a serious discussion about the missile defense systems in the Pacific or China's attempts to blind U.S. satellites.
Chinese officials have consistently rejected the idea of entering arms control talks, because they noted that the United States and Russia each have five times more nuclear warheads than Beijing.
President Biden wants to change that.
For the first time, the United States is trying to get China to talk about its nuclear capability. Mr. Biden and his top aides plan to move slowly, focusing the talks on avoiding accidental conflict, then on each nation's nuclear strategy and the related instability that could come from attacks in cyberspace and outer space.
It has been a long time since the two nations could begin discussing arms control, a treaty or something less complex.
The issue in Washington has taken on more importance than the officials are acknowledging. A new arms race is heating up and could unleash a costly and destabilizing spiral of move and countermove, which is why Mr. Biden's aides are concerned. The fear is that an attack that blinded space satellites or command-and-control systems could quickly escalate in ways that were not possible in the Cold War. President Biden wants to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in American defense.
Washington is focused on the progress of China's nuclear capability in a way that it hasn't been since Mao first tested a weapon in 1964.
In his virtual summit meeting with China's president, Mr. Biden raised the topic of "strategic stability talks."
In interviews, Mr. Biden's aides said the effort is a first step towards a larger agenda like the initial conversations about nuclear weapons that Russia and the United States held in the 1950s. They insist that the goal is to avoid miscommunication and accidental war, even if it never gets to the level of a nuclear threat.
Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden's national security adviser, said in a presentation that there would be an increase in engagement to ensure that there were guardrails around the competition.
He noted that the nuclear relationship with Russia has a deeper history. He said that it was time to begin such conversations with China after the summit meeting between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi. He said that it was incumbent on them to think about the most productive way to carry it forward.
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson was so worried about the rise of another nuclear rival that he considered a pre-emptive strike or covert sabotage on China's main nuclear testing site.
China kept a minimum deterrent for the past six decades, but it was not enough to keep its nuclear program off the Pentagon's list. Its recent moves, from building new missile silo fields to testing new types of advanced weapons, come just as Mr. Biden's aides are about to publish an examination of American nuclear strategy.
The review, which every new administration is required to undertake in its first year or so, will contain key decisions, including whether to go ahead with a modernization plan that by the last comprehensive estimate four years ago looked likely to cost 1.2 trillion dollars over the next 30 years. The future of those plans has been the subject of furious lobbying campaigns.
The size of the Chinese nuclear arsenal may triple by the year 2030. The administration is concerned about more than the number of weapons, it is the new technology and how Chinese nuclear strategists are thinking about non-nuclear arms.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that when the Chinese launched a hypersonic missile in July, they deployed a maneuverable glide vehicle that could zig and zag on an unpredictable path and deliver a weapon anywhere on earth. In the weeks since, American officials have been reluctant to say what, exactly, about that experiment so rattled them, they did not know the Chinese had achieved.
The hypersonic nature of the missile was the least interesting part of the test. Nuclear missiles go fast. It released a glider that could hold a nuclear warhead, but it was designed to evade the United States' primary missile defense systems. The Pentagon recently issued a contract for design work on technology to intercept gliders, but it would be years before that happens.
It is not clear whether China will deploy a hypersonic weapon in the future or if they will be armed with nuclear warheads. The Chinese military had conducted hundreds of hypersonic tests, compared with nine by the United States, according to Gen. John Hyten, who is retiring as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
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The president of China and the president of the US had a virtual summit this month.
The Chinese government may be interested in developing a nuclear first-strike capability, not just the minimum deterrent, as a result of the test and other moves.
He asked on CBS News why they were building all of this capability. He said that the hypersonic glide vehicle appears to be a first-use weapon.
There is no unanimity on that point inside the White House and Pentagon. Mr. Biden has long been wary of assessments that could be used to drive up the Pentagon's budget, and American defense contractors, their executive offices jammed with former senior military officers, have a vested interest in describing a new threat that could lead to billions of dollars in new investments.
Card 1 of 6.
There was a tense era in U.S.-China relations. The two powers are at odds as they compete for influence and technology in other countries. The main fronts in U.S.-China relations are listed here.
Pacific dominance. The U.S. has sought to widen its alliances in the region as China has built up its military presence. Taiwan is a democratic island that the Communist Party considers to be Chinese territory. It could change the regional order if the U.S. intervenes there.
It is possible to trade. The trade war is on hold. The Biden administration has continued to protest China's economic policies and has imposed tariffs on Chinese goods.
Technology. There are still plenty of U.S. tech companies doing business in China despite internet giants being shut out. China needs to achieve technological self-reliance according to Mr. Xi.
Some skeptics agree that the Chinese hypersonic test, along with antisatellite technologies that could blind American early-warning and command-and-control systems, suggest a major rethinking of American nuclear strategy and plans.
In the case of a crisis, Gen. John Raymond, who commands the newly created United States Space Force, has no direct channel for communicating with his Chinese counterpart, according to the New York Times.
The United States and Russia have had lines of communication for a long time. Mr. Biden avoided using the word "nuclear" in his talk because it was a reflection of how space, cyberweapons and other high technologies need to be part of the conversation.
The conversation on Capitol Hill is mostly about matching the Chinese investment, rather than rethinking the nature of the arms race.
Rose Gottemoeller, an arms control official in several administrations, said in an interview that she was very concerned. The automaticity of the actions of more nuclear weapons and more missile defenses without thinking if there is a smarter way is worrying me.
American officials said that Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi had agreed to further conversations, but there was no commitment on how deep those would go. The National Security Council said in a statement that the talks wouldn't include the topic of arms control. Jake Sullivan spoke about the need for rails to reduce risk or the chance of miscalculation.
The history of those conversations is not good. The United States tried to get Chinese officials to talk about how they would secure nuclear weapons in North Korea if the nation collapsed. The effort was made to avoid a collision between Chinese, South Korean and American forces. For fear of being caught talking about the possibility of the North collapsing, the Chinese have always kept quiet.
It is possible that the Chinese are motivated by the deployment of the U.S. missile defenses in the Pacific, as well as ships patrolling off Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. insists that these systems are designed to deter North Korea. The Chinese government has long worried that the United States would use North Korea's nuclear program as an excuse to build a system to contain Chinese nuclear weapons.
The United States and China have never talked about missile defense in the Pacific. Independent experts say that the hypersonic test may force the issue because it is clear that Beijing's ambitions are expanding.
Military contractors and American officials were trying to figure out new defenses against the hypersonic warheads before the test. It would be more complex than intercepting an intercontinental missile, a project that has already cost more than $300 billion over several decades. The Pentagon gave awards this month to the three companies that won the competition to build a missile defense system that could knock out a hypersonic glider. The weapon is the first of its kind.
Up to 500 satellites have been lofted by the Pentagon to provide improved means of tracking missiles. Establishing an end-to-end system that would identify hypersonic attacks and direct interceptors onto flight paths that would allow them to destroy incoming gliders is dependent on the swarm.
Ms. Gottemoeller recently published a memoir about her time negotiating the New Start treaty with Russia. She said that the action-reaction cycle is uninteresting. We need to talk about how we will interrupt it.
