I was really lucky to have Tong Zhao, a Senior Fellow with the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, spend his late Friday afternoon with me to walk through the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs new white paper on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. Our discussion spanned nuclear doctrine, posture shifts, multilateral arms control, and advice for early career professionals interested in U.S.-China nuclear dynamics.

We discuss some of the key terms of art that appear in the document and what they may mean in the contexts of China’s transforming nuclear arsenal: ‘strike only after being struck first,’ ‘rapid response,’ ‘lean and effective,’ and ‘strategic early warning.’

Tong also helps explain the difference between ‘no first use’ and no ‘threat’ of first use - the latter being absent from China’s NFU policy and relevant to the future attempts to deter non-nuclear attacks (or, depending on your perspective in a conflict, coerce adversaries). We discuss the permanence, or lack thereof, of NFU in the midst of a crisis. Tong lists several questions experts and policy makers should make to gain greater clarification from Chinese interlocutors on China’s nuclear policies.

Tong describes China’s confidence in a more “ideal” deterrence strategy, buoyed by confidence in its conventional military advantage in theater as well as broader, favorable shifts in the geopolitical balance of power including a reduced U.S. prioritization of ideological confrontation, and why that may mean China doesn’t feel much pressure to reach nuclear parity with the United States, which does and will maintain a stronger nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, a dynamic where PRC leadership feels they’re achieving military advantage aims also alleviates any pressure to engage in constructive arms control discussions with the United States.

Finally, we touch on China’s behavior and priorities in multilateral arms control fora and Tong provides advice for new professionals interested in building expertise as a practitioner or researcher in U.S.-China strategic relations and arms control. There is a lot left to cover in this white paper, but hopefully this episode serves as a primer on the core nuclear policy elements.

Show notes:

Here are a few documents, projects, or topics we discussed during the podcast.

* Brookings Analysis of the CCP Fourth Party Plenum, 15th Five Year Plan

* Arms Control Association “The Potential of the P5 Process.” Former Acting Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Tom Countryman.

* Carnegie Endowment “Miniaturization and Modernization: The Untold Story of China’s Nuclear Weapons.” Tong is hosting Dr. Hui Zhang to discuss his new book on China’s nuclear warhead development at an event on Tuesday, December 9 at 10:00 AM EST. Register here.

* Foreign Policy. “Is China Changing its Nuclear Launch Strategy?” Tong Zhao.

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We finally pulled our thoughts together on the President’s recent comments regarding nuclear testing, in light of a steady drip of additional information from congress, other U.S. officials, as well as the media. After analyzing what this testing discussion is all about, we opened the mailbag to try and get through a few listener questions.

In lieu of a longer summary of the podcast, I’m sharing some background information on the testing topic as it’s unfortunately very weedy on policy, legal, and technical ground… hope you enjoy:

I mentioned two recent articles during our testing discussion, one from Washington Post on China’s activities around the Lop Nur test site, and another from CNN regarding DOE/NNSA officials heading to the White House to “tamp down” on the testing urge:

* Cate Cadell. “China rapidly expands nuclear test site as Trump revives Cold War tension.“ Washington Post. November 17, 2025.

* Ella Neilsen, Rene Marsh, Alayna Treene. “Exclusive: Department of Energy officials to meet with White House to tamp down Trump’s idea of explosive nuclear testing.“ CNN. November 14, 2025.

Here are a few documents we reference directly or indirectly during the conversation.

State Department Article-by-Article Analysis of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Language to the 2020 State Department Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament Compliance Report, starting with a brief history on the U.S. “zero-yield” standard during CTBT negotiations, followed by assessments regarding PRC and Russian compliance.

And similar information from the more recent 2022 Compliance Report (the Department stopped repeating unchanged information in later reports, so I’m sharing 2022 as the first full compliance report of the Biden administration, providing the updated take on testing, including the zero-yield standard, China, and Russia)

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During our last conversation on U.S. nuclear strategy (about two weeks ago, primarily led by Austin Long and Charlie Glaser who have spent quite a bit of time debating damage limitation), we uncovered a few questions we just didn’t have time to address. We chose three specific questions to discuss on today’s pod, and of course, we uncovered enough interesting material to start planning a Part 3:

* Is retention of a damage limitation necessary for U.S. extended deterrence strategy, and if so, how important is it for extended deterrence allies?

* How comprehensive or successful does the U.S. need to be for damage limitation to be considered “meaningful”?

* How important is damage limitation as a nuclear strategy objective, considering other traditional objectives (restoring deterrence, escalation management, threatening unacceptable damage, etc.)?

Before we dive into these questions, however, we tried to address some recent listener feedback: What does damage limitation actually entail from an operational perspective?

As we mention several times throughout the discussion, conversations on the hypothetical, though never realized, end results of U.S. nuclear strategy and objectives gets Strangelovian very quickly. We’re talking about end-of-the-world extremities in international politics, with the shared goal of ensuring U.S. strategy is designed to ensure that day never comes. You’ll hear several important themes come up—the relative political stakes of belligerents in a conflict over a third country, like a U.S. ally or partner; the importance of saving lives vs. saving the functioning state; why geography matters, etc. While we’re nuclear folks discussing much grander ideas, you will hopefully see the connections between these wonky nuclear strategy topics and broader U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy.

On a lighter note, Charlie reveals the new MIT swag - the CNSP branded “nuclear umbrella” that will now form the core of the new Center’s public diplomacy efforts.

Enjoy this podcast, and as always, we appreciate your feedback and questions to further our own study of and reflections on this important set of topics.

Stay tuned for Part 3, where we hope to spend some time talking about current and potential adversary reactions to current U.S. nuclear strategy, among other issues.

If you missed it, catch part one of this podcast series here.

Suggested readings (referenced during the pod):

Austin’s chapter, “Damage Limitation in the 21st Century” (p. 66), in the LLNL CGSR volume “Counterforce in Contemporary U.S. Nuclear Strategy.”

Charlie’s article in The Washington Quarterly, which he co-authored with Steve Fetter, “Legal, but Lethal: The Law of Armed Conflict and US Nuclear Strategy.”

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For those of you who haven’t met Charlie Glaser, he’s truly a great contributor to nuclear policy discussions and a wonderful colleague. And we were happy to host Charlie for a discussion on damage limitation. Charlie is a prolific author on U.S. nuclear strategy and broader international security topics, having written on the infeasibility of counterforce as China’s arsenal grows, U.S. commitments to East Asia, and many many other topics.

Charlie and Austin recently debated nuclear strategy at MIT for the Center for Nuclear Security Policy community, and we thought reprising and continuing this discussion on our podcast would be a great way to get their arguments out to a broader audience. Our discussion covers the relevance of either proposed approach—discarding damage limitation as an objective or maintaining and enhancing it to pace the changing security environment—to longstanding U.S. grand strategy goals, such as nonproliferation, extended deterrence, and reducing the risk of nuclear war.

We also discuss conventional and theater nuclear capabilities, the possible harm to population centers, and the link between theater and strategic nuclear forces to manage escalation under either strategy approach. Charlie and Austin debate whether damage limitation capabilities create escalatory pressures, or discourage adversaries from escalating. And like good academics, we include a range of interesting research questions that would help elucidate an important debate happening in U.S. nuclear policy circles today.

Much more to follow on the topic of the pros and cons of damage limitation from a regional nuclear deterrence perspective—stay tuned for Part II. Any questions? Hit us up in the comments below.

EDIT: Sharing a few links to Charlie’s publications, for those interested in a deeper dive.

Charles L Glaser and Steve Fetter, “Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China,” International Security (2016).

Charles L. Glaser, James M. Acton, and Steve Fetter, “The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal Can Deter Both China and Russia: Why America Doesn’t Need More Missiles,” Foreign Affairs (October 5, 2023).

I’m also sharing a link which I’ve shared before; LLNL CGSR’s compendium of articles entitled “Counterforce in Contemporary U.S. Nuclear Strategy,” which contains a chapter written by Austin Long titled “Damage Limitation in the 21st Century” starting on page 66.

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Austin, Vipin, and I sat down to share our reviews of Kathryn Bigelow’s new Netflix thriller, “A House of Dynamite.” We share our analysis of the film’s plot; where the film seemed accurate in its portrayal of the nuclear war scenario, deterrence logic, basic facts of government operations; and, some of the more confusing assertions made by characters in the film. Lot’s of feelings! But we also try to highlight what seemed right and what seemed wrong based on our own experiences in government.

We also share our own favorite nuclear war movies and try to answer a few listener questions and share what others said about the movie.

Hope you enjoy, and please send us your own questions or comments regarding the movie in the replies below, or via email.

Edit: I failed to link to Al Mouroni's Substack, which we mentioned during the pod. You can find it here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/almauroni?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=998hw

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Austin, Vipin and I welcome friends from the MIT Security Studies Program, Taylor Fravel and Caitlin Talmadge, to discuss China once again. This time, we focus on two oft-cited rationales for China’s nuclear build-up—the desire to improve the survivability of its nuclear forces, and the potential to use a larger nuclear forces as a fullback for regional coercion/aggression. Our guests help explain China’s motivations, the looming Taiwan scenarios, what is happening in China’s non-nuclear forces, and Taiwan’s own capabilities and attitudes regarding a conflict. Our conversation moves beyond just nuclear weapons and into the political relationship, China’s historical approach to Taiwan, competition outside of the nuclear arena, and the relevance of the broader U.S. strategy toward China to these nuclear questions.

We also talk about the ability for the United States to compete in military domains that help set back the most concerning military scenarios with China, and keep the threshold for nuclear use high if a conflict was to begin. The group also discusses the limitations China may face in improving and modernizing its nuclear weapons capabilities to support a possible sea change in its approach to nuclear strategy, and whether China could become more transparent about its nuclear forces as the buildup continues, or if we’re going to hear about more new and modern windmills instead.

Please feel free to send us your thoughts, comments, and questions on this topic in the replies or via email, as we’re definitely going to record a Part III in the near future and are open to suggested topics. Until then, enjoy the pod.

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Is Putin’s offer to continue adherence to New START central limits for one more year a “cost free virtue signal,” a sincere desire to manage nuclear competition, an opening to a broader conversation on strategic issues, or maybe a combination of all of these things. Additionally, what U.S. interests are at play in considering this offer? Austin and I had a great conversation with two of the top experts in the arms control policy discourse, Mike Albertson and John Warden, to try and answer these questions among others.

We debate the various responses the United States could craft, the relevance of future U.S. nuclear posture adjustments to the question of maintaining New START limits for one more year, the state of New START today without verification activities, data exchanges or regular notifications, and China and trilateral arms control.

Mike and John help us dig into how the U.S. government usually organizes itself to analyze an arms control, the questions senior officials and experts are probably asking, and hopefully trying to answer, and how the United States may respond. We discuss the importance of ending New START on a “good note” to preserve arms control between the two countries and pave the way to future agreements, including ones that manage competition between the two countries and help shape future force posture decisions on each side. The Ukraine war looms large still today, and we talk about how that may play into considerations of Russia’s offer as well as other sources of leverage in arms control negotiations.

Throughout the conversation, the one area of agreement that surfaces is that all four of us think the United States needs to make a counter proposal to Putin’s offer, using the next four months to engage in a serious arms control policy process to establish U.S. priorities and consider how to engage Russian counterparts. We’ll have to see whether U.S. officials feel the same way and Russia is willing to use this offer as a starting point for that conversation, as opposed to accepting a fait accompli.

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Toby Dalton, Francesca Giovannini, and Eric Brewer, experts and leaders with the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, Harvard University Belfer Center Initiative on Managing the Atom, and Nuclear Threat Initiative, staffed the Task Force on Nuclear Proliferation and U.S. National Security for the past 10 months. They recently drafted and published a final task force report entitled “Preventing an Era of Nuclear Anarchy: Nuclear Proliferation and American Security.”

The Task Force, chaired by Ernie Moniz, Tino Cuellar, and Meghan O’Sullivan, is comprised of an impressive array of former officials across the national security bureaucracy and branches of government, and examined the foundations of U.S. national security policy to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. In many ways, the Task Force is spiritual sequel to the 1964 Committee on Nuclear Proliferation, often called the “Gilpatric Committee” or “Gilpatric Task Force” after Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, the chair of the committee. (you can find the original Gilpatric report in its declassified glory at the Department of State’s Office of the Historian, here).

Our discussion examined several fundamental questions relevant to nuclear policy, counterproliferation, nonproliferation, extended deterrence, arms control, and other issues, including:

* Why and how U.S. national security approaches to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons need to change in an era of changing politics, technology, and military capabilities;

* How to spotlight the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons as a core, and once-again emerging challenge to U.S. national interests;

* The necessity of U.S. leadership and international engagement to maintaining the track record of success in preventing nuclear proliferation, both to assure U.S. allies who benefit from extended deterrence guarantees, reduce risks with major power competitors, and to discourage proliferation;

* What a strong U.S. nuclear industry can offer to the nonproliferation toolkit;

* Why the United States needs to manage tensions between nonproliferation objectives and nuclear deterrence, such that the two worlds do not become mutually exclusive;

* How the security environment today is different from that of the 1960s in terms of the competition among major powers, availability nuclear technology, and state of political relationships; and,

* The importance of domestic and international institutions and expertise in meeting increased risks of nuclear proliferation… among many other issues.

We also discuss some inside baseball: how the task force meetings were organized on various topics, how task force members stayed focus on the proliferation problem while taking into account the near-daily shifts in the contemporary domestic and international politics, and trying to drive the task force toward establishing enduring, high-level findings and recommendations rather than something with a short term focus.

I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation, and use it as a primer for reading the report itself. The Task Force roster is incredibly impressive, and not surprisingly, the report is well worth your time.

We’ll be back again next week with a new episode.

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Ankit, Vipin, and I discussed U.S.-ROK-DPRK affairs after recent comments by President Lee at the U.N. General Assembly, the ROK’s “E.N.D.” policy rollout, U.S. immigration and trade actions, and DPRK activities. Ankit and Vipin recently traveled to Seoul and shared insights gained during their trip on the state of extended deterrence discussions between the United States and South Korea, as well as pending issues surrounding ROK STRATCOM, wartime OPCON transfer, the state of the ROK and DPRK militaries. In the context of E.N.D., we discuss what reasoning with North Korea may look like for the Trump administration—including the kinds of risk reduction asks the U.S. may make of KJU— as it finalizes the National Defense Strategy and considers North Korea policy.

We also talk about the state of North Korea’s nuclear program, including the reliability of its ICBMs and reentry vehicles, after recent comments by ROK President Lee. Ankit describes how far the DPRK nuclear prograb has come in the past several years, particularly since the Trump administration’s last attempts at diplomacy in 2017 in partnership with Moon Jae-In. He describes how North Korea’s arsenal and strategy create different potential military scenarios today compared to the past, and how that influences U.S. extended deterrence diplomatic aims (extra credit to Ankit for recalling the “B61s as wedding rings” comparison made by a former defense official.).

The three of us discuss the relationship between political succession in North Korea and the likelihood of conflict/military aggression. We end with a discussion about how stable the Korean peninsula is today compared to a few years ago, following strengthened extended deterrence, policy shifts in Seoul and Pyongyang away from unification, and military technology advancements in North Korea.

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One of the most rewarding aspects of government service is the opportunity to meet amazing, highly qualified and well-respected experts and leaders, and work alongside them in some of the most stressful circumstances. Celeste Wallander is one of those expert-leaders to these three nuclear musketeers (Team Title WIP, and no, this isn’t a new nuclear weapon idea that Austin came up with.). She is currently the Executive Director of Penn Washington, the University of Pennsylvania’s office in Washington D.C. Prior to that, she served in multiple roles in government at the Department of Defense and White House, including most recently as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and a stint as Senior Director for Russia and Eurasia at the National Security Council under President Obama.

We tried to cover recent news on the Russia and Europe front in this episode, starting with drone/aircraft incursions into NATO member airspace, President Trump’s comments at the United Nations General Assembly this week regarding Ukraine’s ability to win…

Trump, in major shift, suggests Ukraine can win back territory long held by Russia

…and European leaders reaction to those remarks:

Top EU diplomat warns Trump that Europe can’t shoulder Ukraine war burden alone

Tusk issues stark reality check about Trump’s pro-Ukraine pivot

We close our planned discussion with a conversation about President Zelensky’s statement that “the world was living through the most destructive arms race in human history” and stakes of various parties in the Ukraine conflict.

We save a few minutes at the end to talk about Putin’s recent offer regarding New START, which I wrote about here earlier this week. I also want to offer perspectives other than my own, provided by friends in the nuclear community, which you should also read:

Jon Wolfsthal: “Why President Trump should put off the new nuclear arms race for one more year“ The Bulletin.

Matt Bunn: “Putin just gave Trump the opportunity to maintain nuclear restraint. Will he seize it?“ The Bulletin.

Austin Long: “No Zombie Nuclear Treaties.” Strategic Simplicity.

Hope you enjoy the podcast and have a joyous weekend. We’ll be back next week with 2 episodes.

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