Nuclear powers should show more restraint, the Chinese government said on Wednesday in response to President Vladimir Putin‘s approval of a new doctrine for the use of Russia’s sizable stockpile of nuclear weapons.
“Under the current situation, all relevant parties need to remain calm and restrained and jointly seek deescalation and lower strategic risks through dialogue and consultation,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China‘s Foreign Ministry, told a regular press briefing in Beijing.
A day earlier, Putin rubber-stamped a decree that could change the nuclear strike threshold observed by his nation’s armed forces. When justified, Russia’s strategic forces could use nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear state, according to the update issued in the days after Ukraine received the approval to fire U.S.-supplied weapons into Russian territory.
Russia will exercise nuclear deterrence “against a potential enemy,” but nuclear use will remain an “extreme measure” in the pursuit of threat reduction, the Kremlin said.
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow did not immediately return Newsweek‘s request for comment before publication.
Sergei Bobylev/Sputnik via AP
Just weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, Russia and China joined the other three permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—the U.K, France and the United States—in declaring that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Since the war began, the Chinese leadership has repeated the January 2022 joint statement, moves that are sometimes viewed as a response to the occasional nuclear saber-rattling by the Kremlin and its allies.
At the same time, Beijing has signaled its displeasure with the U.S. policy known as extended deterrence, which commits America’s nuclear umbrella to the defense of non-nuclear armed treaty allies such as South Korea and Japan, both of which are in China’s regional neighborhood.
Washington has so far resisted calls by Chinese interlocutors to adopt a policy of so-called “no first use,” a commitment not to wield nuclear weapons as a preemptive or first-strike capability, or in response to a conventional attack. Moscow dropped its no first use doctrine in the early 1990s.
However, the U.S. and China have sought to build trust on strategic matters by notifying one another of nuclear missile tests—Beijing in late September and Washington earlier this month.
Russia’s stockpile of nuclear-tipped warheads remains the largest in the world, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington think tank. Russian warheads—including those deployed, in reserve and retired—were estimated at 5,580 compared to the U.S.’s 5,044 and China’s 500, FAS data showed.
North Korea‘s strategic forces are thought to have at least 50 nuclear warheads at their disposal, with enough material to build many more.
Nuclear signaling has become a popular tool for Pyongyang. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un frequently demonstrates his regime’s strategic capability and vows to expand it in response to an uncertain security environment, in which the U.S., Japan and South Korea are becoming increasingly aligned.
Late in October, North Korea conducted its longest-ever test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, which officials in Tokyo suggested could comfortably reach the continental United States—over 9,000 miles.
In Seoul, South Korean officials have said North Korea is benefiting from its deployment of troops to the front lines of the Ukraine war by receiving ballistic missile technology from Russia.
Kyiv has called on its backers in the West to intervene in the Russia-North Korea axis, which it argues has implications for security in Europe and Asia.
