Russian strategist: Moscow can no longer ignore China nuclear buildup

Aleksandr Khramchikhin, a military and strategic analyst, said last week that Russia must not agree to further cuts in its strategic nuclear arsenal because of the growing threat from China's nuclear buildup. Khramchikhin, chief of analysis at the Moscow-based Institute for Political and Military Analysis, warned in a commentary published last week that additional cuts in nuclear arms would make Russia's arsenal "comparable with China's, which are not restricted by any treaties and which continue to grow.""At the same time, whereas for the United States it would represent unacceptable losses for even one nuclear warhead to fall on its territory, China would survive a dozen," he wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta."Meanwhile the shortage of resources (above all, oil) is assuming the nature of a national disaster in China. If China does overtake Russia in terms of nuclear forces, it will begin to talk to us in a completely different tone. And we will not be able to refuse it, as distinct from the United States, anything." Khramchikhin, a hawk on China, has previously warned that Beijing's control over natural resources in Siberia is "not a hypothetical threat, but an imperative of Chinese policy" since that country will run out of resources in a decade.The threat is real because Beijing does not consider the Russian army capable of confronting the People's Liberation Army, he said. China's strategic nuclear buildup is being carried out secretly. It includes plans for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new warheads on both land- and sea-based missiles. In contrast, Robert Joseph, a special State Department envoy on nuclear proliferation, said last week that the U.S. and Russian governments have agreed to hold talks on reducing nuclear arms "to the lowest level possible consistent with our national security requirements and international alliance commitments."
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