[jerf]

One of the strategies is to keep Taiwan itself armed. Civilians like us can't know this, but it has been hypothesized that one of the levers being used on China with regard to North Korea's development of nuclear weapons is explaining to them that if North Korea goes nuclear, they can expect Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and who knows who else to go nuclear, either via local development of the weaponry or via assisted development from the US, if not outright turning weapons over.

After all, one imagines that if they really put their mind to it, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea could all go nuclear in a period measured in small single-digit months. They really aren't that hard [1]. If, indeed, they aren't already effectively nuclear. (We'd probably know if they'd ever tested a weapon. We wouldn't necessarily know if they'd actually built one. If I were them, I totally would have.)

One of the interesting aspects of the whole Inevitable Rise of China narrative storyline is that it has been predicated on their continuing to develop and primarily use soft power. I tend to agree if they focused on that, they have many avenues available for major growth, if not outright exceeding the US in power, certainly by the end of the 21st century. The equations for all of that have to be reconsidered from scratch if they become a dictatorship, become subject to the whims of a single man, and decide to primarily pursue hard power. If they become outright aggressively belligerent, they are surrounded by countries powerful enough to at least put a dent in their ambitions in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and India, all of whom are already generally US allies and would be chased into the US's arms fully by a belligerent China. China is not currently powerful enough to take on that coalition, nor is it clear to me where they would get allies for that push. (It seems unlikely that the EU would full-throatedly throw in their lot with China. Russia, other than being nuclear, isn't really a strong enough military or economic power against that sort of coalition to be the deciding factor.) Furthermore, China's internal power is IMHO more delicate than may meet the eye; if China devotes more resources into hard power internally and the middle class starts to fade, internal social unrest is going to be a major problem. Even if China manages to suppress its most overt expressions, unrest still manifests itself in many little ways.

The best move for China is slow and steady, to win the race. But if one man decides that's not fast enough, well, a lot of people could end up dying for that decision and my guess is China would still not come out on top.

[1]: https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-experiment-proved-that-anyone-c...

[Slansitartop]

> After all, one imagines that if they really put their mind to it, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea could all go nuclear in a period measured in small single-digit months

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_progra...:

> While there are currently no known plans in Japan to produce nuclear weapons, it has been argued Japan has the technology, raw materials, and the capital to produce nuclear weapons within one year if necessary, and many analysts consider it a de facto nuclear state for this reason...

> Japan has also developed the M-V three-stage solid-fuel rocket, somewhat similar in design to the U.S. LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBM, giving it a missile technology base. It now has an easier-to-launch second generation solid-fuel rocket, Epsilon. Japan has experience in re-entry vehicle technology...

> In 2011, former Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba explicitly backed the idea of Japan maintaining the capability of nuclear latency: "I don't think Japan needs to possess nuclear weapons, but it's important to maintain our commercial reactors because it would allow us to produce a nuclear warhead in a short amount of time ... It's a tacit nuclear deterrent"

[Isamu]

I would definitely expect Japan to have completely developed plans for a nuclear weapons program, with contingencies for getting it online in the shortest amount of time possible.

I would not expect them to have actually created a device, unless they are keeping deep under the stadium somewhere below the Akira project.

[FridgeSeal]

Hey, who even needs nuclear weapons if you've got the Akira project anyways :P

[freech]

> We'd probably know if they'd ever tested a weapon. We wouldn't necessarily know if they'd actually built one. If I were them, I totally would have.

What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone? The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.

[jerf]

Having a card up your sleeve is still valuable, even if nobody knows it is there, because it means if you have to pull it out all of a sudden, it's there. Taiwan would be my A#1 pick for "country most likely to secretly have nuclear weapons" because while everyone around China has reason to be nervous at one level or another, Taiwan's clearly got the best one.

"The world" as a whole is also a bit jumpy about nuclear weapons, so pulling the card out early isn't free. If for the sake of argument Taiwan does have some prototypes lying around, they must have judged the risk of a reveal greater than the reward. But that can change swiftly.

One of the questions I find most interesting, from my civilian and total outsider position, is: How developed are the world's intelligence agencies? How good are countries at successfully keeping things secret from each other? Is it theoretically possible for Taiwan to have secretly developed a prototype bomb without China covertly knowing about it? (This is an especially interesting question in that for structural reasons, Taiwan and China have means to spy on each other relatively easily.) Is it in fact the case that everybody basically knows everything about everybody, or are there many, many successfully kept secrets? What are the probabilities of discovery? What's the appetite for risk of discovery within the relevant governments? I expect from my current position that it is simply impossible to get solid answers to these questions. It also seems to me that while the world does not care for countries overtly advertising they have a bomb, the game theory for covertly making it known to certain of your enemies that you have the bomb may be quite different.

[freech]

So china invades Taiwan, Taiwan nukes them, and then? China decides to nuke them of the map instead?

[jerf]

Are you demanding easy answers? There aren't any.

The goal is deterrence, but deterrence doesn't work if you don't have a credible threat, which means that you have to have the credible threat, and a sufficiently insane opponent may call you on it. It's the reason why China going to a dictatorship is scary... the details of the dictatorship are irrelevant, the mere fact that one man will be in charge of the military of China is intrinsically scary. This is one place where the general bias towards inaction and other problems of a committee are advantageous; history shows that an individual is much likelier to do something really stupid for really stupid reasons than any government that is run by many people, even if there is a clear leader. A committee may fail to exploit many opportunities and may in various ways run their country into the ground, or they may even engage in misguided military adventures, but they never really rise to the level of outright evil and stupidity that an individual can muster up.

For instance, if you've got a spare hour to listen, you could do worse than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdM3ID4m38U Which contains numerous examples of Napoleon doing stupid and evil things that cost thousands of lives and burned massive piles of reputation just to benefit himself. If you do watch that video, can you imagine a world in which that Napoleon has nukes? Or, can you imagine a world in which he has them, but doesn't use them? I can't.

So, alas, no, I can't promise that some of the really stupid wargame outcomes aren't on the table now. China could previously be modeled as reasonably rational, but that's rapidly going "poof", and yeah, that means some seriously bad outcomes are on the table, and the mere fact that they are seriously ugly doesn't take them off the table.

[dragonwriter]

> What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone?

The point is so that:

(1) You can maintain the highest ground in proliferation discussions focussed on rivals, and

(2) Reveal your own weapons quickly if the geopolitical situation shifts (either as deterrence or, should the situation shift too quickly for that, direct use to blunt an existential threat.)

> The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.

No, it's (as with any weapon) to provide the capacity to destroy the enemy if needed.

Like any weapon, this capacity can be publicized to deter attacks, but that is not the sole purpose of the weapon, and it can't be, because deterrence cannot work if it is perceived as the sole purpose of a weapon.

[Slansitartop]

> What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone? The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.

The ambiguity is still a valuable deterrent, and avoids the diplomatic cost of violating the NPT in peacetime, etc. That cost would doubtlessly be less if the violator was presently facing an existential threat.

IIRC, Israel follows this strategy. Everyone knows they have nukes but they've never confirmed it.

[NutriSugar]

Why would you tell them, until such a time that you need to tell them? They have strong deterrent value, but there is no need to let others know until such a time as the deterrent value is needed.

[castis]

> The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.

I thought the entire point was to kill as many birds as possible with a single stone.

[pavlov]

USA turning over nuclear weapons to Taiwan sounds like a recap of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Unfortunately Trump is no Khrushchev, and Xi is no JFK either. A terrifying scenario.

[IIAOPSW]

Japan getting the bomb is a tricky question because post war Japanese culture has been ingrained to be very anti-war and they oppose atomic weaponry for obvious historical reasons.