U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III told lawmakers on Tuesday that the Chinese regime’s expansion of its nuclear force is the most “disturbing” military threat he’s seen in his lengthy, 50-year-long career.
“For decades, they were quite comfortable with an arsenal of a few hundred nuclear weapons, which was fairly clearly a second-strike capability to act as a deterrent,” Kendall stated. “That expansion that they’re undertaking puts us into a new world that we’ve never lived in before, where you have three powers—three great powers, essentially—with large arsenals of nuclear weapons.”
Kendall claimed that the United States should attempt to start a dialogue with the Chinese regime and Russia, asserting that open lines of communication between Washington and Moscow were instrumental and preventing a nuclear war during the Cold War. He did not elaborate.
The Air Force secretary said that the United States and then-Soviet Union came close to nuclear war “a couple of times.” However, due to those communication channels, it was averted, he told lawmakers.
“Nobody wants a nuclear war. We do not want to go back to [the Cold War] world of 30 years ago,” he added. I thought we would never be in this position again, and here we are. So, we need to be wise. We really need to start talking to them.”
“Russia’s latest move on the New START treaty is not helping—it’s going in the wrong direction,” Kendall said, referring to Russia’s recent announcement that it would suspend complying with the nuclear treaty program that it had signed with the United States.
During the hearing, Kendall called on lawmakers to fund key military priorities, including bolstering the B-21 Raider bomber program and Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles. By doing so, the United States would counter the Chinese Communist Party’s growing military threat to the West.
“We must develop, produce, and field“ these programs if the United States wants to keep its ”air and space superiority,” he warned. “In order to proceed with any of these programs, the Department of the Air Force needs timely authorizations and appropriations.”
Chinese leader Xi Jinping said during the CCP’s top meeting last year October that China would strengthen its strategic deterrent systems, which is a term often used to describe nuclear weapons, in the years to come.