For a change of pace, we’re going to record a mailbag (or AMA)-style podcast episode in the coming days. While we’ve heard comments from subscribers and non-subscribers to recent work or pods, we’d like to take the opportunity to go through as many topics as possible in a rapid-fire setting. Get us your questions and comments and we will do our best to get through them all at a lightning pace.
You should be able to respond to the subscriber email with your own email service of choice, email “strategicsimplicity@substack.com,” or feel free to send a question to myself, Vipin, or Austin using the substack chat function. Please provide your question or comment, whether you would like to remain anonymous, and any background information that would help us respond. Those of you who have other means of contacting us, feel free to use your preferred method.
This is the first time we’re trying this, so I offer fair warning; this could be unwieldy and we may not get to everyone’s question or comment. But we will try, and can always roll material into the next mailbag episode. For now, send us a message and hopefully we can get to it in our recording this week.
P
I have a question on China-related things in your Foreign Affairs piece. You say that China's traditional posture, with "a handful of unfueled ICBMs" and warheads stored separately "enabled a retaliation-only strategy, accompanied by a “no first use” pledge to the world." Fair enough. But why the new posture, with "hundreds of new ICBM silos," would be any different in that regard? It can much better support the "retaliation-only strategy" and is perfectly compatible with the NFU pledge. What has changed? Other than US ability to credibly threaten to deny China the capability to retaliate, of course. But from China's point of view, it's perfectly reasonable to preserve this capability and one can easily imagine that that's exactly the argument for the ICBM expansion - to deny the US the coercive power, not to acquire this power for China. Couple it with US missile defense, and this arguments becomes even stronger. This goes to the question raised by Bob Gallucci, which you didn't really answer - you cannot ignore the fact that certain US policies have consequences. The "modest adjustments" that you suggest will definitely trigger a response (however misguided). In the end, the damage limitation capability that you value will be simply unattainable.
Pavel Podvig