With China as the pacing challenge and a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as the pacing scenario, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) must balance operational effectiveness, force survivability, and escalation management as it considers its approach to prosecuting a hypothetical future conflict with China. As a result of China's secure second-strike nuclear retaliatory capability, the United States must now, more than ever, consider how to tailor its conventional military operations to avoid triggering Chinese nuclear first use. This report is part of a series exploring how the U.S. joint force could better balance military operational effectiveness, force survivability, and escalation management in a Taiwan conflict scenario. In this report, the authors consider the potential thresholds and drivers of Chinese nuclear first use in a Taiwan conflict scenario in the context of China's evolving nuclear force posture and ongoing nuclear buildup. Their overarching finding is that, in the event of a fully committed military conflict with China over Taiwan, nuclear escalation will always be a plausible scenario in which no amount of U.S. effort could reduce the risk of escalation to zero. As China's nuclear posture continues to evolve, the United States is now dealing with a China that has a survivable second-strike capability. This suggests that the United States must actively account for how China might interpret and respond to U.S. conventional strikes when planning its operations and be adequately prepared for dealing with Chinese nuclear first use.

Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping's reported order to the Chinese military to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027 and China's ongoing nuclear buildup have raised U.S. concerns over the prospect of a U.S.-China conflict. A conflict with China would be distinct from the wars the United States has fought in the post–Cold War period against regional powers without nuclear weapons. This report summarizes a series of reports on how U.S. joint long-range strike, especially the U.S. Air Force's bomber force, could adapt to better balance military operational effectiveness, force survivability, and escalation management to achieve desired military and political objectives without triggering catastrophic escalation, specifically Chinese nuclear first use. This report is the product of a mixed-methods research approach that combined regional studies, analytic strategic theory, and historical case studies, all informed by operational analysis. The authors (1) conducted original Chinese-language research leveraging open-source Chinese military writings; (2) supplemented the limited information available from open-source Chinese military writings with historical case studies and a broad review of analytic strategic theory dating back to early RAND work in the 1950s, along with a literature review of Western scholarship on China; (3) reviewed publicly available U.S. Department of Defense documents and recent non-U.S. government wargames; and (4) developed an analytic framework that linked China’s nuclear escalation with specific technical or employment characteristics of U.S. joint long-range strike.

Rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, coupled with China’s ongoing expansion of its nuclear arsenal, have stoked anxieties about a possible military conflict between the two countries, especially over Taiwan. As the United States considers the prospect of a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan, the U.S. military must be prepared for the risks of nuclear escalation inherent in great-power conflict. This report is one in a series of reports exploring how U.S. joint long-range strike, especially the U.S. Air Force's bomber force, could adapt to better balance military operational effectiveness, force survivability, and escalation management to achieve desired military and political objectives without triggering catastrophic escalation, specifically Chinese nuclear first use. This report explores potential escalation pathways that involve U.S. conventional long-range strike and end with Chinese nuclear first use. The authors employ analytic strategic theory and historical case studies informed by operational analysis as part of a larger project with a mixed-methods approach. Building on the tradition of analytic strategic theory cultivated at RAND since the 1950s and examples from history, the authors draw on the operational analysis of joint long-range strike and their understanding of the Chinese nuclear first use drivers presented in Volumes 2 and 3 of this report series to develop an original framework to analyze prospective pathways to nuclear escalation in a U.S.-China conventional conflict and identify implications for U.S. joint long-range strike.