The potential costs and benefits of participation in future multilateral nuclear arms - Research Paper Example

Further, the continued dissemination of technical and scientific knowledge and the increasing concerns regarding the environmental effects of fossil fuels, the access to dual-purpose technologies will undoubtedly grow. From a Beijing perspective, this project will write a policy paper that outlines the potential costs and benefits of participating in future multilateral nuclear arms control negotiations involving the United States, Russia and China. China declared during the Cold War that as a nation, it would become part of a multilateral arms control regime so long as the US and Russia reduced their arsenals by half (SCRF 47).

This led to the US and Russia reducing their nuclear stock piles. China went ahead and fulfilled that condition, but there are recent reports that it will keep holding back from getting into multilateral arms control with the two nations until their arsenals are more closer in size to its own (Fowler 53). Further, financial, technological and doctrinal constraints have kept China from engaging in nuclear arms control with the US and Russia. However, if China participates in the disarmament, nonproliferation and multilateral arms control, negotiations, there will be associated costs to Beijing.

First, China will have to contend with the risk of being exposed to attacks by other NWS and, in particular, the US and Russia, with whom they are supposed to enter a control regime (Larson & Shevchenko 118). This is regardless of how unfounded the possibility presently seems but, given the massive population of China and the likely consequences of an attack, it is a risk that cannot be assumed. There will also be further moral and strategic costs, particularly in terms of defending key national interests and those touching on territorial integrity and national sovereignty.

While officially declining to be participants of the 2003 US-proposed