Zhu Feng: The Core Meaning of and Pathways Towards a Constructive China-U.S. Relationship of Strategic Stability

The East Is Read | Yuxuan Jia, Yixin Guo

Zhu Feng examines the strategic framework of a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability following leadership discussions in May 2026. The traditional Cold War model of strategic stability, built on mutually assured destruction and arms control agreements like the INF Treaty and New START, is inadequate for bilateral ties due to China's minimum nuclear deterrent and no-first-use policy.

U.S. Indo-Pacific military expansion and containment strategies threaten regional security. Escaping the Thucydides Trap requires grounding relations in interdependence, rejecting bloc confrontation, and establishing four dimensions of stability: cooperation as the mainstay, moderate competition, manageable differences, and enduring peace. Practical implementation demands concrete rules and a long-term approach to preserve global order.

Comment

The rejection of Cold War-era mutually assured destruction frameworks in favour of a managed interdependence model reflects Beijing's effort to decouple strategic stability from nuclear parity. Unlike the bipolar parity codependent on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the contemporary bilateral dynamic attempts to insulate economic integration from regional maritime friction points such as the Typhon and Tomahawk missile deployments in the Indo-Pacific. This approach seeks to bound competitive escalation without conceding core sovereignty claims in the South China Sea or across the Taiwan Strait. Consequently, institutional mechanisms designed to maintain stable competition risk structural failure if conventional and missile force modernisations outpace bilateral crisis communication channels.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If bilateral strategic stability is disassociated from nuclear arms control parity, what operational mechanisms can effectively regulate conventional missile deployments in the Indo-Pacific without replicating Cold War deterrence architectures?

The available evidence points toward limited functional dialogues rather than comprehensive arms control treaties as the primary mechanism for managing conventional deployments. The structural asymmetry in missile capabilities suggests that any near-term predictability will likely rely on unilateral declaratory policies rather than verifiable bilateral limitations.

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