Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long; and Matthew Kroenig respond to Charles Glaser and Steve Fetter's summer 2016 article, "Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China."

This policy brief is based on "Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China" which will appear in the summer 2016 issue of International Security.

China's growing nuclear arsenal threatens to erode the United States' damage-limitation capability—its ability to destroy Chinese forces and thereby significantly reduce the damage that an all-out Chinese nuclear attack would inflict on the United States. Nevertheless, the United States should not attempt to preserve this capability. Doing so is technologically infeasible, would not add to the U.S. nuclear deterrent, would heighten tensions with China, and would increase the risk of nuclear escalation in a crisis.

Charles L. Glaser, Andrew H. Kydd, Mark. L. Haas, and John M. Owen IV respond to Sebastian Rosato's winter 2014/15 article, "The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers."

A grand bargain would not constitute the entirety of U.S. policy toward China. Unilateral measures and alliances would remain essential components of U.S. policy. When uncertain about a state's motives and goals, a state should pursue a mix of cooperative and competitive policies.

China's growing military power has fueled a security competition with the United States, increasing the risk of war between the two countries. To reduce this likelihood, the United States and China should negotiate a grand bargain in which the United States ends its commitment to defend Taiwan, and China agrees to resolve its maritime territorial disputes peacefully and accepts the United States' long-term military presence in East Asia.

U.S. scholars and policymakers commonly worry that a lack of "energy security" hurts U.S. national security, yet few have analyzed the links between states' energy requirements and the probability of military conflict. An investigation of these links identifies threats to U.S. national security flowing from other countries' consumption of oil, rather than just U.S. consumption. Furthermore, while many of the security threats associated with Persian Gulf oil have decreased, new oil-driven dangers are emerging in Northeast Asia.