Sec. 190. Strategic stability dialogue and arms control
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Congress makes the following findings: The United States and the PRC have both made commitments to advancing strategic security through enforceable arms control and non-proliferation agreements as states parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, done at Washington, London, and Moscow July 1, 1968. The United States has long taken tangible steps to seek effective, verifiable, and enforceable arms control and non-proliferation agreements that support United States and allied security by— controlling the spread of nuclear materials and technology; placing limits on the production, stockpiling, and deployment of nuclear weapons; decreasing the risk of misperception and miscalculation; and avoiding the destabilizing effects of nuclear arms competition.
The PRC’s current nuclear expansion, part of a massive modernization of the PLA that is expected to be completed by 2035, combined with the PLA’s aggressive actions, has increasingly destabilized the Indo-Pacific region. The long-planned United States nuclear modernization program will not increase the United States nuclear weapons stockpile, predates China’s conventional military and nuclear expansion, and is not an arms race against China. The United States extended nuclear deterrence— provides critical strategic security around the world; is an essential element of United States military alliances; and serves a vital non-proliferation function.
The United States has, on numerous occasions, called on the PRC to participate in strategic arms control negotiations, and has sought to engage the PRC in a strategic stability dialogue, but the PRC has so far declined. Such negotiations and dialogue would benefit the entire world by developing guardrails to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict. Provocations such as the balloon incident in 2023 and the inability of United States officials to reach PRC counterparts via deconfliction lines underscore the need for further engagement on risk reduction, including through near-term dialogue and eventual arms control negotiations.
The Governments of Japan, the United Kingdom, Poland, Slovenia, Denmark, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Netherlands, Romania, Austria, Montenegro, Ukraine, Slovakia, Spain, North Macedonia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Croatia, and Albania, as well as the Deputy Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have all encouraged the PRC to join arms control discussions. Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Energy, shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report that outlines the strategy and objectives in engaging the Government of the PRC on nuclear and strategic issues, which shall include— areas of potential dialogue between the Governments of the United States and the PRC, including the interplay of ballistic, hypersonic glide, and cruise missiles, conventional forces, nuclear, space, artificial intelligence and cyberspace issues, as well as other new strategic domains, which could reduce the likelihood of war, limit escalation if a conflict were to occur, and constrain a destabilizing arms race in the Indo-Pacific region; the types of strategic military capabilities of the PRC that the United States Government is most interested in limiting; an assessment of whether additional crisis consultation mechanisms should be developed to avoid, manage, or control inadvertent nuclear, conventional, and unconventional military escalation between the United States and the PRC; the personnel and expertise required to effectively engage the PRC in strategic stability and arms control dialogues; and opportunities and methods to encourage transparency and predictability from the PRC with regard to the growth and purpose of its nuclear and related strategic forces.
The report required under paragraph
(1)shall be submitted in unclassified form, but may include a classified annex.