While the world focused on the atomic tantrums of North Korea or the efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, China has quietly enlarged and modernized its arsenal. Where Russia and the U.S. have trimmed, China has grown. In Chinese Nuclear Proliferation, Lipscomb University political science professor Susan Turner Haynes tries to discern the motivations of China’s leaders. She finds that they worry over future conflicts with the U.S. and seek to stir national pride through strength in light of the failure of Communist ideology. Painstakingly pouring over Chinese publications seldom examined by Western scholars, she also finds that the country’s leaders are well aware that first use of nuclear weapons will go down “in the human history of shame,” according to a prominent Chinese commander.
