The nuclear issue in China one must do so within the ambit of a complex and often obscured environment. The task is not, however, impossible, for even without the luxuries of doctrinal guidance and warhead quantity, important factors can be isolated. Even with the added impediments of vague, ambiguous decision-making procedures and accusations of technological inferiority, a likely Chinese position on nuclear force is visible. Furthermore, it is apparent that China pursues an unorthodox and unique nuclear-deterrent posture. Whether under the western guise of `minimum deterrence’ or viewed entirely in its own right, China’s security via nuclear force is the most efficacious at a regional, theatre level. Attempts to counter this regional capability through Theatre Missile Defence initiatives have been found to be problematic and could force China down several avenues that would undermine, rather than enhance, security northeast Asia. China, is any case, s unlikely to allow this regional deterrence to be seriously eroded. These three developments do much to explain the shaky basis for assuming that Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) based on each side’s secure (and adequate) second-strike capability remains the underpinning for strategic stability even in the U.S.-Russian relationship, let alone in the nascent U.S.-Chinese relationship. Within both pairings a range of factors has emerged that threaten to ease the pathways to inadvertent nuclear war. They include the Russian and Chinese holdings of dual-capable nuclear and conventional missiles together with possibly shared command and control systems, creating the risk that a U.S. attack intended against a conventional facility could unintentionally strike its nuclear counterpart; China’s possible plans in a regional conventional conflict to incapacitate U.S. systems needed to manage its maritime operations, systems that include satellites and ground-based radars critical to early warning of a nuclear attack, the evolution of U.S. nuclear doctrine to permit nuclear retaliation in the event of a non-nuclear attack on vulnerable U.S. nuclear C3I (communications, command, control, and intelligence) facilities and the uncertain consequences if cyber weapons were used in a conventional conflict to impair war fighting capabilities essential as well to a country’s ability to communicate with and control its nuclear forces.