核讹诈的时代结束了 The End of the Era of Nuclear Blackmail

By Timothy Huang

长久以来，在人类付出数亿人的生命代价后所建立的二战后的国际秩序中，一直存在着一个异数：核武器。一些心机叵测的小国，倾全国之力，甚至付出巨大的本国人民的生命代价，制造出了勉强可用的核武器，从而对世界秩序的创立者和维护者构成了“核讹诈”，使得大国在国际交往中投鼠忌器、谨小慎微，仅仅敢于对同为文明国家的对手“重拳出击”，却对朝鲜等流氓国家毕恭毕敬、退避三舍，甚至不得不讨好这些流氓国家的流氓大哥，以仰仗其同道之间的影响力暂时维护地区和平。

然而，2025年6月21日，在一场名为“午夜之锤”的军事行动中，美军B-2战略轰炸机横跨全球，对伊朗位于福尔多、纳坦兹和伊斯法罕的核设施进行了致命打击，“一键清除”了伊朗苦心发展几十年的核工业，堪称于万军之中取敌首级，伊朗彻底成为了川普口中“手里没牌”的那位。小说演义中关云长温酒斩华雄，亦不过如此。

这次军事行动不仅直接终结了以色列和伊朗之间的飞弹互射，也宣告了小国曾经可以凭借一堆半成品核材料便对大国和世界和平指手画脚的时代的彻底结束。

小国的核讹诈之所以行之有效，本质上是两组不对等关系的作用。第一组不对等关系是，根除小国的核威胁所需耗费的巨大人力物力与核大国所能从中获得的有限收益之间的不对等；第二组不对等关系是，核材料甚至核武器扩散的巨大潜在危害与绥靖安抚的较小政治经济成本之间的不对等。前者导致核大国缺乏对远离自己核心利益范围的讹诈者进行敲山震虎甚至根除其核威胁的动力，后者导致核大国乃至整个国际社会都倾向于“砸钱”以求暂时安稳，恰恰让小国的核讹诈得到圆满结局。

而美国卧薪尝胆十五年开发的巨型钻地炸弹、以及他们与以色列情报部门的通力合作，则为全世界提供了低成本精准消灭小国核威胁的行动样本。如果小国甚至是伊朗这样的区域性大国的核设施，可以在悄无声息中被十几枚钻地炸弹彻底摧毁，那么，从此以后，不仅仅是核大国，就连区域性的非拥核国家，都可以凭借科技、情报、民心的压倒性优势，以相对而言极低的成本对妄图进行核讹诈的地区威胁实行精准打击，一朝摧毁威胁地区和平稳定的不安定因素，从而让几十年来朝鲜等流氓国家的核讹诈套路彻底破产。这是比阶段性终结中东地区的战争大了千百倍的成果。

中国对于核讹诈从不陌生。事实上，中国在成为真正的核大国之前，也是一个依靠核讹诈起家的“核小国”。在饥荒频发的六十年代，中国共产党不顾民生艰苦而推行“两弹一星”工程，为的就是令美国、苏联等大国在与中国的国际交锋中投鼠忌器，稳固中共甚至毛泽东个人的统治权力。中国真正可用的、足以威胁地缘政治对手的核投射能力晚于原子弹成功试爆十数年（尽管实验用的东风二号导弹于1966年便已成功投送核弹头），原因正在于，一朵蘑菇云足以实现核讹诈的效果，而弹道导弹、战略轰炸机、核潜艇等，对流氓而言则显得昂贵而多余。“有弹无枪”并不是中共政权在上世纪六七十年代所面临的困境，而是他们精明计算下的选择。

而即使中国的核武器在日后逐步发展成型，甚至在形式上具有了“三位一体”核威慑的能力，并且自身屡屡受到朝鲜等国的核讹诈的情况下，中国仍未能摆脱惯常的小家子气，把核武器当作要挟和讹诈国际政治对手的底牌，而不是维护世界和平、承担国际义务的工具，实则是将全体中国人民绑上中共驶向不归路的战车。也正因如此，美国B-2战略轰炸机所摧毁的，不仅仅是伊朗神棍政权的核设施，也是中国几十年以来所惯用的大国核讹诈战略的破产。它意味着，只要美国愿意，B-2的目标随时可以从伊朗福尔多的核设施变成习近平藏身的地堡，小说家们所预想的中美大战，很可能在战争开始的24个小时内就决出胜负，而最为此头疼的，恐怕是战后需要调查天量的中国军用核设施并监督进行去武器化处理的国际原子能机构了。

因此，相比较在以色列和美国的炸弹下东躲西藏的哈梅内伊，习近平显然对“午夜之锤”更加心惊胆战。它不仅是一场升级版的斩首行动的预演，也是在国际舞台的交锋中直接摧毁对手的手牌的初尝试——显然，它是极为成功的，也必将改写国际政治的规则。从今往后，科技、情报、道义的优势，将不仅仅局限于摆动战场上的天平，而是可以直接终结一场潜在的核大战。我们可以开心地确定，核讹诈的时代，已经结束了。

The End of the Era of Nuclear Blackmail

By Timothy Huang

For a long time, within the post–Second World War international order—an order purchased at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives—there has remained a singular anomaly: the nuclear weapon. Certain small states, governed by calculating minds, have poured inordinate national resources—sometimes at the expense of their own citizens’ lives—into producing barely serviceable nuclear devices. In so doing they have “blackmailed” the founders and guardians of the global order, forcing great powers to tread gingerly in diplomatic engagement. They strike “heavy blows” only against other civilised states, yet bow and scrape before rogue regimes such as North Korea—at times even currying favour with those rogues’ larger patrons in hopes that intra‑club influence might, for a moment, preserve regional peace.

        On 21 June 2025, however, during a military operation reportedly codenamed Midnight Hammer, US B‑2 strategic bombers crossed the globe to deliver fatal strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. In a single, decisive action they “wiped clean” a nuclear industry painstakingly developed over decades—an exploit akin to seizing a commander’s head amid a whole army. Iran was left, in Donald Trump’s phrase, “no cards”. In the realm of romance and legend, Guan Yu’s famed beheading of Hua Xiong over warm wine scarcely surpasses it.

        This operation not only brought an immediate halt to the missile exchanges between Israel and Iran; it also proclaimed the definitive end of an era in which a minor state could, armed with a heap of half‑finished fissile material, wag its finger at great powers and world peace.

        The efficacy of small‑state nuclear blackmail has rested on two asymmetries. The first lies between the immense human and material cost required to eradicate a minor state’s nuclear capability and the modest strategic benefit a nuclear power might gain thereby. The second lies between the potentially catastrophic consequences of nuclear materials—or even weapons—proliferating, and the comparatively low political and economic cost of appeasement. The former asymmetry saps the will of nuclear powers to intimidate or eliminate threats remote from their core interests; the latter encourages them—and the wider international community—to “throw money” at the problem for temporary calm, thereby handing smaller states a diplomatic success.

        The United States’ fifteen‑year labour in developing a gargantuan bunker‑busting bomb, coupled with seamless cooperation between American and Israeli intelligence, has now furnished the world with a template for low‑cost, precision neutralisation of a small state’s nuclear threat. If the nuclear facilities of even a regional power such as Iran can be quietly and completely reduced by a dozen or so penetrator bombs, then henceforth not only nuclear powers but even regional non‑nuclear states, leveraging superiority in technology, intelligence and public support, may—in relative terms at very low cost—deliver pinpoint strikes against would‑be nuclear blackmailers. In a single night they can remove destabilising factors threatening regional peace. Decades of North Korean‑style nuclear extortion tactics could thus collapse. This achievement is greater by orders of magnitude than the merely episodic suspension of warfare in the Middle East.

        China is no stranger to nuclear blackmail. Before it became a fully fledged nuclear power, it, too, rose through nuclear brinkmanship as a “small nuclear state”. Amid the famines of the 1960s, the Chinese Communist Party pressed ahead with the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” programme, disregarding the people’s hardship so that the United States, the Soviet Union and other great powers would be forced to handle China cautiously, thereby entrenching the CCP’s—and even Mao Zedong’s personal—grip on power. China’s genuinely usable nuclear delivery capability—sufficient to threaten geopolitical adversaries—lagged more than a decade behind its first atomic test (although an experimental DF‑2 missile successfully delivered a nuclear warhead in 1966). The reason is this: a single mushroom cloud sufficed for nuclear blackmail; for a rogue actor, ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and nuclear submarines were costly luxuries. “Having the warhead but not the gun” was not a predicament in the 1960s–70s—it was a calculated choice.

        Even as China’s nuclear forces later took shape—eventually in form possessing a “triad” capability—and even as it increasingly found itself the target of North Korean and other states’ blackmail, Beijing never shed its ingrained small‑mindedness: treating nuclear weapons as a card for coercion and extortion of opponents in international politics rather than as instruments for safeguarding world peace and fulfilling international obligations. In truth it has lashed the Chinese populace to the CCP’s chariot as it hurtles towards a point of no return. For this very reason, what the American B‑2s destroyed was not only the Iranian theocracy’s nuclear infrastructure, but also the bankruptcy of China’s decades‑long strategy of great‑power nuclear blackmail. It signifies that, should Washington will it, the B‑2’s target could shift at any time from Fordow’s nuclear halls to the bunker sheltering Xi Jinping. The Sino‑American cataclysm imagined by novelists might be decided within the first twenty‑four hours of conflict; the most vexed party thereafter would likely be the IAEA, tasked with surveying a vast array of Chinese military nuclear sites destroyed by the US and supervising disarmament.

        Thus, compared with Iran’s Khamenei—skulking from one hiding place to another beneath Israeli and American bombs—Xi Jinping is evidently more rattled by Midnight Hammer. It is not merely an upgraded rehearsal for a “decapitation strike”; it is a first experiment in stripping an opponent’s high cards directly on the international stage—and a conspicuously successful one, destined to rewrite the rules of global politics. Henceforth, advantages in technology, intelligence and moral legitimacy will not merely tip the battlefield scales; they can summarily terminate a looming nuclear war. We may, with some satisfaction, conclude: the age of nuclear blackmail is over.