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Personally I'm against expansion in the number of nuclear-armed states, full stop, no matter how virtuous. Because the nukes don't easily go away, if at all, and I do worry about tail risks. Mostly of the variety: some idiot breaks the strong taboo and drops a "tactical" nuclear bomb, and then the taboo is way weaker and more shit can happen (direct response or down the road), though you can't entirely discount accidents/misunderstandings/etc as a potential source of disaster. The way it seems to work is risk scale much more strongly with the number of independent actors involved, not number of nukes, so while a mutual US-Chinese nuclear arms race would be bad, I think it's bracketed for me within the 'normal' level of badness. Way less risky in relative terms than allowing someone like, say, Japan (lol) to get nukes even if they seem trustworthy in the near and medium term. There's something to be said for the (sadly now defunct) Cold War arms treaties limiting stuff like intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles simply for the human fact that a 5-minute snap decision is quantitatively and qualitatively much worse than a 15-minute snap decision, though I'm hopeful this logic is clear enough most actors don't meaningfully arm missiles with nukes at those ranges even if the treaty is dead.
As to whether the relative risk of an emboldened China contributing to generalized nuclear tension is greater than the risk of a conventional fight over Taiwan escalating to nuclear exchange(s), that I'm not quite sure. I think a purely nuclear POV probably says that direct global powers at war is the higher risk. As to whether China believes that Taiwan is so 1000% "China proper" that they'd be willing to risk using nukes? On paper they do, but I think it's mostly clear that in practice they don't.
Yeah, I think there's something to be said for the argument that increased nuclear weapons reduces war by increasing risk...but also there's something to be said for the argument that reducing war by increasing risk is still increasing risk.
I feel compelled to point out that such treaties left SLBMs in place. You can fire a sub-launched ICBM on a depressed trajectory, and you could probably put those ~anywhere you could put land-based missiles. That's not to say the treaty did nothing - Trident II is going to be more expensive than a Tomahawk on a truck, or something - but for better or for worse the US and possibly the USSR could still have put people in a 5-minute decision dilemma.
I definitely wonder if a China that's strong and aggressive enough to take Taiwan might become the same China that says "you know what? I don't think you've got the guts for it, and we have missile defense" in some spat with a nuclear Vietnam or Japan a decade down the road.
That's fair, but usage of subs is a substantially higher bar both operationally as well as in the decision-making of things. Notably, an SLBM launch tends to generate substantially fewer false positives (as an absolute number, more relevant here for nuclear risk) than INF-type intermediate-range missiles (which already proliferate not just in presence but usage as well) simply because it generates dramatically fewer positives to begin with. Not that e.g. China ever participated in said INF treaty, though, but the logic still applies to actually being willing to mount, or actually mounting, these types with nuclear warheads. I hope. Unfortunately AFAIK their IRBMs and the like are capable of quick swap, and recent trends towards a launch-on-warn, hair-trigger profile bodes poorly. So the hope comes in the form of: China being smart enough to never ever get caught mounting them (or ideally even thinking about doing so). Thankfully due to physical realities, mainland US is far enough away from Russia that this kind of thing is, well not quite a non-issue, but less worrisome, so maybe it's half-moot.
So yeah, in theory those short windows still exist, but risk-wise the two things are orders of magnitude apart.
The SK-Japan-China axis is especially hard to gauge, because to be honest none of them have really managed to set aside historical grievances or fears. China is big and scary, Japan did some horrific stuff in WW2, SK doesn't want to be the little kid on the block anymore, and then there's ancient history too, lol. I lowkey think that dynamic is way harder to predict in the next 50 years than NK is. Still my feeling is the same: fewer actors -> less risk.
Bringing up Japan is a good point. If Japan as seems likely were to help the US defend Taiwan, that would fundamentally change the Chinese-Japanese relationship far beyond the current trends. However, I'm skeptical that even a more warlike Japan would get their own nukes. Nuclear sharing is the most on the table and that's not that weird - it's still a US-Chinese dynamic. I will grant that what I've ignored here is the substantially closer physical proximity to these allies and time zone issues means that nuclear dynamics on this local axis (with presumed remote US decision making) is a major challenge that can't really be mitigated easily.
Along the lines of spreading nukes around to allies, if the US actually were to follow through and let Saudi Arabia get nukes, that would be absolutely disastrous. That's in my mind the most likely path to countries like Vietnam wanting to sign up too.
Yes, I think you're right that shore-launched conventional ballistic missiles are much more common. I believe the South Koreans have tactical non-nuclear SLBMs but you're right about the lower "false positive" set.
Maybe! Japan can likely produce them quite quickly, and they seem to view Taiwan as a red line of sorts. If Taiwan did fall I think they might seriously reconsider their stance on nuclear weapons.
I think the rumored understanding is that Saudi Arabia already has nukes, they are just stored in Pakistan.
In both of the above cases, though, I think the nuclear breakout is unlikely unless the US demonstrates the inability or unwillingness to be an adequate replacement. So the US shellacking Iran right now probably has made the Saudis feel more comfortable leaving their nuclear weapons parked elsewhere. Similarly, it seems to me that Japan is unlikely to reach for nuclear weapons as long as Taiwan remains outside of CCP control.
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