welcome, everyone to the woodrow wilson center. we are congressionally chartered scholars, ship driven and fiercely nonpartisan. and we are also happy to welcome all of you here today. and c-span, which is also filming this for their book talk. so thank you all at wilson. we are proud of our scholarship we use it to power our discussion of the critical challenges facing today. rob litvack snow book focuses on one of the most immediate challenges triple or instability and nuclear competition among united states, russia and china. best of for all of you and for

people who are participating online. i want you to know this book is available as an e-book for free from the and you can find it online on our website. so for this discussion i am very to be sharing the stage with the best of the best. rob litvack is the wilson center senior vice president and director of international security. his strategic vision has really shaped the wilson center itself in his deep knowledge and critical thinking, has shaped many of us in this room understand nuclear issues, nonproliferation, his books on rogue states, u.s. foreign policy on managing risks and, on nuclear crises with north korea and iran have defined debates in washington and beyond. and that's no surprise because rob served on the national

council staff as director for nonproliferation and as a consultant to los alamos national laboratory. now his book goes straight to the core questions are facing and i really appreciate the opportunity to. get your insight now to help us ask the right questions. we've asked david sanger to be part of this panel. he's been asking the right questions throughout his career at the new york times and he has been its white house and national security correspondent. he's also a distinguished fellow here at wilson. his most recent book was the perfect weapon war, sabotage and fear in the cyber age, which reads like a thriller for those of who haven't read it yet. and you should get started because his next book will be coming out. he's working on it now. it is on the return of great power competition. so the synergy between two is really clear. i'm going to start with a little bitty and that is that in may of 2022, henry kissinger said that

we were living in a totally new era cold war dynamics are being reshaped by emergent tri polarity. can we draw from the lessons we've learned and apply them to risk management for the future? and that question open and many others. i'm going to turn the floor over, david. here's how to work. he's going to lead a discussion with rob for a few minutes and then we'll open the floor to questions and also questions from our online participants. if you are with us online, please look for the submit a question box and then it will pop here and i'll be able to see it and ask that question as part of the discussion. so, david over to you. great. well, thank you very much, robin. and thank you, rob, for giving us not the this book bipolar instability but your whole series of books on this. and also it's just great to be

here at the wilson center done working on my my third book at the wilson center. second one with robin down the hall to drop every once in a while and make sure that i'm typing and if it's late it's not my right and but big thanks as well to rob who make sure that the wilson center not only is on the edge of scholarship, but is right on the news that it's not simply going off in directions that are of great academic interest, but also of great practical purpose. and that is true the the case, maybe even so than on your iran and north korea, which were urgent at the time. you wrote them and remain so today with bipolar instability because as suggested, there is bigger single problem i think facing national security

officials in in washington than trying to figure out the changed relationship between russia and china, the nature of cooperation between russia and china, and what it means that we're seeing an expansion of the chinese arsenal and expansion that the public estimates of the pentagon suggest will bring them from their minimum deterrent of 300 weapons currently 200 to 300 to about a thousand by the end of this decade, and to 1500 by 2035, which be coincidentally exact, we around the limits that the us and the russians are facing with new start and new starting expires in under 1000 days. with no real prospect. it looks like something being negotiated to replace it.

rob is so the news that my wonderful colleague bill broad published today in the science times part section of the times a great called the terror of threes and in fact it's the three body problem that rob is to address here today. so rob, as think about this and think about the fact that it was only ten years ago less, really that barack obama talked about, redesigning us strategy to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in american foreign policy that we find ourselves in this situation where the very real risk heading the other way. so talk us a little bit through the central thesis of bipolar instability, which is to why is

it that introducing a third major strategic adversary since china has had nuclear weapons now, since 1954, is so complicated. it's not immediately obvious to everyone why it undoes so much that we know about deterrence or that we think know well. good day to all of you. thank you, robin, for that kind introduction and. david, for your participation today in your presence at the wilson center. you know, as a fellow let me address your question by. i think the obvious starting point let me unpack the title of my publication, tri polar instability. china became a nuclear weapons state in 1964, but long an arsenal that was small to that of the united states and then soviet union. as you mentioned, china is now under xi jinping's modernization program, which is comprehensive economic, military a new, assertive political role encompasses a drive toward

numerical parity with the united with the united states and russia, probably in the 2030s, as you indicated, that system level change, a shift from bipolarity to try polarity is compounded three destabilizing developments. first, competition is extending into new domains of cyberspace and outer space. you've written extensively about that, david. second, there are no guardrails. there are arms control, architecture of the cold war era has dismantled to the point of near so that the competition among the major powers is essentially unconstrained now. and third, as know from the headlines there, ongoing crises that a war in ukraine and a potential in taiwan. these developments on the system level change and these drivers of potential escalation in a in a crisis are eroding foundations

of strategic stability. during the cold war, the foundation of strategic stability was a stable balance of terror between the united states and the soviet. after the cuban missile crisis. the united states and the soviet union each deployed secure invulnerable systems that created mutual vulnerability and a assured retaliatory capability. both sides, which was the hallmark of mutual vulnerability, created a and an easy but stable, stable peace. the united states never adjusted to the vulnerability of that era, but it was the foundation. what with the balance of power, with the balance terror did, was to deflect competition and to peripheral areas. the so-called third world vietnam, afghanis and the other crisis points during the cold war in. my central argument is that the development as i mentioned, the system level change, plus the

new developments cyber in outer space, the lack of constraints as arms control collapses and ongoing crises are recasting the dangers of the cold war period that the balance of terror is less stable as. the incentives for preemptive in a crisis are being wreaked, created, and the stakes are no longer peripheral. it's not about afghanistan or parts of the of the soviet union or, parts of what we then call the third world. these are vital interests. ukraine is the key to the future of europe. taiwan is central in northeast asia and is of declared vital interest to both to both sides. so the balance of terror is less stable and the stakes are now vital. that's the the elements of tri polar instability and in the title of my work that's great. and that us right to sort the central question so. the argument of the book is that you can't simply export and that

understanding of mutual vulnerability and assured destruction which was the key to that the two way contest with soviet union and then of course with its successor state. because once you add in china and this uneasy relationship that they have with russia, you get ernie moniz said to bill broad was a conceptual problem and i read you the rest of his quote here. i want to do that to sort of correlate with your argument. we've to change the traditional approach, equalizing weapons or strategic delivery systems, but how to that is still unclear now since this has emerged, i've talked it with a handful of members of the senate and, a few members of the house who deal in

strategic we deal in national security issues. and i think it's fair to say it's one of the reasons i'm so glad that you this book that the understand being of the instability that's being inserted is pretty weak right now. so give us fairly concrete sense of why this is such a different deterrence problem and how it is, for example, that we might of some frameworks to address it in. let me pass it this way that there's there's a numeric dimension to this which you focus on like numbers of strategic warheads. but as i laid out in my initial, you know, comment, there are drivers of escalation. and it's in a context where we there's no dialog ongoing with either of these parties with russia. we're in the middle of a war, it's not the time to have that

kind of conversation with. china and have tipped in my colleague daly who heads our kissinger institute. we don't have common terms of reference even with the chinese. we don't have the shared history with them. our key dates. 1914, 1962 don't have the same to them. their concept of deterrence. robert was telling me if you deconstruct the characters that go into their their word, deterrence includes not only what we think of as deterrence like a threat to prevent an action, but also has a compelling aspect to it which could open the door to coercive diplomacy. so the the framework we're not operating from a common conceptual and then once that if is not enough of a hurdle, you have to look at the which is much more complicated than the cold war you're dealing with kind of the numeric dimension of it. what does it mean if china builds up to numeric parity with united states and russia?

but it's in a context where there these drivers of escalation that i that i mentioned at the at outset and this creates for three types of escalation inadvertent accidental escalation. and we had a number of false alerts during the cold war that almost to nuclear use you could have escalation where side takes an action that the other side doesn't view doesn't view as escalatory but the other side for example, china in an opening of a conflict. david they might go after u.s. satellites in space or introduce malware. and they not may not think of that. it's it's escalatory because. no, no one's been killed. bluntly. but it would be it would be significantly escalatory. so there's that risk of inadvertent escalation and the third category of escalation is deliberate or instrumental escalation. and i think this is really i think where the debate is most central in terms of the current constellation of factors.

the nobel prize winner winner, schelling, tom schelling, talked a competition in risk taking. and if you look at how the nuclear balance is shifting in tandem with conventional military balances, most most acutely in northeast, it could leave china to shift its calculus of risk taking. i think it could could do certain things in the taiwan context that had not hitherto done. and russia, and i'm sure will turn to it, is facing, you know, a similar simultaneous crises, a domestic crisis that played out over the weekend, but also the front in the donbass, which is undergoing a ukrainian counter-offensive, which creates a point for putin on kind of escalation or not. well, that's what i wanted to turn to next, though, i have to say that your main mention of schelling, who the original sort of theorist in the cold war for this, brought back memories to

me of really difficult final exams that i did not really to go revisit. so let's dig a little deeper on russia. as you know before. note in the book, we've had a lot of things have been unraveling the nuclear balance sheets with russia alone and separate out the china problem so we've had the demise a series of treaties that already happening before. president trump took office but it accelerate during that time i mentioned that new start which was extended five years at the very beginning of the biden administration has no provision in it for another renewal. so you'd have to start negotiating from the ground up. they started those preliminary discussions before war broke out. they haven't had any in 16 months. the to use tactical weapons by

putin at various points led president biden to say at a fundraiser in york last october that we were the closest we had been an armageddon moment at any time since the cuban missile crisis, which i think kind of shocked the people standing around james murdoch's living room with a nice glass of white wine in their hands who hadn't really thought that they were coming for an armageddon speech. so even if china not revising its strategy would you argue that what held balance of terror together during cold war as you referred to it would be falling apart anyway? that's a great question. you know, we're in a situation we're in in the midst of essentially two cold wars, one with russia and one with china.

and these new cold war are playing at a time when these the foundations of strategic stability that emerged from the old cold are being eroded and and are with nothing to supplant it. if there's no dialog. and i think one of the questions you implicit in your question is, is this truly a triangular relationship? and i, in the study, i talk about i don't go for astrophysics like the in the william broad piece. i go for just plain geometry. and i say that it's more about an isosceles triangle than an equilateral triangle, that it was never truly, you know, equal, that you, you know, you just think of it, you know, china economically as, a $20 trillion economy, the united states has a $26 trillion economy. russia's economy. is $2 trillion the size of italy, no denigration of italy. it's sort of, you know, in this

millennium not a major, you know, world power in terms of of arsenals, russia and, the united states have had a large, you know, arsenals during the cold war to the point beyond kind of rational relation to any strategy and has moved from the minimum deterrent that you mentioned to, you know, approach, you know, parity. i think that that in in terms of framing now the question is is this truly tri or? is it really does the united states really face bipolar programs, a russia problem and a china problem? and i think that the door to that latter optic is a door door. i've just a mixed metaphor of optics and doors there. but any way that you get my point that russia and china, you know, are not states at this time, 1969, when they almost went to war, they were so that part of the asymmetry it's in in

this way it's not an equal eyeball triangle is because russia and china combined both capabilities and hostile adversarial intent toward the united states and the united states has to deal with them in those terms. but there's no one in moscow or beijing zembla thinking of like, gee, what does what does the three pure problem mean for us? because the prospect of conflict between russia and china know is remote at this point. what i find fascinating about argument, rob, is that there isn't really agreement yet that hear in the strategic community about the fundamental question you raise which is do we have tri polar problem or do we have to bipolar? i noticed that sig hecker, the who, of course, ran los alamos national lab and then was at stanford for many years, said in the same piece this morning, i don't see russia and china getting together on nuclear strategies. i see this as two bipolar. on the other hand, we've got a

china and russia who have about a relationship with no limits they've done military exercises together, not nuclear exercises, but military exercises. they both clearly see an advantage in being our antagonist. could you imagine a situation in which they put together a common nuclear, even if they both reserved all their launch authorities and so forth to themselves? well, as de gaulle put it, you know, states don't have friends. they have interests. and we've seen in the china, russia, really and previously the soviet relationship, it's and waned currently their interests align. i think putin and she pulled a reverse kissinger of sorts in 1969 kissinger nixon you know

initiated an opening to china to to china to outflank the then rising soviet putin and xi have come together to address the for the issue of of of american hyperpower. but you know, the the the no limits sounds like know hyperbole that defies kind of historical you know experience they have a long at times contested border there's this asymmetry of in their economies where in china's 20 to 20 trillion russia's a you know two 2 trillion i guess russia's from selling oil to natural gas to europe to sort of trying to shift the two to china as a market. so there's a convergence of of of interest there. but could could this extend into the nuclear ira putin russia transferred early warning systems to. in 2018. this was in the press china a

launch on warning doctrine and we have a history that i alluded to of false alerts. so that's a real concern. and would be a topic on any strategic stability dialog with with china. but and this is where the numbers in what if you took the chinese arsenal and added it to the the emerging chinese arsenal and you added to the existing russian arsenal, does that mean that the united states should have a force equal to kind of to act, so to speak? you know, that would have be equal to russia and china and you get into the numbers, the perrine all issue that goes back to the cold war era which the rand corporation, alan and and others in a different historical context. how much is enough and i think while the united states has two thirds of its nuclear deterrent essentially at sea in in existing technologies, invulnerable submarines that

could more than, you know, mount a devastating blow on russia and china, putting you know, basically both of them out of existence as functioning societies. and we are under a threat, the commensurate threat from them. that has been this is an felicitous, mutually assured destruction, the balance of terror as a foundation of stability, which is hard adjust to. so psychologically, i don't think the numbers per say make the huge difference mean it it you know stalin said quantity quality. you know at times you yes the numbers going up is is is a factor, you know, affecting strategic stability. but might i think in the publication i look at these drivers of escalation one that i that i started out with cyber and outer space no constraints, no common dialog or and with china, no common conceptual

framework we're operating from. and third on an ongoing war and i'd like to come back to the putin ukraine escalatory issue that you you alluded to and a potential crisis in in in china with china overall over taiwan. and there the conventional in northeast asia is shifting. at the same time, the nuclear balance is shifting towards china and the question there in terms of of managing relations is, could this lead to increased chinese risk taking? robert daley has a nice formulation where if the united states does the necessary prevent an erosion of the conventional balance in northeast asia and that will that's a heavy lift and maintain the the the nuclear balance the balance of terror that we're not to change china's long term objectives. you know they're all in on taiwan as part china and are

kind of anxious to move forward on it. but we can change their calculus of decision. so they will say not year, you know, and we push it push off and buying time is important in diplomacy that's the the taiwan been happy to kind of say more on ukraine well let's do that you know when you read into your essay you have this really fascinating section that discusses the basic principles document that came out in 2020 under which russia would employ nuclear weapons. a lot of this believe was done by general, who's been in the news just a little bit this weekend. and you say in here the nuclear putin's nuclear threats during the war should be viewed in the context of these principles and one of them is an existential threat to the state. and we haven't seen that in russia in some time until

saturday saturday. but you make the point that that is in his mind, qanon in this with the survival of his regime and that russian saber rattling is provoking western fears. is it your guesswork now that we see a paranoid vladimir putin, who now has discovered he's got more to be paranoid about with some good reason likely to turn back to his nuclear arsenal the way he has when things were going badly in. one of the conditions you've alluded to, which under russian doctrine the country would consider nuclear use as an existential threat to, the state which he holds is synonymous with putin regime. and this is where the ukraine war and, the future of the putin regime, become connected vessels. and we've tried to pass it and say that the united states said regime change is not an

objective in with the addendum, but normal relations with russia are not possible as long as putin is in power. that's a real contradiction from the use of word from the soviet, you know, lexicon the director, central intelligence, william has said that a is word desperate. putin might consider nuclear nuclear use. and one of the conditions has been a collapse of the of of the military front in ukraine or. it's a really an end or some threat to to the regime back back back in the kremlin or crimea he's added in crimea he added in crimea and i think this is brings to what happened over the to the over the weekend you know as they say in law and order tv show ripped from today's headlines. and i don't have an answer to your question i but let me just kind of analytically lay out

where where the is and where the fisheries and prior to this weekend i think there was a there was one view was, you know, sort of governance driven by this view of a despot might act is that if zelensky went and the lewinsky government really went, it tried to reestablish the 2014 boundaries of ukraine that. that could be a condition under which putin would consider the use of a tactical nuclear weapon as a shock to the system, say western governments. you need to get control over zelensky and rein him in and bring this conflict to an end. the biden administration, the national security, jake sullivan, using the metaphor, he said, we're not going to slice the salami. you know, nuclear uses nuclear use and. even a low yield weapon would be considered a nuclear laid down a deterrent to deterrence marker.

but that view of of of putin russia and escalation was there needed to be care with ukrainian war objectives because if they if they went for a return to you know, status quo antebellum back to 2014 that could trigger russian putin's nuclear use since the weekend when putin facing an existential threat apparently and it's opaque and it's playing out in real time back down, there's been a view that look happened when he faced an existential threat he probably kind of got outside. he made some type of a compromise to ameliorate the situation. he didn't immediately didn't immediately escalate that that assessment then led to has led to those two calls for the west to be all in on ukraine's kind of maximalist geographic

aspirations. that's the pole of the debate right now. i don't have an answer to it. one version is that if if if, if ukraine goes for it, it could trigger escalation. other is that putin has shown that he will accommodate to an existential threat and that the united states should not sell and nato's should not self deter by trying to rein in in zelensky in this counteroffensive. but i don't have an answer to that question. we're getting near the moment for to come in with questions of their own. me just ask you one or two more because so fascinating. okay so imagine you're xi jinping right now. i realized most moment, most you get up and say, what if was running china and you've got the americans on case to start up some kind of discussion. okay the first thing you think is they've got 1550 deployed and several thousand stored.

we've got 200 to 300 deployed building silos. it's going to be a decade before maybe more before we're even up to their levels. what possible incentive does he have to enter that discussion until he has his arsenal is roughly the size of the us arsenal or the russian arsenal, or until it's as invulnerable because of submarines and other capability these as those are he had minimal incentive maintain a minimum deterrent under. you know, chinese making is opaque we don't know why china decided to build up to parity it be one version of what's going on is it's a natural extension of xi jinping's comprehensive modernized nation program. these this is the of being a

great power superpower the world. but i think we also have be taking into account what we do and how it's perceived in that there were one line of strategic analysis in our debate when. china had a small nuclear arsenal was great let's take it out in the first strike during a crisis we'd be able to dictate we the united states could dictate a pattern of stability on china. they read these journals in beijing and presumably and they have the capabilities to to build up an. irony is that after the space shuttle exploded, the united states was reliant on chinese space launch vehicles to put our satellites into orbit. so they have a very robust program to build long range, you know, missiles. and they they it's not a heavy lift for them to ramp up. what can we talk to them about? i think that that we have be modest in our expectations it

would be useful we had strategic stability talks the chinese have as dude their minister of defense i believe is under us sanction and. that's a bit of a problem in terms of a dialog from chinese perspective. they view the guardrails we're talking about as pure containment, pure containment and american rationale to lock in and, you know, it's narrative and their they certainly put together a history empirical data points to support their view of of of of history i think what can we do from where we're at now if we i think strategic stability talks with russia, with with china should be on issues, concepts of deterrence and drivers of escalation. so there's clarity, understanding, and we're not to probably we're not entering an era where there will be new arms control agreements, you know, per se.

but we may be able to develop tacit understandings about china. did an anti-satellite test that generated thousands of of space debris in low-earth in our own space international station has to dodge around some of these these these pieces it generated interest good science fiction movies as well the space debris thing it's, a no win interest to pollute space. low-earth orbit with anti-satellite tests. that would be a constraint would assist in kind of moderate in any temptation in a crisis to start attacks on satellites because wouldn't have tested systems that would allow you to do that artificial which is a topic that i know you're addressing david you've done your reporting and it's and you in your new book that's out there on the horizon and under accidental escalation, we had episodes during the cold war where there were false alerts like flocks of geese that were

were were mistakenly viewed incoming american missiles in. 83 and in the then soviet union if you combined launch on warning with early warning systems that are known to have had. and as the line from dr. strangelove went after, there was the attack on the then soviet union. a general criticism said i wouldn't knock the whole program because of one failure. well. if we have one failure, there would issue it would be, you know, catastrophic. if you add to that and, this is for chapter you probably haven't even written yet. a.i. artificial intelligence to automatic launch systems. i say no in terms of the potential, you know, threat for for escalation. that's why the biden administration in a smart move is laid out. norm of conduct to manage a artificial intelligence in the

military sphere. and one of the norms was that i don't think anyone would take issue with is that a human being should be the chain of decision making on nuclear use. so let's go for norms as a vehicle. and the united states has to do its we have to play out our hand and and to reinforce deterrence and extended deterrence, which i know is of interest to. robin one variant of deterrence we must most of us recognize deterrence. deterrence by punishment, the threat of punishment if you do this then that. but another the other variant of of of deterrence is deterrence by denial, which is that are taken to confound and to block the efforts of the adversary so that if we harden our infrastructure to protect against malware attacks, if we harden our satellites to make less vulnerable to probing by an adversary, toughen our our

targets that could be a deterrent for saying you you're an attack wouldn't work. exactly. couldn't be sure that it would work. and and launching it would would would would you know start a process that might where they might lose control or rather a last point here you raised a i there is a lot of discussion about making that the first area that you walled off for this but the last thing i wanted to ask you about is the use by china and russia now of hypersonic delivery which is a way basically evade our protections add to the instability. absolutely i mean emerging technologies that and is where this picks up the comment i think of former secretary about you know numbers and concepts and categories. hypersonics are a new category it can be used, you know, suborbital and deliver, you know, an ordinance at a distance, you know, in tens of

minutes, which decreases time for decision makers to make decisions. and it's being tested in both convince and potentially nuclear mode. china and russia. the united states has said ours are only for conventional ordnance. it's unclear with china and russia. so if they see a hypersonic system coming in which can evade you defenses and strategic defense has been kind of the black hole of defense in terms of money to try to get the desired outcome. is it a nuclear system coming in or a conventional one and that blurring conventional and nuclear which arises in a number of contexts like we the co-location of conventional and nuclear systems. so if you're talking a conventional system that's co-located with nuclear, you may be escalating it without. and barry posen from mit with wilson wrote a book and really didn't than the lead thinking on

this inadvertent escalation from the co-mingling of conventional nuclear systems. so so the motto of the wilson center to peace might unofficial might an unofficial motto is to peace. long may it require study. we are. there are a lot of challenges there, analytical and otherwise. and the wilson center's role is to promote policy relevant scholarship, which is what i've tried to do in this publication and it very successfully. so robert, let me turn this back you for your own questions and those of our audience. thank you so for the audience in the room. your moment is coming. right? so think about this get your questions together. got a bunch of them online so that you've got competition meanwhile while you're thinking i'm going to just ask one of my own questions to robert, drawing on my time. some of you know, i was our acting ambassador in berlin and i am especially attuned therefore to how our allies rely on the extended deterrence that

couples our security, the ability to resist coercion. and you talk about this a bit in your book. can you tell us more about the hardware and software needed to keep that extended deterrence going. and my question is we doing enough? great question. and let me preface it with a historical point of reference. right now, there are nine nuclear weapons states. the five permanent members of the security council that were brought into the nuclear treaty as nuclear weapon states. there are three states, india, pakistan, israel, which their sovereign right and never joined the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. you had north korea became a nuclear weapon state in 2006. if treated differently because it was in the npt and cheated within it. and then you have iran, which has a nuclear threshold state. we don't live in a world where there are 30 or 40 nuclear weapons states. and that wasn't over that assumption wasn't always the in the 1950s. there were studies by the rand

corporation in 1962, president gave a speech at the u.n. general assembly. he talked about a world of 30 or 40 nuclear weapon states. that led to the negotiation as the culminated the nuclear inoperative nation treaty. we don't live in that world and one of the major reasons why we don't and there's an established literature on this is the us extended deterrence commitment why germany doesn't think it needs its own nuclear weapon. japan doesn't. south korea doesn't. the nuclear umbrella. the national security adviser, jake sullivan, talked about the hardware and, the software of extended deterrence. so the during the ukraine war the united states naito argument did its dual use nuclear capable aircraft in in europe. there are questions about northeast asia where the united states, russia and the then-soviet union withdrew two tactical nuclear weapons from the korean peninsula. and there's a question now about whether how the united states should address the nuclear

balance in northeast asia to address this competition, risk taking that i alluded to, these are the china and taiwan the nuclear piece of it. what what is necessary there to bolster japan and south korea? what can we do? we can do more. that's the hard work of it, so to speak. the software side, the consultations, which are institutionalized and the nuclear, you know, group within planning group in the naito which you were working in brussels as well, are conversant all about that they've it's about to go the natal summit meeting covering that we're i'm nuclear planning discussions are going to be point you know important point on the agenda we don't have that type institutionalized framework with japan you know in south korea. but there are discussions with them to talk about, you know, nuclear contingencies, what can be done to bolster deterrence taking into account japan's constitution, which places limitations on their ability to

develop systems and south korea, where there is a debate and certain disjunction actually now between popular opinion on developing an independent capability and the south korean governments commitment to kind of its relationship with the united states and the the extended deterrence, you know, commitment. so that's is are we doing enough? it just requires constant tending and adjustments as circumstances change. and i think those circumstances have emphatically changed in the last year. yeah. okay. all right. for those in the room, this is your moment right. we have a microphone. so this will this will eventually be coming your way. and i'll take the question here. but dave ottaway here at the woodrow wilson center. rob, what is your assessment of putin moved tactical nuclear weapons belarus and is this something you think the naito or

the u.s. should be responding to. well putin, who operates from his own, you know, historical network of grievance and the place of russia in, the world and he's made a number of assertions that russia has a special commitment to russians outside of the russian federation. russia does not have natural boundaries. there are 25 million or so russians in other parts in adjacent countries. and he's declared kind of an extraterritorial commitment to defend those. i remember from the cold war period when the russians, the then soviets would say, we feel surrounded by nato and china, you know, the quip back was, if had 11 time zones, i'd feel surrounded to and why belarus? i mean, belarus a you know, let's call as it is, it's a vassal state of of of russia.

lukashenko has kind of limited for autonomous action. it's sort of in if you want to go there in kind mafia kind of matter, you know, analogies, it's one of the five families he's out there, the belarus, you know, portfolio and the notion that that belarus would autonomous control over russian nuclear systems really kind of beggars belief they would remain under control of russians. they've been deployed. putin, of course, in his own kind of you know, this is on framework of of, you know, grievance and russia's in the world basically said we are doing nothing different than what the united states has done by deploying tactical nuclear weapons in europe with dual use. you know, dual use system. you know, so, again, a bad point because it is, in fact, what exactly. yes.

yeah. before i take another audience question, don't worry. i'm coming back to your i'm going to give you an online question. it it comes from from a colleague at king's college and and also because it is very specific in what it is proposing. so i thought i would i would give this to you with from clare whalen with china under an arms chasing mentality, do you believe that they could be persuaded to in arms control discussion and if the u.s. and russia were to agree on a middling number that the three pole poles could settle on and said let's say hard at 750, you talked a little bit about about the disparities in forces. i'm going to give you her proposal, too. well, that's a great question. and in david kind alluded to it right now. there's the new start treaty, which had its lineage back to the cold war era through different iterations which limit the united states and to 1550

deploy both, you know, systems russia has under putin has suspended aspects the of compliance with that in terms of consultations and inspections. but russia significantly has not abrogated treaty as in know signaling a step of building up beyond 1550. the that's that's been posed you know online i think is really a central one as we move forward and look to 2026 and what will happen then in i heard one analyst say that arms is dead, dead, dead. you know, one dead. what would have been enough? the others are redundant but to make the make the emphatic i think that you know back to you know countries have interests you know and even with the tortured history and china has been party to it and that they have numerically inferior so

asking them join and lock in american superiority is a real concern for them but could just analytically and i would defer to the china watchers like robert daly you know on whether this is realistic or not. i could see a chinese interest in wanting to lock the united and russia into a lower number rather than having just unconstrained, you know, so that it's analytically possible to see how we could get there politically, i don't know. and i end the part of the study with. a nice quote from from from who was challenged like you crack the atom and you unravel the of the atom and yet you can't come up with a system to manage the control of the of atom so that we don't destroy ourselves, to destroy humanity and. an einstein, you know, quipped back, that's because, you know, physics is easier than politics. and we're now in the realm of like what you can analytically out. and i really that that was i

think the approach in the book here it's not a hard advocacy it's trying to lay out the analytical you know landscape and the fissures and the debates are and what would be the prerequisite it's for policy makers to make decisions such as the one reflected in the question which is a great i'm not sure the 750 number would be the one that locked into it might be a higher number but i think the concept of the concept is is analytically valid, whether politically we can get there or not, i think is the open question. okay. all right. so we are in the room and i'm going to take that right down here. yeah, that's you. hi, robert. my name is yegor. until last month, i was a fellow, the wilson center, the kissinger institute. now u.s. corresponding for the south china morning post. my question is regarding the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in ukraine by russia

many china experts, analysts. they say that if putting this size to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, ukraine, that would be the red line for beijing, because according to the core principle like foreign policy, quote principles, nuclear weapons should be for deterrence not to attack another country, but also like territorial integrity, it was supposed to be of the core principles for the chinese as we think that that's not the case since they've been aligning with russia since the invasion of ukraine. and i was wondering first, if you that china would indeed side with the west if russia deploys nuclear weapons in ukraine. and secondly, if that would give a reason to get directly in the conflict, arguing the nuclear contamination would be sort of like a direct attack. sure. like me or allies. thank you. well, that contingency would

really put the no limits formulation to the test. i think that there would be a limit. the chinese have already alluded to it. there have been meetings with the chinese and indian leaders with where they'd contact with putin, where i mean, they don't use our terminology red line, but where they made it clear that nuclear nuclear use would be a threshold that would be a create a whole new, you know, international reality. so i think that's been that's something that the russians, you know, have to take into account. but point about, you know, territorial integrity russia has now annexed the provinces you know blossomed in the ukraine and of clara claim that they are part of the russian federation. so if and this is the nub russia says we'll use nuclear weapons if there's a threat to the state which they hold is synonymous with putin regime. and that state also now

encompasses these this irredentist that russia had against against ukraine. and that's that creates the zone of uncertainty on an escalation. i tried you know, i characterized where the debate is now of whether of how the situation in the battlefield could affect, you know. putin's calculus of deterrence, having just been through, you know, weekend where there was a surprise existential threat to the survival of his regime. now, for those in the room, you're going to have a chance to talk to rob after this. so i'm going to take one last question from from our online contributors, and that is from former ambassador laura kennedy, who asks, do you see, the ability of the p5 process to tackle some of these issues that you have eloquently laid out. after all, experts have now spent years developing a common glossary discussing doctrine maybe baby steps, but at this

difficult time, it's the only game town. that's a great question. you know, the p5 plus one mechanism was championed by the wilson center own baroness catherine to bring about the iran nuclear deal and the the prior administration, u.s. administration from that deal. there had been hopes that that model could be built upon to address other issues. and even when ukraine after 2014, when and david spent a lot of time in eating chocolate covering these meetings as i recall. pulling late nights even during that period, russia, china cooperated with the united in bringing about the nuclear the iran nuclear deal because they had a shared interest in constraining iran's nuclear ambitions. i think we're the middle of a war in ukraine. and there have been we're at a nadir point with with china.

so i don't know what the immediate practical possibilities are of a p5 plus one right now, russia is as a pariah, so it would not be not be included, but think that on a pragmatic basis and as you put my cards on the table, people people talk about what your theory of international relations, which is really kind of a disguised question about ideology. i'm a card carrying kind of what works and what's in our interest. and we should we should try it. and that's what's kind of motivated the analysis here. we should look for opportunities to explore and how this mechanism could be used. but we're not. there were two nader point with which china need to do some rehabilitative, rehabilitative military work to get to that point where we could even resume a conversation with china about other issues. just a footnote on. back in the cold war, china was in of proliferation was a more

the more the better or more the heart. you know they of shrugged at increased numbers of nuclear weapon states and china transferred you know know how to to to pakistan which found its way to to to the libya. the chinese have really gotten religion, so to speak, nuclear issues and recognized, you know. they they've they've taken proliferation nonproliferation on board as a as an interest. they've always been as helpful as they could be on north korea. but i think that that there is some predicate there for engaging them certainly on on these issues. but it's going to be a steep climb. thank you. so i want to thank both of our panelists rob writing this book and making the geometry for us. david for asking all the right questions and guiding us through the through the book and and posing some questions from your own experience as well. so for those of you who are here in person book is available

outside in hardcopy. it is also available online, an e-book on the wilson center website. so do please go there. no excuses for not reading it right. and thanks again to c-span, also featuring us. thank you. we been. than