tv every sunday on c-span to watch nonfiction authors discuss their books. television for serious readers. watch them all online anytime a booktv.org. you can also find us on twitter, facebook and youtube apple tv. >> welcome, everyone to the woodrow wilson center. we are n congressionally charted , scholarship driven and fiercely nonpartisan. we are also happy to welcome all of you here today and c-span which is also filming this for their book talk. thank you all. at wilson, we are especially proud of our scholarship. we use it to power our discussions of the critical challenges facing uss today. .... .... 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 for this discussion i am very proud to share the stage with the best of the best. rob will back is this director of international security studies, his strategic vision has really shaped the wilson center excel.in addition, his deep knowledge and critical thinking has shaped how many of us in this room understand nuclear issues and nonproliferation. his previous books on look states any u.s. one policy, managing nuclear risk and nuclear crisis with north korea and iran have defined debates

in washington and beyond. rob served on the national security council staff as director of nonproliferation and consultant to the los alamos national laboratory. 's latest book go straight to the core questions we are facing and i really appreciate the opportunity to get your insight. to help us ask the right questions we've asked david sanger to be a part of the panel. is that asking the right questions throughout his career at the new york times and he's been has white house and national security correspondent he's also distinguished fellow here at wilson his most recent book was the perfect weapon for sabotage and fear in the cyber age which reads like a thriller for those of you who haven't read it yet. you should get f started becaus his next book will be coming out he's working on it now it's on the return of great power

competition. the synergy between these is really clear, i'm going to start with a little bitty quote that is in may 2022 henry kissinger sound we were living in a totally new era. cold war dynamics are being reshaped by a merchant tribe larry. can we draw from the lessons we learned d and apply them to ris management for the future? with that question open and many others are going to turn the floor over to david, he's going to lead a discussion with rob for a few minutes then we will open the floor to questions and all questions from our online participants. if you are participating with us online please look for the submit a question box and it will pop up and i will be able to see it and ask that question as part of the discussion. david, over to you >> thank you very much robin and thank you rob giving us not only this book "tricolor

instability" but your whole series of books on this topic. also it's just great to be here at the wilson center. i'm working on my third book at the wilson center. the second one with robin down the hall. to drop by every once in a while to make sure i'm actually typing. >> it's late it's not my fault. [laughter] >> big thanks as well to rob who makes sure that the wilson center not only is on the edge scholarship but right on the news. that it's not simply going off in directions that are of great academic interests but also a great practical purpose. that is truly y the case may be even more so than on your iran and north korea books that remain today with tricolor

instability, as robin suggested, it is no bigger single problem i think facing national security officials in washington then trying to figure out the change relationship between russia and china. the nature of cooperation between russia and china. and what it means that we are seeing such expansion of the chinese arsenal. and expansion that the public estimates of the pentagon suggests will bring them from their minimum determined of 300 weapons currently 200 to 300 to about 1000 at the end of this decade. north 1500 by 2035 which would be coincidently exactly around the limits the u.s. and the russians are facing now with new start. and new start expires another 1000 days.

robert so on the news that my wonderful colleague bill brought published today in the science times part the section of the times a great article called " the terror of threes ". in fact, it's the three body problem. that rob is trying to address here today. rob, as we think about this and we think about the fact that it was only 10 years ago, less really, that barack obama talked about redesigning u.s. strategy to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in american foreign policy that we find ourselves in this situation where there is a very real risk of heading the other way. talk us a little bit through

the central thesis of tri-polar instability. which is to say that why is it that introducing a third major strategic adversary, 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 determinants or we think we know. good day to all of you, thank you for the kind introduction, and david your participation today. let me address your questions by i think the obvious starting point let me unpack the title of my publication "tricolor instability", china became a nuclear weapons estate in 1954 but long had an arsenal that was small relative to that in the united states and then soviet union. you mentioned china is now under xi jinping, which is comprehensive, economic,

military, viewed as a political role, encompasses a drive toward numerical parity with the united states and russia. probably in the ly2030s as you indicated. that system-level change the shift from bipolarity to try polarity is compounded by destabilizing developments, first, competition is extending into new domains of cyberspace and outer space. you've written extensively about that. and there's no guardrails, the arms protection of the cold war era has been dismantled to the point of near collapse. the competition among major powers is essentially unconstrained now. and third, as we know from the headlines. there are ongoing crises of the war in ukraine and a potential crisis in taiwan. these developments,

system-level change and the drivers of potential escalation in a crisis are eroding the foundation 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 union after the cuban missile crisis the united states and the soviet union each deployed secure and vulnerable systems that created mutual vulnerability. and assured retaliatory capability on both sides which was the hallmark blof neutral formal debility created an uneasy but stable peace. the states never addressed it to the vulnerability of that era part it was the foundation. what the balance of power what the balance of terror did was to deflect competition to third world yet non-afghanistan, the other crisis points during the

cold war, my central argument of the romans i mentioned system-level change plus the new developments cyber and outer space the lack of constraints as arms-control collapses and ongoing crises are recasting the dangers of the cold war period, the balance of terror is less stable as incentives for preemptive action in a crisis are being re-created and the stakes are no longer peripheral. it's not about afghanistan or parts of the peripheral of the soviet union or what we call the third world, these are vital interests, the balance of the stakes are now vital. that's the elements of tricolor instability in the title of my work.

>> that's great and that takes us to the central question. the argument of the book is that you can't simply extend that understanding of mutual permeability and mutual destruction which is the key to the two-way contest with the soviet union and then the successor state. because once you add in triad and the uneasy relationship that they have with russia, you get what ernie believes said to bill brought was a conceptual problem. and then i will review the rest of his quote, to correlate this with your argument. we've got to change the traditional approach of equalizing weapons for strategic delivery systems but how to do that is still unclear. since this problem has emerged, i've talked about it with a handful of members of the

senate and a few members of the house who deal in strategic issues, they deal in national security issues and i think it's fair to say it's one of the reasons i was so glad you spoke, the understanding of the instabilities as being considered is pretty weak right now. give us a fairly concrete sense of why this is such a different deterrent problem and how it is we might think of frameworks to address it? >> let me parse it this way there is a numeric stdimension this we should focus on like members of strategic warheads, but as i laid out in my initial comment, there are drivers of escalation and it's in a context where there's no

dialogue with either parties. with russia we are in the middle of the war it's not time to have that kind of conversation, with china ããwe don't have common terms of reference even with the chinese we don't have a shared history with them our key dates 1914, 1962, don't have the hesame meaning to them, their concept of deterrence, robert was telling me if you deconstruct the characters that go into their word for deterrence includes not only what we think of the deterrence like a threat to prevent an action but also a component aspect to it. which could open the door to coercive diplomacy. the framework we are not operating from common conceptual framework. mn if that's not enough of hurting you have to look at the dynamic which is much more

complicated than the cold war era you are dealing with a numeric dimension of it what is it mean to try to build up numeric parity with the united states and russia. but it's in a context with these drivers of escalation i mentioned at the outset. test creates openings for three types esof escalation, accident escalation, we had a number of false alerts during the cold war that led them nuclear news he could have inadvertent escalation where one side takes an action of the other side doesn't view as escalatory but the other side does, china in an opening of the conflict they might go after u.s. satellites in space or introduce malware and they might not think it's escalatory because nobody's being killed. but it would be significantly escalatory there is the risk of inadvertent escalation and the third category of escalation is deliberate or instrumental escalation i think this is really where the debate is most

essential.

i mentioned a new start which was extended for five years at the very beginning of the biden administration has no provision for another renewal o you have to start negotiating from ground up, they started those

very preliminary discussions before the war broke out they haven't had any in 16 months. the threat to use tactical weapons by vladimir putin is very ããthat led erpresident biden to say at a fundraiser in new york last october that we were the closest we have been to an armageddon moment at any time since the cuban missile crisis which i think shocked the people standing around james murdoch's living room with a nice glass of white wine in their hands to have thought they were coming for an armageddon speech. so even if china was not revising a strategy, would you argue that what held the balance of terror together during the cold war as you refer to it would be falling apart anyway?

>> that's a great question. >> we are in a situation where we are in the midst of essentially two cold war's, one with russia one with china and these new cold war's are playing out at a time when these foundations of strategic stability that emerge from the old cold war are being eroded and with nothing to ããthere is no dialogue. i think one of the questions, and in your question, is this truly a triangular relationship? in the study i talk about i don't gopro astrophysics in the william broad piece i go for plane geometry anand say it's more of a isosceles triangle than an equilateral triangle it was never truly equal. you think w,of china economical has $20 trillion economy, the united states has a $26 trillion economy russia's

economy is $2 trillion the size of italy, and this millennium is not major world power. in terms of arsenals russia and the united states have had a large arsenals during the cold war at the point beyond rational relation to any strategy and china has moved from minimum deterrent that you mentioned to approaching parity. i think in terms of framing right now the question is, is actually tricolor or is it the united states faced tricolor. the door to that ladder optic is ããit's a mixed metaphor but anyway, you get my point, russia and china are not adversarial states.

at this time in 1969 when they almost went to war they were. part of the asymmetry and why it's not an equilateral triangle is because russia and china combine both capabilities and hostile adversarial to the united states and united states has to deal with mbthem in thos terms that there's no one in moscow what is the this problem mean for us because the prospect of conflict between russia and china is remote at this point. >> what i find fascinating about this argument is that there isn't really agreement yet that i hear in the strategic community about the fundamental question that you raise which is do we have a tricolor problem or two bipolar's? ããsaid in the same piece this morning i don't see russia and china getting together on

nuclear strategies, i see this as two bipolar's. on the other hand, we got a china and russia who have talked about a relationship with no limits. they've done military exercises together, not nuclear exercises but military exercises. they could both clearly see an advantage in being our antagonist. could you imagine a situation in which they put together a common nuclear strategy even if they both reserved all their launch authorities and so forth to themselves? >> as goodall put it, states don't have friends they have interests. we have seen in the china russia previously soviet relationship it's waxed and waned. currently there interests align. i think putin and xi jinping ã

ãthey have come together to address for them the issue of american hyperpower. the no llimits sounds like hyperbole that defies historical experience they have a long at times contested order there is asymmetry in their economies where china is 20 trillion, russia is 2 trillion, i guess russia is pivoted from selling oil and natural gas to europe to shifting it to china as potential market there is a convergence of interest there but could this extend into the nuclear?

putin, russia transferred early warning systems to china in 2018 this was in the press. china has a launch on warning doctrine. we had a history that i alluded to a false alerts. that's a real concern and that will be a topic on any strategic stability dialogue with china. this is where the numbers come in, what if you took the chinese arsenal and added it to the emerging chinese arsenal and added to the existing russia arsenal does that mean united states should have force equal to 2x they don't have to be equal to russia and china. there you get into the numbers the perennial issue that goes back to the cold war era think while the united states has two thirds of its nuclear deterrence essentially, and

existing technologies and vulnerable submarines that could more than mount a devastating blow on russia and china putting basically both out of existence as functioning societies we are under threat from them that has been this mutual destruction and balance of terror as a foundation of stability which is hard to adjust to psychologically, i don't think the numbers per se make the huge difference. stalin said quantity becomes quality, yes the numbers going up is a factor affecting strategic stability. but in the publication i look at these drivers of escalation that i started out with cyber and outer space, no

constraints, no common dialogue with china, no common conceptual framework we are operating from and ongoing war and i would like to come back to the putin ukraine issue you alluded to, and the potential crisis in china, with china over taiwan. the conventional balance in northeast asia shifting at the same time the nuclear balance shifting towards china and a question there in terms of managing relations is, could this lead to increased chinese risk-taking? robert daly has a nice formulation where if the united states does the necessary prevent erosion of the conventional balance in northeast asia, that's a heavy

lift. we are not gonna change china's long-term objective. we can change their calculus of decision so they will say not this year. that the taiwan piece i'm happy to say more and ukraine. >> let's do u that. >> when you read into your essay you have this very fascinating session that discusses the basic principle document that came out in a lot of this i believe was done by general grounds amount who's been in the news just a little bit this weekend. you say and hear the nuclear ã during the war should be viewed in the context of these principles one of them ofas an essential threat to the state

we haven't seen that in russia and sometime until saturday. but you make up the point that that is in his mind some of us with the survival of his regime. that russia nuclear saber rattling provoking western fears is that your guesswork now that we see a paranoid vladimir putin who now has discovered he's got more to be paranoid about with good reason. likely to turn back to his nuclear arsenal the way he has when things are going badly and ukraine. >> one of the conditions you alluded to under which russian doctrine the country would consider nuclear use is x essential to the state which he holds as anonymous with relation.this is where the ukraine war and the future of

the putin regime become connected vessels. we tried to parse it and say the united states said regime change is not an objective but normal relations with russia are not possible while putin is in power, that's a real contradiction to use the word from the soviet. lexicon. the director of central intelligence william burns decided his word desperate putin might nconsider nuclear use and one of the conditions has been a collapse of the military front and ukraine or some threat to the regime back in the kremlin. i think this brings us to what happened over the weekend. as they say from law and order

tv show "ripped from today's headlines and i don't have an answer to a question about hunting analytically frame it where the debate is and where the fissure is prior to this weekend there was a there was one view driven by the view of desperate putin might act trying to reestablish the pre-2014 boundaries of ukraine that could be a condition under which putin would consider the use of tactical nuclear weapon as a shock to the system need to get control over zelinski and bring the conflict to an end. the biden administration the national security advisor using the metaphor he said when ark-la-miss likes the salami

nuclear use is nuclear use the correct marker that view of putin russian escalation was there needed to be care with ukrainian or objectives because if they went for the return to status quo antebellum back to 2014 that could trigger russian putin nuclear use, since the weekend when put in the face and x: existential threat there's been a view t what happened when he faced and existential threat, ãã he didn't immediately escalate. that assessment then led to has led to those calls for the west

to be all and on ukraine's maximalist geographic one version as if ukraine goes for it i could trigger escalation the other is putin has shown he will accommodate even to x existential threat and nato should not insure themselves by trying to rein it in. but i don't have an answer to that question. >> are getting near the moment the people that come in with questions of their own let me ask you one or two more. imagine you are xi jinping and most mornings you get up and say what if i was running china. [laughter], you've got the americans on your case to start up some discussion.

the first thing you think is they have 1550 deployed and of several thousand start. we got 200 to 300 deployed, building silos, this can be a decade before many more before we been up to their levels. >> he had minimal incentive to maintain minimal deterrent under conditions. chinese decision-making is opaque we don't know why china decided to build up to charity

it might be one version is what's going on with the national extension of xi jinping's modernization program, the encouragement of being a great superpower in the world. but i think we also have to be taken into account what we do, how it's perceived invasion. but there was one line of strategic analysis in our debate when china had a small nuclear arsenal was great let's take it out of the first strike during the crisis and we would be able to dictate who the united states could dictate a pattern of stability on china. they read these journals and advocate possibilities to build up. the irony is that after the space shuttle exploded, the united states was reliance on chinese space launch vehicles to put our satellites into orbit so they have a very robust program to build long-range missiles and it's not a heavy lift for them to ramp up.

what can we talk to them about? i think we have to be modest in our expectations, it would be useful if we had strategic stability talks, which the chinese have this jude minister under u.s. sanction. that's a bit of a problem in terms of the dialogue from the chinese perspective. >> they view the guardrails we are talking about as pure containment. >> pure containment and american rationale to login superiority. if their narrative and they cant certainly put together a history and empirical updata points that support their view of history. what can we do from where we are at now, i think a strategic stability talks with russia with china should be on issues of concepts of deterrence and drivers of escalation so there is clarity of understanding.

we are not going to probably enter an arrow where there will be arms control agreements per se but we may be able to develop passive understandings about norms. china did an antisatellite test this would be a constraint and would assist in moderating any temptation in the crisis to start launching attacks on satellites because you would have tested systems that allow you to do that.id artificial intelligence, which is the topic i know you are addressing in your reporting 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 mistakingly viewed as incoming american missiles in 1983 and the been the soviet union. if you combine launch on warning doctrines with early warning systems that are known to have had problems and as the line from doctor strange after the attack on then soviet union said i wouldn't knock the whole program because of one failure. if we had one failure that would be catastrophic. if you add to that, and this was for chapters you probably haven't written yet, artificial intelligence to automatic launch customs. i say no more in terms of potential threat for escalation. that's why the biden

administration and the smart move is laid out norms of conduct to manage artificial intelligence in the military sphere. one of the norms lines that i don't think anyone would take issue with is that a human being should be in the chain of decision-making on any nuclear use. let's go for catchup norms as a vehicle and then the united states has to do its part, we have to play out our hand and reinforce deterrence and extended deterrence which i know is of interest to robin one variant of deterrence most of us recognize deterrence by punishment, the threat of punishment. to block the efforts of the adversary, if we harden our infrastructure to o protect against malware attacks if we harden our satellite to make

them less vulnerable to probing by adversary to toughen the targets that could be a deterrent. >> basically saying an attack wouldn't work. >> exactly. they couldn't be sure it would work and launching it would start a process where they might lose control. >> on the last point here, you raised a i there's a lot of discussion about making that the first area but the last thing i wanted to ask you about the use by china and russia. >> emerging technologies, this picks up the comment i think of former secretary mont east about numbers and concepts and categories, hypersonic's are the new category, it can be used solve orbital and deliver

ordinance at distance in tens of minutes. which decreases the time for decision-makers to make decisions and it's being tested in both conventional and potentially nuclear mode by china and russia. united states said hours are only for conventional ordinance is unclear with china and russia if they see hypersonic system coming in, which can evade defenses and strategic defenses and the black hole of defense spending in terms of money spent to try to get the desired outcome, is it nuclear system coming in or conventional? that blurring of conventional and nuclear, which arises in a number of contexts like the co-location of conventional and nuclear systems so if you are attacking a conventional system colocated with nuclear likely escalating it with them

moderate of the listen center is unofficial modernist peace one that required study there are a lot of challenges out there analytical and otherwise in the wilson center's role is to promote policy development scholarship which is what i try to do in this publication. >> and done very successfully. let me turn this back to you robin for your own questions and those of our audience. >> thank you. for the audience in the room, your moment is coming. [your questions together i got a bunch online you got competition. meanwhile, while you are thinking i'm going to ask one of my own questions to rob. during my time some of you know

is acting ambassador in berlin and i'm especially attuned therefore to how our allies along an extended deterrence that couples on the security and to resist coercion. you talk about this in your book, can you tell us more about the hardware and software needed to keep that extended deterrence going? and my question is, are we doing enough? >> great question. let me preface with historical point of reference. right now there are nine nuclear weapons space. there are three states india, pakistan, israel, which exercise their sovereign right and join the treaty north korea, treated differently because it was in the npt and then you have iran which is nuclear threshold state we don't live in a war stomach world where there are 40 or 30 nuclear weapon states that

assumption wasn't always the case in the 1950s there were studies by the rand corporation 1952 president kennedy gave a speech at the un general assembly toughen a world of 30 or 40 0 nuclear robin states th led to the negotiations that culminated in nuclear nonproliferation treaty we don't live in that world and one of the major reasons why we don't, and there's establish literature on this is the u.s. 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 advisor jake sullivan talked about the hardware, software of extended deterrence. during the ukraine war of the united states made all augmented its dual use nuclear capable aircraft in europe the questions about north east asia where the united states and then soviet union went through

tactical nuclear weapons from the korean peninsula there's a question about how the united states should address the nuclear balance in northeast asia to address this competition risk-taking that i alluded to the nuclear piece of it, what's necessary there to bolster japan and south korea. to do more, that's the hardware side of it, the software side are the consultations, which are institutionalized in the nuclear group within the planning group at the nato you work in brussels as well and know all about that david is about to go to the nato summit meeting covering that were i'm sure nuclear planning discussions will be a point on the agenda. we don't have that type of institutionalized framework japan and south korea but there are discussions with them to talk about nuclear

contingencies and what can have you done to bolster deterrence, taking into account japan's constitution which places limitations on their ability to develop authentic system and south korea where there is a debate and certain just junction about popular opinion on developing independent nuclear capability and the south korean government's commitment to its allied relationship with the united states and the extended deterrent commitment. so are we doing enough? it requires constant tending and adjustments as circumstances change and i think those have changed yein t last year. >> for those in the room this is your moment. we have a microphone so this will eventually be coming your way and i will take the question here. >> days here at the woodrow wilson center, what is your assessment of why putin moved

tactical nuclear weapons into belarus and is this something you think the nato or the u.s. should be responding to? >> putin, who operates from his own historical narrative of grievance and the place of russia in the world and he's made a number of assertions including russia has a special commitment to russia outside the russian federation russia does not have natural boundaries those 25 million or so russians in other parts of the adjacent countries and declared extraterritorial commitment to those individuals, i remember from the cold war period when the russians then soviet say we feel surrounded by nato and china ever had a 11 time zones i would feel surrounded too. [laughter] and why belarus? belarus is let's call it as it

is as a vassal state of russia. lukashenko has limited scope for autonomous actions if you want to go there and mafia it's one of the five families he's out there managing the belarus portfolio. the notion that belarus would have autonomous control over russian deployed nuclear systems really beggars belief they would remain under control of russians that they been deployed. putin of course in his own framework of grievance and russia's role in the world basically said you are doing nothing different than what the united states has done by deploying tactical nuclear weapons in europe with dual use

systems. >>. >> before i take another audience question i'm going to give you an online question because it comes from a colleague at king's college and also because it's very specific in what he's proposing i thought i would give this to you. with china operating under arms chasing mentality to believe they could be persuaded to purchase paid in arms control discussions if the u.s. and russia were to agree on a number that the three poles could settle on and said let's say a hard cap at 750, you talked a little bit about the death disparities and forces i'm going to give you the proposals. >>. >> right now there is the new start treaty different

iterations which limit the united states and russia to 1550 deployable systems. russia has under putin suspended aspects of compliance with that in terms of consultations and inspections. russia significantly has not abrogated the treaty as signaling the step of building up beyond 1550. the question that's been posed online i think is really a central one as we move forward and looked at 2026. and what will happen then. i heard one analyst say arms control is dead. one dead wood about enough, the others are redundant. back to the countries have

interest, even with the tortured history and china has not been party to if they have the numerically and furious asking them to join and lock in american superiority's is a concern for them but i could just analytically and deferred to the china watchers like robert daly on whether this is realistic or not i could see a chinese interest in wine to lock united states and russia into a lower number rather than unconstrained buildups. so it's analytically possible to see how we can get there. politically i don't know, i am of the study with a nice quote from einstein who was challenged like you cracked the adam and you unravel the mysteries of the atom but yet you can't come up with the system to manage the control of the atom so we don't destroy ourselves we don't destroy humanity. einstein clipped back because

it's easier than politics we are now in the realm of you can adequately nuclear layout that was the approach in the book it's not a hard advocacy book is trying to lay out the analytical landscape and where the debates are and what would be the prerequisites for policymakers to make decisions such as the one reflected in the russian which is a great one i'm not sure the 750 number would block into it but i think the concept the concept is analytically valid the politically we could get there or not i think is the open question. >> we are in the room and i'm going to take this out here, that's you. >> hi, robert, my question is

regarding the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in ukraine by russia. many china experts and analysts say that if ããthat would be redline for beijing because according to the core principles like foreign policy nuclear weapons should be used for deterrence since they have been aligning with russia's existing vision of ukraine i was wondering first if you think that china would indeed side with the west if russia provides nuclear weapons in ukraine and second, if that would give nato a reason to get directly involved in the conflict arguing that nuclear content relation would be sort

of like a direct attack to nato allies. thank you. >>. >> the contingency would really put the no limits formulation to the test. i think there would be a limit and the chinese already alluded to it the meetings with the chinese and indian leaders would contact with putin where they don't use our terminology redline but they made it clear that nuclear use would be a threshold that would be create a whole new w international reality. that something the russians have to take into account. to your point about territorial integrity, russia has now no annexed the provinces and the in the ukraine and acquired claim that they are part of the russian federation and this is

the novel where russia says we will use nuclear weapons if there is a threat to the state that state also now encompasses the irredentist claims that russia had against ukraine. that creates the zone of uncertainty on escalation. i characterized where the debate is now the weather how the situation on the battlefield could affect putin's calculus and deterrence having just been through a weekend where there was a surprise existential threat to. >> for those in the room, you can have a chance to talk to rob after this so i'm gonna take one last question from our online contributors, that's from former ambassador laura kennedy who asks, do you see the ability of the process to tackle some of these issues

that you have so eloquently laid out, experts have announced that years developing common nuclear glossary discussing doctrine, baby steps but at this difficult time it's the only game in town. >> that's a great question. >> the p5 +1 mechanism was championed by the wilson center's own catherine ashton to bring about iran's nuclear deal and the prior administration u.s. . administration from the deal is in hopes that model could be built upon to address other issues and even when ukraine after 2014 when david spent a lot of time in hotels eating ã ãcovering these meetings even during that period russia and china cooperated with the united states in bringing about the iran nuclear deal because they had a shared interest in constraining iran's nuclear ambitions. i think we are in the middle of

the war ukraine and they have been we are at a nato point with china so i don't know what the immediate practical possibilities are of the p5 plus one right now russia is a pariah state so it would not be included but i think on a pragmatic basis and to put my cards on the table, people talk about series of international relations which is a disguised question about ideology and a card-carrying utilitarian, what works in our interest we should try it that's what's motivated the analysis here we should look for opportunities to explore how this mechanism can be used but we are not there we are at nato point with china we need some rehabilitative work to get to that point where we could resume conversation with china about other issues just ã

ãback in the cold war china was in terms of percolation was the more the better or they shrugged at increased numbers of nuclear weapon states and china transferred cash to pakistan which found its way to ããthe chinese have really gotten religion so to speak on nuclear issues and recognized they have taken nonproliferation on board as interest they have not always been as helpful as they could be on north korea but i think that there is some predicate there for engaging them certainly on these issues but it's going to be a steep climb. >> thank you. >> i want to thank both of our

panelist for those of you who are here in person the foot book is available outside in hard copy also available online as an e-book on the wilson center website so please go there, no excuses for not reading it, thanks again to c-span for featuring it. [applause]

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