Managing escalation: missile defence,strategy and US alliances

Missile defence plays an increasing role in NATO and in most US alliances in Asia, which raises the question of what impact it has on the management of extended deterrence. Extended deterrence relies on the threat of escalation. Since the costs of escalation are different for different allies, the management of extended deterrence is inherently difficult. Missile defence shifts the relative costs of conflict, and therefore also impacts on the alliance bargains that underpin agreement on extended deterrence strategy. Although increased defensive capacity is a clear net benefit, the strategic effects of its deployment and use can still be complex if, for example, missile defence increases the chances of localizing a conflict. The article discusses the role of missile defences for the US homeland, and of the territory and population of US allies, for extended deterrence credibility and the reassurance of US allies in Asia and in NATO. It argues that there is increased scope in strengthening deterrence by enmeshing the defence of the US homeland with that of its allies, and that allies need to pay closer attention to the way the deployment and use of missile defence influence pressures for escalation. In general, missile defence thus reinforces the need for the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia to negotiate an overall alliance strategy.     

The US debate on NATO nuclear deterrence

NATO's nuclear deterrence posture has since the late 1950s involved risk‐and responsibility‐sharing arrangements based on the presence of US nuclear weapons in Europe. Since 1991 gravity bombs, deliverable by US and allied dual‐capable aircraft, have been the only type of US nuclear weapons left in Europe. Although many other factors are involved in the alliance's deterrence posture and in US extended deterrence—including intercontinental forces, missile defences, non‐nuclear capabilities and declaratory policy—recent discussions in the United States about NATO nuclear deterrence have focused on the future of the remaining US nuclear weapons in Europe. The traditional view has supported long‐standing US and NATO policy in holding that the risk‐ and responsibility‐sharing arrangements based on US nuclear weapons in Europe contribute to deterrence and war prevention; provide assurance to the allies of the genuineness of US commitments; and make the extended deterrence responsibility more acceptable to the United States. From this perspective, no further cuts in the US nuclear weapons presence in Europe should be made without an agreement with Russia providing for reductions that address the US—Russian numerical disparity in non‐strategic nuclear forces, with reciprocal transparency and verification measures. In contrast, four schools of thought call for withdrawing the remaining US nuclear weapons in Europe without any negotiated Russian reciprocity: some military officers who consider the weapons and associated arrangements unnecessary for deterrence; proponents of ambitious arms control measures who accept extended deterrence policies but view the US weapons in Europe as an obstacle to progress in disarmament; nuclear disarmament champions who reject extended nuclear deterrence policies and who wish to eliminate all nuclear arms promptly; and selective engagement campaigners who want the United States to abandon extended nuclear deterrence commitments to allies on the grounds that they could lead to US involvement in a nuclear war.     

Extended nuclear deterrence in East Asia: redundant or resurgent?

A number of commentators have claimed that the strategic relevance of extended nuclear deterrence is declining in the twenty‐first century. This claim is based on three key arguments. First, that the positive effects of extended nuclear deterrence have been exaggerated by its proponents; second, that the rational actor logic underpinning extended nuclear deterrence is increasingly redundant; and third, that extended deterrence using conventional weapons is equally, if not more, effective as extended nuclear deterrence. This article applies these arguments to East Asia, a region where nuclear weapons continue to loom large in states' security equations. In applying each of the above arguments to the East Asian context, the analysis finds that not only is extended nuclear deterrence alive and kicking in the region, but also that in the coming decades it is likely to become more central to the strategic policies of the United States and its key allies, Japan and South Korea. Despite predictions of its demise, US extended nuclear deterrence remains a critical element in East Asia's security order and will remain so for the foreseeable future.     

Missile defence and the transatlantic security relationship

This article examines the re-emergence of ballistic missile defence (BMD) as a contentious issue in US-European security relations since 1999. It begins by outlining three phases in the recent evolution of US missile defence policy from 1995 to mid-2001. The article then examines five key factors that have dominated European views and concerns in relation to BMD: a divergence between European and American assessments of the emerging ballistic missile threat; concern over the implications for nuclear arms control stemming from Russian and Chinese opposition to BMD; the impact of missile defence on deterrence and the Atlantic alliance; scepticism about the technological feasibility of BMD; and the potential opportunity costs associated with resource allocation to missile defence. It is shown that European anxieties have been exacerbated by a perception of a growing unilateralism in American security policy in recent years. The article proceeds by arguing that the US-European debate over BMD looks set to evolve in one of two directions. The more likely and most desirable scenario would involve the US reaching an understanding with its European allies on the way forward. The less desirable scenario would involve key European countries, such as France and Germany, deciding ultimately to withhold their political support for BMD, which would have the potential of causing significant rifts in both transatlantic and intra-European security relations. In both cases, it is argued that the BMD debate will be defined by the interaction of several key variables. These include the extent to which the Bush administration engages in meaningful consultations with the Europeans; the administration's ability or otherwise to reach an agreement with Russia on the way ahead; the architecture options of a future allied or global BMD system; the related issues of technological feasibility and financial cost; and the evolving missile threat.     

Drawing a line in the Taiwan Strait: 'Strategic ambiguity' and its discontents

The Bush administration's continuing emphasis on US military deterrence of the PRC on behalf of Taiwan threatens to undermine the posture of 'strategic ambiguity' that the United States has proclaimed since 1979. This article argues for the retention of 'strategic ambiguity' and traces the origins of revisionist sentiment towards this effective conflict avoidance mechanism to reactions within the US foreign policy community to the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis. Case studies of this crisis and its predecessors in 1954-55 and 1958 demonstrate that US military deterrence was not a decisive factor in their resolution. US and PRC initiatives and responses in the 1950s crises introduced the essential elements of 'strategic ambiguity' into the triangular relationship between themselves and Taiwan. In particular, they established a precedent for the United States and the PRC in circumscribing the issue of Taiwan so as to achieve a political accommodation.     

A nuclear North Korea and the stability of East Asia: a tsunami on the horizon?

This article aims to assess the strategic implications of North Korea's nuclear development. It calls into question the conventional wisdom that Pyongyang's atomic weapons will not only undermine the state of deterrence on the Korean peninsula, but also will trigger a nuclear domino effect throughout East Asia. A nuclear-armed North Korea, I argue, still cannot win a major victory over the South and the United States; Pyongyang's bombs somewhat decrease—rather than increase, as many believe—the risk of US preventive attack. And the regional US military presence as well as the available missile defence technology is sufficient to persuade Seoul and Tokyo not to pursue nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future. While I reject the alarmist view, I find that North Korea's armament nevertheless carries two significant—albeit less grave—risks that have received little scholarly scrutiny. First, I argue that the risk of inadvertent war through pre-emption will increase with Pyongyang's armament. I also argue that the strengthening of US alliances in the region as well as the US development of a missile defence capability in response to the North Korean threat could exacerbate the security dilemmas among major powers. I conclude, however, that these potential dangers do not markedly threaten regional stability.     

Assurance and US extended deterrence in NATO

Historically the NATO allies have focused considerable attention on US 'extended deterrence'— that is, the extension by Washington of an umbrella of protection, sometimes called a 'nuclear guarantee'. A persisting requirement has been to provide the allies with assurance about the reliability and credibility of this protection. This article examines the definition of 'assurance' used by the US Department of Defense for most of the past decade and argues that it has drawn attention to long-standing policy challenges associated with US extended deterrence in NATO. The article considers the assurance roles of US nuclear forces in Europe, as well as elements of assurance in Washington's relations with its allies regarding extended nuclear deterrence. Whether the allies will retain the current requirements of extended deterrence and assurance in their new Strategic Concept or devise a new approach will be an issue of capital importance in the policy review launched at the Strasbourg/Kehl Summit. Contrasting approaches to these questions are visible in the United States and Germany, among other allies. The main issues to be resolved include reconciling extended deterrence with arms control priorities; managing the divisions in public and expert opinion; and avoiding certain potential consequences of a rupture with established arrangements.     

Nuclear Order and Disorder

After a decade of great progress in diminishing the risks posed by nuclear weapons, international nuclear relations came unstuck in the late 1990s. Why did this happen? This question is best answered through an understanding of how a ‘nuclear order’ was constructed during the Cold War, how it developed in the early post‐Cold War period, and how confidence in it dissipated as the 1990s wore on. After considering how the nuclear order was founded upon linked systems of deterrence and abstinence, the article explains how both were destabilized in the mid‐ to late 1990s—cause and effect of the United States shifting its ordering strategy towards protection (through missile defences) and enforcement. Can confidence in nuclear order be restored? How should we regard the recent agreement among States Parties to the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Agreement to press for complete nuclear disarmament?     

The fuzzy limits of self-reliance: US extended deterrence and Australian strategic policy

As a close US ally, Australia is often seen as a recipient of US extended deterrence. This article argues that in recent decades, Australian strategic policy engaged with US extended deterrence at three different levels: locally, Australia eschews US combat support and deterrence under the policy of self-reliance; regionally, it supports US extended deterrence in Asia; globally, it relies on the US alliance against nuclear threats to Australia. The article argues that in none of these policy areas does the Australian posture conform to a situation of extended deterrence proper. Moreover, when the 2009 White Paper combines all three policies in relation to major power threats against Australia, serious inconsistencies result in Australia's strategic posture—a situation the government should seek to avoid in the White Paper being drafted at the time of writing.     

‘Navigating sovereignty under a Cold War military industrial colonial complex: US military empire and Marshallese decolonization’

Abstract

As World War II unsettled the global balance of power ushering in a wave of decolonization, the postwar period also saw the expansion of US military imperialism into Micronesia. In this central Pacific region, a new colonial era began rooted in US strategic concerns and mandated under a 1947 United Nations Trusteeship Agreement. During the Cold War, the United States buttressed its nuclear arsenal by testing its deadliest weapons of mass destruction (nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile) in the Marshall Islands, residing on the eastern edge of Micronesia. This weapons testing program would inform Marshallese struggles towards self-determination, ultimately shaping the contours of Marshallese sovereignty as the region achieved formal decolonization through a Compact of Free Association in 1986.     

Analysing international nuclear order

William Walker's article, ‘Nuclear enlightenment and counter‐enlightenment’, raises fundamental questions about the history of efforts to construct order in international politics in relation to nuclear arms and weapons‐related capabilities. However, Walker's ‘enlightenment’ and ‘counter‐enlightenment’ tropes are clumsy and unsatisfactory tools for analysing contemporary policies concerning nuclear deterrence, non‐proliferation and disarmament. Walker holds that in the 1960s and 1970s most of the governments of the world came together in pursuit of ‘a grand enlightenment project’. This thesis cannot withstand empirical scrutiny with regard to its three main themes—a supposed US‐Soviet consensus on doctrines of stabilizing nuclear deterrence through mutual vulnerability, a notion that the NPT derived from ‘concerted efforts to construct an international nuclear order meriting that title’, and the view that the NPT embodied a commitment to achieve nuclear disarmament. Walker's criticisms of US nuclear policies since the late 1990s are in several cases overstated or ill‐founded. Walker also exaggerates the potential influence of the United States over the policies of other countries. It is partly for this reason that the challenges at hand—both analytical and practical—are more complicated and dif cult than his article implies. His work nonetheless has the great merit of raising fundamental questions about international political order.     

具有中国血统者就是华人吗？——美国赫蒙人之案例分析

论文就中美两国对赫蒙人截然不同的族群界定与依据、赫蒙人在美国的生存适应与族群认同的状况进行了研究。对于20世纪中叶沦为难民后,陆续辗转移居美国的老挝赫蒙人,中国学者将其视为少数民族华人,美国官方却将其确定为与华裔、韩裔等少数族裔并列的独立族裔类别。美国赫蒙人虽然在血统的意义上可归属于具有中国血统的人,但其几乎不存在华人归属意识,也极少与中国发生社会联系。许多海外华人或海外具有中国血统的人将会随着时间的推移而逐渐失去华人认同意识,并与中国社会浙行渐远。因此建议依据中国血统、中国传统文化的保持、主观认同为华人、与中国社会的联系等“华人性”的几个维度去理解和定义“海外华人”。     

The challenges confronting US extended nuclear assurance in Asia

This article aims to explore the credibility of future US extended nuclear assurance in Asia. Extended nuclear assurance, all too frequently confused with extended nuclear deterrence, faces a daunting series of challenges: a US strategic mainstream fractured on the roles and purposes of nuclear weapons; an Asia where assurance demands are high during a period of strategic uncertainty; and a US theatre‐ and tactical‐range nuclear arsenal much depleted from its heyday. Meanwhile, nuclear latency is growing in Asia as more countries reach the technological level that the US attained in 1945, as nuclear skill sets become more prevalent, and as delivery vehicles appropriate to nuclear weapons become more typical in regional arsenals. The US now provides extended nuclear assurance to nearly 40 countries worldwide, agreeing to run nuclear risks on behalf of its allies and friends. The bulk of those assurances derive from the NATO alliance, but it is the non‐NATO‐related assurances—and settings—that seem likely to be the more controversial ones over the next decade or two. Asia is coming into its own at a time when extended nuclear assurance needs reinvigoration as a key ingredient in US strategic policy.     

The US Nuclear Posture Review and the NATO allies

The 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review called for reducing operationally deployed US strategic nuclear warheads by almost two-thirds over the decade ending in 2012; emphasizing the development and/or improvement of capabilities other than nuclear forces, including missile defences, non-nuclear strike forces, and a responsive infrastructure; and placing nuclear and other capabilities within the framework of new concepts such as dissuasion and capabilities-based planning. The reductions foreseen in the NPR furnished the basis for the May 2002 Moscow Treaty. Allied observers have welcomed this treaty as a political substitute for the ABM Treaty and START negotiations, but have found it disappointing as an arms control measure. While allied observers have expressed reservations about combining nuclear and non-nuclear strike forces in a single notional leg of the 'New Triad' and about increasing readiness for possible nuclear testing, they have endorsed unprecedented steps in the defensive area, notably with respect to ballistic missile defence. Some new US concepts have been relatively uncontroversial because they represent continuity, but others (such as dissuasion and deterrence by denial) have evoked scepticism.     

The Making of a Non-Aligned Nuclear Power: India's Proliferation Drift, 1964–8

The article examines the strategic circumstances leading to non-aligned India's safeguard of its nuclear option during a crucial period in its proliferation trajectory, when it was one of the states closest to nuclear-weapons development, and faced US pressures to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that was being negotiated at the time. Based on Indian, US, and French primary sources, this paper demonstrates that India's regional strategic insecurities and bilateral tensions with the United States were too great for it to sign the NPT. Yet, New Delhi's capability to successfully reprocess weapons-grade plutonium permitted the developing country substantial leverage that it exploited through advancing on a slow dual-use nuclear programme.     

The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force: reshaping China’s approach to strategic deterrence

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is in the midst of a sweeping reform programme to significantly transform its organisation, force posture, command and control structures, and internal politics. Among the many important aspects of this effort is the establishment of the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF). Creation of the PLARF solidified China’s missile forces as a critical element of China’s evolving strategic deterrent posture, portends continued significant investment in PLARF modernisation, and points to a more concerted effort to integrate PLARF capabilities into more effective PLA-wide joint operations—all key developments in the fundamental reshaping of China’s approach to strategic deterrence. These developments will affect U.S. strategic and extended deterrence postures, U.S.-China strategic stability, allied conventional force operations, information dominance and security, critical infrastructure, and other key aspects of national security. This study details the organisational, technological, and doctrinal changes afoot for the PLARF, and analyses how—if successful—they affect U.S. and U.S-allied military strategy in the Indo-Pacific region.     

RE-EXAMINING THE ABM MORATORIUM

The argument of this essay is that current U.S. strategic postures and weapons systems, based essentially on mutual assured destruction (MAD), are defective, in that they over-deter and under-defend. MAD provides far more than sufficient deterrence against deliberate, full-scale nuclear war launched by the government of the Soviet Union, but provides little deterrence and no defense against the far more likely nuclear catastrophe of the future: an accidental, unauthorized, or third-party missile attack. The proposed solution is the reintroduction of superpower ABM (anti-ballistic missile) protection, on a limited, negotiated basis, which could provide defensive systems heavy enough to defend against light attacks but not heavy enough to defend against full-scale superpower attacks (and thereby undermine deterrence).     

Sino–American relations and the ‘Australian factor’: inflated expectations or discriminate engagement?

Orchestrating relations between its American security ally and increasingly crucial Chinese trading partner constitutes perhaps the major foreign policy challenge now confronting Australia. The Howard government insists that it can pursue such diplomacy without having to choose between the US and China in the event of a future great power regional confrontation. Both Washington and Beijing, however, appear intent on pulling Australia into their own orbits of influence. This article contends that neither of them will be content to allow Australia to apply a ‘discriminate engagement’ policy toward their own regional interests if Sino–American strategic competition intensifies over Taiwan or throughout the Asia–Pacific region. It reviews Chinese and American strategic expectations regarding Australia and their response to that country's relations with the other, and outlines growing policy imperatives that Australia must confront in order to overcome current anomalies in its ‘dual strategy’ directed toward China and the United States.     

Chinese strategies in a US-hegemonic global order: accommodating and hedging

China's economic, political and military influence has been increasing at a time when the United States, as sole superpower, dominates the international order. This article outlines Chinese elite perspectives on the current global order and shows not only how these perceptions have affected China's policies towards the United States, but also how they have influenced China's regional and global policies more broadly. It argues that variants of realist logic that interpret Chinese behaviour as a form of balancing are not particularly helpful, and do not capture the essence of Chinese strategies that are underpinned by an overwhelming focus on its domestic development needs. The article posits that Chinese leaders have accepted that they operate in a unipolar order and have chosen not to stick out for negotiating positions that the United States would see as seriously detrimental to its interests. However, Beijing couples this accommodating approach with policies designed to ensure that, were relations seriously to deteriorate with Washington, China could draw on deepened regional and global ties to thwart any US effort to interrupt its domestic objectives. China's hope is that a more 'democratic' international order will emerge, which means not multipolarity as such but a 'concert of great powers system' that will operate to forge multilateral cooperation among the major states.     

Virtuous War/Virtual Theory

Strategic discourse and the use of force in the twentieth century have become increasingly virtual. Leading the way, as the dominant actor in global politics, is the United States, whose diplomatic and military policies are now based on technological and representational forms of discipline, deterrence, and compellence that could best be described as virtuous war . At the cyborg heart of virtuous war is the technical capability and ethical imperative to threaten and, if necessary, actualize violence from a distance—with no or minimal casualties. Using networked information and virtual technologies to bring 'there' here in real time and with near-verisimilitude, virtuous war exercized a comparative as well as a strategic advantage for the digitally advanced. It has already become the 'fifth dimension' of US global hegemony, with a very real gap opening between technological capability and strategic value on the one side, and theoretical understanding and ethical awareness on the other. There is a clear and present need to develop a virtual theory that can assess the perils and promises of this intimate relationship between modes of representation and violence.