Integrated Arms Control In An Era Of Strategic Competition

Can contemporary arms control keep pace with the rapid rate of change in both geopolitics and technology? While the challenges to future arms control point to a rocky road ahead, measures that build confidence, reduce miscalculation, enhance transparency, restrain costly and dangerous military competition, and offer useful mechanisms and venues for addressing sources of conflict will be of increasing value. For arms control tools to succeed, however, they must be adapted to the current security environment, account for rapidly evolving technological and informational factors, and consider alternative structures, modalities, and participation models. Indeed, now is the time for a recoupling of arms control with deterrence in a way that recognizes these new realities. Now is the time for integrated arms control that enhances stability, embraces plurality, and reinforces resiliency. This CSIS study examines the implication and prospects for the future of arms control in a highly competitive security environment in which challenges from advanced technologies and diminished state control over processes of verification become increasingly prominent features, even as the scope and modalities of arms control grow more complex and multifaceted. The report offers a reexamination of the broad contours of arms control and its role in managing competitive security risks and challenges and the implications for U.S. policymakers, academics, and strategic thinkers engaged in U.S. nuclear policy.

World events in recent years have led observers, particularly since late 2013, to conclude that the international security environment in recent years has undergone a shift from the post-Cold War era that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, also sometimes known as the unipolar moment (with the United States as the unipolar power), to a new and different situation that features, among other things, renewed great power competition with China and Russia and challenges by these two countries and others to elements of the U.S.-led international order that has operated since World War II. The shift to renewed great power competition has become a major factor in the debate over future U.S. defense spending levels, and has led to new or renewed emphasis on the following in discussions of U.S. defense strategy, plans, and programs: * grand strategy and geopolitics as part of the context for discussing U.S. defense budgets, plans, and programs; * nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence;* new U.S. military service operational concepts;* U.S. and NATO military capabilities in Europe;* capabilities for conducting so-called high-end conventional warfare (i.e., largescale, high-intensity, technologically sophisticated warfare) against countries such as China and Russia; * maintaining U.S. technological superiority in conventional weapons;* speed of weapon system development and deployment as a measure of merit in defense acquisition policy;* mobilization capabilities for an extended-length large-scale conflict against an adversary such as China or Russia;* minimizing reliance in U.S. military systems on components and materials from Russia and China; and* capabilities for countering so-called hybrid warfare and gray-zone tactics employed by countries such as Russia and China.

A theoretical analysis and historical investigation of the Cold War nuclear arms race that challenges the nuclear revolution.

The second half of the 20th century featured a strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition avoided World War III in part because during the 1950s, scholars like Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter analyzed the fundamental nature of nuclear deterrence. Decades of arms control negotiations reinforced these early notions of stability and created a mutual understanding that allowed U.S.-Soviet competition to proceed without armed conflict. The first half of the 21st century will be dominated by the relationship between the United States and China. That relationship is likely to contain elements of both cooperation and competition. Territorial disputes such as those over Taiwan and the South China Sea will be an important feature of this competition, but both are traditional disputes, and traditional solutions suggest themselves. A more difficult set of issues relates to U.S.-Chinese competition and cooperation in three domains in which real strategic harm can be inflicted in the current era: nuclear, space, and cyber. Just as a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles of nuclear deterrence maintained adequate stability during the Cold War, a clearer understanding of the characteristics of these three domains can provide the underpinnings of strategic stability between the United States and China in the decades ahead. That is what this book is about.

Organized by SIPRI, the Nobel Symposium on A Future Arms Control Agenda considered how arms control contributes to a cooperative security system based on the peaceful resolution of disputes and the gradual demilitarization of international relations. This book documents the proceedings, including comprehensive discussions of new elements of the post-Cold War global security system and objectives and limitations of arms control within that evolving system. Special attention is given to the changing roles and responsibilities of the major powers in arms control efforts.

A leading international security strategist offers a compelling new way to "think about the unthinkable." The cold war ended more than two decades ago, and with its end came a reduction in the threat of nuclear weapons—a luxury that we can no longer indulge. It's not just the threat of Iran getting the bomb or North Korea doing something rash; the whole complexion of global power politics is changing because of the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a vital element of statecraft and power politics. In short, we have entered the second nuclear age. In this provocative and agenda-setting book, Paul Bracken of Yale University argues that we need to pay renewed attention to nuclear weapons and how their presence will transform the way crises develop and escalate. He draws on his years of experience analyzing defense strategy to make the case that the United States needs to start thinking seriously about these issues once again, especially as new countries acquire nuclear capabilities. He walks us through war-game scenarios that are all too realistic, to show how nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of power politics, and he offers an incisive tour of the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia to underscore how the United States must not allow itself to be unprepared for managing such crises. Frank in its tone and farsighted in its analysis, The Second Nuclear Age is the essential guide to the new rules of international politics.

Conventional Deterrence is a book about the origins of war. Why do nations faced with the prospect of large-scale conventional war opt for or against an offensive strategy? John J. Mearsheimer examines a number of crises that led to major conventional wars to explain why deterrence failed. He focuses first on Allied and German decision making in the years 1939–1940, analyzing why the Allies did not strike first against Germany after declaring war and, conversely, why the Germans did attack the West. Turning to the Middle East, he examines the differences in Israeli and Egyptian strategic doctrines prior to the start of the major conventional conflicts in that region. Mearsheimer then critically assays the relative strengths and weaknesses of NATO and the Warsaw Pact to determine the prospects for conventional deterrence in any future crisis. He is also concerned with examining such relatively technical issues as the impact of precision-guided munitions (PGM) on conventional deterrence and the debate over maneuver versus attrition warfare.Mearsheimer pays considerable attention to questions of military strategy and tactics. Challenging the claim that conventional detrrence is largely a function of the numerical balance of forces, he also takes issue with the school of thought that ascribes deterrence failures to the dominance of "offensive" weaponry. In addition to examining the military consideration underlying deterrence, he also analyzes the interaction between those military factors and the broader political considerations that move a nation to war.