“This program will not be a threat to them”: Ballistic Missile Defense and US relations with Russia and China

Although the Obama Administration has differed from its predecessor in a number of respects, on the specific issue of Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), there is a striking continuity. The Obama Administration has remained committed to the BMD project, even as it has modified the schedule of deployments and prioritized different systems from the Bush Administration. Significantly, this has led to Chinese and Russian balancing in the nuclear sphere. As a result, there is evidence of a security dilemma-type dynamics in US relations with China and Russia. At present, there is no study that analyzes Russian and Chinese hard internal balancing against the USA in the sphere of missile defense during the Obama Administration. This article fills this gap.     

Minimum deterrence and missile defenses: what's new,what's true,what's arguable

Minimum deterrence is a compromise, or halfway house, between nuclear abolition or nearly zero and assured destruction, the dominant paradigm for strategic nuclear arms control during and after the cold war. Minimum deterrence as applied to the current relationship between the United States and Russia would require downsizing the numbers of operationally deployed long-range nuclear weapons to 1000, or fewer, on each side. More drastic bilateral Russian–American reductions would require the cooperation of other nuclear weapons states in making proportional reductions in their own arsenals. In addition, US plans for European-based and global missile defenses cause considerable angst in Russia and threaten to derail the Obama “reset” in Russian–American relations, despite the uncertainties about current and plausible future performances of missile defense technologies.     

NUCLEAR STABILITY AT LOW NUMBERS

Chinese writings on the workings of nuclear stability, deterrence, and coercion are thin and politicized. Nevertheless, it is possible to glean, from direct and inferential evidence, rather pessimistic conclusions regarding Chinese views of nuclear stability at low numbers. While China has been living with low numbers in its own arsenal for decades, today it views missile defense and advanced conventional weapons as the primary threat to nuclear stability. More generally, China views nuclear stability as wedded to political amity. Because none of these would be directly addressed through further US and Russian arsenal reductions, China is unlikely to view such reductions as particularly stabilizing. While there is little in Chinese writing to suggest lower US and Russian numbers would encourage a “race to parity,” there are grounds to worry about China becoming more assertive as it gains confidence in Beijing's own increasingly secure second-strike forces.     

Russia,America and missile defense

Russia has sharply objected to US plans for ballistic missile defense. The Russian official explanation is that the real purpose of the US missile defense plan is to make it impossible for Russia to retaliate against a US nuclear (or massive conventional) attack, thus making Russia subject to military blackmail by the US. The Russian response has been the result of a sum total of various factors, mostly political and cultural, while the technical capabilities of the proposed system have played a secondary role.     

NUCLEAR REDUCTIONS AND MIDDLE EAST STABILITY

The United States faces a series of strategic and policy conundrums as it attempts to promote strategic stability in the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East. This article examines the relationship between a reduced US nuclear arsenal and strategic stability in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. It argues that a series of interrelated political and military factors play a much more significant role in regional security and stability than the US strategic arsenal, which has never, with a few extraordinary exceptions, played a direct role in maintaining regional security. The United States has constructed a system of regional stability based on conventional deterrence and defense that has seen it forward base forces at various installations in the region in combination with efforts to arm, train, and equip host-nation militaries. Nuclear weapons have never played a prominent role in this regional system. Evidence presented in this article suggests that there is no compelling reason for the United States to abandon and/or modify the defensive system of conventional deterrence and defense by adding nuclear-backed guarantees to the mix.     

Nuclear Disarmament and Stability in the Logic of Habit

ABSTRACT

In 2008, the announcement of the Global Zero campaign—an international effort to eliminate nuclear weapons—coincided with the election of Barack Obama. The new president, avowedly pro-disarmament, made getting to zero nuclear weapons a centerpiece of his foreign policy. This article takes on the question of what impact global disarmament might have on international strategic stability. In a break with much of the literature and analysis on nuclear policy, it explicitly focuses on how publics understand the significance of nuclear weapons. In so doing, the article draws on recent international relations scholarship on the role of habit to argue that eliminating nuclear weapons can generate instability by creating widespread perceptions of insecurity and anxiety. If disarmament campaigners wish to achieve their goal without generating instability, they will need to work over the long-term to break habituated beliefs about nuclear weapons.     

The Chinese and Asian impact on Russian nuclear policy

Asia, where nuclear powers already interact (including North Korea), exerts a growing influence on the thinking and policy underlying Russia's current and future nuclear (and overall defense) posture. China's rise is forcing Russia into a greater reliance on strategic offensive weapons and tactical nuclear weapons. These in turn will reinforce its opposition to US missile defenses, not only in Europe but also in Asia. Russia must now entertain the possibility of nuclear use in regional conflicts that would otherwise remain purely conventional. It cannot be postulated blindly that nuclear weapons serve no discernible purpose other than to deter nuclear attacks by other nuclear powers. The strategic equation in Asia and in the Russian Far East convincingly demonstrates the falsity of this approach. Nuclear weapons will be the essential component of Russia's regional defense policy if not of its overall policies – and this also includes contingencies in Europe.     

The BWC protocol mandate for failure

The stage may be set for what could be a historic turning point in America's reliance on nuclear weapons to meet its fundamental national security interests. Proponents of a refurbished nuclear stockpile and infrastructure are convinced that nuclear weapons will remain central to U.S. security interests, yet they admit that there is no national consensus on the need for and role of nuclear weapons. Nuclear opponents are gravely concerned that to the extent nuclear refurbishment creates a global perception that nuclear weapons remain essential instruments, it will eviscerate nuclear nonproliferation measures precisely at a time when nuclear ambitions are growing. Moreover, opponents see deterrence through advanced conventional weapons as decisively more credible than any nuclear alternative. With hopes of elevating discourse to the national level, this article examines the key current arguments pro and con within the specialist community and forecasts changes in the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next decade. It concludes with a brief prognosis on prospects for complete nuclear disarmament.     

弹道导弹防御中多目标拦截的策略

多目标拦截是弹道导弹防御的重大难题,也是目前美国导弹防御系统所遇到的最大的技术难点。在将多目标问题分为单弹头攻击和多弹头攻击2类问题的基础上,结合美国的相关研究计划,分别针对核爆炸防御、助推段防御、先进的目标识别器和多拦截器防御等多目标拦截策略进行了分析研究。     

美国国防太空力量发展的动向及应对 ——基于对美国2020年《国防太空战略》的解读

发展国防太空力量是美国谋划大国竞争的战略支点。特朗普政府执政以来,为捍卫一超独霸的太空地位,加速推进太空军事化进程,已制定《国家太空战略》,签署新的太空政策指令,成立第六军种“天军”。2020年6月,美国公开最新版《国防太空战略》报告。本文对其梳理分析以研判美国国防太空力量发展动向,并运用网络调研法搜集近年美国政府部门关于国防太空力量发展的权威政策文本及知名智库的深度研究报告。在此基础上,把美国2020年最新版《国防太空战略》作为中心文本,以文献分析法归纳美国国防太空力量发展的动因、目标及行动计划。中国作为负责任的发展中太空大国,应当积极借鉴并应对美国2020年《国防太空战略》：内强素质,提升国防太空军事技术硬实力;外树形象,在国际场合积极推动太空和平利用的政策议程。     

Boost-glide Weapons and US-China Strategic Stability

ABSTRACT

The United States and China are testing boost-glide weapons, long-range strike systems capable of flying at Mach 5 or faster through the upper atmosphere. For the United States, these systems would provide a conventional prompt global strike capability, which, together with US ballistic missile defense programs, Chinese experts regard as a threat to China's ability to conduct nuclear retaliation. This perception is encouraging the Chinese military to modify its nuclear posture in ways that tend to create greater risks for both sides. If China's own boost-glide systems are meant to carry nuclear payloads only, their deployment would not fundamentally alter the current situation between the two states. However, if they were conventionally armed or dual-purpose, or if the United States could not determine the payloads they carried, the deployment of Chinese boost-glide systems could compound problems of strategic stability created by the introduction of ballistic missile defense, antisatellite, and antiship ballistic missile capabilities. If the technical hurdles can be overcome, it may be difficult for the two sides to refrain from these deployments in the absence of strong mutual trust or an established arms-control relationship. New confidence-building measures and expanded mutual transparency are warranted to avoid creating new dangers.     

美国导弹防御系统发展动向及对策思考

随着奥巴马政府各项安全政策主张的陆续出台,美国导弹防御系统建设进入一个新的发展时期.分析了美国导弹防御系统发展的最新动向,剖析了美导弹防御系统发展对我国国家安全的影响,提出了应对美导弹防御系统发展的对策思考.     

NONPROLIFERATION POLICY CROSSROADS:

On October 1, 2008, Congress enacted a proposal that originated with President George W. Bush in 2005 to approve an unprecedented nuclear trade pact with India by removing a central pillar of US nonproliferation policy. Despite the numerous political challenges confronting the Bush administration, the initiative won strong bipartisan support, including votes from Democratic Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. The four-year struggle to pass the controversial US-India nuclear trade agreement offers an exceptionally valuable case study. It demonstrates a classic tradeoff between the pursuit of broad multilateral goals such as nuclear nonproliferation and advancement of a specific bilateral relationship. It reveals enduring fault lines in executive branch relations with Congress. It vividly portrays challenges confronting proponents of a strong nonproliferation regime. This article is based on an analysis of the negotiating record and congressional deliberations, including interviews with key participants. It assesses the lessons learned and focuses on three principal questions: how did the agreement seek to advance US national security interests?; what were the essential elements of the prolonged state-of-the-art lobbying campaign to win approval from skeptics in Congress?; and what are the agreement's actual benefits—and costs—to future US nonproliferation efforts?     

Burden sharing and the future of NATO: wandering between two worlds

The US role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance is a 65-year history of retrenchment and renewal. When Washington has sought a retrenchment from the world, it traditionally increased burden sharing pressure on Europe to do more. During times of increased global ambition, the USA reaffirmed its traditional leadership role in the Alliance and its commitment to NATO effectiveness and relevance. This cycle of NATO retrenchment and renewal, however, is halting. Though the USA will continue to go through periods of relative increases and decreases in security policy ambition, signs point to a permanent defense and security retrenchment in Europe. Germany is the ally singularly capable of filling the resulting security gap. If NATO is to avoid the drift toward irrelevance many critics have predicted, Germany will need to cast off old inhibitions toward security and defense leadership. These trends and their implications for NATO's future are explored through historical case studies and the shifting contemporary security environment.     

US strategic preferences in the early twenty-first century

This article investigates how US national security planners have envisioned the emerging strategic environment during the early twenty-first century and evaluates how their perceptions of this strategic environment have changed during these years. This conceptual evolution can be seen in how defense planners define threats, identify defense priorities, and design security strategies. Five key strategic planning documents serve as the basis for this analysis and illustrate significant shifts in how the US government has envisioned its own security requirements as well as the context within which its strategic vision will need to be realized. These planning documents are: (1) Joint Vision 2020, (2) the Bush Administration's 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, (3) the Obama Administration's 2010 National Security Strategy, (4) US Strategic Defense Guidance entitled Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21^st Century Defense, and (5) the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Capstone Concept for Joint Operations: Joint Force 2020.     

SPEED BUMP ON THE ROAD TO GLOBAL ZERO

The prospect of the United States continuing to reduce the size of its nuclear arsenal to “very low numbers” has raised questions in Japan and South Korea, where US extended deterrence guarantees are premised on the “nuclear umbrella.” In both countries, however, concerns focus less on numerical arsenal size than on the sufficiency of specific nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities to meet evolving threats and on the degree of broader US commitment to these alliances. This article assesses developments in US-Japan and US-South Korea relationships in response to the Obama administration's nuclear disarmament policies, focusing on how the evolutionary course of those relationships may in turn condition prospects for sustaining this US nuclear policy direction. The analysis finds that the challenges of deterrence credibility and allied reassurance are difficult and long-term, but also that US nuclear arsenal size is secondary to broader political, strategic, and military factors in meeting these challenges. The evaluation concludes that strong alliance relationships and strategic stability in East Asia can be maintained while the size of the US nuclear arsenal continues to decline, but also that deterioration of these relationships could imperil core US nuclear policy and nonproliferation objectives.     

“Leading from behind”: neoclassical realism and operation Odyssey Dawn

In March 2011, President Barack Obama ordered US air and naval forces to commence Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya to impose a no-fly zone. The decision by the Obama Administration to intervene in a limited and supporting role in Libya is an important development in US foreign policy. Operation Odyssey Dawn presents scholars with a valuable opportunity to analyze and explore how US foreign policy is made and what roles domestic politics and elite perceptions play in decisions to use force. The author argues that neoclassical realism is a useful and compelling theoretic framework with which to analyze Operation Odyssey Dawn. While the Administration intervened in response to perceived external-level threats to US national interests, salient intervening domestic-level variables and elite perceptions shaped and guided the tenor and scope of the operation.     

VERIFIABILITY,RELIABILITY, AND NATIONAL SECURITY

The rejection of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the U.S. Senate in October 1999 could have been avoided, and the consequences of that vote still loom in the minds of supporters of the treaty. President Barack Obama has embraced the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and a key element of the Obama administration's arms control agenda is delivering on U.S. CTBT ratification. In order to secure the two-thirds majority in the Senate necessary to ratify the treaty, senators that remain skeptical of nuclear disarmament must also be convinced that the entry into force of the CTBT is in the national security interest of the United States. This article provides an analysis of the issues surrounding U.S. CTBT ratification divided into three segments—verifiability of the treaty, reliability of the U.S. stockpile, and the treaty's impact on U.S. national security—and concludes that CTBT ratification serves the security objectives of the United States. The CTBT constitutes an integral component of the multilateral nonproliferation architecture designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and it constrains the qualitative development of nuclear weapons, thereby hindering efforts by states of concern to develop advanced nuclear weapons.     

POWER,INFLUENCE, AND HIERARCHY: DEFENSE INDUSTRIES IN A UNIPOLAR WORLD

The global defense‐industrial sector reflects the hierarchy of power in the post‐Cold War world. As in the larger international system, the United States plays the dominant role in the defense sector as well. It is a comparative advantage often used by US policymakers to influence the foreign policy behavior of other states. Curiously, the radical concentration of the world’s defense industrial sector, as described here, has received relatively little scrutiny from either academia or the media, even though it not only reflects the international order but provides the United States with considerable leverage in it.     

The Obama administration's phased-adaptive architecture: technological,operational and political issues

In 2009, the Obama administration announced a new missile defense strategy, termed a phased-adaptive architecture (PAA) focused primarily on countering the growing threat from theater ballistic missiles. The success of this strategy is predicated on the rapid development and fielding of successive increments of defensive capability in a manner adapted to the specific requirements for missile defenses in different regions of the world. The administration is committed to building a European regional missile defense system, the European PAA or EPAA between now and 2020. The first elements of the EPAA were deployed in late 2011. However, much progress is still required in order to reach the goals set for the PAA. This article addresses the technological, operational and political issues confronting the Obama administration in its efforts to make the PAA a reality.