Russia, the USA and arms control
In my previous Blog, The Downward Spiral – How Arms Control Died and How it Can be Reborn, I referred to The New START arms control treaty as:
‘…the only significant arms control system that remained in place between Russia and the USA…The New START treaty was due to expire in February 2021, but was rather hurriedly extended for 5 years….However, New START may be coming to a new end. There is the suspicion that the Russians were anxious to extend it before they began their Special Military Operation in Ukraine, because President Biden would never agree to the extension with the political facts as they are now. The Russians seem to have underestimated the Western response to the operation and are now looking for ways to hit back. On August 8 2022, Russia suspended the inspection of its weapons by the US side, citing the fact that reciprocal inspections of American weapons were made difficult by the travel ban and other aspects of the sanctions regime against Russia. This may be true. Either way, it is hard to see the travel bans being altered or rescinded any time soon. This means the inspections cannot continue, which means the treaty may continue to 2026 but will be rendered meaningless. Alternatively, the USA may decide to denounce the treaty, as another form of political pressure on Russia….’
Well, the bad news is that New START is Newly Dead. On 21 February 2023, in a speech celebrating the first full year of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, President Putin announced that ‘Russia is suspending its participation’ in New START. It is interesting that while Russian government sources have referenced the difficulties of participating in the inspection system caused by sanctions, the main reason cited by President Putin is the general hostility to Russia which is evidenced by the sanctions regime itself. President Putin went onto list two requirements before arms control could meaningfully resume: The first is for the US to stop military support to Ukraine. This is both neither possible, nor reasonable. The second, that France and the UK be a part of future arms control negotiations, is merely impossible but is perfectly reasonable. The UK and France have large numbers of nuclear weapons. They add a considerable number of warheads for Russia to worry about in its defensive calculations. They also can be located close to Russia’s border which gives them potentially greater utility than US-based weapons. But the British and French nuclear forces have never been truly integrated into NATO – they are, quite specifically, national forces. This makes it difficult to compel either state to engage in multi-lateral arms control negotiations.
Technically speaking, New START is comatose rather than dead, but it is one of those coma’s that you don’t wake up from. Russia has suspended its participation in the Treaty rather than denouncing it permanently. This offers hope that it could be revived if Russia restarts participation. New START involves a quite complex series of enforcement institutions and procedures and these are technically still in operation. But it seems inconceivable that relations will improve enough for this resuscitation to happen and the Treaty expires formally on 5 February 2026 – this is less than three years away. There is little enthusiasm in Washington to renew it, since the last renewal was followed by the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. President Biden looks naïve for having agreed to that last extension.
We are living in a dangerous time, when Russia is constantly seeking to draw attention to its nuclear stockpile – the one measurement of state power and capacity where it can compete with the US. It is tempting to just dismiss the suspension of New START as another example of this. It keeps the focus on nuclear weapons and keep them at the forefront of Western news cycles. The idea is to scare voters in states that are supporting Ukraine. In this way, it could be said we are doing President Putin’s work for him when we focus on these announcements. The actual risk of nuclear use remains very low. But if New START is not renewed (New ReSTART) or replaced (New New START) then we will be living in a world with no arms control restraints on Russia or the US, the first time this been true since 1972. The rather feeble 1970’s Treaties did little to stop the buildup of nuclear weapons themselves, but they did establish the principle that arms control and the de-escalation of nuclear risk were desirable objectives. This led to the really meaningful and relatively successful agreements of the 1980’s and 1990’s.
It seems likely that both sides will begin to build up their nuclear arsenals again. If you use arms control as a barometer for the state of international relations in the Atlantic region, then all the progress of the last 51 years was for nothing. In fact, it is worse than nothing. The Soviet Union and USA spent trillions of dollars and rubles on nuclear weapons from 1945 onwards. They then spent trillions destroying some of them. They now propose to spend trillions replacing the systems they destroyed.
The new era of nuclear proliferation
There is another dangerous development to consider. The UK has already committed to reinvest in its nuclear forces. This could involve a switch to multiple delivery systems if the Royal Air Forces (RAF) capability is revived. The UK would return to the Cold War scenario of having both a sea and air based deterrent. The UK is probably unique as currently being the only nuclear state that relies on a single delivery system, the Trident Sea Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM). This diversification of delivery systems will inevitably involve more warheads. China’s nuclear force structure was, until recently, very similar to that of France and the UK. It employed a relatively low number of warheads, around 200, and emphasised the importance of its SLBM fleet. SLBM’s are considered the least disruptive type of delivery system because they offer lower accuracy but are almost impossible to locate and destroy once the boats go to sea. This means they are ideal second strike (i.e. retaliatory) weapons, but relatively poor at first strikes. These are nuclear weapons as existential insurance policy: they guarantee protection from serious attack by non-nuclear states. Of course, nuclear weapons are unlikely to be the first choice of weapon even when a nuclear armed state is attacked by a non-nuclear one. There are other calculations that the nuclear armed state must make. When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, they did not have to seriously worry that the UK would launch a nuclear missile at Buenos Aires. But the Falkland Islands are 13000 kilometers from London and this was not an existential threat. You could also categorise China’s previous force structure as regional: it was not intended for use on a global scale, but was designed to ensure China had enough of a nuclear presence to make Soviet or US interference an unattractive choice should either power choose to meddle in Chinese affairs.
However, over the last twenty years, China’s has steadily increased its force structure. It has gone from having the fifth largest force, to third place – easily outstripping the UK and France. As the US and Russia went through successful arms control negotiations, Beijing’s forces started to appear relatively larger still. This is worrying because, after decades of Sino-American cooperation, China is now filmy back in Russia’s camp. The Chinese are now clearly supportive of Russia’s choice to attack Ukraine. They will expect Russia’s backing if they attack the Republic of China (Taiwan). This is encouraging Japan, South Korea and perhaps even Taiwan itself to develop its own nuclear forces. The combined effect of the end of Russian-US arms control agreements, the expansion of the UK force and the increasing size of China’s arsenal may push threshold states into developing their own nuclear forces.
The nuclear states have always tried to stop the spread to the nuclear have-nots. One way of doing this is through the Non-Proliferation Treaty 1968 (NPT). This obligates signatory states not to develop, deploy or export nuclear weapons. The NPT has always suffered from three problems:
- States tend to sign up to it and lie. Nuclear technology is the amongst the most sensitive elements of a state’s security apparatus. Nuclear states invest a lot of resources in keeping it secret. They are incentivized to believe they can get away with denying they possess it at all.
- The NPT is a treaty and states can renounce it. North Korea did this in 2003. Some experts suggest that North Korea’s withdrawal from the treaty was not carried out in the technically correct manner and so does not count. In the author’s view, this is an idiotic interpretation of how international law works. If North Korea thinks it has left the NPT and acts like it has, then it has.
- The NPT is a hypocritical, biased and rotten treaty. It tried to legitimise the nuclear monopoly of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. India, Israel and Pakistan never signed the NPT. Rather than place real pressure on them to do so, they were allowed to drift into nuclear weapons development. In the case of Israel, the nuclear capability was almost certainly developed with tacit US approval, if not outright assistance.
The Domino Theory and the nth country problem
During The Cold War, Western governments became concerned with a principle known as the Domino Theory. This suggested that as a state might move into the Communist camp, it would lead to neighbouring states following suit. This was at least part of the explanation for the US involvement in Vietnam: South Vietnam itself turning Communist would not be a major concern, but the whole of South East Asia going the same way would be. The Domino Theory was always fairly crude and did not allow for the way these conflicts were viewed by the locals, for whom they were often simply a struggle for self-determination against previously colonial powers. In the early years of nuclear strategic thought, the period 1949-1965, a similar principle was developed to explain how a large number of states might seek a nuclear capability. It was described as the nth country problem.
The nth country problem starts out with the proposition that state number 1 develops nuclear capability out of rational self-interest. This encourages state 2 to develop a comparable capability, again out of rational self-interest. This carries on until two phenomena are observable:
- Potentially, every state develops nuclear capability. This is not 100% rational, but is often spurred on by the development of a previous threshold state going nuclear. For example, China developed its capability to keep up with the US and later the USSR. India developed a capability to respond to China, so Pakistan had to respond to the Indian development. It is also worth noting that in the 1950’s it was assumed that nuclear capability made sense for smaller states, who could use it as a leveler against their general military inferiority to larger states.
- Each state that develops nuclear capability regards it as sensible and justified, but there may be a state that develops capability that the existing nuclear powers think is neither sensible nor justified in developing such a capability. This is the nth country. Iran is a candidate for it now. The US, EU, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia can tolerate a nuclear Israel but not a nuclear Iran.
The nth country problem fell out of fashion almost as soon as it appeared, largely because it presented a generally pessimistic view of nuclear proliferation that was not borne out by the facts. Nuclear proliferation stopped in the 1960’s at the five major powers. Israel then developed a capability in the 1970’s and then nothing apparently happened for 25 years until India and Pakistan joined the club. We now know that Libya and South Africa developed nuclear weapons around 1990. But we also know they disposed of them almost immediately – hardly suggesting that proliferation was a destabilising phenomenon.
It may be time to reconsider the nth country problem. Not only do developments in Asia suggest that more states might seek an independent nuclear deterrent, but the Ukrainian Government must be regretting the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. In this document, Russia, the US and the UK confirmed that Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine would transfer their nuclear arsenals to Russia. In exchange for this, all parties agreed to, inter alia, respect the signatory’s independence and sovereignty within their existing borders and refrain from the threat or the use of force against them. The document is not a treaty and thus is not enforceable in Public International Law. Ukraine and the other states gave up their nuclear weapons, but as we now know, Russia violated its part of the Memorandum in 2014 and 2022. With hindsight, it would have been far better for Ukraine to keep its nuclear arsenal. This would have provided an existential guarantee against Russian aggression. This has been pointed out by Ukrainian officials today. Russia has seized on this to suggest that Ukraine is developing a nuclear capability. The two problems with this view are that:
- Russia has already violated the Budapest Memorandum, so Ukraine would not be doing anything morally or legally wrong by renouncing its membership of the NPT and developing a nuclear capability;
- Ukraine has shown no interest in this option. Ukraine has never developed a nuclear capability before – it inherited it from the USSR. The idea that they could develop one now, in secrecy and in the midst of a general conflict is ludicrous.
Conclusions
President Obama came into office dreaming of a nuclear free world. But dreams are not enough to change the nature of international relations. There was nothing in the way of a concrete proposal for how this could be achieved. Nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented. The physical principles involved in their production are very well known and relatively easy to implement. North Korea and Pakistan have developed nuclear weapons. This suggests they are not very resource intensive either. The main forces that’s top states from developing them are diplomatic pressure and the difficulty in finding the fissile material.
President Trump came into office promising to modernise Us nuclear forces and effectively end arms control with Russia. He then promised ‘Fire and Fury’ if North Korea threatened US interests. The two visions are starkly different, but the only one that came near fruition was President Trump’s. Dreams of a nuclear free world will remain merely dreams. The task for leaders today is to prevent the nightmares.
