Asia in the New Nuclear Age

Welcome to the Asia Chessboard, the podcast that examines geopolitical dynamics in Asia and takes an inside look at the making of grand strategy. I'm Mike Green of the United States Studies Center in Sydney and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Welcome back to the Asia Chessboard. I'm Mike Green and I'm really excited to have with me Professor Vipin Narang. Vipin is the Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security and Political Science and the inaugural director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology SSP Center for Nuclear Security Policy, CNSP. And he's one of those sort of national treasures in the American National Security Ecosystem, who comfortably transits between the academy and high levels of government policymaking. He served from March 2022 through August 24 as the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense P. Dazzy and then acting assistant secretary of defense for space policy at the Pentagon with oversight of strategic capabilities including nuclear space, missile technologies, missile defense and cyber policy. As an academic, as a scholar, Vpin is regarded worldwide for his work on nuclear proliferation, extended deterrence, Asian security issues. He's won multiple book awards and fellowships and on the academic side and for his policy work was awarded the department of defense medal for distinguished public service and he's a listener to the Asia chess board which of course explains all his success but maybe we should rewind before you started listening VP welcome and tell us a bit how you got into this and I want to ask you a bit about the migration between academia and policy but first of all how did you did you play with toy nuclear weapons when you were a kid how did this all happen? First of all, Mike, thanks for having me. A longtime listener. It's truly an honor to be here with you on the Asia Chess board and I'm not Thank you for that very kind introduction. Certainly undeserved and I'm not sure I comfortably transition between anything. We should talk about that because I think it's rarer for academics to go into policy compared to the Cold War and since although there were quite a few that I worked with. No, I didn't play with toy nuclear weapons. I It's sort of a funny story. I was all set to go to medical school as an undergraduate. So, I was an undergraduate chemical engineer at Stanford University in the late 1990s, early 2000s. And I think my story is sort of a story of random good luck with having great professors who became mentors and having a cohort of friends and colleagues at Stanford at that time that were all interested in security affairs and sort of pushed me out of my comfort zone. I'm an Indian-American immigrant. I thought I was going to medical school and I think one of my biggest regrets in life may turn out to be I turned down going to work for Google in 2000 but I was really intrigued after taking a class by Scott Sean international security in the changing worlds chip blacker and Scott Sean and my TA was Taylor Frabel is now my colleague longtime friend and I just got the security bug and sort of ended up writing an honors thesis through SEESAC which is the center for national security and cooperation at Stanford. I was in the inaugural class of what is now this storyried undergraduate honors program at Stanford and I was there at a time with people that will be familiar to a lot of listeners. Mike Soulmier, Tun Chabra, Sheena Chestnut Greatton, Zack Cooper, Oriana Mastro, Mir Rap Hooper, Jane Bainman. I think if you look back, I'd like to think we're still young, but I was sort of in the first class and they came behind me and they're lifelong friends and we're all there around the same time and interested in sort of security affairs. And it was Scott and Taylor who pushed me to think about doing this as a career. And the technical training, I think, pushed me towards sort of thinking about nuclear weapons and weapons mass destruction. My honors thesis there, my undergraduate honors the no one should read because it was an undergraduate honors thesis, but it was on India's chemical weapons program. And that sort of then set up this journey and pathway where I took a year afterwards to do what I called the victory lab at Stanford. I did have an MS in chemical engineering because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wasn't sure I want to go to medical school. And then 9/11 happened and that really changed my perspective on the value of this sort of enterprise and studying security affairs and nuclear weapons. And from there it just sort of led to a couple years in the UK. And then there again, I had a great mentor, Yuanfun Kong, who's in Singapore now. And he was like, "Why would you go to medical school? Like, give this a shot. And if you suck at it, then go to medical school. Medical school will always be there or law school." And I tried the PhD and sort of just ended up studying nuclear weapons at a time and nuclear strategy and deterrence at a time when everyone was telling me not to do it because the focus was on non-prololiferation, counterpolliferation, disarmament. And I ended up defending my dissertation on nuclear strategy in the modern era like a couple weeks after President Obama's Prague speech. And I'll never forget a very senior Harvard faculty member saying, "Well, it's career suicide. Like, what are you going to do now? Nuclear weapons are going away. But my PhD adviser, Steve Rosen, very famously told me or indelibly told me, as long as nuclear weapons exist, we're going to need people to study them, and they're not going away in our lifetime." And so ended up here because of good mentors and good friends. And I think that is it better be lucky than good. And that's story of my story. >> That is a smokers book of excellent advice for anyone listening at the beginning of their career. You know I did my PhD in the '9s early to mid90s on alliances in Asia. And you know my mentor said the same thing. You're wasting your time. The Cold War is over. No one will care about >> right. Yeah. This is number one. Stick to your guns if you think it's important and if it's something that's not actually going away in a way you have a supply and demand advantage because you'll be the one who's left >> gone off studying whatever postmodernist mumbo jumbo. >> That's great advice. Don't follow the fads. >> Very good advice. I'm sorry. Stanford undergrad. Is that right? >> Stanford undergrad. Yeah. >> Are you in that same cohort with Mirror Hooper and Zach Cooper? And >> they were a couple years behind me but we've all friends and all knew each other. I was sort of the in that first class and then they were four or five years behind me but we've all been in the same orbit because of our PhDs working in this area and it's sort of when you do sort of like the sociological study of this I do wonder in 101 15 years whether sort of when you look at that that that cohort in the early 2000s you'll see a lot of Stanford undergrads that went through the SEAC honors program >> and all just incredibly impressive and influential you You know, there are these >> of the punch. Yeah, that's >> well you know, present company excluded, right? But there are these great books like 1848 that I forgot the author about the West Point class of 1848. And of course it's all these giants civil war in both the north and the south were Rick's book about West Point and all of the Petraeus others who went through Iraq and Afghanistan and the nightingale song if you know that about the naval academy in 60 I think class of 58 and 68 and there were just these moments in thesemies that produced a generation of national street leaders and I I've told all the people we're talking about someday somebody's going to write a book about Stanford in those days because so many people in that small corner of the US in that one program emerged as really significant players, mostly Democrats, but in a bipartisan way. So anyway, so if I'm still doing this podcast in 20 years, I'll have the author on who writes that book. MIT is an amazing place. Our mutual friend Dick Samuels made me an undeserved fellow at MIT when I was doing my PhD and I went up for extended periods of time and I loved it because people had technical chops. that were astrophysicists and chemical engineers who were very happy to sit around the table with political scientists and historians and great intellectual environment and I learned to fake technology talk a bit there >> and went on when was a grad student at Johns Hopkins SC to be an RA for Harold Brown the >> oh wow defense secretary I think still the youngest Caltech PhD in physics ever and we were playing tennis one day and after he goes you know what I like about you Mike he said unlike all these guys who majored in history. You actually understand technology. These other guys wouldn't know a nuclear bomb if it hit him in the butt. Dr. Brown, actually, I did major in history. So, I was at least proud that I could fake some of this, but you actually have the technical training to some extent. >> Jade, I'm an expired engineer now. But your point about MIT and the security science program in CIS, I think, is spot on. It is it I'm biased obviously but what Barry Posen Dick Samuels Harvey Seapolski before him Owen Cotay have built Taylor's currently the director of the security studies program we have an allstar faculty youth Caitlyn Talmage Eric Lyn Greenberg and Eric Hegen Bothotham so it's just a really special time where we have this assembly of social scientists but people who also have technical chops Dr. Austin Long who just came from the joint staff, Pne Vad who's on the national security council. I mean it is Matthew Sharp who is a PhD in physics from Chicago working on arms control from the state department and I can't think of a better assembly at this particular time to study these hard problems and both an emerging technology but certainly also nuclear policy and it is a special place. I feel very fortunate to be there. >> It for a group of social scientists has the feeling of a skunk works of engineers solving a problem they know is really hard. There's a certain humility >> certain humility which you don't always find in Cambridge, Massachusetts. >> Yeah, we're sort of the with all having done my PhD at Harvard like in some ways we fashion ourselves the anti-Harvard. No offense to listening to this from Harvard, but that's probably a topic for another day, but we try not to be hierarchical. I think that's really our we especially try to be and I hope this was true the case when you were there too, but very flat structure and the graduate students are smarter than we are and so and provide all the energy. So the idea that the senior faculty should get the first questions and stand and everyone stand in line behind them. I think we try and have a different model. >> Well, I'm glad to hear I was there 20 some 30 almost years ago. So I'm glad to hear the dynamic is the same. And let's talk about going from academia into government. I did it into the Pentagon to work with Kurt although I was really an adviser. It was not a line position. And then into the NYSE which is a line position. Had you done a government before this dazzy job? >> No. And this was sort of what the difficult. So my story again is just random luck and having somebody who believed in me probably misplaced faith. I had gone through all the academic progression and were sitting in COVID in 2021, summer of 2021 and Colin Call who had just been confirmed as under secretary for policy a couple months before and he's like I need to talk to you. I'm like sure yeah I've known Colin forever. I love him. One of my dearest friends always been just a huge supporter. give great advice. I thought he needed to pass off a grant or something from CESAC. I don't know if I ever told him the story. I was like, "Yeah, sure. Colin, happy to chat. Like, you need me to do something, I'm happy to do it." And he's like, "You want to come be a Pasty in nuclear policy?" I'm like, "What?" I was like, "First of all, what's a Pasty?" I was like, "I didn't know was." And I never worked in government. And it was a huge leap of faith that he put in me and I didn't know enough to know that this was going to be a steep uphill climb. And I was in a position both at home and my wife was very supportive. She comes from a family of public service and she we didn't move the kids down from Boston to DC just cuz I didn't think I didn't know if I was going to survive 3 months. My first lease in my crash pad in Pentagon City was 3 months cuz I was like I know enough to know that the Pentagon can chew people up and spit them out. And I had never worked in government. I didn't know what that was going to be like. I did not know whether I would survive or whether I would succeed or whether it be just complete failure. And I worked very hard to go in with an open mind, listen to the team. I had a phenomenal staff and I had a phenomenal boss. Dr. John Plum was a confirmed ASD for space policy and he wanted to do the space stuff and he came in and he let me run on the nuclear policy side and he gave me a lot of support, a lot of advice and he was I like to say he was a tough boss but he was a good boss and he really really helped me succeed and so did Colin. and I had all the support from the staff, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion. I had no idea what I was doing. And my advice for any academic that goes in at any level, I wish I'd gone in as an AO earlier. So, one, go in as early as you can. Take advantage of the CFRIAF fellowships. But the second piece of advice is don't go in there thinking you know everything, right? Like one, I didn't have a clearance before I went in. So, that opens your mind. I mean, my views shifted on China, on the Korean Peninsula. Once you get sort of exposed to intelligence, you're like this is on Russia. Like I didn't believe in pure evil until I saw the intel on Putin and Russia. But don't go in. Academics go in thinking they know everything. And go in with humility and learn from the staff because they've been doing a long time and government is different than academia. It's hierarchical and bureaucracy matters and the intelligence is important. and whatever big brain you think you have, go in with some humility and open mind about sort of how the government works. >> That's what I tell people. First of all, you're right. A little dose of exposure to the sausage making helps. >> Yeah. >> But the most important advice I think is in academia as a post-doal fellow or an assistant professor seeking promotion, you can do well by demonstrating you're the smartest person in the room. >> That rarely works in government. >> Government, unless you're the president of the United States, that is death. You have to have the humility but also the wisdom to think about how do you get people around an idea and you have to have the humility to realize it may not be your idea. >> Correct? >> You are working for its hierarchy. You were working for someone else. But I found in my stint in government that when I came back my academic research was incredibly enriched because there are all these problems I had not thought about >> in a theoretical world. >> Yeah. >> It's interesting because some political scientists argue that going into government ruins you as an academic. They say it's like like scientists putting their finger in a petri dish. You're no longer a pure objective scientist able to measure. I think it's the exact opposite. I think it complexifies the world for you, but also changes your assumptions radically. >> Fully agree. It was the honor of a lifetime. It was an opportunity I didn't necessarily think I would ever get or seek out. >> But afterwards, I think it's enriched my perspective on academia, also the world. And I hope it's made me I don't know. You'd have to ask my PhD students. Maybe it's made me a terrible teacher. But I think it's I think it's made me a better teacher and also equally supportive of non-academic careers in a PhD in political science. Right? So well at least when I did my PhD it was like it was forboden to go around saying that you want to do anything except be a professor at an R1 university. And I think one of the gems about MIT has always been that like we're open to training very the great people doing great PhDs, rigorous PhDs, but there is value in having folks we train go serve in the intelligence community or the department of defense or the state department. And it's not always just about academic the academic R1 jobs. And I think that's something that like we really value also at MIT now. >> All right, we've solved academia. Let's now solve global nuclear proliferation and the credibility of extended deterrence. I guess macro level, what's deepang sort of elevator pitch or short version of where we are in the global nuclear security environment in 2026? >> So overall, I mean, I think this is the most difficult and challenging nuclear security environment in the history of the nuclear era pure writ large. Right? So number one, during the cold war, there was one pure nuclear power, the Soviet Union. We could size and focus everything on Moscow. Now we have an emerging second pier nuclear power with China. Don't sleep on North Korea. India and Pakistan are throwing roundhouses at each other every couple months. Iran over the last the saga of Iran began in the early 2000s when when you were in government and they were sort of enriching uranium and had the Amad program and the nuclear program. Then we have the JCPOA, the pull out of the JCPOA, then Operation Midnight Hammer. And then we have even without the current domestic political environment in the United States during the Biden administration, extended deterrence and the credibility of extended deterrence in this environment was difficult and challenging because we had nervous allies who wondered whether the United States could credibly extend deterrence with the hardware solutions. like were we willing to invest in a new sort of a new nuclear posture that could make extended deterrence credible and now we have the added challenge with the current administration about whether we're willing to right and that is a double challenge for extended deterrence and so we have not faced the confluence of these challenges we face everything except I think the multiple peer challenge at some point or the other we've had assurance crisis in the past we've had doubts about the credibility of extended deterrence we've had quote unquote rogue proliferators but we've never had all of it at the same time. And I worry that we've lost a generation of folks who not only understand these issues but can actually work on them both in the government and outside because at the end of the Cold War, as you know, everyone focused on arms reductions and we thought we're going to keep going. New start would last indefinitely. But now we're facing for the first time in this environment for the first time in decades the absence of formal arms control. on top of all of that. So, we lost a generation of folks, subject matter experts, and we need to recover it and we can't recover it quickly enough because we've never faced all of this at the same time. >> If you went back to 196061 and met President John F. Kennedy, he would have told you we're looking at a world where in my presidency we're going to have dozens of nuclear weapon states. I mean, that was it's not that bad, right? It's not a it's not a lateral proliferation. It's more a concentration of peer nearpeer aspiring peer nuclear competitors China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, right? Are you worried also about lateral proliferation? >> We have to worry about we have to worry about allied proliferation for the first time since the end of the cold war. But the risk of if Iran's nuclear program is sort of on pause and at some point in the future, Iran does test or announce themselves as a nuclear weapons power, the cascade effect in the Middle East is going to be pretty significant and stark. And in Northeast Asia, if for example, South Korea decides, you know what, the US really doesn't care about North Korea and this alliance is no longer fit for this world and we need an insurance policy and and South Korea sort of acquires or pursues its own nuclear weapons program. I would be surprised if Japan doesn't at least think about following suit. And I don't know that Taiwan could get out of the barn, but it may try and that may create sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The very sort of attack that they're trying to deter may be provoked by pursuing nuclear weapons. So I leave open the possibility that you might start seeing a cascade of proliferation. And we haven't talked about Europe, right? Poland and others may start thinking about their own capabilities as you know sort of the US enthusiasm for extended deterrence in NATO wanes as well. So, first the devil's advocate question, the John Mirshimer argument. What's wrong with that? If Japan, Korea, Taiwan have nuclear weapons. We had strategic stability, mutual assured destruction. The US, the Soviets during the Cold War, why not just sort of extend that and save ourselves a lot of trouble with conventional deterrence because no one's going to attack a nuclear weapon state. >> Yeah, >> I don't buy it. I'm sure you don't buy it, but what's the push back? don't because I think John and others who make that argument including Ken Waltz underestimate how long the process of developing and acquiring nuclear weapons is and it's very hard to do in secret forever and the requirements for mutually assured destruction and sort of secure second strike can take decades take India Pakistan as example both are very very capable sort of nuclear weapons powers and they tested in 1998 and we are now 30 years And only now I think are both India and Pakistan relatively sort of confident in the security of their second strike. And even then Pakistan worries about survivability. India may worry about survivability against China. And so this idea that states overnight can become nuclear weapons powers with secure second strike capabilities I think is not only misguided it's empirically untrue. And every nuclear weapons power even the United States took years if not decades to achieve the level of sort of secure second strike that that Mirshimer and Waltz believe sort of lead to stability and states in those periods become very very vulnerable. I don't think we want to rerun India Pakistan crisis when they had fives and tens of nuclear weapons and they're worried about survivability because they get itchy trigger fingers and I think that that is if you ignore the 30-year intervening period okay maybe but you can get a lot of conflict and instability in those 30 years and so states that don't have the organs to manage nuclear weapons that haven't sort of thought about what vulnerabilities they have in the process that they might be targets if South Korea pursues nuclear weapons or Japan pursues nuclear weapons China may get a vote, right? North Korea may get a vote and you may precipitate the very thing you're trying to avoid in the process. So, the process of proliferation can be very, very violent. And we're seeing that with Iran right now. Great powers out there don't want states necessarily to get nuclear weapons and those that oppose it may actually take military action to stop them. >> Yeah, well said. I suppose at this point the structural realist would say, well, you're absolutely right. all the more reason why we should accelerate proliferation and get to that second strike capability as quickly as possible. But we won't go there. I think I think you speak for the sensible majority on this one. We have a really really excellent research fellow at our center in Sydney, Dr. Chris Wat, who does a lot of work on proliferation and he's more pessimistic than I am, maybe because I work on allies more and I can see the internal structures and cost benefit analysis governments do. My sense is the the lateral proliferation risk in the Middle East is more significant than anywhere in the world. The Saudis and others have the Pakistan option. The the security treaties with US are not as binding. The US from their perspective commitment is more fickle than in the Western Pacific or Europe. >> Current events notwithstanding. I'm much less we need to be vigilant, but I'm much less worried about North Asia. >> In large part because you don't see Syria hedging other behavior in other ways. the support for the alliance with the US 97% in Korea, 93% in Japan despite the Trump administration's unprecedented efforts to unnerve them. And then if you look at military exercises, things like AUS, joint command and control arrangements. So I don't see the if I saw a lot more hedging behavior in the conventional arena, then I'd be more worried. But that's just one variable. They the indogenous the exogenous variable of course is the North Korean modernization, China's modernization. Is it that side that worries you? Yes, things look good on the inside right now, but we've not faced these exogenous challenges to deterrence. Is that sort of what animates you? >> I mostly I mostly agree with you in the sense that I think the preferred solution for Tokyo's and Soul security predicament is a robust extended deterrence architecture and I would say I'll throw Camber in there as well and they would prefer a credible US extended deterrent commitment and umbrella over indigenous nuclear weapons. But we are making it very difficult for ourselves in the United States right now. I think sort of the scale back of the exercises with South Korea. The notion that we can separate sort of the economic war from the broader alliance dynamics with Japan, South Korea and Australia, I think leads to doubts about the US enthusiasm and willingness and even in a post Trump era, right? There's some damage that I think is almost irreparable in the sense that so Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi both you know Rush is contemporary of mine from grad school and Kurt is obviously the OG Kurt they're more optimistic that in a postTrump world we can sort of get back and I agree with them like it'll take effort but we can get back because I think the allies want to get back there but there is one piece that I think will be hard to really repair in the way that the Biden administration tried in the in in 2020 which is Trump was an aberration. and it's not going to happen again. You only get one shot at that and now it's happened again. And it will take I think a successive chain of administrations that are committed to extended deterrence and the allies and the formal alliance architecture I think for allies to get over this period of anxiety and so it's possible but I think it's more long it's more long term but with North Asia I agree I mean we sort of even with the UN administration right the Washington declaration really did I believe staunch the soul's interest in an independent nuclear weapons capability and as we all worked on the NCG, the nuclear consultative group, and I had the privilege of chairing it. But that was sort of like from the White House, that was like the solution to soul's anxieties, and it really worked. If Yun were president today, I do wonder whether we would see the hedging behavior that we see. I think the Lee administration does not want to pursue their own nuclear weapons and I think are not engaging in the kind of hedging behavior that we might have seen if you had not declared martial law and sort of stayed in power. But so you get these we're sort of saved by random walks in domestic politics. But I'm not sure if the structural feature persists where the US continues to show an unwillingness or actually disdain for our formal alliance architecture whether at some point we start seeing the hedging behaviors in North Asia that we don't see as you noted today. >> So I'm a little more optimistic but if I'm wrong I hope you'll have enough cans of beans in your bunker for me. [laughter] The other thing frankly that's very very significant Victor Chaw points this out but the the way he puts it is the path to nuclear proliferation goes through the garden of extended deterrence and so the US has multiple opportunities when these ripples are happening when this hedging behavior is happening when and we've seen it before we saw it after the Nixon gam in ' 69 we saw it in the in the Bush administration after I left when there was a move to lift terrorism sanctions on North Korea this was all about the Japanese abductees and it had an >> incredible impact on the credibility of extended deterrence and people in the Obama administr Bush administration at the time were sort of stunned that Japan would look at the treatment of terrorism and abducted Japanese citizens and North Korea criminal behavior as an indicator of credibility for extended deterrence. But those things is you know extended deterrence is in the eye of the beholder. So we've had these sort of ripples, uncertainties, turbulence in the credibility of extended deterrence, the nuclear umbrella before, but we've we the United States has recovered. We did Biden Kurt, you did the soul declaration to reassure South Korea. We did at the end of the Bush administration towards the end. I had left, but I got involved in a sort of 1.5 track dialogue on extended deterrence that eventually became government policy with Japan. So we recover. We recover. One of the toolkits, one of the things that we might be required to do to recover is something short of proliferation and that's the dual keyed tactical nuclear deployments in Japan or Korea or you know nuclear sharing as it's called or setting up a NATO nuclear committee. There's a lot you I'm sure you dealt with all of these >> different options or certainly heard about them in government. What's your view of that sort of interim step nuclear sharing sort of like give concerned all like Japan or Korea if we have to more actual fingers on the not the button but the keyboard. >> No. And so I'd say nuclear sharing is sort of the high end. And I I reiterated I think and I've said this before publicly as well to South Korea and Japan. Nuclear sharing is not all it's cracked up to be. And if you ask our NATO allies that are involved in the nuclear sharing mission, it is very costly. It's a huge commitment. And the assets that they commit to the nuclear sharing mission essentially have to be hived off from the conventional mission because they have to survive and be available in the event that they need to be called upon for a nuclear strike of some sort. And in a lot of ways, the preferred solution, I still think short of nuclear sharing, there are a lot of things that we can still do, right? So with the Japanese, if Tokyo were open, we're going to have a slick of men, a sea launch nuclear cruise missile off of likely a Los Angeles or Virginia class submarine. think of configurations we can talk about later, but the if we could rotate through if we could have even storage facilities for temporary rotations or storage in places like Japan or South Korea so that in a crisis we could sort of surge capabilities there and reload if we had to would really augment the credibility of our posture and the extended deterrence relationship. So even just having storage facilities without permanent deployment I think is it could offer quite a few advantages and sort of be what the South Koreans and Japanese referred to as a wedding ring with a wedding ring of extended deterrence and that wouldn't require permanent storage and it wouldn't require nuclear sharing but could actually sort of have an outsized sort of deterrent and assurance effect and so you know I hear especially in sold they jump to nuclear sharing but like we should think very carefully about the cost and obligations of that arrangement for the ally and recognize that there are a lot of steps short of that that actually I think have better bang for buck and so everyone says nuke's back on pen well putting gravity bombs on the peninsula right very vulnerable and for to do what I'd rather rely on sort of standoff slick of men that are lurking in the seas that are sort of invisible to Kim Jong-un that better deter him than having something visibly on pen that would be sort of the first ripe preemptive target for a North Korean sort of short-range nuclear weapon. And so the Asian geography is very different from NATO. And so we shouldn't graft solutions that are better for NATO because of the land geography there for the maritime environment in North and Northeast Asia. And so I think it's important to have these discussions. I think it's absolutely right. This is the time to have these discussions. But sort of the solutions we arrived at in NATO aren't necessarily the same ones that we should necessarily adopt in North Asia. But I do think to your point about sort of a broader we have three bilateral as you know better than anybody. We have three bilateral relationships in Asia with Australia, Japan and South Korea short of an Asian NATO. Nobody's talking about necessarily an Asia NATO at this point but it would be nice at least with the nuclear bodies to have a coordinating mechanism. We have three bilateral nuclear relationships. We have the EDDD with Japan, which you sort of helped develop out with the track 1.5 that became the EDDD. That's phenomenal. We have the NCG with South Korea. And then we have the SPD, the strategy and policy dialogue with Australia. Well, now given the security environment, how about we have some coordinating body or mechanism on top of those three so that we get a common picture of sort [snorts] of the threat and our posture and exercises because we need to coordinate better even if it's not formal. some informal layer would be very helpful. >> Yeah, I think on a whole range of issues in broad security, we need more of a coordination mechanism to connect the bilateral alliances, the hub and spokes we have. I mean, I would do that for infrastructure financing. I would do [snorts] it for foreign interference. I would do it for maritime security, energy security. We don't have a NATO, but we can have bits and pieces with all the right players, and I think nuclear is one of them. Y >> and historically, as you know, the US government, the Pentagon has not liked that idea because they prefer to separate the allies to do as little as possible in each case, >> right? If you have a trilateral coordination mechanism, the Australians and Koreans may find we do a lot more with Japan actually on this stuff, >> right, >> than we do with them. Or the Japanese and Koreans may find we share a lot more intelligence with the Australians than we do with them. So, you set yourself up, you have how many kids? You know, you set yourself up for a dynamic. But I think we're at a point now where as part of the larger need for networking our alliances, this that definitely should be on the table and maybe that's a 1.5 track as well to kick things off. I think it's a great idea and I also I think that the at least in the nuclear realm I think what they'll see is actually like we've tailored each of our nuclear relationships to the ally but a lot of it is the same right and so we could gain efficiencies by having a quadrilateral sort of arrangement coordinating body and that it will help soul sort of see that the ED isn't better and Tokyo to see that the NCG isn't better they're tailored they're different but we are trying to do the same thing and the objective is essentially to augment the extended deterrent relationship pursue conventional nuclear integration. All the rage right now is CNI and we are going to have to coordinate our broader conventional and nuclear posture in the theater in the region in a way that we can't do it unless we have a coordinating mechanism on top. >> You mentioned earlier in the list of everything that's going wrong right now in the nuclear world, you listed we have no arms control. We have a bit of photo op kind of summetry potentially with North Korea, but we don't have an actual nuclear negotiation of any kind. I was in those as you know, and there never really was that substantive, but we have nothing right now. >> We have virtually nothing with the Chinese mainly because Beijing's not interested. >> Correct. >> I guess the question for you is at this point, is it too late? I mean, what's the role of of arms control talks right now? How important is it? And how how realistic is it? I mean, I think the Trump administration actually admirably and the Biden administration as well were always open, right? We're always ready to have those talks. They do need to be now in the multiple peer world. There are ways to sort of have a bilateral arrangement with Russia that gives us enough margin against China, but really this does in the future I think needs to be at least a three. And my French and British colleagues and friends don't like hearing this, but it may need to be a five, right? I mean, it may need to be a P5 sort of arrangement. And I don't see anything immediately or even in the medium term for the reasons you laid out. But that doesn't mean I'm a little more optimistic about the future of arms control. I think at some point it is going to be in Moscow's and Beijing's and Washington's interest to sit down and say, "Look, we can arrive at an arrangement where we don't need to keep building up and it'll be in all their interest." And when that day arrives, I'm more optimistic that we can arrive at some sort of mutually agreeable or beneficial arrangement that is in each side's interest. But at the moment, as you know, there's really nothing except a fraying NPT. And I don't want to sleep on it. We talked about Kennedy earlier, but the NPT has been a miracle up until now. I don't think anybody thought the NPT would last until 2020, 2026, but it's not so much I think Iran's nuclear journey has been sort of baked into the NPT because it's been like a frog in boiling water. But we go back to other potential proliferators. I don't know what'll happen to the MPT if a state in good standing such as a Saudi Arabia or South Korea, Japan or Poland sort of pursues nuclear weapons either with the tacid approval of Washington or even worse covertly and what that does to the MPT. So by definition, Iran aside, the next nuclear weapons power in the system will be a state in good standing who's a member of the MPT. And that I think could pose a real challenge for the future of the NPT. >> So if you're an ally like Australia or Japan say which has you know an existential interest in the credibility of extended US deterrence of the US nuclear umbrella but also substantial constituencies who believe in arms control and non-prololiferation and article six of the NPT and you want to have some influence on this. You know what do you do? I mean the Japanese keep using the first committee and UN process which is I don't know it's not angels on the head of a pin but it's not exactly causing Moscow or Beijing to shutter. So what do you do if you're a US ally and you believe what you just said which is we will get to arms control with the major nuclear weapon states. If you're a non-weapon state what do you do? I mean historically what the Japanese would do is flaunt their latent nuclear weapons potential. >> I mean what I've written on this but a lot of people thought Japan was hedging with nuclear weapons capability. They weren't. It was primarily about negotiating leverage for article six of the NPT and but that's not a great solution. Not right now. What do you do if you're sitting in Cber or Tokyo to sort of and with an administration that's not very interested frankly what do you do to sort of lean history the arc of history back faster to that world you're talking about? >> This is my own personal view and sort of very blunt straight talk which is you have to prioritize do we care about vertical proliferation in the United States or horizontal proliferation. Right. And my view has been in this new nuclear sort of era we find ourselves and the United States is the only country that takes on this responsibility of non-ontiguous extended deterrence and our force posture is largely driven by that. That includes theater nuclear forces which the administration is admirably you know moving out ahead. So Bridge KBY gave some remarks at the Stracom deterrent symposium and he's talked about it elsewhere that they're focusing on theater nuclear capabilities to have more flexibility in theater both Indoacific and in NATO but there is even post new start the United States has roughly 1550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons that was for like Russia and only Russia up until now there is some margin against China and it's not urgent I think we probably have a couple years where we have enough margin to implement enduring sort of US nuclear strategy which prioritizes counterforce and damage limitation. But as China fills out its silos, the United States may have to think about increasing the number of deployed strategic forces. If you're an ally, if that's what it takes to make extended turns credible to stop the spread of potential sort of latent capabilities or hedging or even outright proliferation amongst allies, this is the trade-off, right? a modest amount of US vertical proliferation. It's not even that much. When we talk about what it would take to cover down on China and Russia, let's just say hypothetically that goes from like 1550 deployed to 2,000 or 2400, something in that neighborhood. We're not talking about matching Russia plus China plus one just the way sort of the way the US does strategy and targeting. But if the price of assuring allies and reducing the risk of horizontal proliferation particularly amongst allies is a modest amount of US vertical sort of quote unquote proliferation and that is just deployed numbers. We're not even talking about growing the stockpile. I would make that trade any day of the week and twice on Sunday. And I think we have to get comfortable with sort of those trade-offs. You can't have everything. You can't say no vertical proliferation and no horizontal proliferation because the math just doesn't math, right? allies will be nervous if the United States doesn't do what is required to maintain the credibility of extended deterrence. And so I think we're entering a phase where for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the US may have to contemplate increasing the number of deployed weapons in order to sort of assure allies and thereby prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. And I think that's a bargain at least I'd be willing to make. >> So and I would too. Well put. And I hope you don't mind me saying my sense is that was what you're describing was a consensus in the Biden administration. >> I would say consensus% >> they were this way. Let me put it this way. There was more consensus about what you're saying in the Biden administration than there was in the Obama administration because the nuclear posture review and the Obama administration >> really pitted two different camps against each other on those issues. >> Right. >> And in the end the sort of deterrence first, if you will line you're describing prevailed. I think it was the dominant line going into the Biden administration coming out. And I want to give, you know, I was middle management, but like the leadership, I want to give a lot of credit to Sasha Baker, Colin when they were under secretaries, but the White House, John Feiner and Jake Sullivan, I was in the White House, but Pne Vad was a senior director. >> There was broad alignment that this security environment demanded sort of new thinking. we couldn't be tied to sort of our old the old shivalits of the postcold war era and particularly on nuclear weapons. And if you had told me at the beginning of my time in government that the Biden administration would not only sort of for the first time sort of have to start thinking about not necessarily immediately but laying the groundwork for potential adjustments along these lines but also remember the Biden administration was the one that developed the B6113 and I don't know how many people followed this but the B6113 was sort of the high yield variant not the low yield high yield variant of the B6112 because there was a need for particularly that capability to hold at risk certain what we called wide area not hardened but wide area military targets especially I can think of those kinds of targets particularly in in Asia if you had told me that President Biden would sort of steward the development of that capability or approve that capability I would have never I would have never bet on it but he did because we recognized one that allies were anxious. Two, we're in a different nuclear security environment and broader security environment. And I want to give my leadership ton of credit for adjusting off their priors. And I would say actually that we're probably in a different place than the we're more focused, I think, than the current administration is on this. I think the Department of War is very focused on sort of the theater capabilities, but I think there hasn't been a lot of at least publicly, we haven't seen a lot of sort of discussion about, well, what about adjustments to the strategic posture itself? >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, the Obama administration sitting from the outside had two conflicting set of assumptions going in to power about the nature of international relations. And one was a bit more of a liberal institutionalist idealist view. And the other was a bit more hard-headed headed realism. And because reality is hard-headed, the hard-headed realists sort of prevailed by the end of the Obama administration and I think came in as the dominant group in Biden and therefore there was some continuity from Trump won on a lot of these issues. I also had the sense that we do these periodic nuclear posture reviews >> and the nuclear posture review in the Obama administration was very contested and the Japanese in particular but the allies more broadly really weighed in. I mean that when you when I asked earlier about how allies have agency and influence it's these nuclear posture reviews >> correct >> where senior people who worked on it told me that the Japanese were most more influential than the British and French >> because the British and French wanted to preserve their own nuclear deterrence where the Japanese wanted to shape the American deterrence. >> Right. The Koreans and Australians are a bit less active but now much more active. And so I want to ask you about the current nuclear posture view. Prince Kby has said the new the current nuclear posture view is going to emphasize expanding options or expanded options. What do you make of that? What do you think is going to come out of this one? >> You know it's a good question. The and I like the line that the Japanese in particular thought about the nuclear posture and shaping US nuclear policy and the remember it was actually the allies that really shaped the Biden administration view. Now I came in after the nuclear posture review is complete but remember there was this talk about sole purpose right changing to culture the sole purpose of nuclear weapons to deter nuclear attack against US and allies which is different from fundamental role which is what I think we ended up with but it was the allies that convinced particularly secretary Austin I believe that we could not change declaratory policy not in the current security environment and so it was really the allies that shaped that particular point and now so the Trump administration it appears has dispensed with a formal nuclear posture review and branch has said that they're doing uh nuclear strategy review. >> Can I interrupt to ask? I had always thought that was legislated in somewhere. >> The NDS is legislated, but the NPR is not >> not. Okay. >> And in fact, I'm partial to the idea of not doing nuclear posture reviews unless you intend on making a change like a drastic change and declarator. Let's just assume there's continuity unless we say otherwise because I think nuclear posture reviews are primarily the audience are primarily allies because adversaries don't like they don't really care what we say there. They think we're going to do what we're going to do. But allies always get nervous around nuclear posture reviews and so even the possibility of change in declaratory policy for example raises anxieties. So why put allies through that? Unless you plan on making a change then do a nuclear posture review. But if you intend on broad continuity, if you look at the Trump 20, I think it was 2018 nuclear posture review and then the Biden administration 2022 nuclear posture review, there's a lot more continuity than discontinu discontinuity and that may be unpopular but there are other than cancelling slick amend which then ended up gets reversed because congress mandates it and then cancelling B83 which we then substitute with B6113 in a lot of ways there was very little difference just some lexical sort of phraseology differences but nothing really I think core there were no real core differences between the two Trump 2.0 know has decided not to do a formal nuclear posture review which I am actually sympathetic to but they're doing this nuclear strategy review and I think bridge if you look at his prior writings he has long sort of focused on limited nuclear options theater options and I want to give them credit for moving out relatively with determination on developing I think a diverse set of options I think we'll see sort of what comes out of it but diverse set of theater options particularly for the Indoacific where we're pretty bare at the moment I don't want to get into too much posture sort of wedi stuff. But we have the W76 Tac 2 on the Ohio class submarine which is a low yield warhead on Trident ballistic missile on a strategic platform. I'm not wild about relying on a strategic platform for theater employment and or regional deterrence and the slick amen is a dedicated regional deterrent sort of capability and that is I think going to be absolutely essential for the Indopacific and I think the administration now is looking at other options and I I believe in sort of deterrence through diversity particularly at the theater level you don't need lots of these capabilities but tens or maybe a hundred of seabased capability air launch capability heck maybe even a ground launch capability gives you a lot more options and complicates adversary decision-m and I think assures allies better than having like hundreds of one type of capability and so I think they're pushing out on different sort of basing modes and different platforms for theater capabilities and I think that's really important the one question and open sort of debate I think is sort of what are they going to do about our strategic deployments right the triad because the triad was sized for Russia And we now have to start thinking in a couple years about how do we accommodate sort of the growth in Chinese forces, particularly their landbased forces going forward. And so far they've been silent on it, but that doesn't mean that they haven't thought about it. They may not have reached a conclusion about what they want to do or what they need to do. But I think the urgent piece of it is the theater forces. And I think they're moving out sort of with determination on that. And at some point though there will have to be a considered discussion, debate and I think decision about what we do about the strategic forces. >> The development reminds me of you were probably just getting ready to go to Stanford at that point but in the mid '90s Ian Johnson at Harvard produced a really influential piece in international security >> capturing the Chinese limited deterrence tactical use. We are moving into that world ourselves, aren't we? Yeah, I think we're going back to it and I think in fact Ian's article Ian was on my committee and a dear mentor of mine I think his article is 30 years early. I think the Chinese are doing it and all of you know the the Chinese military power report all the public sort of documentation of the department of war suggests that the China is thinking exactly about what Ian wrote about in 1996 or 7. I think it was 9697 is and they're developing a strategic force that you know has the potential to be sort of launch on warning in addition to what looks like theater capabilities to either defeat the US conventionally or slow us down or deter US first employment of theater capabilities if they're winning the conventional war. And it's not necessarily it's not irrational, but I don't think we do ourselves a service by denying what China is doing, which is developing a full suite of theater and apparently strategic forces that starts to mirror what the Soviets did and what we did during the Cold War. >> And North Korea now with probably upward of 50 warheads working on so many launched, ballistic missile programs advancing. What in your view is the doctrine for Pyongyang for tactical nuclear potentially strategic nuclear weapons? Is it just deterrence? Is it what some scholars call nuclear stalking, coercion and leverage? What do you think their goal is? It used to be survival, but they now have a large enough deterrent that they have options. >> Yeah, I think you like this is where sort of being in the Pentagon as you know sort of changes my world. You just have to prepare for the worst case. And the worst case given what they're developing is I call Pakistan for me is sort of the OG implement of this strategy which is sort of use nuclear weapons to support conventional provocation or subconventional provocation in the Pakistani case against India. And even it's for defensive purposes. The idea is they have this they're developing a shield that enables them to do sort of what Russia did with Ukraine, attempt a territorial fed plea and use a threat of nuclear employment, you know, theater nuclear employment to deter an attempts to unwind it. North Korea is starting to look like that. And that even if it may be for defensive purposes, it can certainly support offense. And that really complicates, I think, our alliance dynamics with South Korea, obviously, but also Japan. And we don't do ourselves a service by hoping that it's just defensive. And so I think we need to prepare in all of these cases for these states to start using their nuclear weapons coercively the way Pakistan has, the way Russia has, and the way China and North Korea appear like they're preparing to do with the posture investments they're making. I spent a lot of quality time with the North Koreans and still track developments on the peninsula. And as you know, the propaganda, the doctrine in the north has moved away from unification. And so I think the most likely scenario is that this is a giant mafia operation and that the nuclear weapons allow them to extract major concessions, end of US exercises, end of sanctions to enrich the regime. >> Right. And why fight for when you can get it for free, which is essential with the exercises. >> I mean, it's a productivity >> Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I'm curious to what you think about the cooperation North Korea, Russia, China. Now you've got strategic level cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang. And I don't sleep on Pyongyang and Thran, right? And the cooperation between them and whether sort of now this, as you say, mafia operation. It was Sheena Greatton wrote that article I remember in is about the mafia state. And it was sort of like, are we back in a world where North Korea, you know, may end up solving its economic problems by selling its stuff. >> Yeah. I mean, we don't know what exactly the Russians are providing in exchange for, >> right, >> tens of thousands of troops rotating through the Ukraine fight from North Korea. We, one of my problems with the JPCOA is it did not adequately allow for the possibility of a surge in uranium enrichment and other production from North Korea. I mean that this I guess what you'd call lateral proliferation among the crinks China, Russia on North Korea is also a new dimension that's really problematic. We have unwound all the tools we needed to deal with it. Before Chris Hill negotiated with the North Koreans, we had a the beginning of a pretty effective interdiction network around the world and it's largely been unwound. We had with the IP4, the Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand summits with NATO, an increasing integration of defense awareness, planning between NATO and Asia allies. And the Trump administration is actually discouraging that. And so my own view is we have to put back in place an interdiction, counterpoliferation, cost imposition, global deterrence concept with all our allies to deal with this. What I'm not in favor of I'll be interested in your view maybe last question is saying oh well that didn't work. Let's acknowledge North Korea is a nuclear weapon state and see what deal we can get. I assume you're not a fan of that. >> No, I just I worry about the press in that sense is terrible. It's just absolutely catastrophic. It just incentivizes everyone out there to go get nuclear weapons, adversaries and allies alike that if you just wait and b your time long enough, right, you'll get accept. And we from a policy perspective now does North Korea possess nuclear weapons? Yes. But recognizing it as a nuclear weapons power creates all sorts of precedents and downstream effects that I think can you know potentially blow a hole through US non-prololiferation policy. So I'm curious sort of how you think about that. >> Completely agree with you on that. And I think one of the there's been a great discussion. We could go for another three hours. I think one of the takeaways going back to your first point about academics going into government needing to be humble. I think look the summary I would give for this whole discussion is there is no quote unquote silver bullet. you know, deploying tactical nuclear weapons, recognizing North Korea, reintroducing START. There's no sort of magic solution to this. It's a ugly series of least bad options put together in a strategy and >> we don't quite have that strategy is also my takeaway. We meaning we our allies >> it may not be able to because they're too many circles to square. Is that right? Yeah, I think that's the right too many circles to square. And part of this is I think one one mindset shift is academics are always looking for the policy recommendation that will solve everything. And when you go to government you realize there's no solutions. Part of this is just a management and it's always about trade-offs and prioritizing you know what are we prioritizing at the moment knowing that those priorities may end up shifting down the road. These problems aren't going to go away. And the idea that we can solve these problems is I think maybe potentially the wrong framework or mindset. A lot of these problems are to be managed and what we need are managers and there's a shortage of managers in this particular field in the nuclear field. But I do think that these problems are so complex and so difficult that striving for solutions is only going to set us up for failure. Right? We have to manage them the best we can knowing that they're always trade-offs and there's no silver bullet to your point. >> Unfortunately, when we study grand strategy, we study the big grand solutions, >> right? >> Nixon and Mao and so forth. And the reality is grand strategy is more often than not about management of competing hard problems. Anyway, we will have those managers because you're training them at MIT. So, I should let you get back to that. >> Oh, fingers crossed. Yeah. And Mike, it was great to talk to you. Thank you so much for having me. It was really an honor to be on Asia Chessboard today. >> Thank you, Ven. For more on strategy and the Asia programs work, visit the CSIS website at csis.org and click on the Asia program page. And for more on the US Studies Center in Sydney, please visit ussc.edu.auu.