Australia’s concerns over US extended nuclear deterrence are primarily about entrapment, not abandonment. Still, Australian policymakers are aware that Canberra needs to take on a greater share of the deterrence burden as part of alliance cooperation. Australian policymakers want to better understand the risks associated with greater nuclear cooperation. As they draw on a different Cold War legacy to other US allies, this legacy needs to be properly understood for further cooperation to be possible. Unique among America’s allies, statements about Australia’s understanding of US extended nuclear deterrence commitments are included in its Defence White Papers, but not in joint statements with the United States. Australia and the United States should begin discussing nuclear deterrence at the annual Australia-US Ministerial Consultations communiques to signal alliance cohesion, support its domestic legitimacy and enable more structured strategic dialogue. Both countries should identify where they agree on issues of deterrence, strategic stability and arms control. They should work with like-minded countries to engage China in relevant dialogues; and with Southeast Asian countries to understand and shape their perceptions of the role of deterrence and nuclear weapons in international and regional security. The alliance should consider cooperation in conventional long-range strike to reduce the reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence and to signal that such cooperation might be expanded in extremis to involve nuclear weapons should Australia’s security environment deteriorate.
In an era of great power competition, the role of alliances in managing escalation of conflict has acquired renewed importance. Nuclear weapons remain the ultimate means for deterrence and controlling escalation, and are central to US alliances in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. However, allies themselves need to better prepare for managing escalation in an increasingly challenging geostrategic and technological environment for the US and its allies. While the challenge of great power competition is acute at both ends of Eurasia, adversary threats, geography and the institutional context of US alliances differ. This book brings together leading experts from Europe, Northeast Asia, the United States and Australia to focus on these challenges, identify commonalities and differences across regions, and pinpoint ways to collectively manage nuclear deterrence and potential escalation pathways in America’s 21st century alliances. ‘Nuclear weapons play an important role in deterrence and preventing military conflict between great powers, while also posing an existential threat to humanity. It is vital that we have a nuanced understanding of this important challenge, so that such weapons are never used. This book offers many important perspectives and makes a significant contribution to the overall debate about these powerful weapons.’ — The Hon Julie Bishop, Chancellor, The Australian National University, Former Foreign Minister of Australia ‘This timely book identifies a wide range of challenges US alliances both in the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic face as they seek to ensure the value of US extended deterrence, particular the US nuclear umbrella, against China and Russia. This unique collection of chapters written by experts in US allies in both regions presents widely varying security perceptions and priorities. To understand such differences is the key to globally strengthen the US alliance systems, which are a significant advantage Washington enjoys over the two competitors.’ — Yukio Satoh, former President of The Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) ‘This is a timely and thoughtful collection of essays that should serve to jumpstart public discussion and debate—the absence of which is widely noted and much bemoaned. Each contributor examines an aspect of the complicated, multifaceted nuclear debate by discussing the range of dilemmas from deterrence to disarmament. The various views set out here are more relevant than ever as Russia, China and the United States flex their nuclear muscles in new and sometimes dangerous ways. This book should be read by anyone interested in the preventing the use of nuclear weapons and understanding complexities of alliances in an increasingly dangerous world.’ — Madelyn Creedon, former Principal Deputy Administrator of the US National Nuclear Security Administration and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs
In an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific, the United States, Australia and their regional allies and partners face a myriad of strategic challenges that cut across every level of the competitive space. Driven by China’s use of multidimensional coercion in pursuit of its aim to displace the United States as the region’s dominant power, a new era of strategic competition is unfolding. At stake is the stability and character of the Indo-Pacific order, hitherto founded on American power and longstanding rules and norms, all of which are increasingly uncertain. The challenges that Beijing poses the region operate over multiple domains and are prosecuted by the Chinese Communist Party through a whole-of-nation strategy. In the grey zone between peace and war, tactics like economic coercion, foreign interference, the use of civil militias and other forms of political warfare have become Beijing’s tools of choice for pursuing incremental shifts to the geostrategic status quo. These efforts are compounded by China’s rapidly growing conventional military power and expanding footprint in the Western Pacific, which is raising the spectre of a limited war that America would find it difficult to deter or win. All of this is taking place under the lengthening shadow of Beijing’s nuclear modernisation and its bid for new competitive advantages in emerging strategic technologies. Strengthening regional deterrence and counter-coercion in light of these challenges will require the United States and Australia — working independently, together and with their likeminded partners — to develop more integrated strategies for the Indo-Pacific region and novel ways to operationalise the alliance in support of deterrence objectives. There is widespread support for this agenda in both Washington and Canberra. As the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy makes clear, allies provide an “asymmetric advantage” for helping the United States deter aggression and uphold favourable balances of power around the world. Australia’s Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds mirrored this sentiment in a major speech in Washington last November, observing that “deterrence is a joint responsibility for a shared purpose — one that no country, not even the United States, can undertake alone.” Forging greater coordination on deterrence strategy within the US-Australia alliance, however, is no easy task, particularly when this undertaking is focussed on China’s coercive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific. Although Canberra and Washington have overlapping strategic objectives, their interests and threat perceptions regarding China are by no means symmetrical. Each has very different capabilities, policy priorities and tolerance for accepting costs and risks. Efforts to operationalise deterrence must therefore proceed incrementally and on the basis of robust alliance dialogue. To advance this process of bilateral strategic policy debate, the United States Studies Centre and Pacific Forum hosted the second round of the Annual Track 1.5 US-Australia Deterrence Dialogue in Washington in November 2019, bringing together US and Australian experts from government and non-government organisations. The theme for this meeting was “Operationalising Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific,” with a focus on exploring tangible obstacles and opportunities for improving the alliance’s collective capacity to deter coercive changes to the regional order. Both institutions would like to thank the Australian Department of Defence Strategic Policy Grants Program and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency for their generous support of this engagement. The following analytical summary reflects the authors’ accounts of the dialogue’s proceedings and does not necessarily represent their own views. It endeavours to capture, examine and contextualise a wide range of perspectives and debates from the discussion; but does not purport to offer a comprehensive record. Nothing in the following pages represents the views of the Australian Department of Defence, the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency or any of the other officials or organisations that took part in the dialogue.
There is a small risk of deliberate nuclear use and a larger risk of inadvertent nuclear use in a future US-China conflict, both of which could increase if the possibility of conflict grows or if Washington or Beijing pursue more ambitious nuclear strategies. China’s nuclear strategy has to date focused on deterring an adversary’s nuclear threats and use. While its recent nuclear arsenal modernisation is consistent with this strategy, Beijing has acquired new capabilities that could enable a shift to a nuclear first-use strategy. The United States and China are not in a nuclear arms race. Nevertheless, efforts by the United States to maintain its current margin of superiority over China’s nuclear forces, or to deter North Korea or Russia, could prompt further growth in China’s arsenal. Australia’s interests would be best served by an allied military strategy for countering China that emphasises robust conventional capabilities, relies on US nuclear weapons to deter the unlikely prospect of Chinese nuclear first-use, and strives to mitigate the risks of inadvertent nuclear escalation. Australia should work through existing mechanisms for consultation in the alliance, as well as multilateral fora, to lessen the risks of nuclear use in a future US-China conflict scenario and support informal arms control among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
The United States is facing multiple challenges to sustaining its military-technological edge in the Indo-Pacific: The proliferation of advanced missiles, submarines, satellites and other technology has raised the costs and risks for the United States in a regional conflict. Access to advanced technology and innovation has spread, raising the importance of the private sector in maintaining military superiority but also generating new centres of technological progress.The United States’ current defence strategy and capabilities are increasingly economically unsustainable, and its defence budget is stagnating due to political polarisation in Congress. The Third Offset is a set of strategies that aims to bolster US conventional military power by mobilising innovation, new technologies and institutional reform: The United States is placing ‘bets’ on a series of new technologies, from artificial intelligence to hypersonic weapons, that will allow its military to project force in contested environments. Some of these technologies will, in theory, allow for more economically sustainable military operations and capabilities. Reforming US defence institutions to prioritise innovation, and seeking ways to take advantage of new technologies in the private sector, are attempts to embed and sustain US military advantage. The direction of the Third Offset, and its success or failure, should inform Australia’s strategic outlook. Canberra should seek to expand engagement with the Third Offset, particularly through the following institutional aspects: A United States-Australia Defence Technology Workshop should be established to generate new ideas around Indo-Pacific technological trends, investment and new military concepts. Canberra should explore the possibility of hosting, or jointly funding, an international Defence Innovation Unit Experimental Office, providing strategic coordination on technological developments, resourcing and opportunities for Australian defence firms. Australia needs to expand its engagement with the United States on the testing, exercises and simulations that will form new Third Offset military concepts.
A leading international security strategist offers a compelling new way to "think about the unthinkable." The cold war ended more than two decades ago, and with its end came a reduction in the threat of nuclear weapons—a luxury that we can no longer indulge. It's not just the threat of Iran getting the bomb or North Korea doing something rash; the whole complexion of global power politics is changing because of the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a vital element of statecraft and power politics. In short, we have entered the second nuclear age. In this provocative and agenda-setting book, Paul Bracken of Yale University argues that we need to pay renewed attention to nuclear weapons and how their presence will transform the way crises develop and escalate. He draws on his years of experience analyzing defense strategy to make the case that the United States needs to start thinking seriously about these issues once again, especially as new countries acquire nuclear capabilities. He walks us through war-game scenarios that are all too realistic, to show how nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of power politics, and he offers an incisive tour of the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia to underscore how the United States must not allow itself to be unprepared for managing such crises. Frank in its tone and farsighted in its analysis, The Second Nuclear Age is the essential guide to the new rules of international politics.
Nearly 40 years after the concept of finite deterrence was popularized by the Johnson administration, nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) thinking appears to be in decline. The United States has rejected the notion that threatening population centers with nuclear attacks is a legitimate way to assure deterrence. Most recently, it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement based on MAD. American opposition to MAD also is reflected in the Bush administration's desire to develop smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons that would reduce the number of innocent civilians killed in a nuclear strike. Still, MAD is influential in a number of ways. First, other countries, like China, have not abandoned the idea that holding their adversaries' cities at risk is necessary to assure their own strategic security. Nor have U.S. and allied security officials and experts fully abandoned the idea. At a minimum, acquiring nuclear weapons is still viewed as being sensible to face off a hostile neighbor that might strike one's own cities. Thus, our diplomats have been warning China that Japan would be under tremendous pressure to go nuclear if North Korea persisted in acquiring a few crude weapons of its own. Similarly, Israeli officials have long argued, without criticism, that they would not be second in acquiring nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Indeed, given that Israelis surrounded by enemies that would not hesitate to destroy its population if they could, Washington finds Israel's retention of a significant nuclear capability totally "understandable."
Colonel Donnini analyzes the demise of the ANZUS alliance and shifts in Australian and New Zealand defense features. He addresses many questions and issues dealing with changing the political situation and the impact of those changes on defense and security conditions in the South and Southwest Pacific regions.
