Bronwen Maddox
We’re just waiting for the last few to come in to take their seat and also for it to hit the top of the hour. Very glad to have such a large online audience, but I don’t want to jump the gun. Okay, I think we’re there.
Good morning, very warm welcome. I’m Bronwen Maddox, the Director of Chatham House, and we’re delighted to have today Dr Colin Kahl here. Leslie is going to give him a longer and more expansive introduction, but let me just say that the kind of things that I imagine that they are going to be talking about, about US defence, about the transatlantic relationship, about China, about Ukraine are absolutely at the heart of what we’re doing at Chatham House, as is the US program. It is one of the central questions that goes over all of our work, what to expect from the US and how other countries might then respond to that. The same goes for China, and those two make an arc, if you like, over many of the things we’re looking at, whether it is the environment or security or geopolitics in the larger sense.
So, I’m going to stop there, I’m not going to anticipate any of these questions. I know Leslie has a lot, I hope you have a lot, and please do start getting them ready, we want to hear them, but, just again from me, a very warm welcome and Dr Kahl, welcome to you. Thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Good morning, it’s terrific to see so many familiar and distinguished faces in the audience. For me, it’s a real honour to welcome Dr Kahl, Colin, back to Chatham House. Colin was here a handful of years ago when he was – before he went into his current role, in between roles, to talk with us at that moment under the Chatham House Rule. There was no way that we were going to give you – that we were going to keep you to ourselves given the significance of the moment. Colin, you’ve been in your role as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in – for the Biden administration since April of 2021, an extraordinary moment for America’s global engagement. I’m sure that there are many periods that one might say that about, but it certainly feels like this is one of them.
Before we get onto that, let me just mention, I think I’m correct in saying that this is your last week in this role. You will be returning to Stanford University as Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, one of America’s leading institutes at one of America’s leading universities. It’s been highly influential on all of the things that you’re currently working on and that we’re so concerned about in international affairs. So, we look forward to continuing this engagement with that role.
You were previously Deputy Assistant to President Obama and National Security Advisor to Vice President Biden, October 2014 to January 2017. You’ve worked earlier in your career, also, in The Pentagon and had a very serious and important academic career. And I actually think – I like to always mention when I talk about you, which I do Colin, because I’ve known you for a long time, since 1994, our PhD days at Columbia, Colin was on to the question of climate and environmentalism and its role in international security long before many people. His first book – and remember, books are conceived and researched for a long time before they’re published, but his first book was published in 2006. I think it – the ideas started somewhere in the mid-1990s, I was there for many of those conversations, “States, Security and Civil Strife in the Developing World” took environmentalism and resource drivers of conflict very seriously. 2021, you wrote “Aftershocks” with Tom Wright ,who, of course, is now in the National Security Council, about pandemic politics and the end of the old international order.
And the other piece that I really wanted to mention in light of the recent announcement that the US would be supplying cluster munitions to Ukraine, was the piece that you wrote in 2007 on the non-combatant immunity norm and US compliance with that in the context of Iraq, but also looking back historically. And I point that out because, you know, we’re sitting here with somebody who has taken questions of international humanitarian law very seriously, not only as an – not as a norm – not as a normative [inaudible – 06:18], but as something that he has understood and researched empirically through the lens of policy and really grappled with for a very long time, and I think that’s really important in the context of the current moment.
So, it is really a true honour to have you here today, thanks for taking the time. You’re on your way with your remarkable team, who are here with us. It is an extraordinary team, and alongside the rest of those in the US Government and many across Europe who are heading to Vilnius, not least President Biden, who’s in London today, as we know.
So we – let me take just a – you know, a part of the session to talk with you. I know from seeing – you know, we’ve got Jamie Shea, Alex Cooley, Mark Brewer, we have some tremendous people here in the audience, so we are looking for a really, really serious discussion, also many of ourselves internally. Let’s start back, though, ‘cause this is a moment to reflect, since you are – we are not coming to the end of America’s role in this, but for a moment you will be in a different role within a handful of days. They probably seem a very long way away, given what you’ve got to do this week, but you were – as I understand it, had your hand on the pen of the National Defense Strategy 2022, an extremely important document.
It defines this period as being a decisive decade. There was a lot in there about strengthening deterrence, about integrated deterrence, about China as the pacing challenge and many other things. But can you tell us, both in terms of how you were thinking when you worked to conceive and write that document, obviously, across the US Government, what were you aiming to do with that and how does it look? You know, it’s only been a year, or – I don’t know exactly which date it – you wrote it. How does it – how did it look then? What were you aiming to set out and how’s it look now?
Dr Colin H Kahl
Great. Well, a terrific question, and Leslie, first, just thanks for having me here at Chatham House. It’s – I’ve been here a few times, it’s always lovely to be back and it’s especially great to be up here with you, who are a dear friend, dating back – you told people precisely how many decades back, but a long time. You don’t look a day older. I can’t – I don’t claim the same.
So, yeah, my office, as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, oversees the writing of the National Defense Strategy, and like other defence strategies around the world, ours is nested under our National Security Strategy. In the Biden administration, we actually put out an interim national security strategic guidance document that we wrote during the transition, I was the lead author for that document, because we thought coming out of the Trump administration, it was important to, kind of, put our stamp on how we wanted – where we wanted to go before we put out a formal national security strategy.
So, the – that really enabled us at The Pentagon, actually, to get a fast start on making sure that we had a National Defence Strategy which was aligned with where we wanted the President to go. And it – in – actually, we published the classified version of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, along with the release of our budget, in March of 2022. Then the National Security Strategy rolled out in unclassified form that fall and then the unclassified version of our Defense Strategy followed.
So, it is nested under our national strategic documents. That said, it’s, kind of, a natural evolution, frankly, from the 2018 National Defense Strategy. I mean, I obviously have a lot of differences with the Trump administration, but the 2018 National Defense Strategy is a serious and important document because it really made the hard pivot away from the post-9/11 construct of the security environment, towards one understanding that geopolitical competition among major powers was returning to the scene in a very consequential way. So, the 2022 National Defense Strategy picks off that theme.
I think it does do more work than in 2018 in distinguishing the challenge between China and Russia. China is described, as you mentioned, as our, ‘pacing challenge’, and that’s jargony, but it essentially means that China is, in our estimation, the only country with the military, technological, economic and diplomatic capability and increasingly, the intention to try to displace the United States as the world’s most influential power. And in many respects, the United States has been China’s pacing challenge since the 1990s, probably since the Gulf War, certainly since the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the conflict in the Balkans. And they are, you know, undergoing the most breathtaking military modernisation any country has engaged in since the 1930s.
And that entire modernisation effort is aimed at us and in particular, at enabling China to exert its fear of influence in its near abroad, in the Western Pacific, and hold at risk sea lines of communication, the security of our allies and partners, in ways that directly challenge our interests. And of course, that’s just in the military domain, and they’re challenging us across the board technologically, economically, diplomatically. So, the document recognises that, that’s in line with the National Security Strategy that’s – that, you know, identifies China as the most consequential strategic competitor that we face.
The document is also, though, very aware of the challenge that Russia poses. So, the National Defense Strategy describes Russia as an ‘acute threat’, and both of those words are quite intentional. Acute meaning, kind of, immediate, right in your face and sharp and a threat ‘cause threat. And I think there, the big distinction is that Russia has the capa – doesn’t have the capability to dominate the world, but they do have the capability to blow up the world and as we’ve seen in Ukraine, are perfectly capable of going on reckless campaigns of aggression to try and, kind of, overturn the rules and norms that have defined the post-World-War-II era in terms of sovereignty and territorial integrity. So, there’s a lot at stake. The document was written before Ukraine, but nothing in – or, I would say that most of the document was drafted before the invasion of Ukraine, but nothing about the conflict in Ukraine is surprising based on the characterisation of the Russia challenge in the document.
So, the National Defense Strategy organises us around the pillars of pacing our own modernisation efforts and major investments and how we’re thinking about things against the challenge that the PRC poses, while also mindful that in the near-term, Russia poses this acute threat.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
So, may be you could say – and maybe we’ll start with China, but first, may be you could say just a little bit more about this concept of integrated deterrence. What is it? Is it new? Is it just different packaging? What significance is it? And also if you could speak a little bit to the role of America’s partners and allies and especially the UK in that?
Dr Colin H Kahl
Yeah, it’s important. Look, everybody comes up with their own branding and buzzwords and there’s always a risk that when you use a term like ‘integrated deterrence’, it could come out that way. I think definitionally, it’s useful because it suggests the imperative of integration across a number of different continuum. So, it does – we have to integrate our deterrence efforts across the domains of warfare, so not just land, sea, undersea and air, but space and cyberspace, and we have to integrate across the conventional nuclear divide. We also have to integrate across the spectrum of conflict, from the grey zone up to high intensity warfare like we’re seeing in Ukraine.
We have to integrate across the capabilities that we have as a government, because as potent as our military is, we also have potent diplomatic, intelligence, informational and economic tools that have actually been on display in the conflict in Ukraine and imposing costs on Russia, and there’s an important formula in deterrence for that. In fact, my own view is if China is, ultimately, going to be deterred from engaging in an attempted forceful reunification across the Taiwan Strait, the fundamental question leadership in Beijing will ask them is, “If they did that, will the world’s reaction be like Ukraine or like Hong Kong?” And if the answer is, “It’ll be like Hong Kong,” they’re much more likely to do it. If the answer is, “It’ll be like Ukraine,” they’re a lot – much less likely to do it, and part of that is a military dimension, but a big part of that is the political and economic response by the world’s leading democracies and economies to what’s happened in Ukraine. So that, I think, touches on that, why that whole-of-government buzzword, actually we’re seeing a case study of that unfolding, and I do think it’s seeping in the quarters of power in Beijing.
Integration also requires us to integrate across our allies and partners, and no ally is closer to us than the UK. The UK military operates with us everywhere and has for a long, long time, despite, you know, no bad feelings about us leaving the Empire. We apparently are able to – have gotten past that, and we, you know, we are integrated across the board and it’s very difficult for us to imagine conducting military operations at scale anywhere without asking the Brits to be along with us, and I think vice versa. And I think, actually, it is – you know, again, you can fall into these jargons, like ‘asymmetric advantage’ and all of that and managing alliances and coalitions is hard, but almost every problem we tackle requires a team. And all – almost – that – those teams are built around our core alliances almost everywhere where we tackle these problems. So, integrated deterrence also requires us to integrate our deterrence efforts with those actors.
That’s why the integration of integrated deterrence matters, but actually, part of this was driven specifically by our assessment of what the PRC’s theory of victory would be over the United States. And their theory of victory over the United States is, how do they keep the American military at bay for long enough to accomplish their core objectives militarily, plant a flag and dare the United States to start World War III to take it back? And the way that they’ve done that militarily is to build out these incredibly robust anti-access/area denial capabilities, missiles, air defence systems, long-range, you know, long-range capabilities, a very – an increasingly potent navy.
But part of it is also their intention to paralyse the American networks that undergird the American way of war. So, think about our – the networks that rely on outer space or cybernetworks or critical infrastructure in the American homeland, and the goal would be to blind us, deafen us, slow us down and turn us inward for a matter of weeks so that we can’t mass forward in the Western Pacific. And so, if you think across the domains, that means we can’t just deter in one area. We actually have to demonstrate deterrence across these domains and actually we have to think about deterrence in different ways.
So, in space and cyberspace, for example, concepts like resilience, which often aren’t thought of as part of deterrence, are actually at the heart of how you deter a country like China from engaging in military conflict against the United States, because if they are convinced that we can roll through disruptions, either by reconstituting or diversifying or proliferating or otherwise being resilient in the face of those disruptions, they’re actually a lot less likely to start a military operation because their theory relies on them being able to paralyse our networks and so, we need to demonstrate they can’t do that.
And so there is also some [inaudible – 18:11] there in the undergirding of integrated deterrence and it’s backed up by our investment. So, last year, we put more than $30 billion just in space, mostly to make our space architectures, which were built for the Cold War, more resilient. We’ve asked for more than $30 billion this year. $30 billion is a lot of money, it’s bigger than the defence budget of most countries on earth, and that’s just for space, and we’re making similar investments in cyber and other categories for similar reasons.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
So, let me ask you a question about threat perception that comes right off this. How do you sense check your perception of the threat that China poses? And I guess that’s, you know, that’s partly a defence question. There’s also, I guess, a question about diplomacy and you’re joined up, one gets the sense that over time the administration has become increasingly more and more joined up, maybe less so in Afghanistan. And what role, you know, what role do, again, America’s European partners, and especially the UK, play? And, I guess, I ask the question because sometimes or often, there is the perception here that the US has overhyped the threat that China – you know this – you’ve heard it – if you’ve been listening, and you have, you’ve heard it, but there – you hear it – one hears it a lot here…
Dr Colin H Kahl
Yeah.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…that there is a sense that America has overhyped the threat that China presents and therefore, you know, it becomes part of the problem. I don’t know for you how that integrates into your thinking on deterrence, on resource management, but it’s certainly an all-of-government question. So, your thoughts on threat perception.
Dr Colin H Kahl
Yeah, I mean, look, Leslie, you and I were students of Bob Jervis, right? We all have to be worried of the, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy of the security dilemma, that in portraying a threat, in arming and preparing for it, you actually make the threat worse, and you run the risk of a spiral to some self-fulfilling conflict. And I think we’re very mindful of that possibility with the PRC and with other actors, and of course, part of the rhetoric coming out of Beijing is that we’ve hyped the threat. That it’s a China-threat model that we’re using to contain their national ambitions and that China doesn’t pose a challenge to the free world.
I think, first of all, this isn’t a US perception, I don’t know how it’s felt in every corner of Europe, but if you go to Japan or Australia or the Philippines or India or increasingly, the ROK, you’ll see a whole host of countries that are not beholden to some set of imagined things cooked up in Washington, but are seeing what China is doing every single day to flout international rules. You know, just take the number of unprofessional and unsafe intercepts of aircraft by our allies and partners that are operating in – over international waters and international airspace, oftentimes enforcing international agreements or resolutions.
So, for example, a little – you know, about a year ago, an Australian aircraft, reconnaissance aircraft, manned, flying in international airspace, was intercepted by a PLA aircraft that flew right in front of it and released flares and chaff back into the engine, intentionally, of the Australian aircraft. And when the protest was – you know, we were – “This is international airspace,” they were like, “Don’t get so close to China.” That’s not okay. Canadian aircraft enforcing sanctions against North Korea in international airspace have been harassed in similar ways. You know, the Philippines has been serially harassed by, you know, some combination of PLA Navy, coastguard, maritime militia etc.
So, you essentially, you know, in the parlance of international relations theory that we were trained in, you’re essentially seeing balancing coalitions form in the Indo-Pacific. You know, the fact that India has made the pivot that it has, in many respects, is a consequence of the increased threat they perceive along their shared land you know, the disputed land border with China and the clashes that emerged in 2020. You know, Australia, five or ten years ago, was hedging in a significant way and they’ve made a hard pivot and agreements like AUKUS are a 100-year commitment to the alliance with us, the relationship with the UK, and these are all in recognition of a similar set of dynamics. So, I would push back not against you, but against the notion against somehow, this is a plot cooked up in Washington. The folks who are closest to the behaviour are seeing similar things.
I think we don’t see a conflict with China as imminent or inevitable, and we certainly don’t see it as desirable. It would be disastrous. It would be disastrous for China, it would be disastrous for the United States, it would be disastrous for the world economy. It would be profoundly destabilising in every way, so we don’t want a conflict. We also don’t think it makes sense to have a world in which China can do to its neighbours what Russia is trying to do to Ukraine, and China has am – you know, potentially has ambitions, whether it’s across the Taiwan Strait or in the East China Sea or the South China Sea. And a world in which the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must, is a world in which the rules-based international order is replaced by the law of the jungle, and I’m not sure that, you know, we want the 2030s to look like the 1930s. So, you know, we’re conscious about that.
So, that’s why the National Defense Strategy is routed around deterrence, not conflict and we want the leadership in Beijing to wake up every single day and say, “Today is not the day.” We also want to build guardrails around our competition so that it doesn’t inadvertently spiral. We have regularly reached out to thicken our crisis communications and crisis-management channels with Beijing and they have serially pushed us off, in large part, because they appear to be concerned that we want to use crisis management tools so we could have more crises. There’s, kind of, a moral hazard theory underlying it. And in part – and in all seriousness, when we have these conversations with them, they’re like, “Well, if you don’t want crises, there’s a simple answer.” And we’re just like, “What’s that?” and they’re like, “Get out.” Like, “You’re not a Pacific power,” which is weird if you’ve – as a Californian, “just leave.”
And so, you know, when we are doing a Taiwan Strait transit or freedom-of-navigation operation through the South China Sea, it’s not a hegemonic enterprise. It is exercising our rights just like you all have, and everybody else on earth has, to fly, sail and operate wherever international law operates, but that’s not how China sees it.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Maybe you can say one word about Taiwan before we – I know it’s hard to say just one word about Taiwan, so no limiting clause there, but before we turn to Ukraine, which is on the forefront of everybody’s mind, which is why I’ve started with China, ‘cause I think once we start to talk about Ukraine, for very good reason, it’s very hard to move away from it, what is your sense, not only of the deterrent that – what – how worried are you about Taiwan? We’ve heard different timelines put on this. I don’t know if those are useful or not and what’s your sense of that? And has the war in Ukraine changed anything in your mind? Does it change, you know, your sense, you at The Pentagon, of what China’s calculating, how they’re reading this? People say any number of things about America’s credibility and how China’s reading it. So, what is your sense of the threat that China poses to Taiwan’s independence, such as it is?
Dr Colin H Kahl
Yes, that was the one word, right? No, sorry. So, look, anybody who pretends they know the date at which China may or may not take action against Taiwan, they don’t, they’re lying. Nobody knows the date; Xi Jinping doesn’t know the date. When people use the term – the date ‘2027’, it’s really referring to a date at which Xi Jinping has essentially instructed his military to have the capability to take Taiwan by force or the political decision made to do so. Capability does not mean intent, intent does not mean inevitably, like – you know, so nobody knows when the clock is.
I don’t see any indication, despite the fact that the PRC has become increasingly bellicose and coercive in the strait, and we saw a version of this after the visit of our Speaker of the House, Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, last summer. You saw a bit of it during President Tsai’s transit of the United States more recently. They are becoming more coercive, but I don’t see anything that suggests that a conflict across the strait is imminent or inevitable. But I do think that the PRC is building the capability to give that – to make that an option for their leadership toward the end of this decade. But I think that is based on a lot of factors.
I think there’s a political dimension there. Do they believe that the prospect for peaceful reunification is completely foreclosed, or do they believe that there’s still a prospect for that? I think it will depend on their assessment of our capabilities and our likelihood of intervening. I think it will depend on what assumption they make about how the international community will respond. You know, when they fired missiles over Taiwan in response to the Speaker of the House visit, some of those missiles fell in Japan’s EEZ. It’s hard to imagine a conflict in Taiwan that doesn’t envelope Japan, which is a real country with a real military.
And, you know, the Philippines are close by and there’s a lot of other places, too, and I think, you know, I think the PRC worries that if they do this, it’ll embroil themselves in a conflict that’s bigger than just Taiwan or the United States, but it could be a wider conflict. And I want them to worry about that because, the more they worry about that the less likely they are to do it, and let’s be clear, you all have a stake in that not happening. I think most people take it for granted that if, say, Saudi Arabia were attacked, it would have implications for the global economy. An attack on Taiwan would have just as many implications for the global economy, given their role in high-end supply chains, you know, 70% of microelectronic components for certain things, 90% for the highest chips. It would be devastating to the world economy.
Which brings us to the question of Ukraine, which is – the real question is not what we’re learning from Ukraine. It’s really what leadership in Beijing may be learning from Ukraine, and I think they are probably taking a couple of lessons. First, their intelligence is not very good. You know, Putin shows up at the Beijing Olympics, a couple of days before the Olympics and tells Xi Jinping he has no intention of invading Ukraine and three weeks later, he does just that and nobody around Xi Jinping told him any different. We knew it, Xi Jinping didn’t know it. I think they were surprised by the degree to which not only our intelligence was better, but we were able to be forward leaning in the information space in a way that told the truth about what was coming and in so doing, helped mobilise the world and understand the consequences of those actions. I think that’s terrifying if you’re in Beijing and you assume that you can control the narrative around geopolitical events.
I think they – you know, if you’re sitting in Beijing and you looked at Russia going into the war, they probably looked like the second-best military in the world on the day that they went into Ukraine, and as Secretary Blinken noted, you know, these days, “They don’t even look like the second-best military in Ukraine.” Well, the second-best military had been Wagner, I guess that’s probably not true anymore. But the point being that I think the inference from that – you know, the lesson to draw from that is real war’s hard and actually, what the Russians did in Ukraine is easy compared to an amphibious invasion across the Taiwan Strait when you’re thinking about the amount of expertise, the amount of jointness, the logistical requirements for it. Real war’s hard and the PRC hasn’t fought a war since the late 1970s and the last one they fought didn’t go very well, and nobody has fought the type of war they’re thinking about doing. And then they’ve seen the international, economic and political response, and that also has to be concerning, because Chi – you know, China’s theory of national greatness, their ambition requires them to be integrated into the world to a much larger degree than Vladimir Putin needs to be integrated into the world. And so, the risk of being unplugged in the way that Russia has been unplugged, that’s a real problem.
So, all of that, I think, is conducive to deterrence, which is good. Now, do I think that the – that it’s convinced, completely convinced, the leadership in Beijing, not to think about this? No, I think to quote Jaws, they’re probably thinking, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” But they’re – but I think they’re going to be– they’re going to try and build a bigger boat. So, it’s incumbent upon all of us to not invite a conflict with China, but to discourage them from starting one that – and to convince them again that were they to do so, the outcome for them would look a lot more like Ukraine than like Hong Kong, where the world just, kind of, moved on.
The last point I’ll make is, I think they’ve also seen in Ukraine, a plucky democracy that rallied the sympathy of the world, remained much more resilient and much more militarily capable and was able to leverage asymmetric technologies in ways that really tied up a nuclear – a military major power, it tied ‘em up in knots. And I think that they probably have to be concerned that Taiwan could replicate aspects of that, as well.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yeah, I’m sure we’re going to come back to some of this. Of course, if they were unplugged from the world economy, it would hurt us too, and I think…
Dr Colin H Kahl
It would.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…Europeans certainly worry about that a lot, as I’m sure do Americans, but I think in Europe it’s a very deep concern. As you know, I want to ask you a big question about Ukraine and then – and bring it to everybody in the room who is – we’ve got some, like I said, tremendous people here.
At different points in time – I mean, I think the overall sentiment in the UK and in Europe has been that US leadership on the question of Ukraine, on supporting Ukraine and the unity amongst the US and its – certainly amongst its European allies, has been extraordinary and remarkable. You’ve heard the critique some people have made which is that, you know, the US has perhaps been a little bit slow at times, that there’s been an incrementalism. I’ve listened to you talk about this, I think it might be hear – important for people to hear your version of what incrementalism has been based on, why you’ve made certain decisions at certain points in time, based on the budget available, which has been very significant.
But I – but obviously, you know, now we’re at a slightly different moment, I don’t know if it will stick or not, but most of us spent the weekend reflecting on your comments and Jake Sullivan’s comments about the US decision to supply cluster munitions, and it would be good to hear you say a little bit about that. It certainly raises a question of – for all of us, of what is the argument when it comes to military effectiveness? What’s the trade-off when it comes to the morality, or rather the immorality, that’s been attached to these weapons through the convention, which the UK, of course, has signed and the US has not? How did you make that calculation, that decision? You’ve been weighing it up for a very, very long time. There are always trade-offs to be made, there are particular conditions set on this, but it’s certainly something that you know better than anybody else, if not managed well and the messaging, risks taking that extraordinary period of US leadership, in unity with America’s allies, and possibly undermining it, to a degree.
Dr Colin H Kahl
Yeah, so I – look, we’re extraordinarily proud of the international coalition that we’ve helped build and shepherd. I will also say, you know, I give a lot of credit to the UK for the role that this government has played in that effort, as well. So, you know, my direct boss, Secretary of Defense Austin, you know, convenes once a month at what’s called the UDCG which is the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, and it’s 50 countries and it’s at the ministerial level every month, just – not only to, kind of, show symbolic or political solidarity for Ukraine, but to come with real stuff. And that stuff has helped Ukrainians stay and fight, and so we’re really proud for the coalition that we’ve built.
I think we’re also proud of the sheer quantity of assistance that we’ve provided. It’s – we’re now north of $40 billion in 16 months. As someone who’s worked in the bureaucracy before, that shouldn’t be possible. It doesn’t happen on its own. It’s never happened, I don’t think, in the history of the world, but we made it happen and we’re proud of that. And, you know, look, I understand the frustration about, you know, what gets sent when and in what quantities and how much and all of that and look, in particular, if I’m in Ukraine and you’re in the midst of an existential struggle, there’s never enough, and it’s never soon enough and there’s always something else that can be helpful, so I get that.
I think, though, that people have to appreciate that we didn’t have $40 billion on the day that Vladimir Putin’s troops rolled into Ukraine. So, let me just give you a vignette to help you understand. At every stage, basically, we’ve taken the money that Congress has given us, the taxpayer money that they’ve given us, and tried to figure out, what does Ukraine need right now? What is the nature of the fight right now? What can we get them right now? What do they know how to use? What they – what can they be trained on? What can be sustained? And these are really important questions because if you get them stuff that looks great in the Jane’s Weekly Defence magazine, but doesn’t get there for three months and doesn’t deliver a capability they need right now, it’s not very helpful.
So, one example, for the first six weeks of the war, I think most people would admit, arguably the most crucial period of the war, ‘cause this is when the Russians were defeated in trying to overturn – overthrow the government in Kyiv. Had the Ukrainians lost that battle, the war would be over and Ukraine would be over. They didn’t lose that battle, so let’s focus on those first six weeks. We had $3 billion in those first six weeks. We could have spent those – that $3 billion on a Patriot battery, $1 billion for one Patriot battery, and the Bradleys, Abrams tanks and Stryker vehicles we’ve now given them, all great stuff. That would have absorbed all $3 billion. The Patriot would have taken two or three months to show up and to train on. The Abrams tanks would have taken eight months to show up. The Bradleys and Strykers would have taken a few months to show up and a few months to train on. I don’t know – I’m not very good – I’m not a real Scientist, so my math isn’t so great, none of that would have helped them in the first six weeks of the war.
So, what did we spend the money on instead? Instead of Patriots, we spent the money on short-range air defence and man-portable air defence systems, like Stingers. Instead of tanks, we gave them Javelin anti-tank systems, the Brits provided similar capabilities. Instead of long-range, high-precision missiles, we provided them artillery for the Soviet artillery systems they already knew how to use and could deploy effectively. Instead of sending them Patriot, we scrounged up our inventories from the Cold War to make sure that their S-300 systems could stay in the game. Can anybody honestly argue it would’ve been better for us to send them the sexy stuff at the beginning? It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous and it shows a degree of magical thinking. Like, we had $40 billion, and you could have just sprinkled it over Ukraine at the beginning of the war and the war would be over.
And so, after we had that phase and they defeated the Russians in Kyiv using a lot of the stuff that we collectively prioritised, the conflict shifted to the East. They were running low on Soviet artillery and therefore we had to shift them to NATO-standard artillery, so we started sending them Howitzers and 155 mm ammunition. Then we started sending the HIMAR systems and the GMLRS so that they would have more range and that allowed them to be successful in Kharkiv and Kherson and reset the table. As we transitioned into winter, we then started giving them Patriots, because at that point, we were worried that the Iranians might be sending in ballistic missiles. We knew that the Russians were coming over the top to threaten critical infrastructure, so we invested in things like NASAMS, Patriot etc, and then, as we knew that they were going to engage in the spring counteroffensive, we built up this mountain of steel that involved Bradleys and Strykers and everything else. So is it incrementalism? Yeah, it’s also rational based on the considerations that we put forward, and so, it does – as you can see a little bit in the tone, not from your question, but just, like, it frustrates me because it doesn’t reflect the lived experiences of those who have worked their tails off to move heaven and earth to get $40 billion of security assistance.
Now, there’s a question of DPICM with the cluster munitions question. This was an issue that we had with for months, many months. And, by the way, there’s some tension in the two parts of the question, right? “Have you done enough to give Ukraine everything they want when they want it?” and “Why did you give them that?” right? As you all know, they’ve been pushing for DPICM for a long, long time, alright? This was at the very top of their list of requirements. So, there’s a little bit of a tension between, “Get the Ukrainians everything they want. How dare you keep stuff from them that they need for their survival.” and then the criticism, “But don’t send them that.” But we held off because it was a really hard decision, because we wrestled with the moral issues, the normative issues, the humanitarian issues. We obviously aren’t a party to the Oslo Convention on Cluster Munitions, but many of our closest allies are.
I think, you know, there – certainly this is a system that if you use the wrong way with the wrong system, can have devastating effects on civilians, and we’ve seen this – you know, the Russians have probably, just in the first year of the war, probably expended enough cluster munitions of one kind or enough to, you know, tens of millions of submunitions across Ukraine. And by the way, had we not made this decision, the requirement for Ukraine to deal with unexploded ordnance and demining, this will be a generational challenge for them because of what the Russians have done. So, this is a burden that Ukraine will have no matter what. So, nobody is more aware of the burden that falls on Ukraine of these things than the Ukrainains.
So the question then becomes, should we provide this system or not? And at the end of the day, two arguments tipped the balance, and it was a – it’s a fuzzy boundary between these strictly, kind of, deontological moral arguments, like, absolute right/wrong, and the utilitarian ones, and there’s a fuzzy boundary. I mean, again, going back to our graduate student days, we know from reading people like Michael Walzer, that there are periods in which a combination of existential stakes and emergency conditions tip you from one category into the next. And it’s not only true for theorists, it’s also true for practitioners.
And in this particular case, two things, I think, tipped us. One was the urgency of the moment. The Ukrainians are in the midst of their counteroffensive, they still have considerable combat power to go, the counteroffensive is a – they have a good shot to clawback additional territory that the Russians are occupying, but not if they run out of artillery. And the challenge is that the stockpiles of unitary, that is a single-shot, 155 mm ammunition, are strained across the world, and we moved heaven and earth to get them hundreds of thousands of shells for the counteroffensive and it’s not going to be enough. So, the question then becomes, in the absence of this, would you run the risk that the Ukrainian counteroffensive might stall out? And what would the implications be for Ukraine if that happened?
I will conjecture that if you’re really worried about civilians in Ukraine, kids in Ukraine, the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, it’s not a good idea for the Russians to get momentum on the battlefield and take more of Ukraine, because the last time they took chunks of Ukraine, they carted off thousands of Ukrainian children back to Russia and they will seize that territory indiscriminately, right? There’s just no question about that because it’s empirically true. So, the first is the urgency of the moment. The second was the need to build a bridge. We have doubled our production, nearly doubled our production of 155mm ammunition and the Europeans are investing in more too, and that’s good, but it’s going to take a while for that ramp to build up and so, this essentially builds a bridge to that.
Okay, those are the two, essentially, utilitarian arguments. But then the question is also, like, but that doesn’t mean you open the floodgates for everything, right? You shouldn’t and we won’t, but the DPICM munitions that we’re providing are not like the cluster munitions that the Russians have been using. The cluster munitions that the Russians have been dropping and using have dud rates of 30 or 40%. That means three or four out of every ten are not going to explode and they could litter the territory and create unintended consequences. So, it’s not just that the Russians are using them indiscriminately, the high dud rates mean that the collateral damage risk after the fact is considerable.
The dud rates of the munitions that we’re providing are capped at 2.35% and some of them are as low as 1.3%, which is substantially less. It means one or two out of a 100, alright? We’ve also gotten assurances from the Ukrainians that they’re not going to use these in populated urban areas and of course, they have a vested interest in not killing Ukrainians, I think people can agree on that, and that they would keep track of where they’re using these munitions to inform post-liberation demining efforts. So, is this a morally pure, like – it wasn’t. We agonised about this decision for months, but at the end of the day, in that fuzzy boundary between absolute moral principle and the utilitarian considerations that also bear on the humanitarian circumstances, we made the decision we did.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
A quick question, I’m coming to the audience, please put your hands up. Will it divide – will it create divisions internally? Many of America’s closest allies are signatories to the Convention. Are they basically saying, “We’re not giving them, it’s okay that you are, and case closed,” or will it create more of a problem? And I think there was a – who’s got their hands up over here? I’ll come to Sanam then Jamie.
Dr Colin H Kahl
I think the answer is, I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I don’t think it will create a huge problem.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
If you have more to say on that later, we’d love to hear it. Sanam, please introduce yourself, no introduction needed but…
Sanam Vakil
Thank you. Hi, Colin, Sanam Vakil, Director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. You mentioned Iran and Saudi Arabia, just one words, and, of course, there are bigger issues at play beyond the Middle East, but the Middle East, of course, remains a theatre that never lets you forget that there are many conflicts going on. I wanted to ask you briefly about two things. First of all, what’s the status of the integrated air and missile defence project underway?
And secondly, both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, despite frustrations with the Biden administration, still remain quite keen in having a bilateral agreement with Washington, and I’ve heard it described, you know, in the further afield objective of having a Taiwan-like agreement with Washington, but knowing full well they can’t get that in terms of a treaty and knowing that the US doesn’t necessarily live by their treaty commitments or agreements, period, like the JCPOA. I’m curious to know how that – those relationships are progressing and what, sort of, assurances and guarantees you might be giving those two countries bilaterally. Thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I’m going to take a couple. I know from history – historical experience that you’re supersmart and can hold them in your mind. Peter Watkins and then Patrica Lewis.
Peter Watkins
So, Peter Watkins, formerly Director General Security Policy, Ministry of Defence. I want to come back to integrated deterrence. I’m not going to claim that we in the UK invented it, but we did do quite a lot of work, which we actually badged, ‘modern deterrence’. But – and the idea, of course, is to use all the levers of power in order to deter, including, of course, non-military ones. And I just wondered, reflecting on what’s happened recently, how one calibrates the relative effectiveness of these levers, because we sought, collectively, to deter Russia from invading Ukraine by threatening massive consequences, mainly economic, but it didn’t work because you get the old issue in deterrence of the asymmetry of interest.
And also, if you’re looking at how effective or otherwise these measures are, you said – you used the phrase, “We’ve unplugged Russia from the world economy.” Well, we’ve unplugged Russia from part of the world economy. You know, a very large number of countries are perfectly happy to keep on doing business with Russia. So, I just wonder if you might reflect, you know, it’s a nice idea integrated deterrence, but I – you know, even as somebody who was involved in developing it, I sometimes wonder if it’s going to work in the future.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I – there’s a follow-on question online, Paul Hurmuz. “Is it fair to say that the USA integrated deterrence concept was inspired by the US modern deterrence coined around December 2017?” Patricia Lewis?
Patricia Lewis
Thank you very much. Patricia Lewis, International Security Head here at Chatham House. I’m not going to talk about cluster munitions, ‘cause I think you’ve spoken about that, but we are very concerned about the issue of norms and international rule-based order and what we’re trying to achieve. And I’m honoured to follow Peter Watkins, who is known as ‘Mr Deterrence’, integrated deterrence in the UK, to just say that. Sorry, Peter.
I wanted to pick up on your really interesting thought about resilience as deterrence and I’m really glad you brought that up, and certainly, it’s clear in space, it’s clear in cyber. We’ve seen it also with bioweapons approaches where, you know, the preparedness with vaccines, functioning public health system, ready to respond etc., is a major feature of the way in which we think about deterring biothreats. I’d say the same is true for war. A prepared resilience community, witness Ukraine right now, in many respects is less attractive as a target, although that didn’t work, and – but can resist more readily if attacked.
But what we have been shocked by, I think, is Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons. Ben Wallace, Secretary of Defence here at the Munich Security Conference and James Heappey just last week at the London Conference, talked about how to reinforce the taboo of use, and I know that the US has really been strong on this. So, my question is how do we – is this something that we could develop with China? China has also been strong on this particular issue. It would be a norm, it would be a taboo, but we can’t get them into arms control, bilateral arms control, at the moment and I’m just thinking that is this an interesting approach that the US could take with China to consider how we might reinforce that taboo?
Dr Colin H Kahl
On use?
Patricia Lewis
On use, yes, just on use.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Great question. Sorry for throwing all that – I will come back to – in the next round to Jamie and to you, Jonathan.
Dr Colin H Kahl
Alright, a couple – so, great questions, tour of the world. On the Gulf questions, look, I think we’re making progress on the integrated air missile defence front. I think there are all sorts of possibilities in the region, largely for two reasons.
One, because the Abraham Accords have opened up the horizons for co-operation with Israel, which is one of the leading countries in the world in terms of integrated air and missile defence. Now, of course, not everybody is in the Abraham Accords. That helps the UAE, it doesn’t apply yet to Saudi Arabia. I think the other piece that’s helped is that now that Israel’s part of CENTCOM, which is our theatre of command for the Middle East, it increases the possibility of stitching together countries across the region into an integrated air and missile defence framework. I think there’s clearly recognition that there is value in it. You still have to overcome some trust issues, I think, in the region about sharing different types of data, but we’re getting there.
I think one thing that’s not going to lead to integrated air and missile defence is a bunch of Chinese military equipment in these countries. They won’t be interoperable with our systems, and they won’t be allowed to plug in to whatever network we’re building, because of the counterintelligence problems. And that’s not punitive, that’s just in our – we’re not going to let Chinese air defence systems interact with our networks and I think our partners understand that.
Do the UAE and Saudi Arabia, do they want a firmer security arrangement or treaty? I think it’s fair to say that a, kind of, Article-V like commitment that’s instantiated in a treaty, seems to me, a – you know, something that is probably politically not possible in the United States, separate and apart from whatever the administration’s preferences are. It’s – I think the prospect of getting, you know, enough votes in the Senate on something like this are – you know, we don’t get – we can’t get any treaty through the Senate, so I don’t think that’s going to happen. We do defend Saudi Arabia and the UAE every single day, so, you know, is there more that we could do? Probably. Will we continue to have conversations with them? Almost assuredly. And as the Saudi-Israel normalisation conversations continue, I’m sure these, you know, frameworks will be debated about, you know, what Saudi expectations are and what is politically feasible in the United States.
On who created integrated deterrence, I don’t know. You guys definitely integrate – created modern deterrence. That’s what I’ve heard from these questions. So, may be ours is post-modern deterrence? You heard it here first, yeah.
Peter Watkins
I got that.
Dr Colin H Kahl
Look, I think there is this question of, like, did deterrence work or not in Ukraine? It certainly didn’t work in the sense of Russia wasn’t deterred from going into Ukraine. I think they weren’t deterred, in part – you mentioned the asymmetry of stakes question. I think that, you know, countries in the West basically made it clear that there was a – you know, as our President said, “We’ll defend every inch of NATO,” but we weren’t going to fight World War III over Ukraine. And so, I don’t think Putin believed that going into Ukraine would be to invite a direct conflict with NATO. But frankly, even had we not said that, I’m not sure he would have believed it because he would have believed that he was willing to run more risk of direct conflict and escalation in Ukraine than we were ‘cause he cared about it more than we did. And he – I’m not saying he’s right or wrong about that, I’m saying that’s what I think was in his mind. Therefore, there’s an open question about whether he was deterrable.
I also think that until it actually happened, and you’re absolutely right, we did not unplug Russia from the international economy, but the economic sanctions and export controls have been a lot harsher than he anticipated and he – I think one of the reasons he went into Ukraine is that he anticipated that Europe would buckle, that Europe would divide, that you had a new government in Germany, you had upcoming elections in France, you had – winter was coming and higher energy prices. There would be a lot of coercive levers for Moscow to pull that would, essentially, deter Europe from engage – from enacting the types of sanctions and export controls, and also, weaning off of Russian energy over time that we’ve seen. I’ll leave it to others as to whether there’s still a lot more to be done, whether we’ve done enough, but I think certainly more was done then than Putin believed.
But I also think we need to give ourselves some credit, we have deterred him from expanding the conflict to NATO. You know, the security assistance that’s flown into – that’s gone into Ukraine has passed through countries in the NATO Alliance and the Russians have, to date, not struck NATO territory in an effort to interdict those supplies. And I think they haven’t done that because they are very much deterred right now from a conflict with NATO. In fact, I would argue that, at least conventionally, you know, the level of deterrence is higher than at any period since the 1990s, just because of how decimated the Russian Army has been in Ukraine.
I do think the question moving forward, is – goes back more to this question, or the answer I gave earlier about the lessons the PRC might be drawing from this. And yes, the PRC is hard to unplug for the reason Leslie mentioned, which is we are also very dependent on – you know, there’s an interdependence in our relationships with them that would impose costs, and they are banking on it. At the same token, they are worried about countries derisking to lower the risk exposure that they have under certain – because I think the democracies and advanced economies of the world have a vital national interest in not being coerced at a moment of international crisis. And so, I think what is important to convey to Beijing is that their theory of national greatness, which is that they will be fully integrated and be able to ride the wave of that, it can be held at risk if they engage in a conflict that threatens the world economy. And I think if we don’t – if we want the conflict not to happen, that is the deterrent message we should be sending.
Part of integrated deterrence, though, isn’t just about the – all the toolkits. It’s also different thinking about it, and we talked about resilience and resilience comes in all sorts of forms, resilience of leadership, resilience of command and control, resilience of society against things like disinformation, which is something I worry about very much in our own society, I know that’s a challenge here as well, resilience of our cyber networks and resilience of our space architectures. All of these have profound implications for our ability to project military power, fight wars and sustain wars, communicate, navigate, you name it. So, we have to be more resilient across the board. It won’t be enough, but it is an important part of deterrence.
Whether China can be brought into the nuclear taboo, it’s a really interesting question and a timely one because, of course, China’s undertaking an effort to quadrupole, maybe even quintuple, their nuclear arsenal to ensure that they have a survivable second-strike capability that will create a new world. For the first time, the United States and the UK will be confronted by not one, but two potentially adversarial powers that have – that are, you know, near peer – nuclear peers with the United States, that’s a big change. I don’t think the PRC leadership has fully thought through what that will mean for their doctrine, and to what degree it – they move in the direction of, you know, of a mutually assured destruction model or a model that sees higher battlefield utility for nuclear weapons, which would be more aligned with the way in which I think the Russian mentality is. And I think that debate will happen over the next ten years there.
But I do think you see signs of China understanding that nuclear use at any scale would be a world-changing moment that would have profound implications for China because China is part of the world. And we saw a little bit of a dry run of this last fall, when there were significant concerns about possible nuclear escalation in Ukraine, you’ll recall. And Chinese leadership made some statements, and I think in large part, because of the rise in concern there, and I think communicated – probably more was said behind closed doors, communicated that, you know, that Russian use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would have implications beyond Ukraine. And so, whether that offers some hope for bringing them into the nuclear taboo, I don’t – it’s too soon to tell, but I think we should test the proposition.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Dana Allin has asked, “Can you say something about the debate within the administration about eventual NATO membership for Ukraine?” Dana Allin, double-I, double-S. I think given where you’re headed this afternoon, that’s a really important question for you to address, if you would, and then I’ll come to Jamie Shea, but why don’t you go ahead and take this from Dana, who I’m sure you know well?
Dr Colin H Kahl
Yeah, I think – you know, there’s actually no debate about whether NATO should have an open-door policy or not. So, that’s not about Ukraine, right? Ukraine is open to seek membership, like any other country that wants to join the Alliance. I think there’s also been a consensus in the administration that, going into Vilnius, we’ll continue to support the 2008 Bucharest Statement that, you know, eventually Ukraine will be part of NATO. I think what – where there’s been resistance is to suggest that there’s a degree of automaticity or immediacy. I think that – for understandable reasons, I think bringing a country into NATO that is in a hot conflict with Russia is a vote to immediately involve NATO in the conflict, which I don’t think there’s consensus across the Alliance in. And most especially from our President’s point of view, there are a whole host of domestic and security reform issues that every NATO member has had to cross that Ukraine will also have to cross.
So, I think what will be clear this week is that the door remains open, quite open for Ukraine, but that it’s not, kind of, temporarily bounded, but instead, conditions based, like it would be for any other member and that, in the interim, we also need to think about other forms of security assurances for Ukraine in the context of the current conflict, in part, as a bridge to whatever future Ukraine might have in NATO.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Jamie Shea.
Jamie Shea
Thanks very much for giving me the floor. Jamie Shea, formerly of NATO and now, like Peter, luckily, an Associate Fellow here. First of all, thanks for a very informative and forceful, a complimentary word for me, forceful, presentation.
One of the things that probably won’t get a lot of publicity in Vilnius because of the focus on Ukraine, of course, and Sweden and so on, are the standing defence plans that are going to be approved that General Cavoli has worked out for the collective defence of Europe. Colin, could you give us a rapid, sort of, military health check on how you think –how ready you think NATO is to implement today those plans? What is NATO doing well? Where are the gaps? And from a US point of view, are you now – with all of the commitments to the Indo-Pacific, the arms transfers to Ukraine, is the US more or less at the limit of what it can provide itself for NATO? Is it time for Europe to step up, and do you see a greater role for the EU, directly or indirectly, in the conventional defence of NATO territory? Thank you very much.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
As usual, Jamie Shea, no small question. Those are great questions.
Dr Colin H Kahl
So, I’m optimistic that we’ll get the regional defence plans through this week in Vilnius, and it’s a good thing, too, because it’s a long-overdue revision of those plans. And just for those who aren’t following along at home, there’s essentially three plans for the north, central and south. They are important in, kind of, two respects. One, to be realistic operational plans that will now have to be, you know, further detailed. They are war-fighting plans for different contingencies involving attacks on NATO territory. So, they matter for the same reason that contingency planning matters at the national level. But the real reason they matter is that they provide concrete plans that provide hooks for specific force commitments by NATO countries to commit forces at a much higher state of readiness than NATO has previously held its forces across the board. And so, I expect what you’ll see is a much larger number of forces being assigned and affiliated with NATO and being connected to these plans.
I think there will still be gaps and part of that gap – you know, some of that gap could be political, a lot of it could be capability driven, and there, I think, that’s the third piece why the plans are important, is it can help them drive the types of investments. As countries are spending more on their military, as they’re building back from stockpiles they depleted to assist Ukraine. It provides a little bit of a roadmap about what capabilities are most important to support what plans. So, I think that it is absolutely crucial to get the Alliance in a place where it needs to be in the coming years to have a more credible defence and deterrence posture. There’s also some command and control changes that have been – that are associated with it that I think will help NATO be a more effective, war-fighting – so, I’m confident that the plans will move forward and we’ll have the benefits I just talked about.
In terms of the US role, I mean, there are more US forces in Europe now than there were before the crisis. I expect that our numbers will go up and down, but our studies state we’ll probably stay above pre-crisis levels for quite some time. That said, a lot of the enhancements that we made in prepositioning equipment and building up infrastructure after the last time Russia invaded Ukraine paid huge dividends here because it allowed us to surge 30,000 forces into theatre like that. And I take a lot of pride because I don’t think any other country in the world could’ve done what we did, but that’s also proof that, you know, I know there’s a lot of tendency to count every single American on the ground at any given moment, but we can move people around if the infrastructure is there, if the equipment is prepositioned. And so, I think there’s – there will be considerable US capacity. and as it relates to these plans, you’ll also see the United States stepping up to assign and affiliate forces so that the new force model will be viable moving forward.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Two final questions, if that’s okay with you, from Jonathan and then the gentleman at the back. Jonathan?
Jonathan Paris
Thank you. Jonathan Paris, a London-based US Consultant. I’ve – 12 years of those spent consulting for Andy Marshall, Director of the Office of Net Assessment. My question is a follow-up on Sanam, but I really want to get at Iran. If you – you spoke so well about how Xi might look at Taiwan and a war with the United States. I want to know how you think the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, looks at the United States, so distracted with so many other things right now. The Iran issue has been, sort of, slid down to the bottom of the issue box. But is this a chance, may be, with his new so-called access with the, I call it the ICR, Iran, China, Russia, does he have a sense that time is with him, that he’s got some allies now and he might just test? And in the words of you friend [Amu Shablan – 68:19] might creep across the line on the nuclear side and what exactly will deter him in Washington from doing that?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Right here at the back, there’s a mic.
Simon Webb
Simon Webb, also former MOD policy one – now walking – working on AUKUS. A China question. China imports a lot of its energy and raw materials. Could that affect their thinking in good or bad ways? In other words, would they lose a long fight, particularly with all these, now, submarines around, but might they also be tempted into a quick fight?
The second thing is, there’s a very long border in Finland, you could absorb almost all NATO infantry defending that. Is there a place to start opening up a long-term discussion with the Russians about the, sort of, force limitation stuff that saved us all a lot of money and anxiety in the past?
Dr Colin H Kahl
So on Jona – Jonathan here, about Iran and its Supreme Leader, I don’t know what’s in his head. I think that – I think at the moment, they appear to be in a, kind of – there’s a paradox of Irani behaviour at the moment because there’s a degree of de-escalation in places like Yemen, obviously with, you know, some degree of rapprochement with the Saudis, there – you know, a previous détente with the Emiratis. I think they are trying to stir the pot in the Levant, especially in the context of turmoil in Israel and the West Bank and other things. I think there will be – they may see opportunity there. Since we – since our response to their attack on our forces in Syria a few months ago, their – the attacks by their proxies in Iraq and Syria have calmed down a bit.
So, on the one level, there’s a little bit of a lull. On the neck – on another level, though, they continue to be extraordinarily provocative. They’re providing, you know, drones to attack Ukrainian civilians, you know, they’re providing those drones to the Russians. They are obviously moving forward in their nuclear capabilities, enriching to higher levels – stock – higher stockpiles, more advanced centrifuges. You know, whatever one thought or didn’t think about the Obama era, JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, you know, when that deal was in place, they were about 12 months away, in terms of their breakout timeline, for one weapon’s worth of fissile material. Now, they could probably do that in a matter of days or a handful of weeks, so that’s put us in a tougher spot.
That said, we have communicated very clearly to the Ukrai – to the Iranians that 90% enrichment, which would be weapons-grade enrichment, would be considered a step towards weaponisation. There’s no civilian justification for 90% enrichment of uranium and the President has been clear that Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. My boss, the Secretary of Defense, who doesn’t mince words, has been pretty clear that he prefers a diplomatic outcome, but we have other alternatives.
The Israelis also have another alternatives and I think one thing that you’ve seen from our administration is a high degree of co-ordination with the Israelis on this issue. Back in January, we had the largest military exercise in the history of the US-Israel relationship. Something like 6,000 service members, employing 183 – 180,000 pounds of live fire munitions, aerial refuelling, aircraft carrier, out of long-range strike capabilities showing that we and the Israelis can act together. I think that whatever he thinks about our – you know, the US national will, I think he probably doesn’t doubt Israel’s national will, so I think we’ve done a fair amount to bolster our deterrent. So, I’m – you know, I think it would be a very bad thing for the Iranians to make a move towards a nuclear weapon.
And in terms of are we distracted around the world? We’re busy, but we also have displayed over and over again to include in that military exercise, Juniper Oak, back in January, that we can deploy enormously potent capabilities to that part of the world on a very tight string. So, again, anybody who, basically, assesses US military power in any part of the world by doing this is making a grave mistake because we can be just about anywhere on a very short string.
Questions about the PRC energy, I’m not energy expert. I would say it is something, if I were them, I would worry about because they have far-flung supply lines and they don’t control the sea lines of communication in any of those places. So, I would think that that would be concerning if I were them, but I don’t know if it is actually something that factors into their calculus. But it’s a risk for them, and great, if they’re uncertain about that and they worry about that then, again, I want them to wake up every single day saying, “Today is not the day.”
Now, the other question that was, temporarily, does that push them from protraction into a, kind of, a fait accompli, rapid-strike? Maybe, but I think they were already there. I think that – I think the theory of victory, it essentially requires them to win in a handful of weeks before the United States can mass enough power forward in the Western Pacific to challenge the intervention force, and so, I think they’re not looking for protraction anyway. But I think one of the lessons from Ukraine is that if you’re betting that the war will be really fast, maybe, you know, that’s a gamble, it’s a big gamble.
On Finland, it – look, I don’t want to prejudge what NATO’s posture will look like in Finland. I think Finland’s pretty good at defending itself. It is a long border but frankly, I would turn the question around, I think it creates way more dilemmas for the Russians than it creates for NATO to deal with that border. So, that doesn’t – I am completely confident we will work with Finland hand-in-glove and that it creates a lot more problems for Moscow.
Now, the broader question you raise is an important one which is broader conversations about the European security architecture with Russia at some point. We’ve made clear that, you know, at the end game on Ukraine, we’re willing to have broader conversations with the Russians on a whole host of things. We were willing to have those conversations ahead of the war and they pushed them aside. So, you know, I think that we can revisit those conversations at the appropriate time and we’re certainly open to them.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Colin, this has been tremendous and it’s come at a very special point in time for NATO. It’s come at a special point in time for all of us and it’s, I hope, come at a special point in time for you, since this is the final week that you will have in this current role. It’s probably not the time – the world has changed. It hasn’t been exactly what you probably imagined when you agreed to take on the role. I personally am very glad that you have been in the role. I think on behalf of all of us at Chatham House, I would like to thank you, not only for coming here, but for your service to the US and to NATO and for all of us. And please come back when you’re at Stanford, often, regularly, under the rule and we’ll take it that much further, but this has been tremendous. Thank you [applause].
