A lack of political will is the biggest barrier to arms control right now. Strategists in most of the world’s nuclear-armed states seem to believe that they will be better off investing in hard deterrence postures, strengthening conventional and nuclear deterrence alike and increasing risks. Various US experts have claimed that the best way to reduce risk is through enhancing deterrence.
The US’s experience – and that of the Soviet Union – in the Cold War ought to provide sufficient caution against this strategy. Security postures throughout the Cold War were in fact characterized by a mix of deterrence, resilience and reassurance. But the US and the Soviet Union grew to understand the importance of mutual restraint.
In the 21st century, the nuclear policy landscape is far more complex than in the Cold War period, with additional states possessing significant nuclear arsenals and the strategic relationships between nuclear-armed states being much more interconnected. The recent focus of strategists on increasing deterrence capabilities significantly increases the risk of inadvertent escalation across several potential regional flashpoints, such as in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Indian Ocean, while diplomatic channels for engagement have been reduced.
This paper shows that opportunities for engagement and progress towards arms control still exist in all four of the inter-state relationships discussed. Expert-level engagement will likely be the easiest route. Despite this, it is important to note that, in some cases, even that low-level co-operation may be difficult due to challenges with visa permissions, think-tanks and experts being under government sanctions and – above all – high levels of distrust between the nuclear-armed states.
Renewed engagement at the expert level is crucial for maintaining a bottom-line of mutual awareness, for generating new ideas and for training the next generation of experts. States must ensure that some degree of knowledge and capacity is retained for when engagement becomes politically feasible again.
The project behind this paper is an attempt to preserve some of the lessons learned in the Cold War, and to update those lessons for the present. Although it will take time and effort to persuade states to re-engage with one another, the reward will be a return to predictability and stability in nuclear affairs, and the avoidance of a costly new arms race.
