On 26 January, the VCDNP hosted James Acton, Co-Director of the Nuclear Policy Program and Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. Acton's presentation addressed nuclear risks in the contemporary world and the possibilities for a breakdown in nuclear deterrence through the impact of new technologies.
Nuclear risks, Dr. Acton said, are changing. In his view, since the end of the Cold War, changes in geopolitical relationships and evolutions in technology make the likelihood of a collapse in nuclear stability increasingly credible.
On the geopolitical front, the most striking shift since the days of the Cold War has been the end of bipolarity. Nuclear deterrence relationships now extend in all directions, he explained, particularly as seen in triangular relationships between the US, Russia and China, and between China, India and Pakistan. The current web of relationships makes for a far more complex nuclear order than the chiefly US/Russia-centric nuclear order that existed for most of the second half of the 20th century. Added to this is the complexity of nuclear decision-making based not only on nuclear-nuclear considerations, but on considerations of conventional weapon capabilities as well.
Dr. Acton then turned to technological developments in arms control. During the Cold War, he said, the main worries about nuclear weapons use centered on the possibility of countries turning to nuclear weapons to counter losses in a failing conventional war, and on concerns about "crisis instability", mostly between the US and Russia. At the heart of crisis instability was always force vulnerability, with vulnerability seen almost entirely in terms of nuclear-on-nuclear force.
Today, however, Dr. Acton argued, this is changing in potentially dangerous ways, particularly with the development of four kinds of non-nuclear weapon technologies that each have the possibility to affect countries' nuclear force capabilities: ballistic missile defense; high-precision conventionally-armed missiles; anti-space weapons; and cyber-attack capabilities. All carry the potential to impact on nuclear stability during a "deep crisis", although not likely on a day-to-day basis, he said.
Of the four, high-precision conventional weapons have particular resonance for nuclear escalation. States may observe launches of conventional weapons and interpret these as attacks on nuclear deterrence capabilities (particularly if nuclear missiles have been refitted with conventional warheads) or, in the case of so-called boost-glide missiles, states may observe their launch but, due to the low-altitude flight characteristics, not be able to track such a missile's progress with radar—possibly initiating a heightened level of nuclear readiness.
Dr. Acton also spoke of the dangers he perceives in an apparent trend towards dual-use command and control infrastructures for both nuclear and conventional weapons. He pointed to both China and the US as examples. China, he said, is believed to control both nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles using the same structures and systems, while, in the US, early warning satellites once used solely to detect launches of Soviet missiles are now used both for launch detection and ballistic missile defense.
As a result, an attack designed to target conventional capabilities could be interpreted by a state—quite reasonably—as an attempt to degrade its nuclear force, which could in turn result in a crisis spiralling out of control to a point at which nuclear weapons may even be used.
