ACLF 2021 - Renewing nuclear arms control and disarmament

uh as always let me begin by um paying acknowledging and celebrating the first australians on whose traditional lands we all respectively are present and acknowledging and celebrating and respecting uh leaders past and present and emerging it's um my very great pleasure to welcome to this session bob einhorm um senior fellow at brookings now but a hugely distinguished diplomatic career behind him as you've seen from his cv in the papers as a senior state department of three senior state departments official in the non-proliferation arms control area during both in particular the clinton and obama administrations as you might have noticed we were going to be joined in this session by amanda goolie who is the australian ambassador for arms control and counter proliferation uh but amanda was given a couple special assignment and circumstances we can probably imagine which made it impossible for her to uh to join us but i think we have so many other um distinguished high-level members of the default defense establishments both present and former that even though i can't be relied upon i can't be trusted to give any kind of sympathetic view to the present government's position no doubt someone will fill the gap if i if i misspeak um let me begin uh in terms of the conduct of this session uh there's a lot of ground we want to cover um so bob and i will have a conversation covering eight or nine different topics over the next half hour or so hopefully not not much longer before we go to general discussion and q a in which context um i think if we could work on the basis of just raising your hand physically or pressing the the raise hand button to get into the discussion uh that would work better than relying on me to follow a chat box so um i don't have a ten-year-old let's just do it physically as we can so look in our opening panel conversation bob and i assume uh we'll assume no doubt a little heroically that you've at least had a glance at the framing paper that was circulated a few days ago and in our conversation we'll take as given that um although participants should of course feel questioned to feel able to challenge any of these assumptions we'll take as a given [Music] nuclear weapons we'll take as given the high likelihood east unintended if not deliberate in the foreseeable future uh we'll take as given the enormous existential risk associated with any significant nuclear exchange and i think we'll take as given also the self-evident sense of the reagan gorbachev statement now actually recently embraced by all of biden putin and xi that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought so taking all that is more of this given our focus here will be on what if anything can be actually done to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used we'll be looking at the state of play the prospects for nuclear stockpile reduction uh will be an elimination we'll be looking at holding the line on non-proliferation and we'll be looking at more general risk reduction issues i want to start with the existing nine nuclear armed states and then moving from there later in the discussion to potential newcomers so my first question bob to get things started is basically is the framing paper too pessimistic the framing paper describes the the prospects for significant movement towards disarmament as desolate increasing modernizing stockpiles their arsenals with missile systems developed with no sign anywhere nice and nuclear weapons and national postures yes russia all arrangements ending and with no buy-in at all from anyone who matters to the nuclear ban treaty that's the picture that's painted in the framing paper is it too pessimistic beginning in particular with the u.s russia relationship given the possible ground for optimism i guess and i'd like you to talk about this the biden putin summit agreement to re-establish strategic security dialogue to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction as they say is there any hope at all for further bilateral stockpile reductions of the kind that we saw after the end of the cold war bob garrett thank you very much for that introduction and i thank the organizers of the crawford leadership forum for inviting me um gareth for reasons that you uh just mentioned and also for additional reasons that you put in your framing paper there are plenty of grounds for pessimism in the current environment but that doesn't mean that arms control is dead it means that the focus of arms control needs to shift at least in the near term formal agreements to further reduce nuclear weapons are very unlikely in my view uh it's a good thing uh that the new star treaty was extended for five years and a good thing that the united states and russia have agreed to resume strategic stability talks on a bilateral basis but the main purpose of those bilateral talks will be largely conceptual to reconceptualize strategic stability in arms control to consider how stability and future arms control will be affected by great power competition uh by disruptive uh technologies uh such as cyber and hype and uh uh and hypersonics uh by novel by novel uh nuclear weapons uh systems like undersea drones and also by additional nuclear competitors primarily china and north korea so we can't really expect any near-term disarmament agreements emerging from these uh new uh and resumed uh bilateral u.s russian stability talks the priority now uh when the prospect of nuclear conflict is greater now than it's been for decades really should not be on further nuclear reductions it should be reducing the likelihood that nuclear weapons will ever be used again and that means pursuing confidence building transparency communications measures that are designed to reduce the likelihood of armed conflict resulting from accident or miscalculation it means uh developing informal rules rules of the road uh to uh create uh uh norms of responsible behavior in such areas as space and and cyber and because in my view any use of nuclear weapons today will almost surely be the result of escalation from a regional conventional military conflict it means focusing heavily on preventing regional armed conflicts from erupting in the first place uh whether along the nato-russia border the south china sea or taiwan strait the korean peninsula or kashmir eventually further nuclear reductions may be possible but for now the international arms control agenda will consist of these more modest risk reduction measures well i want to come back to risk reduction measures and perhaps some slightly less modest options in that area as well in a few moments but let's uh first of all explore some of the other key players and in particular china because even more eyes are on china these days than the than the big two i guess although it's arsenal is only presently about 1 15 on most estimates um the u.s size and even though china has traditionally adopted a both a no first use and a minimal deterrence posture what is your take on the risks associated with the current chinese enterprise of modernization expansion diversification not least the recent information that's emerged about these missile silo sites in western china maybe up to 300 even though that doesn't necessarily mean 300 weapons it could be it could be a shell game what's your take on the the current risks associated with china's posture and whether it will ever be possible uh to get china directly engaged in control arms limitation arrangements uh well you know in my view gareth and not just in my view it's almost uh consensus view now china's current nuclear monetization uh efforts um are disturbing including what you just mentioned this evidence that they are constructing two or three uh new fields of icbm silos that could house hundreds of multiple warhead missiles and you know for decades as you've mentioned uh china has pursued a minimum uh deterrence capability but now that appears to be changing the goals of its uh modernization program remain unclear at a minimum in my view it wants to ensure a secure reliable nuclear retaliatory capability to deter the united states from conducting a disarming nuclear first strike by itself that's understandable and relatively benign but it takes place at a time when china is acting more assertively toward its neighbors and working hard to replace the united states as the dominant conventional military power in the western pacific by achieving a mutual nuclear deterrence relationship with the united states china may hope to gain a freer hand to pursue its regional objectives without fear of u.s nuclear coercion china is therefore very unlikely to agree to anything that could impede its ability to achieve a mutual deterrent relationship with the united states but at the same time china wishes to avoid armed conflict resulting from accidents misperceptions or miscalculations and so hopefully it will agree before too long to engage in a strategic stability dialogue with the united states it's so far resisted holding such a dialogue and such a dialogue would allow each side to gain a better understanding of the other side's strategic objectives and perhaps avoid perhaps avoid worst case planning and even an arms race it could also allow them to develop confidence building and other measures to reduce the likelihood of inadvertent armed conflict and conceivably they could also agree on mutual limitations for rules of road in areas where the united states and china have comparable capabilities such as cyber space or hydrosonics but formal quantitative nuclear arms limitations agreements are very unlikely for quite some time how much serious commitment is there within the present biden administration given domestic political imperatives and the and the extent of the emotion that now seems to be invested in the the anti-china position how much serious commitment is there to such a strategic dialogue as you describe it even even one with fairly modest aspirations i i think there's a real commitment to do that the blind administration has uh emphasized that while uh key aspects of the relationship will be competitive uh it looks to cooperate uh in areas where interests can converge whether it's climate change or dealing with north korea but certainly avoiding uh inadvertent armed conflict is one of those converging interests well let's keep moving across this rather broad landscape next north korea in which you've been very closely involved for a very long time with almost every dimension of u.s nuclear policy our prospects for a negotiated settlement with pyongyang now completely dead in the water do you see any hope at all or achieving denuclearization or even just a permanent freeze on north korea's nuclear capability has the u.s really gone as far as it could and arguably should go in putting incentives on the table for north korea to move gareth at their summit in singapore kim jong-un and donald trump agreed to work toward the complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula but nothing kim jong-un has said or done since then suggests that he has any intention whatsoever of abandoning his nuclear turret to turn which i believe he sees as essential to the survival of his regime the north has continued a de facto moratorium on icbm range missile tests and nuclear weapons tests but it's continued to increase uh its strategic capabilities including by developing and testing short and medium range uh missiles uh and also by producing fissile materials to expand its arsenal of nuclear weapons actually in the current report by the iaea the iaea states that after a lengthy hiatus north korea has resumed the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons the biden administration has repeatedly reached out to north korea and called for no negotiations anywhere anytime but the uh north has repeatedly uh refused to engage i believe the biden administration is realistic about what can be achieved with north korea it's reaffirmed the ultimate goal of complete denuclearization but it recognizes that at least for the foreseeable future that goal is not in the cards and so it's prepared to pursue denuclearization but as a long-term step-by-step process that would begin with near-term limits on north korea's nuclear and missile capabilities further steps toward denuclearization would be deferred for until a future time but pyongyang hasn't budged perhaps it's ruled out engagement as long as it remains sealed off from the world due to the covid uh pandemic perhaps it's waiting for uh unilateral concessions by the byte administration or perhaps after the failed hanoi summit with trump it sees little prospect of an agreement that would serve north korea's interests sorry so i'll let you finish but what is the downside risk in the us coming forward with something that is a credible unilateral concession even if only something to do with the status of the war issue the guarantee of diplomatic uh relationship or or something of that kind uh you know which which korea is obviously wanting the us position has not been to put anything on the table before sitting down but maybe we need a circuit breaker well you know the u.s ambassador and envoy song kim was in seoul recently and apparently the two allies talked about uh humanitarian assistance to the north especially during the coven crisis that could help jumpstart engagement between the u.s and north korea but i think we'll have to wait and see uh whether the uh the north has an appetite for beginning uh for beginning discussions i am yeah i i think eventually it will it's an economic crisis i i think the byte administration is dead set against making major unilateral concessions other than humanitarian assistance to get talks started i think it's the by demonstration is always already pursuing a domestically risky engagement with iran and it knows that the prospects for productive engagement with north korea are even lower and so i think it's reluctant to undertake uh more unilateral steps to get talks started will we have to wait and see no doubt a number of our participants will want to come back to north korea in fact all these issues so far but just one more quickly on north korea how seriously do you place the risk of aggressive first use by north korea of such weapons as it has do you count that as a risk factor at all or or discount it well you know kim jong-un has has talked about initiating the use of nuclear weapons um i you know i don't think he's serious about it uh i know uh he he must know that that would mean the annihilation of his regime which is something which is a fake he doesn't want so i i i i doubt these threats are serious okay let's pick up the pieces briefly um with the other nuclear armed states india pakistan um israel you know including the the npt non-members what's the prospects of any of bringing them into serious nuclear arms control uh negotiations with a bilateral or multilateral and even if the prospect of stockpile reduction in those cases is zero in the present environment what about the possibility for some serious not just confidence building but some more serious risk reduction measures like you know reduced deployments de-alerting and no first use which we will no doubt come back to any of that stuff well you know i think there may be some value in trying to bring npt nuclear weapon states and uh you know non-npt nuclear-armed states uh together for consultations i'm only talking by the way about seven nuclear powers i'm not talking about israel which is not going to play it doesn't acknowledge having nuclear weapons i'm not talking about north korea we don't want to invite north korea to a table with nuclear armed states um you know the seven nuclear powers if you could get them together might discuss some common challenges like the challenges the challenge of securing uh its nuclear weapons installations materials against theft procedure they might also share experiences their own experiences with previous confidence building measures and compare notes on what has worked but developing new risk reduction measures is more likely to be feasible i think in a bilateral or regional context such as along the nato russia border or the south china sea i'm i've i've read about your four d's gareth and i'm not terribly optimistic about anyone any of them whether it's decreasing the number of nuclear weapons in total inventories uh decreasing the number of deployed um nuclear weapons uh what you have now is u.s and russia i don't believe are going to reduce their deployments the uk as you pointed out in your framing paper has even increased the ceiling on its deployed weapons and a china north korea india and pakistan are increasing their deployment diplomas d alerting is your third d i i don't see it i see united station and russia retaining their highly alert prompt law launch force pastures and china uh pakistan and india once kept their nuclear warheads unmated from delivery systems but now it looks like they're moving in the other direction so the third d um not not very optimistic you're fourth on doctrine uh and prospects for uh universal buy-in to no first use um i'm dubious on that as well even for china and india which have had no first use postures but may be moving away from them but you probably want to talk more about the us approach on no first use we'll come back to that in just one second but if the weapon states they're going to dig their heels in on any significant movement on any of these really major risk reduction issues what on earth can they bring to the table in an npt conference context that will begin to satisfy the perception of the non-nuclear weapon states that the the weapons states are simply not serious about disarmament they can talk their heads off about transparency and australia can talk its head off about you know all the wonderful things we're doing to contribute to energizing the nuclear weapons stage to bring something to the table but in the absence of any of that bigger stuff i mean is any of this remotely credible well look um what can the nuclear weapons states bring to the table i think many of the npt non-nuclear weapon states understand that the current strategic environment is not very auspicious for for arms control especially for nuclear further nuclear reductions and i think they recognize the need to pursue risk reduction measures that can reduce the likelihood of nuclear war um will they ever be satisfied no they will never be satisfied nor nor nor should they uh the record of nuclear weapons states in implementing the npt nuclear weapons states and implementing the article 6 commitments is is is not very good um and this is going to lead i think to more contention at the upcoming review conference but you know my own view uh is um and you've you've raised questions about this uh separately my own view is it's not gonna lead to additional countries deciding to have nuclear weapons um you know countries don't decide to have nuclear weapons because of the slow pace of disarmament they decide for their own particular reasons because their security is jeopardized because they want more status and influence and prestige because their domestic pressures to get nuclear or the rest uh it's not because of the slow pace of nuclear disarmament well we'll come back to one of the key proliferation potential states iran in just a moment but let's let's go back to the no first use issue which is the subject of a major international campaign at the moment and is probably you know the risk reduction measure one of the four d's with the most apparent likelihood of some buy-in around the place the nuclear umbrella states australia included played a really fairly crucial role in the past in inhibiting any move by the us down this particular track president obama as we know wanted to go the no at least the soul-purpose route which is a functional equivalent of no first use but was dissuaded eventually by the by the northeast asian allies by the central east european allies and with a bit of help from australia as well and not to do that what what are the prospects and what's the desirability of a no first use or at least a sole purpose commitment but what are the prospects of the moving in that direction what will it take to get it there well i'm not going to make you happy with this answer gareth in in january 2017 in his last month as vice president uh biden expressed his personal view that the sole purpose of u.s nuclear weapons should be deter and if necessary respond to nuclear attack against the u.s or its allies biden repeated that position as a candidate for the presidency but now his administration is conducting its nuclear posture review and i doubt uh that it will adopt a sole purpose sole purpose as an official u.s policy now a key argument for sole purpose or nfu as you point out it is equivalent is that u.s adversaries no longer believing the us will use nuclear weapons first in a crisis will have less incentive to use nuclear weapons first themselves but as long as the united states maintains a prompt launch force posture us adversaries will place will place very little faith in a usnfu pledge and their incentives to preempt with nuclear weapons won't be reduced so i think yeah a critical argument for no first youth i i think is seriously question and the achilles heel of no first use and you've alluded to to this is that it could undermine the confidence of u.s allies in the u.s ability to deter major non-nuclear threats nato allies in eastern europe and in particular japan among us asian allies remain opposed to no first use especially as threats from russia china and north korea have increased and given the byte administration's strong commitment to reinforcing the credibility of u.s security assurances to allies i think a sole purpose declaration is very unlikely despite what me what might be the president's personal preference now this is especially the case uh in light of the strategic and political fallout from the us withdrawal from afghanistan but i think there's much that the biden administration can do short of declaring no first use to indicate that the use of nuclear weapons should only be considered in the most extreme of circumstances in particular it can reverse the trump administration's apparent expansion of those circumstances the trump nuclear posture review explicitly reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in response to conventional military attack against civilian populations or infrastructure or in response to a cyber attack against critical infrastructure early warning systems or nuclear command and control systems but the united states has effective and more proportionate and credible non-nuclear means for deterring and responding to such attacks a nuclear response is simply not necessary in addition the byte administration like the obama administration but unlike the trump administration should explicitly adopt sole purpose as a goal and should commit to putting in place conditions that would allow that goal to be realized it should give substance to that commitment by establishing dedicated consultative mechanisms with allies with the express purpose of identifying and promoting those conditions and evaluating periodically progress toward putting them in place to be sure it's a modest step that would disappoint advocates of no first use but it's a step at least in the right direction unlike the direction in which we've been headed in recent years well bob you've directly acknowledged that it is what we call an australian to suggest that the united states would ever use first nuclear weapons in response to a sub-nuclear attack whether it's cyber or hypersonic or anything else it just won't we know that it's got sufficient conventional capability for the foreseeable future to retaliate in any conceivable way to such an attack it's not going to do it so why the hell not have people like you because look frankly it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if people like you with your experience and your credibility are not prepared to go and say this is something we should do it's not going to happen look you're absolutely right in saying that without being backed by reduced numbers reduced deployment the alerting and so on no first use does remain a statement rather than something that has a huge amount of credibility in extremists but um but is this something we we should give up on there's so little on the table at the moment that this at least looks like something that would take us a credible step forward you know uh once i was at a uh a senior meeting it was in the situation room and we were talking about these issues it was the context of the 2010 nuclear posture review and kind of before the meeting began i went to a very senior u.s military officer and i said sir would the u.s president ever authorize nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear attack would he actually do that at the time i said he or she we were already thinking of possible she but uh in any way so i asked him he said no the u.s president would not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear attack but he added but our adversaries don't know that uh and that's the critical thing from uh from the the perspective of the u.s nuclear establishment well this is no doubt an issue we'll pick up in discussion which i want to get to very shortly but just two other issues first of all uh one is you've touched upon it but it is pretty critical a new technological development space cyberspace hypersonics drones to what extent has that seriously complicated the prospect for any kind of arms control negotiation of the kind that we've been canvassing um governments as you pointed have only recently begun to conceptualize how to cope with potentially disruptive technologies like cyber counter space hypersonics and so forth these technologies post serious potential threats to early warning and command and control systems and they could reduce decision time in a crisis now these challenges need to be addressed somehow in future arms control discussions it's no longer enough to deal with the threats to strategic stability posed by nuclear weapons themselves but adding new technologies to the mix will clearly complicate arms control negotiations because these difficulties are evolving so rapidly and because of the difficulties of definition verification and attribution especially for cyber it will be hard to deal with them using traditional arms control methods some especially cyber will need to be addressed in separate informal arrangements like normative rules of the road rather than formal legally binding agreements and it's a and here's an important point i want to make it you need to recognize one needs to recognize that arms control by itself can't eliminate the threats posed by these new technologies in fact the most effective means of predicting against these threats will be unilateral for example taking unilateral steps to make early warning and commanded control systems more resilient and more redundant iran is something you've been directly personally engaged with that issue right really from the outset what are the prospects now getting the jcpoa back on any kind of track will iran's advances in fissile material production given the the trump horror story mean that um the restoration of the agreement's not gonna make much practical difference uh is an agreement that doesn't address missile delivery systems and um iran's actions in the region still in agreement worth having what should quick take on that we'll have to we'll have to leave some time for discussion so i just want you to open up the issue yeah you know i look um [Music] restorate you know the binding administration a two-step plan restore jcpoa and use it as a starting point for following negotiations on a broader deal that would strengthen the jcpoa and deal with the regional and missile uh threats uh the restoration was just to be the easy part well they began these indirect contacts in vienna but they bogged down um i think the uh the iranians have overreached we can go into some examples of that but i think they've they've overreached in their negotiating positions and you now have a new hardline government in tehran president ibrahim raisi he wants to resume negotiations he recognizes iran is in dire economic straits and it needs the removal of the sanctions uh through restoration of the jcpoa to get the economy back on track but i don't think he's going to soften their negotiating position the biden administration believes it's um it's it's done more to reach uh to meet iran halfway and doesn't want to make any unilateral more additional unilateral concessions and it says that negotiations can't go on indefinitely with the continued improvement of iran's nuclear capabilities the experience knowledge they're gaining from advanced centrifuge operation it's going to be hard to put humpty dumpty back together again it's going to be hard uh to uh to restore the jcpoa uh and re-establish the long breakout time than that that's jcpoa guaranteed so i don't know it's hard to tell now uh whether agreement can be reached sometime this fall if it's not reached um and there is no restoration what the binding administration may do is to try to skip the restoration of the jcpoa and go directly to these follow-on negotiations these expanded negotiations that would also deal with the regional missile threats as well but if they've had so much difficulty restoring the jcpoa i wouldn't put uh you know a bit a big bet on being able to succeed in the more complicated negotiation well plenty more to discuss there look just one last question which i would have been putting to amanda gourley had she been with us but i'd really like your take on it what role if any can middle powers like australia play in this whole nuclear arms control enterprise we have played some kind of a role in the past in developing normative positions with the canberra commission and so on that's spilt out in the framing paper is there any prospect of us playing a useful role in the future and moving this agenda forward should we be minded to over the years and you point this out in your framing paper gareth or australia has indeed punched way above its weight in these arms uh in these international arms control discussions uh and you've played a personally a major role uh in in that arena you also point out that australia has been a key participant in organizations like the npdi and they have helped uh pursue a constructive middle ground between the npt nuclear weapon states and some of the more strident non-aligned states and this is sometimes facilitated consensus at npt review conferences and maybe minimize some of the polarization that has plagued the non-proliferation regime but in terms of impact i think australia's most impactful role can be as a trusted ally of the united states its views are taken seriously in washington both in bilateral contacts and there are many of those as well as meetings of like-minded countries like like the quad richard yeah thanks gareth and thanks um thanks rob um you know i i can't speak for the government anymore as you know but i but i do wonder about your question about middle power contribution um because i think that's waning a bit from an australian perspective and i think i think there are probably uh three reasons for that one is the exceptionally difficult environment that you both have been talking about and the sense that real progress on uh nuclear arms reduction uh is just not possible at the moment because of the very tense competitive environment between a number of the nuclear weapon states uncertain regional situations and so on the second is china which of course hangs heavy over all of the australian foreign policy debate at the moment and a feeling in the system that the alliance and the nuclear umbrella that comes with it is more important than ever third reason is i don't think we've had a minister in recent times with the same personal passion that you brought to the issue gareth and i think that shows but i would say that i do think that's still embedded in the australians certainly in the um international security division in the department uh and across um other parts of the australian system like um asthma there still is uh quite a deep repository of expertise in this idea that australia can play an important role to push things along we've seen that most recently i think with rob floyd being elected as the head of the ctp pppo and that continues a long tradition with australian officials serving in senior positions in international organizations dedicated to arms control and disarmament and um australian diplomats still plugging away at things like um technical questions on verification of nuclear disarmament uh and on the npdi initiative to support the npt which has been hit a bit by covert hasn't been out of meet uh in person so i do still think there is a role personally for australia on middle powers including uh encouraging the u.s system uh on in the negotiations in iran there was a a bit of a wobble over the iran deal a few years ago under the trump administration but ultimately the australian government came down and said the deal was worth staying in even though the trump administration didn't listen to us i think that's a valuable role we can keep playing and certainly on north korea where we have a prominent role in sanctions enforcement and also i think in talking to the american system about options there including i think forestalling preemptive military action which in most circumstances as the australian system continues to believe would be highly risky and counterproductive so i suppose there are a few thoughts about um where australia is richard thanks very much for that more specifically on just on the no first year's sole purpose issue that is something presumably the biden administration is going to seek allied input on what should our advice specifically be to washington if and when asked on that or frankly even if not asked should we be as cautious as bob is suggesting we should be on this or is it something on which a little bit of heroism might be overdue um look i well again i can't speak for the government here i i think we will be reading the tea leaves pretty closely in washington and i think there'll be low appetite for uh suggesting a course of action to the biden administration that we know that they're not going to take that's my that's my guess well again self-fulfilling prophecy stuff i mean biden's not going to take it if he doesn't get any signals from allies like us that this is legitimate cause if we all hide under the table i mean obviously um lowest common denominator risk avoidance political risk avoidance is going to prevail i weep a little bob do you have any comment on any of that just one last question from lee because the crawford forum does engage not only uh business and public sector people but the civil society non-government organizations as well and australian non-government organizations have really been pretty prominent in the whole nuclear debate for a very long time but is anyone listening anymore to anything that comes from below is this um necessarily this whole nuclear arms control business is it necessarily a top-down business or is there potential for important bottom-up contributions just one more dimension i'd like to get on the table before we break yeah you know when when i was a government official uh and i was a government official for many years um you know i i listened politely to uh ngos um but um you know frankly i was a bit too dismissive in part because i didn't feel they had access to the sensitive information i had access to but now things have really changed with uh you know open source uh information so uh prevalent on so many issues with commercial uh photography a very high resolution you have these uh non-governmental organizations in a pl in a position uh to to play important roles and you have these think tanks and organizations like like your you participate in gareth with a very deep expertise uh including former government officials who know who remember how the sausage was made and to have a real appreciation of of decision making and policy making and i think increasingly uh they're going to play a big role especially at a time when people don't have the answers when uh you know a re-conceptual conceptual conceptualization of deterrence and stability and arms control would be necessary i don't think governments have a comparative advantage uh in in that well that's at least a marginally more optimistic note on which to conclude after this sea of pessimistic desolation which we've been experiencing over the last hour but uh we've been experiencing it with the help of some hugely interesting input from you bob and hugely expert and experienced input and we really really appreciate your participation i'd like to express my appreciation to all the other participants in this enterprise and bid the conference organizers richard pam all the rest of you a very productive conference for the rest of the two days so thanks bob thanks everyone and we'll now leave you to move on great

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Length: 45min 58sec (2758 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021