Theory & Practice of Security Conference | Keynote: Dr. John Mearsheimer

[Music] you [Music] welcome back as I promised every minute that we delay is a minute taken away from our distinguished guests I promise John Mearsheimer that I wouldn't give a long introduction if you if you if you're here you know John Mearsheimer likely I won't read his bio maybe you know him from such great hits like why leaders lie or the tragedy of great power politics or the Israel lobby or conventional deterrence one of his first books maybe you're a you know big King's College fan a British historian and you like BH Liddell Hart my personal favorite book not one of his favorites apparently the weight of history it's a single greatest takedown of someone who probably deserved to be taken down a notch or two based on their own claims but back to John John Mearsheimer again professor at University of Chicago um the only thing I want to highlight you may know him for all those other things but early in his career he actually was quite involved in the world the nuclear realm in a couple different ways first of all there was a book in the mid 80s early eighties on the ethics of nuclear deterrence of which John co-edited which I don't think he even appears on his CV anymore he tried to take it off but he once thought deeply about those issues of ethics and a nuclear deterrence it probably still does the other thing is that John Mearsheimer is a 1970 the class of 1970 graduate from the US Military Academy at West Point and I want you know usually when you say someone's a distinguished graduate of West Point you say what rank they were in the in that class I'm not going to get into that let's just say it was somewhere between you know general robert e lee and Edgar Allen Poe to to West somewhere in between there was his consciousness but right after he was a of course Military Academy but went in to be an Air Force officer at the time I can't quite recall why there was that the ability to do that but he went into R&D working on space and missile policy out in Los Angeles but for the for the Defense Department and I gather he was working on nuclear related issues at the height of the you know nineteen early 1970s of the Cold War without further ado please join me in welcoming John Mearsheimer [Applause] thank you very much for the kind introduction care it was actually due to Kim il-sung really that I ended up in the airforce but I won't tell you that story now I also graduated in the bottom one-third of my class at West Point as I like to tell people and I was not even the top man in the bottom one-third how I ended up here speaking today before you I have no ideas I often joke to people I sometimes wake up in the middle of night in a cold sweat saying to myself what am I doing here but anyway I'm here the unipolar moment is behind us and we're now moving into a multipolar world we're great power politics is back on the table and as a result of this the whole subject of nuclear strategy and the possibility of a nuclear arms race is back on the table it's very interesting but for the older people in the audience who grew up in the Cold War like I did subjects like nuclear strategy were paid an enormous amount of attention we just spent endless hours debating these issues and then the Cold War ended and we moved to the unipolar moment and that subject almost disappeared completely and what came in its place for people who did nuclear issues was the causes of nuclear proliferation so I like to think that back in the bipolar world we studied strategy and did not pay that much attention to the causes of nuclear proliferation but then with the coming of unipolarity where there's just one great power in the system and great power nuclear strategy by definition doesn't matter that much and proliferation really does matter to the United States during the unipolar moment we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about the causes of proliferation well now we're transitioning from unipolarity to multipolarity great power politics is bad on the table and I would imagine we'll still pay attention to the causes of nuclear proliferation but at the same time I think what's going to happen here is you're gonna see an enormous amount of interest in the subject of nuclear strategy and the subject of nuclear arms racing and really what I want to talk about today is the subject of arms racing and my title for the talk is the great powers and the quest for nuclear advantage now with regard to arms racing there a good number of foreign policy experts who believe that arms racing for great powers is foolish behavior most of these people are associated with the nuclear revolution these are folks who believe it makes no sense to arms race to try to gain nuclear advantage because nobody's going to fight a nuclear war anyway nuclear weapons are so horrible the consequences of them are so devastating and we have so little understanding of escalation at the nuclear level that no one would be foolish enough to start or initiate nuclear use then you have a lot of arms controllers who believe that it's downright dangerous to engage in nuclear arms racing people believe in the nuclear revolution effectively don't believe it's dangerous because the things are just not going to be used but arms controllers tend to believe that arms races are really bad because it increases the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used and given the horrific consequences of a nuclear war of almost any sort we therefore should go to great lengths to prevent nuclear arms racing for the purpose of preventing nuclear war what I want to do today is I want to talk about what the future holds for nuclear arms racing and I want to ask three specific questions first should we expect the great powers to arms race for strategic nuclear advantage second is it strategically wise for them to do so is it strategically smart for the great powers to try to seek advantage over their adversaries or is this just an example of states behaving in non strategic or irrational behavior then the third question I want to ask is does arms racing for gain increase the likelihood of nuclear war in other words if we do see arms racing does it increase the likelihood of war here are my three answers before I go into detail first the great powers are going to engage in nuclear arms racing just as the Soviets and the Americans did during the Cold War great powers in my opinion almost always look to gain military advantage over rival great powers whether it's at the conventional level or at the nuclear level at the nuclear level great power is do not like living in a mad world and when they find themselves in a mad world they do everything they can to transcend it or gain advantage despite it my second argument is although many ARMs controllers and nuclear revolutionists think that this kind of behavior is irrational it is not indeed it makes good strategic sense to arms race for advantage and it certainly makes good strategic sense not to let your adversary gain a nuclear advantage over you third while seeking nuclear advantage makes sense from the perspective of each individual great power there's little doubt that it makes nuclear war more likely which is not to say it makes it likely but it clearly makes nuclear war more likely the possibility of nuclear use would be close to zero if every country had nothing more than an assured destruction capability which is of course the capability to destroy the other side as a functioning society but that's not the world we live in and it's not the world we will ever live in and how am I going to make my case first I want to explain to you why great powers seek nuclear advantage and basically what I'm gonna try and do is tell you what the good reasons are for trying to seek nuclear advantage then I'm going to attempt to explain what nuclear advantage looks like because it's very important to give you some sense of how I think states can actually gain a nuclear advantage which means they can use nuclear weapons in ways that benefit them and don't end up getting them incinerated then what I want to do is give you a synoptic version of cold war and post Cold War history to show that if you look at the great powers to great powers of the Cold War and the single great power in the post-cold war world you'll see that they constantly worked to gain nuclear advantage then I want to deal with the two major counter arguments against me and then finally conclude with a few words about arms control and how far arms control can go to slow down an arms race okay so let me give you my reasons why I think great powers seek nuclear advantage and again what I'm trying to do here is to tell you that it makes strategic sense first great powers sometimes have foreign policies that explicitly call for having a first use strategy which of course means initiating the use of nuclear weapons for either coercive or for purposes of defeating an adversary and any country that has a first use policy is going to want to have an advantage over its rivals it kind of just goes with the territory now let's talk about the United States the United States as was clear from much of the discussion this morning has long had a first use policy and there is no evidence that we're giving up that first use policy that first use policy is inextricably tied to extend the deterrence during the Cold War the United States took it upon itself to put its nuclear umbrella over Germany mainly in Central Europe and over Korea South Korea and Japan in East Asia we didn't want them to have nuclear weapons we did not for good strategic reasons want them to have a trigger on a nuclear a finger on a nuclear trigger so we extended deterrence to them that meant we had to be willing to use nuclear weapons to come to their rescue in case their survival was threatened that involved the first use policy and one again once you have a first use policy you better think about nuclear advantage because you may have to use those weapons first and of course this situation is not going to change in the emerging multipolar war world because we are going to extend the pterence to both South Korea and Japan for the foreseeable future so I would say do you've given that the United States is tied to a first use policy and that we're surely going to seek nuclear advantage in the future you can rest assured we're going to arms race with all the other great powers in the system and in this multi polar world that means China and Russia second reason it makes sense to arms race for advantage is even if you don't have an explicit or immediate need for a first strike capability you want to have that capability in reserve because a rainy day may come along and you may need to think about initiating nuclear use and when that's the case you want to make sure you have maximum military advantage we give you an example if a great power is involved in a conventional war with a rival great power and it comes to believe that its territorial integrity or its survival is being threatened I think there's a good chance that that great power is going to want to think about initiating nuclear use to rescue itself almost everybody agrees that great powers are likely to use nuclear weapons when they feel their survival is threatened and great powers are remarkably sensitive about attacks on their homeland and attacks on allies that live close to them and you can imagine situations where a great power may want to rescue a situation by initiating nuclear use then there's always the possibility if you see a rival great power beginning to mobilize its nuclear forces and that great power has vulnerable nuclear forces and you know that great power is in a using or losing situation you want to take out that Arsenal as quick as you can I'll talk more about this later but this is the great danger the China runs has a quite vulnerable nuclear arsenal gets into a crisis with the United States the United States thinks it has a first strike capability very powerful incentives here in Washington to take out those Chinese nuclear forces before they can be used is this likely to happen no I'm just saying it's a serious possibility and if you're the United States of America you want to have the capability should that event arise and should you feel compelled to do it furthermore one can imagine plausible scenarios where a great power has incentives to launch a nuclear strike against a nuclear-armed minor power that's acting in threatening ways and the prospect of having a disarming first strike capability against a minor power is much greater than it is against a great power because a great power usually has a survival retaliatory force not always but usually whereas when you're dealing with minor powers you're dealing with countries like North Korea or Iran if it were to get nuclear weapons you're in the realm of possible first strike scenarios third reason that you seek nuclear advantage is because of the possibility that an adversary will use nuclear weapons against you or against an ally and if that's the case and you have to retaliate first of all you want to make sure that the initiator your adversary doesn't gain an advantage over you so you have to check the initiator but furthermore if you do get into a nuclear conflict what you want to do is do everything possible to make sure you have a nuclear advantage so that you can settle that conflict on terms that are favorable to you again I'm not saying that you can achieve that but you can rest assured that great powers will go to great lengths to make sure they maximize their chances of achieving that capability and then the final reason that you're going to want to have nuclear advantage is there's always a possibility that a close ally will initiate nuclear use and drag you into a nuclear war one of the reasons we pay so much attention to extend the deterrence is because we don't want allies to have their fingers on the trigger because we don't want an ally to start a nuclear war when it feels it's survival is at stake and then drag us into that nuclear war but that could happen not to likely now because extended deterrence works but you hypothesize a situation where South Korea and Japan both have nuclear weapons and war breaks out between one of those countries are both of those countries and China it is possible nuclear weapons could be used and if the Chinese mainland gets hit with nuclear weapons by the South Koreans of the Japanese the Chinese might very well strike back at the United States as well as South Korea and again this is why we like extended deterrence but for those sorts of scenarios you want to make sure that you have a nuclear advantage because if you get involved in a nuclear war you don't want to be at a disadvantage let me conclude my discussion with just one point I'm not arguing that nuclear arms racing guarantees that a great power will gain an advantage over its opponents it's not my argument my key point is the great powers constantly tried to gain nuclear advantage over their rivals and they do it because they're powerful incentives to do so okay let me switch gears now and talk about the meaning of nuclear advantage I've sent to you up to now that great powers go to great lengths to achieve nuclear advantage but what exactly is nuclear advantage and what this really is all about is the question of how you can employ nuclear weapons in a way that gives you an advantage and my argument is that a great power pursuing nuclear advantage can achieve it in four different ways at least theoretically and let me tell you what those four different ways are the ideal outcome is to be the only state in the system that has nuclear weapons then there's no possibility of retaliation you're the only state that has nuclear weapons and you can easily begin to contemplate situations where you would use nuclear weapons because you have a great advantage you are the only power with nuclear weapons however desirable this situation is no state is going to achieve nuclear monopoly in our lifetime the best outcome a great power can hope for in the contemporary world is to acquire the capability to launch a splendid first like against each of its nuclear-armed adversaries or at least some of them as I said before it's especially difficult for a great power to achieve a splendid first strike capability against another great power because those great powers almost always have such a large number of nuclear forces they almost always have or usually have an assured destruction capability but when you're talking about minor powers it's a different matter it's much easier for a great power with lots of nuclear capability especially lots of counter force to establish the capability to launch a disarming first strike against a minor power and you want to have that capability and that's one of the reasons that the United States will surely seek to make sure it has a splendid first strike capability against minor powers and it'll try to have that capability against major powers because that's the best possible outcome given that nuclear monopoly is not on the table I would note to you that some prominent scholars mark Trachtenberg among them maintain that the United States had a splendid first strike capability during the Cold War from the early 1950s up until about 1962 this is really quite interesting a number of prominent scholars think that the United States which was arms racing like crazy at the strategic nuclear level during the Cold War had a splendid first strike capability against the Soviet Union during the early years of the Cold War and I think there's reason to believe today that under certain circumstances I'm choosing my words carefully here the United States has the capability to launch a disarming first strike against North Korea's nuclear weapons and I think it's quite clear that in the early 2000s we had a first strike capability against China I point out these examples at this point just to give you a sense that these are not unrealizable goals not realizable all the time but they are sometimes realizable so what I've said to you here is the first two favorable outcomes for gaining nuclear advantage or nuclear monopoly let's take that off the table and then splendid first strike the third best outcome is damage limitation capability and I'm not talking about escalation dominance here that's not part of my story but I'm talking about damage limitation and damage limitation basically says that you have a very formidable counter force capability and you can take out a huge chunk of the other side's retaliatory capability but there's no doubt that there is going to be some retaliation and the belief is that the other side is not going to be left with anything approximating an assured destruction capability you're going to take out so much of the other side's retaliatory capability that only a handful of nuclear weapons are going to get through right and if you have that capability and you are desperate enough so the argument goes in a crisis you will use nuclear weapons or you will at least consider using nuclear weapons because you have a damage limitation capability and again just to be very clear for people who haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this splendid first strike means that you have the ability to take out virtually the entire arsenal on the other side damage limitation says you can take out a huge chunk of that arsenal but you're still going to suffer some retaliation the least attractive and this is the fourth strategy the least attractive first use strategy is manipulation of risk and basically the argument here is that if you get into a crisis and you think it's essential to use nuclear weapons let's say you believe your survival is at stake you launch a handful of nuclear weapons you know two three maybe four nuclear weapons into a remote area of terror most piece of territory for the on the other side or on the ally of the other side and the basic aim here is to throw both sides out on the slippery slope to oblivion we all know that nuclear escalation is a subject that is really hard to get your hands around actually if you look at the literature on escalation forget the nuclear escalation the literature on escalation in international relations is really quite terrible just don't have a good literature we just don't have a really good handle on escalation and when you talk about nuclear escalation we just don't know much at all because thankfully we've never had a nuclear war well that threat the vest Galatian married to the fact that you're just using a handful of nuclear weapons right the theory goes will cause the other side the state that has not used nuclear weapons that did not initiate nuclear weapons to change its behavior you will in effect coerced out of the state into changing its behavior because that other state will understand that you're out there on the slippery slope to oblivion and to put it in Thomas Schelling's terms the last clear chance to avoid nuclear Armageddon rests with them and even if they don't understand that at first and they use one or two or three nuclear weapons of their own it will quickly become apparent to both sides that you're on the slippery slope and what will happen is that you will reach some sort of agreement what you're doing here is you're basically escalating for the purpose of trying to get the other side to de-escalate that's the basic name of the game here right you're not using military weapons for nuclear advantage when you talk about a splendid first strike you're talking about taking out the other side nuclear arsenal when you talk about damage limitation you're talking about taking out the other side's Arsenal and limiting damage it has as similarities with the whole notion of sort of winning military war winning a victory in a military sense that's not what's going on here here you're just manipulating risk I believe that this is never the strategy of choice for a great power they don't like manipulation to risk if if a great power is forced to adopt the manipulation of risk strategy it will nevertheless go to great lengths to see if it can find a way to develop a damage limitation capability and even better to develop a first-strike capability much rather have first strike capability then damage limitation damage limitation capability then a manipulation of risk strategy but sometimes you're thrown back to having a manipulation of risk strategy as the strategy of first choice because you don't have those other two strategies but nevertheless I believe great powers are never satisfied with manipulation of risk alone now let me talk a little bit about the historical record and I've already said some words about this there is considerable evidence in fact a large body of evidence from the Cold War and from the unipolar moment that Great Powers relentlessly pursue advantage and sometimes really realize it excuse me that's my argument here my argument is that Great Powers pursue nuclear advantage one and number two they sometimes realize it I think if you look at the historical record it's quite clear that that argument meshes neatly with what we know about the Cold War in the unipolar moment just based on the work of people I care and Daryl kirlia or Daryl press Austin long and Brendan Green mark tracked and arrghh and others it's quite clear that during the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union arms race for nuclear advantage there's just no question about that moreover I think you can make the argument as Trachtenberg does that the United States had a first-strike capability throughout the 1950s and early 1960s and if you don't believe that they certainly had the United States certainly had a significant damage limitation capability in the 50s and in the early 60s and the Soviet Union which was arms racing with the United States by the mid-1960s had effectively a limited eliminated that damage limitation capability or first-strike capability that the United States had and that's why starting in the mid-1960s many people argued that we lived in a pure mad world but the fact is the United States was not happy living in that world in the United States continued to arms race with the Soviet Union and the United States went to great lengths to seek nuclear advantage and one can make a quite convincing case that by the end of the Cold War the United States had not a first-strike capability against the Soviet Union but had a significant damage limitation capability certainly Soviet policymakers worried that we had that capability and when they looked out to the future they thought the gap between us and them would only increase with the passage of time then comes the end of the Cold War duuude a polar moment the United States is the only great power in the system we are Godzilla you would think at that point in time especially given the fact that the Soviet Union falls apart in late 1991 that the United States would have relaxed and would not have been interested in counter force and would not have been interested in developing a first-strike capability against China and Russia which were not great powers in the unit moment but we're merely major powers but that's not what happened the United States worked very hard to develop a splendid first strike capability and if not a splendid first strike capability damage limitation capability against China and against Russia and as here and Daryll argue by the early 2000s the United States probably had a splendid first strike against China's retaliatory capability whether China mobilized its forces and got them ready or whether they didn't either way they argue we could have taken out the entire Chinese arsenal and they argue that under certain circumstances mainly if the Russians hadn't been able to alert their forces and start moving them that we probably had a splendid first strike capability and certainly a damage limitation capability against Russia in the early part of the Cold War so what I'm telling you here is if you look at the Cold War and you look at the unipolar moment and you look at the behavior of the United States there's no evidence right that we accepted the arguments of the nuclear revolutionists were we were deeply committed to arms control we were deeply committed to arms racing we were seeking nuclear advantage we worked overtime to achieve nuclear advantage we think nuclear advantage is a good thing and certainly when you're in the business of extended deterrence you're gonna push really hard on that front so as we move in to the multipolar world what's the evidence the evidence that we're first beginning to see tell us well it's quite clear that the United States certainly under Donald Trump but I would argue under who's ever in the White House is deeply committed to arms racing at the nuclear level if my memory is correct President Obama was going to spend one heck of a lot of money on modernizing their strategic nuclear forces and you can rest assured we were going to build a lot of counter force whether Barack Obama was in the White House or Donald Trump was in the way we're Hillary Clinton was in the White House it doesn't matter at all we're addicted to counter force we've been long addicted to counter force we've been long addicted to developing a first-strike capability and that ain't gonna change and what about the Russians as you heard on the panels this morning the Russians are gonna arms race with us the Russians by the way have a GNP about the size of Italy the idea that they can compete with us at the conventional level is out of the question well when you can't compete with Uncle Sugar at the conventional level it's pretty obvious where you're going to go you're gonna compete with sugar at the strategic nuclear level and the Soviets are building lots of nuclear assets so they're gonna be arms racing and then there's the Chinese they look to some extent it's hard to say for sure because it's early in the game like they don't want a really arms race all I would say is if they don't arms race they are asking for big trouble because if they ever get in a crisis with us they're gonna be in a usable losing situation and we're going to have a very itchy trigger finger because of that very powerful incentives to take out their nuclear forces because if they don't arms race with us we're gonna have a first-strike capability against them for sure and that's not a good thing now I want to say a few words about the two possible counter arguments against me one is the nuclear revolution argument which I alluded to before and this is this is the argument that nobody's ever going to use nuclear weapons nuclear weapons have fundamentally changed the nature of international politics not only can you not fight a nuclear war you cannot fight a great power war at the conventional level it's just war between the great powers is effectively taken off the table by nuclear weapons so it's a waste of time two arms race and then of course the second argument which I lay it out before which I want to return to is what I call the orange controllers argument which is that it's just dangerous it's dangerous to arms race because it makes war more likely and what we should do is just settle down into a mad world when I was young like most of you students the New York Times used to regularly run them editorials praising the virtues of a mad and saying we should do everything we can to remain in a mad world this is basically the arms controller view and what I want to do is just lay them out and tell you why I disagree with them the claim that no state would initiate a nuclear war as I've said to you is predicated on two assumptions one is that these weapons are destructive in the extreme which is - which is true and - that we don't really understand nuclear escalation which is true so the assumptions on which the theory is based is is is correct and the argument is if you're in a world where both sides have assured destruction capabilities you know this is the United States and the Soviet Union from 65 so let's say 85 then it just makes absolutely no sense to even think about nuclear use but some nuclear revolutionists argue that even with just a small number of nuclear weapons just a small number of nuclear weapons even if you don't have an assured destruction capability you still won't have a war this is the existential deterrence argument which is usually attached to McGeorge Bundy's name and his argument is did you know this the terrible and avoidable uncertainties in any recourse to nuclear war create what could be called existential deterrence where the function of the adjective and he of course is talking about existential is to distinguish this phenomenon from anything based on strategic theories or declared policies or even international commitments his point is that if you have countries that have nuclear weapons to talk about fighting a nuclear war with the country even one that doesn't have an assured destruction capability even one that just has a rather small retaliatory force is out of the question any recourse to war makes no sense at all and similarly as many of no there's a whole school of thought out there that talks about the nuclear taboo the nuclear taboo is very similar to the Bundy argument about existential deterrence and it's part of a theory of body of theory associated with the nuclear revolution look I want to be very clear here I believe that the case for the nuclear revolution is a powerful one I would never dismiss it if I had to defend it in a debate I could do a very good job defending it but nevertheless it's wrong as emphasized in my earlier comments there are sound strategic reasons for pursuing nuclear advantage which is another way of saying there are circumstances under which a great power might initiate nuclear war moreover there is an abundance of evidence which shows that States seek nuclear advantage because they think they might have to fight a nuclear war I mean you just want to ask yourself why do we have this huge body of evidence that shows that the United States and the Soviet Union were seeking nuclear advantage why is that the case why don't we see evidence that during the unipolar moment the United States was working to make sure that it had a splendid first strike capability against China Russia it's because we thought it was in our advantage those people didn't believe in the nuclear revolution and I think they didn't believe in the nuclear revolution for good reason and again I don't want to poopoo the nuclear revolution argument because again it is a powerful argument I often make the same point about isolationism I can make a very powerful case for isolationism as a grand strategy for the United States I'm not n ot and isolationist but the case for isolationism is very powerful and you want to understand it the case for the nuclear age revolution is very powerful and you want to understand but it's wrong there's a logic that shows you why it's wrong which I've tried lay out here and the evidence cuts against it in very significant ways now I want to make a couple points just about what the world will look like going forward and why it's reasonable to think that there will be some possibility of nuclear use I think given that we've never had nuclear weapons used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki which is a wonderful thing right it's hard for a lot of people to think that it's possible that nuclear war would ever happen by the way one of the best ways to sort of illustrate the fallacy of that argument that you know nuclear weapons would never be used it's just to ask a person if we were to run the Cold War a hundred more times we ran it once and we had no nuclear war if we were to run it a hundred times do you think that we would have 100 cases where there was no nuclear war I've asked lots of people this question and almost everybody thinks that if we ran it a hundred times that at least five or six or seven times it would've had a nuclear war that tells you something nuclear war is not impossible thankfully we dodged the bullet the one and only time we ran it but you don't want to bet that if we had to run it again it wouldn't end up with nuclear weapons being used but I want to talk about the future the for the coming multi-pole a world why do I think that there's a possibility that they'll be nuclear use first I think there's good reason to think that the United States has or is going to have a splendid first strike capability or significant damage limitation capability against small nuclear powers like North Korea and I think you can imagine scenarios where we end up using nuclear weapons against North Korea likely no possible yes but maybe even great powers like China or Russia if the Chinese stone arms race with us they're going to put themselves in a vulnerable position and you can rest assured that the United States is moving full speed ahead to available lots of sophisticated counterforce for either damage limiting or warfighting purposes second and very importantly when you look at what a possible war between China and the United States look like it becomes clear that they could end up fighting a limited war over control of the East China Sea or the South China Sea and the islands and those large bodies of water or they could end up fighting a war over another island called Taiwan and these Wars especially the wars over the East China Sea in the South China Sea would be fought in good part in large bodies of water and they would not involve ground forces fighting on the Chinese mainland and I think in that geographical space it's conceivable to come up with it's possible to come up with plausible scenarios where nuclear weapons are used because the collateral damage would not be great and you would think that you could keep things limited this situation stands in marked contrast to the situation we faced in the Cold War when we ran wargames involving the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War everything quickly devolved to the central front we had this thing called the swing strategy we would swing forces out of East Asia to the central front the center the central front was the center of the universe yet when we ran wargames it was almost impossible to get a war started in Central Europe and the reason was you had two massive armies eyeball eyeball each armed to the teeth with thousands of nuclear weapons who in God's name was going to start a war on either the Soviet side of the American side the chances that this would lead to nuclear Armageddon were pretty significant and given those consequences you know it's very hard to get a war started between the United States and Soviet and you start think about thinking about the United States and the Chinese tangling and the South China Sea much easy to imagine a war getting started and then of course there's another nuclear danger in a war between China and the United States that I haven't talked about and this is the threat of inadvertent escalation which Caitlyn Talmadge's worked on people talked about this morning the fact is that the Pentagon appears to have plans to launch massive strikes against the Chinese mainland in a war over Taiwan and it is the case that Chinese nuclear and conventional assets are largely indistinguishable and they're co-located in many cases and the end result is that as we fight this conventional war we may begin to erode or chip away at the Chinese nuclear arsenal and that may give them cause to use nuclear weapons to tell us to cease and desist I would argue that even if we don't chip away at their nuclear arsenal we're able to avoid hitting their nuclear arsenal if you start to launch massive air raids and naval attacks against the Chinese mainland is a very good chance but they would retaliate with nuclear weapons one thing that strikes me from having studied great power politics for decades and decades is how sensitive how paranoid great powers are about their security and especially when it comes to their homeland when you run the NATO alliance right up to Russia's border you really asking for trouble you get into a war with China and you start to launch massive attacks against the Chinese mainland I don't think they're gonna sit there and take that I think they're gonna think long and hard about how to retaliate and they're gonna be at least a few people who are thinking about using nuclear weapons if I were in Beijing I'd certainly be thinking about using nuclear weapons third reason we don't want to be too optimistic is that the US remains deeply committed to extend the deterrence as long as we're deeply committed to extended deterrence right the need to use nuclear weapons is always there some of you may say Oh what we should do is eliminate all this emphasis on extended deterrence I would say to you who advocate that then get ready for a lot more proliferation and then finally to return to a point I made earlier the Russians clearly are emphasizing nuclear weapons and their defense build-up they are deeply fearful of the United States you listen to people talk about the Russians the Russians are really scared of the United States we're in their face we're in their face they know we're building all this counter force damage limiting you can't fool them any more than you can fool the Chinese tell the Chinese the pivot to Asia is really not designed to contain them they laugh in your face appropriately so the Russians understand we're right in their face they understand we're building all this counter force they're scared again my study of great power of behavior over time tells me when you scare a great power you're really asking for big trouble and you're really asking for big trouble in that country has nuclear weapons and doesn't think it can deal with you at the conventional level want to make a final point it's a general point about deterrence for those of you who they nuclear war will never happen when we focus on deterrence we teach classes on deterrence was especially true nuclear deterrence when I was young we tend to focus on the military variable one of the costs and benefits of using military force can we do this can we do that you know if we launch the Schlieffen Plan will it work if we do this will it work or not work how costly will it be when you look at the pterence you not only have to look at the military variable you have to look at the political variable because countries go to war for political reasons they're powerful political reasons that push countries to war and then the question is do the military capabilities when you look at the balance of power between the attacker and the defender through the military capabilities of the two sides allow you the aggressor to think that you can achieve your success okay we have two very famous cases in the historical record where countries went to war thinking they were going to lose but they went to war because they thought that the status quo the political status quo was completely unacceptable and therefore they were willing to take a leap in the dark in both cases and I laid him out free in a second in both cases they thought there was some small chance they would succeed they would win but they thought in all likelihood they would lose but nevertheless they went to war because the value of peace continued peace was so low incentives to go and the two cases are the Egyptians in 1973 when they attacked the Israelis in Japanese in 1941 when they attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor the Egyptians in 1973 had no illusions that this was really a case of Bambi going up against Godzilla and the Egyptians were not Godzilla they were Bambi right one of the reasons the Israelis got caught with their pants down in 1973 and even when the Israelis finally figured out the Egyptians were coming were slow to mobilize the IDF the ground forces was because the IDF couldn't believe the Israelis leaders couldn't believe that the Egyptians would attack because the balance of power was so unfavorable to that the reason the Egyptians attacked was they were desperate right and the same thing is true with regard to Pearl Harbor Bruce Russert Scott Sagan and others have written on this I used to think when I was young the Japanese were irrational but they showed you they were not irrational the value of peace was so low they were willing to leap into the dark okay I only raised these two examples to tell you that there could be cases in the future where countries that are armed with nuclear weapons are desperately scared you say to yourself but why should they be scared John they have nuclear weapons they're the ultimate deterrent you know it's funny I would think that that's the way they would think but they don't think that way it's interesting you go to place like Israel you talk to the leaders there people in the National Security community how about how they think about their security they do not have a profound sense that we have nuclear weapons we have the ultimate deterrent therefore we don't really have to worry very much about our survival you go to Moscow today you talk to Putin in his lieutenants right what you discover is that they are scared I see them what are you scared you've got nuclear weapons I've never seen a country on the planet that has nuclear weapons that disappeared I don't want to hear that argument right they're scared so you get a country like Russia that's really scared and you get in their face that you start threatening them don't be surprised if this is Pearl Harbor or Yom Kippur War all over okay let me conclude by talking a little bit about arms control one might think that arms control is a means to seriously limit nuclear arms racing it isn't I'm not opposed to arms control in all honesty but it's not likely to curb nuclear arms racing in any meaningful way the first reason is the arms control agreements by and large involved the weapons that great powers are really not interested in developing anyway they don't place a high premium on them any weapon that and that a great power thinks will give it nuclear advantage is not going to be the subject of an arms control agreement second point I would make to you and it's related is that arms control agreements work in some cases to facilitate arms racing they work to facilitate arms racing and first of all they can do that by freeing up resources right if you have a salt one agreement you don't spend money on ballistic missile defense that's wonderful in my opinion because ballistic missile defense is a really classic case of throwing money down a rat all right you don't spend that money on ballistic missile defense you can spend it on counter force weapons but the other way the arms control facilitates arms raising is that when Hawks want to build a particular system in some cases they can't do it right they can't do it because there's political opposition in their own country and what arms control does is it allows the Hawks to say that the quid pro quo for going along with arms control is to allow the Pentagon to build those counter force systems and I know this from personal experience Keir alluded to the fact that I was in the Air Force from 1970 to 72 most of you in the audience are too young to remember what sentiment towards military things were like in this country in the wake of the Vietnam War or this wasn't even the wake of the Vietnam War was at the end of the Vietnam War 70s 72 the Senate had basically forced the Air Force to lock up all its counter force systems hard to believe I remember Senator Edward Brooke who was a Republican from Massachusetts played the key role in forcing the Pentagon to slow down greatly its development of counter force weaponry what the administration did this is the Nixon administration the Pentagon in particular the war hawks as they said the quid pro quo for going along with salt one is you unlock the counter force weapons that are in the closet you have to unlock them so the Pentagon went along with salt one and the end result was the counter force weapons were unleashed and I was talking to John Mauer who has a PhD from here at Georgetown who's done work on the early arms control agreements including salt one and he was telling me make sure you read his book when it comes out right he was telling me that the Hawks in the Nixon administration were deeply committed to arms control because they want to put they wanted to put quantitative limits on our ability to build missiles so that they could arms race at the qualitative level which is counter force in other words they didn't want more launchers more ballistic missiles they wanted more warheads and more accurate warheads they wanted more counter force capability so he was telling me that this is consistent with my story some of the biggest Hawks and the Nixon administration or in favor of arms control because they saw it as a way for arms race for the purposes of gaining nuclear advantage my third point to you is that arms control agreements are going to be much tougher to negotiate in multipolarity than they were in bipolarity because you have three players instead of two players and getting three players together to agree is much more difficult than just two players and I think a harbinger of trouble on this front can be seen in the recent discussions about the INF treaty the INF treaty as you know was consummated in the mid 1980s 1987 it involved just the United States and the Soviet Union and today it involves just the United States and Russia but the end result of this is that the Chinese are free to build all of the intermediate range missiles they want nuclear or conventional and the United States and the Russians can't do this I believe personally the main reason the Americans want out of INF is not because of the Russians and the fact that the Russians are cheating I think we want how because of what's going on in Asia the idea that the Chinese are gonna be free to build AI and F and we can't build them not gonna happen and I believe the Russians are thinking to some extent in the same way well what's the obvious solution to this the obvious solution is to go to the Chinese and say join the INF we tried that you know what the Chinese said take a hike the Chinese shot I know this is shocking the Chinese like their INF right can you blame them I'm in Beijing playing their hand I like INF too I'm not gonna sign some stupid treaty right it was not a stupid treaty for the Americans and the Russians to sign in the mid-1980s it was a very smart treaty I'm not knocking the INF the point I'm making to you is that you move into a multipolar world you have three players the Russians the Chinese and the Americans and I think at this point in time it is pretty much the Chinese and the Russians against the Americans kind of looks by polish but the fact is the Russians have their eye on the Chinese the Chinese make them very nervous talk about one belt one road into Central Asia the Russians hands start shaking right so you know you have three players here three players thinking about INF and we're not talking about an arms race involving China Russia in the United States that's restricted to INF the arms racing that's coming down the road will involve much more than just intermediate range nuclear weapons and it will be an intense competition and some great power politics has returned and as we know from the Cold War matters of nuclear strategy and matters of arms racing will be front and center for both practitioners and students of international politics thank you take some question sure I'll take some gladly take some questions sir there's somebody right dead center there you should just talk do they have a microphone oh yeah there's a microphone sir in 1994 you were very vocal about our Ukraine surrendering its nuclear arsenal to Russia and I just wanted to know in your opinion is the annexation of Crimea a vindication of your opposition to Ukraine surrendering its nuclear weapons yeah I wrote a piece for those of you who don't know in 1993 arguing that Ukraine should not give up its nuclear weapons because one day the Russians would come knocking and they would have good use for their nuclear weapons so the gentleman's question is given that the Russians conquered or annexed Crimea in 2014 would that not be the case if they had nuclear weapons and would I therefore be vindicated I'm tempted to say of course but I don't think the answers of course I don't think that Ukrainian if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons and and had a formidable nuclear deterrent I do not believe that it would have stopped Russia from taking Ukraine and I don't believe that Ukraine would have used nuclear weapons to prevent it from happening I do think and I can't prove this this is just my intuition I do think that it would have gone a long way towards keeping the Russians out of eastern Ukraine I think that if Ukraine had nuclear weapons and had started to threaten to use them if the Russians intervened in eastern Ukraine there's a good chance that would have worked but one can never be a hundred percent certain I mean one of the problems here and this is a point that I it's related to a point that I tried to drive home here you can never be certain that nuclear weapons won't be used right this is my problem with the nuclear revolution argument you can never be certain that they won't be used you also can't be certain that they will be used because again they are weapons of mass destruction and countries don't use these weapons lightly and also in the case of Russia and Ukraine because of the geographical proximity it's much more difficult for Ukrainians to think about lobbying nuclear weapons into Western Russia when you think about all the consequences regarding fallout and so forth and so on so I think it would have been good for Ukraine if it had those nuclear weapons but not for purposes of keeping Crimea sir okay I'll repeat the question and please correct me if I don't get it exactly right her question is that the North Koreans would like significant relief from the sanctions that we have on them and in return they will dismantle significant parts of their nuclear inventory and she asked me what my advice would be to the president Trump on how to deal with the North Koreans my view is the North Koreans would be crazy to give up their nuclear weapons right I'm not talking about from an American point of view I think whenever you think about nuclear weapons you want to think about what's an America's interest and then what's in the interest of the other country for example if I were an Iranian national security adviser Iran would already have nuclear weapons this is not in America's interest it's not in America's interests I want to be clear it's not in America's interest for North Korea to have nuclear weapons it is in North Korea's interest to have nuclear weapons right I remember a hood Barak former Israeli prime minister said about Iran he said the reason to think that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons is because it makes so much sense just think about that statement he of course is correct but anyway so my view is they're not going to give them up and this is all just one giant waste of time and I don't know what to say beyond that I think that it is important for the United States to be very careful with the North Koreans because again as I've emphasized here if the North Koreans get really scared they could use a nuclear weapon and get not likely but they could and given the consequences I don't want to see that happen but the other thing that you have to remember about the North Korean case and it's what really distinguishes it from the iran case is that North Korea has a benefactor they're just real limits to how rough we can get with the North Koreans because the Chinese don't want us getting rough with the North Koreans remember when we crossed the 38th parallel in the fall of 1950 it was the Chinese who came in and when we fought the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 we were not fighting the North Koreans it was the Americans against the Chinese the Chinese made it manifestly clear in 1952-53 that North Korea is a huge strategic importance to them and I believe if the North Korean regime for example were to implode tomorrow the Chinese would be in there like that the last thing they want to happen is to have a unified Korea under South Korean auspices which means the Americans are up on the Yellow River right but just with regard to nuclear weapons it's very tough for us to get tough it's very tough for us to get tough with North Korea because if we threaten to bring the regime down that automatically triggers Chinese intervention in the case of Iran if we are able I don't think we'll pull this off but if we're able to bring the Iranians to their knees at this point in time there's nobody who will come to Iran's rescue so I think this is a hopeless situation and we just have to live with the fact that China issues me that North Korea is going to have nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future and do everything we can to make sure we don't have a nuclear war sir thanks very much professor Mearsheimer one quick question just given China's relatively small nuclear arsenal at least at present do you think they ascribe to the manipulation of risk strategy I think that they have to subscribe to a manipulation of risk strategy I mean here's what you want to think about you want to think about how you can use nuclear weapons this is the thorniest issue I gave I actually wrote my talk out and I gave the paper to a couple young friends of mine and their view was John nobody's ever gonna use nuclear weapons right this is not going to happen that told me it was incumbent upon me to make a case that there are scenarios where they can be used okay so the question you have to ask yourself is how can you use these things not only in ways that give you military advantage but also so that you don't get vaporized you understand what I'm saying you don't want to get vaporized that's not a good thing right and and and when you're dealing with nuclear weapons that possibility is always out there okay now nuclear first-strike splendid first strike that's one possibility not possible for the Chinese damage limitation not possible I mean they're dealing with the United States of America you know which is God you know huge number of warheads just not going to happen they can't do first strike they can't do damage limitation I don't believe in escalation dominance and haven't talked about it but they can't do escalation dominance either they're left with nothing but manipulation of risk you know what else are they going to do and I just say to you if you're the United States of America and you think there's a really good chance that you have either a splendid first strike capability or a damage limitation capability against China you get into a conflict say over the East China Sea and for some reason you decide it's appropriate to use nuclear weapons I think that the Americans even if they think there's a really good chance they have damage limitation or first strike capability we'll first go to manipulation to risk because it only involves handful of nuclear weapons right and I think you know the fear of escalation right may be so great that you know you don't want to just really go full blast I'm not saying that's true but I think in the Chinese case they really just they have no choice right sir his question was whether or not I think that Russia investing such great resources at the nuclear level will compensate in smart ways or effective ways for the fact that it's not invested as much money in conventional forces because they're robbing Peter to pay Paul that kind of argument I think the answer is yes I mean I think if you're playing their hand that's the smart thing to do I was in at the Valdai conference in Russia two years ago and talked to all sorts of Russian leaders and the Russians don't want to arms race with the United States the Russians are well aware that one of the key factors that wrecked the Soviet Union was spending all that money on defense they understand that their economy is basically a giant gas station and that what they have to do is modernize the economy and they understand that spending lots of money on defense is not the way to do that and one of the reasons they would like to spend money on nuclear's their nuclear weapons is because of the more bang for the buck rationale that the Eisenhower administration laid out in the 50s most of you too young to remember this but there was a time in the 1950s George Humphries was the secretary of the Treasury when Republicans actually believed really believed in a balanced budget and they thought that Harry Truman had spent out the Gazoo it was crazy they're spending all money on defense so the Republicans came to power and they wanted to get more bang for the buck and what they did was they spent more money on nuclear weapons and really downgraded spending on conventional forces you could have argued that the strategic circumstances were such in the 50s that that made good strategic sense as well and you can argue in the Russian case today that it makes good strategic sense to rely on nuclear over conventional and it also makes good economic sense because then you can limit how much money you spend on defense and hopefully do things to refurbish your economy but I think either way the rush the Russians are in real trouble this is a declining great power over the long term the real threat for the United States is China last question sorry somebody back there has their hand up thank you again dr. Mearsheimer so I guess we should consider how a minor power that is not yet gone nuclear might look at the situation in Ukraine and the results thereof going back to the first question and I feel this is very timely because turns out President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan has just resigned so we don't know what the next leadership will look like we don't know how they'll be thinking you've talked about how we don't know how future leaders of foreign powers will think if you're Kazakhstan what ask to go right or go wrong for you to consider building up a nuclear arsenal may be something very minor type four and what would the implications of that be for great power politics in the region I don't know much about Kazakhstan I mean yet kazakh kazakhstan that when when the Soviet Union collapsed as many of you know four countries ended up with nuclear weapons on their territory not necessarily under their control most people believe the Russians maintain control but there's no question that Kazakhstan Belarus and Ukraine all ended up with nuclear weapons on their territory and the Cossacks gave it up pretty easily my sense is that Kazakhstan doesn't face any great threats and therefore there's no real incentive to acquire nuclear weapons it's not easy to acquire nuclear weapons they're expensive and furthermore the Russians will go to great lengths to make sure they don't develop nuclear weapons and we of course will as well I believe the Russians this is one issue the Russians and the Americans and probably the Chinese will work together on so I don't think that's the problem I think if you look out at the nuclear proliferation front today the scenario you want to keep your eye on is Iran Saudi Arabia right the United States as you know has walked away from the jcpoa and if the Iranians walk away from the jcpoa and they start to enrich uranium the Saudis have made it clear that they're going to enrich uranium and if the Iranians begin to get a bomb because they act the way a hood Barack and John Mearsheimer think they should right and they start moving down that road the Saudis will be right behind them and then if you begin to look around the region and you start thinking about the Turks you start thinking about the Iraqis you start thinking about the Egyptian you think they're going to be happy with the situation where Iran and Saudi Arabia are getting nuclear weapons and they don't have them I don't think so this is one of the reasons I think walking away from the jcpoa was a really stupid thing to do I mean the administration is betting that they can bring the Iranians to their knees and take this problem off the table forever that may happen who's to say it won't for sure but I would not bet a lot of money on that and I'd bet my money that the Iranians will actually developed nuclear weapons or certainly get back into the business of enriching and once they get into the business of enriching and the Saudis follow suit dot-dot-dot but that that's the scenario I keep my eye on today I wouldn't worry much about Kazakhstan and I think fortunately from our point of view extended deterrence appears to be working reasonably well despite all of president Trump's efforts to you know do serious damage I proposed Charlie's comments this morning to the Alliance's in both Europe and especially in Asia but as long as we're able to keep you know those alliances intact and extended deterrence remains a viable idea those countries don't have an incentive to get nuclear weapons but but if we if extended deterrence falls apart and Iran begins to enrich boy you're opening Pandora's box and it won't be Kazakhstan [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Georgetown University Center for Security Studies

Views: 24,561

Rating: 4.7822351 out of 5

Keywords: international security, nuclear weapons, georgetown university, center for security studies, css, john mearsheimer, political science, university of chicago

Id: FdvdKdnpCRg

Length: 76min 55sec (4615 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2019