FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.
FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.
Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.
APARC is pleased to announce that two young scholars, Jeffrey Weng and Nhu Truong, have been selected as our 2020-21 Shorenstein postdoctoral fellows on contemporary Asia. They will begin their appointments at Stanford in autumn 2020.
The Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship on Contemporary Asia is open to recent doctoral graduates dedicated to research and writing on contemporary Asia, primarily in the areas of political, economic, or social change in the Asia-Pacific, or international relations in the region.
Fellows develop their dissertations and other projects for publication, present their research, and participate in the intellectual life of APARC and Stanford at large. Our postdoctoral fellows often continue their careers at top universities and research organizations around the world and remain involved with research and publication activities at APARC.
Meet our new postdoctoral scholars:
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Jeffrey Weng Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia
Research focus: How does society shape language, and how does language shape society?
Jeffrey Weng is completing his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a BA in political science from Yale University, and his work has appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies and Theory and Society. His research focuses on the evolution of language, ethnicity, and nationalism in China.
Jeffrey's dissertation examines language in the context of Chinese nation-building. Mandarin Chinese was artificially created about a century ago and initially had few speakers. Now, it is the world’s most-spoken language. How did this transition happen? Weng's research shows how the codification of Mandarin was done with the intention to match existing practices closely, but not exactly. Top-down efforts by the state to spread the new language faced enormous difficulties, and ultimately its wide-spread adoption may have been catalyzed more by economic growth and urban migration. By investigating how these monumental social and political changes occurred, Weng’s work deepens the understanding of societal shifts, past and present, in one of the world’s predominant nations, while also contributing more broadly to scholarship on class, the educational reproduction of privilege, and the construction and reconstruction of race, ethnicity, and nation.
At Shorenstein APARC, Weng will continue to publish papers based on his doctoral research while reworking his dissertation into a book manuscript.
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Nhu Truong Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia
Research focus: Why are some authoritarian regimes more responsive than others?
Nhu Truong is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative politics in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, with an area focus on China, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia. She received an MPA in International Policy and Management from the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, an MA in Asian Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in International Studies from Kenyon College. Prior to embarking on her doctoral study, she worked in international development in Vietnam and Cambodia, and with policy research on China.
Her research focuses on authoritarian politics and the nature of communist and post-communist regimes, particularly as it pertains to regime repressive-responsiveness, the dynamics of social resistance, repertoires of social contention, and political legitimation.
Nhu Truong’s dissertation explains how and why the communist, authoritarian regimes of China and Vietnam differ in their responsiveness to mounting unrest caused by government land seizures. Drawing on theory and empirical findings from 16 months of fieldwork and in-depth comparative historical analysis of China and Vietnam, Truong uses these two regimes as case studies to explore the nature of responsiveness to social pressures under communist and authoritarian rule and the divergent institutional pathways that responsiveness can take. She posits that authoritarian regimes manage social unrest by relying on raw coercive power and by demonstrating responsiveness to social demands. But not all authoritarian regimes are equally responsive to social pressures. Despite their many similarities, the Vietnamese communist regime has exhibited greater institutionalized responsiveness, whereas China has been relatively more reactive.
As a Shorenstein Fellow, Truong will develop her dissertation into a book manuscript. She plans to continue exploring the variable outcomes and knock-on effects of authoritarian responsiveness in places like Cambodia, which will further support her comparative research on China and Vietnam and lay the groundwork for her next project.
About this Event: Russia has deployed cyber operations to interfere in foreign elections, launch disinformation campaigns, and cripple neighboring states—yet the regime has also maintained a thin veneer of deniability and avoided strikes that cross the line into acts of war. How should a targeted nation respond? The international effort to counter Russian cyber operations by imposing sanctions and indictments, in combination with a new defend forward approach, has done little to alter Moscow’s behavior. Therefore, in his new book on Russian Cyber Operations, Scott Jasper takes a deep dive into the legal and technical maneuvers that are used to avoid consequences, proposing that nations develop robust solutions for resilience to withstand future attacks.
About the Speaker: Scott Jasper, CAPT, USN (ret) is a Lecturer at the National Security Affairs Department and the Institute for Security Government at the Naval Postgraduate School, specializing in defense strategy, hybrid warfare, and cyber policy. Scott has published chapters in various handbooks related to cybersecurity and articles in Strategic Studies Quarterly, the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, United States Cybersecurity Magazine, The National Interest, Small Wars Journal, and The Diplomat. He is the author of Russian Cyber Operations: Coding the Boundaries of Conflict, Strategic Cyber Deterrence: The Active Cyber Defense Option and editor of Conflict and Cooperation in the Global Commons, Security Freedom in the Global Commons, and Transforming Defense Capabilities: New Approaches for International Security. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Reading, U.K.
Virtual Seminar
Scott Jasper
Naval Postgraduate School
Seminars
European Security Initiative
Russian Power and Purpose in the 21st Century Seminars
The signing of President Trump’s Phase One trade deal with China has rekindled speculations about the future of the world’s second-largest economy. Many analysts have cited trade frictions between the United States and China as a driving force behind the slowdown the Chinese economy has experienced in recent years. It is not a tariff crossfire, however, that explains the slowdown, argues Nicholas Lardy, a leading expert on the Chinese economy.
Lardy, the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, offered a different view on China’s slowing economy in a lecture presented at the China Program’s 2020 winter/spring colloquia series, which examines the past, present, and future of the PRC at 70. Using data and trends from the last forty years of China’s economic growth, Lardy presented the case that the slowing trend in the Chinese economy is directly related to changes in how the government lends credit and to what he terms “resource misallocation.”
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According to Lardy, the Chinese economy is slowing from the inside. The government’s recent campaign to deleverage the amount of credit coming out of the shadow banking system was arguably justified, but it has nonetheless reduced the amount of credit available to businesses, particularly private companies. As a result, the credit-to-GDP ratio has plateaued in the last several years and is growing in-pace with the economy instead of ahead of it.
Coupled with this is the observation that Xi Jinping’s government has actively sought to increase the size and scope of state-owned enterprises. Lardy’s research indicates that the assets of state-owned, non-financial companies in China are growing twice as fast as the overall GDP, a situation he feels is only possible if state companies are being allocated a disproportional share of credit and loans. Lardy shows that pre-2012, funding to private companies was at $3.6 trillion USD, but by 2016 it dropped to a mere $600 billion.
Taking these factors together, Lardy argues that the economic slowdown will continue if the Chinese government continues to aggressively emphasize party control and the importance of the state sector over private companies. While reporting on trade deals may dominate the media, “We will increasingly see friction not on tariffs, but on technology transfer and issues of technology,” he says. “The key thing to watch is whether or not Xi Jinping gets serious about reforming state-owned enterprises and having a financial system that allocates credit more efficiently.”
Last fall, SPICE provided me an opportunity to design and organize its first post-collegiate online course. The Stanford-Hiroshima Collaborative Program on Entrepreneurship (SHCPE’s Japanese-friendly pronunciation, “shu-ppe”) was conducted in collaboration with the Hiroshima Business and Management School (HBMS) at the Prefectural University of Hiroshima (PUH). HBMS offers the only Master of Business Administration (MBA) program in Japan’s western region of Chugoku and Shikoku. Interacting with amazing individuals on both sides of the Pacific, this unique experience brought me priceless moments.
Innovation in Itself
SHCPE, a course to help nurture entrepreneurial thinking, was an innovation in itself. The program was born out of Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki’s vision to design and implement a social challenge to help accelerate Hiroshima’s regional growth. Harnessing the resources of Stanford and Silicon Valley, the new online class was launched to empower the students and to revitalize the business sector in Hiroshima. SPICE created the curricular content and HBMS provided the learning environment designed to maximize the academic experience for the students. As the course’s curriculum designer, I leveraged the expertise of my fellow SPICE online instructors and applied design thinking, a method developed by Stanford faculty, practiced widely in Silicon Valley, and popularized globally to understand the end-user, challenge our assumptions, and reconstruct alternative perspectives to generate innovative ideas.
Bridging Silicon Valley and Hiroshima
SHCPE’s 18 MBA students in Hiroshima met every Saturday morning for three hours from September 28 to November 16, 2019 to connect online with Japanese entrepreneurs, professionals, and scholars in Silicon Valley. The first virtual class focused on discussing the mindset expected for the course as well as the conceptual framework. In the following six weeks, we welcomed guest speakers who shared their diverse experiences. What were their prior experiences, expertise, and insights? What resources did they have to achieve their goals? What were the major promoters and impediments to their journeys? Through active exploration of these questions, the students were exposed to real-life case studies to analyze Silicon Valley’s ecosystem and think critically about entrepreneurial competence and qualification. The course was conducted entirely in Japanese.
The guest speakers engaged and energized the HBMS students. Akira Onozato spoke about the evolution of Silicon Valley over the past three decades. His diverse experiences as a serial entrepreneur painted a rich picture of the San Francisco Bay Area’s growth cycle. Akira’s story provided a great segue to Rika Nakazawa’s lecture on the mindset and culture surrounding startups. Rika highlighted grit, tolerance of failure, and branding as important assets of successful entrepreneurs. Dr. Fumiaki Ikeno spoke on the landscape and trends in the medical device industry. He pointed to Japan’s declining productivity and economic competitiveness and discussed the persistent fear of failure as a major impediment to promoting entrepreneurship. As an active venture capitalist on both sides of Pacific, Seiji Miyasaka explained the funding schemes and financial cycles surrounding the investment climate of startups. Using case studies, he highlighted the role of investors who act as coaches to aspiring entrepreneurs. Tatsuki Tomita’s definition of a startup was shaped by his own experiences of starting multiple companies. His discussion of the pivot pyramid provided a visual guideline for how startups can experiment with ideas and find their product-market fit. Tasha Yorozu shared her expertise as a legal counsel, walking through the steps of starting a business in Silicon Valley. Along with Jumpei Ishii, a visiting legal counsel from Japan, Tasha further discussed their observations of successful startup practices and common pitfalls. The diversity of SHCPE guests represented the vibrant Silicon Valley community.
Active Learning and Knowledge Construction
While these professionals provided informative accounts of their expertise, SHCPE’s ultimate goal was to help each HBMS student to develop a mindset of an active learner. The MBA students were constantly challenged to think critically about the weekly theme, and work in pairs or teams to discuss assigned topics. The experience offered a dynamic and interactive learning environment for the Japanese students in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who had been accustomed to traditional lecture-style formats. SHCPE’s curriculum based on design thinking adopted an inquiry-based learning pedagogy, which engaged every student through weekly assignments and in-class discussions. During the first class, the students were informed that SHCPE would not teach them entrepreneurship. Instead, this course would provide them with the opportunity to reconstruct their knowledge of entrepreneurship and innovation based on what they observe, hear, and feel during the class. In addition, the students were required to provide feedback after each class, which was utilized to redesign the lesson plans for the following week.
This active and experiential mindset was envisioned by Dr. Gary Mukai, Director of SPICE and a renowned Japan–U.S. educator. “At SPICE, we provide students an opportunity to own their learning experience. Education is about empowering the students,” Dr. Mukai asserts. This tradition comes from the American philosopher and education reformist John Dewey, who said, “I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing.” SHCPE’s inaugural curriculum aimed to implement this philosophy through direct, real-life interaction with founders and movers in Silicon Valley, and through the iterative process to deconstruct and reconstruct their knowledge on entrepreneurship.
Innovation Through Education
What SHCPE aimed to achieve was innovation through education. The weekly three-hour online class was roughly divided into three parts: guest lecture, class discussion, and interview. Prior to the interview session, a pre-assigned team of three students met with me in a separate online room and brainstormed their interview questions. For the majority of the students, it was their very first time to formally interview a person, and the experience brought a novel learning opportunity to think critically about entrepreneurial competence. Many commented on the challenge and the excitement of getting to know strangers by engaging them in a thoughtful conversation. The weekly interview highlighted the philosophy, aspiration, and raw sentiments of the guest speakers, evoking passion, energy, and empathy among the students.
SHCPE 2019 team with Ken-ichi Nakamura, President of the Prefectural University of Hiroshima
Through observations and discussions, the SHCPE participants built their own knowledge and understanding of what constitutes entrepreneurship. To conclude the eight-week course, I had the chance to visit Hiroshima to offer the last SHCPE class in person, and to observe first-hand their reaction to the curriculum design. Meeting the students as well as the HBMS faculty and staff who supported SHCPE, was an incredibly rewarding experience. My class focused on education and empowerment. The students discussed in teams how they might develop a curriculum to promote entrepreneurship in Hiroshima. Much to everyone’s delight, one of the students expressed his hope to apply what he learned in this course and serve as an angel investor to support local startups. The class culminated with a closing ceremony during which each student was presented an official Certificate of Completion. My trip to Hiroshima also provided a valuable opportunity to visit Governor Yuzaki as well as PUH President Ken-ichi Nakamura, who emphasized the importance of adding a real-life, global perspective to the HBMS curriculum. Programs such as SCHPE were made possible through these leaders’ foresight and support.
SHCPE strived to adopt the pedagogy of active learning and the toolsets of design thinking to implement Governor Yuzaki’s vision of “learning innovation.” The course appears to have succeeded in helping to realize his vision as one student reflected upon his experience:
This class does not intend to offer answers [to the question what entrepreneurship is]. Instead, it urges the students to constantly think on their own and engage themselves in learning. This is very different from the Japanese traditional pedagogy, which relies on rote memorization and mechanical process of practice problems. This class highlighted the fundamental difference in the philosophy of how we look at education, and I enjoyed this eye-opening experience.
SHCPE ’19 concluded with much enthusiasm. SPICE looks forward to continuing its partnership with HBMS to build upon the invaluable lessons learned from the inaugural program. With Stanford e-Hiroshima, an online course for high school students managed and taught by my colleague Rylan Sekiguchi, SPICE will continue its efforts to empower the people in Hiroshima.
Acknowledgement
I am greatly indebted to Dr. Gary Mukai for providing me this invaluable opportunity. Special thanks go to Carey Moncaster, Dr. HyoJung Jang, Jonas Edman, Meiko Kotani, Naomi Funahashi, Rylan Sekiguchi, Sabrina Ishimaru, Dr. Tanya Lee, and Waka Takahashi Brown for their valuable comments on the preliminary curriculum. I thank all of my colleagues at SPICE for their support and encouragement throughout the process.
My special gratitude goes to Akira Onozato, Dr. Fumiaki Ikeno, Jumpei Ishii, Rika Nakazawa, Seiji Miyasaka, Tatsuki Tomita, and Tasha Yorozu who took the time out of their busy Friday evening to participate in the virtual classroom. Their contagious enthusiasm energized the students.
Last but not least, I would like to express my deep appreciation to my collaborators at HBMS. I thank Professor Katsue Edo for his hard work and commitment to implement the program, Professor Yasuo Tsuchimoto for his technical expertise and dedication to administer the distance-learning, Professor Narumi Yoshikawa for supporting in-class discussions, and Kazue Hiura, Yoshihiko Oishi, and Kenji Okano for their capable assistance and thoughtful arrangements. Last but not least, my heartfelt congratulation goes to the 18 MBA students who successfully completed SHCPE ’19. The inaugural class will always have a special place in my heart.
About this Event: Germany plays a key role in shaping European and Western policy toward Russia. Berlin is a leading voice within the European Union on Russian issues, and Chancellor Angela Merkel co-chairs with the French president the "Normandy" effort that seeks to broker a setttlement between Ukraine and Russia to the conflict in Donbas. Emily Haber, the German ambassador to the United States, will join us for a conversation on how Berlin sees the Russian challenge and how the West should respond.
About the Speaker: Emily Margarethe Haber has been German Ambassador to the United States since June 2018.
Immediately prior to this, Haber, a career foreign service officer, was deployed to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, serving as State Secretary overseeing security and migration at the height of the refugee crisis in Europe. In this capacity, she worked closely with the US administration on topics ranging from the fight against international terrorism to global cyberattacks and cybersecurity. In 2009, she was appointed Political Director and, in 2011, State Secretary at the Foreign Office, the first woman to hold either post.
Emily Haber is married to Hansjörg Haber. The couple has two sons.
Emily Margarethe Haber
German Ambassador to the United States
About this Event: In 2011, the impact of the Arab Spring and the emergence of YouTube videos evidencing ballot stuffing during Russian parliamentary elections, which nearly led to a revolution in Russia, forced Kremlin strategists to suddenly realize that the Internet had become a major media — and a major power. This was the case not only in Russia, but everywhere on the planet. The Kremlin spent years and billions of dollars [or rubles?] to subdue this power, and to learn how to make use of it. Was this crusade successful? Is it true that Putin is now capable of influencing elections everywhere in the world? Will he be able to cut Russia off from the global internet? And what are the troll farms trying to achieve? Leonid Volkov, an internet expert and the founder of the Internet Protection Society, the leading Russian digital rights NGO—and, simultaneously, Chief of Staff for Alexey Navalny, the leader of Russian opposition—is known for his optimistic view on these issues. While Putin is far from possessing almighty internet warfare, the situation has complex implications for Russian society and democracy.
About the Speaker: Leonid Volkov is a Russian politician and IT-expert. He oversees regional political operations, IT and electoral campaigns for the leader of Russian opposition Alexey Navalny. Previously Volkov served as campaign manager and chief of staff for Alexei Navalny’s 2013 mayoral campaign for Moscow, as well as for Navalny’s attempt to get registered for the 2018 presidential election. Leonid Volkov is a former deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Duma. He has over 20 years of experience as an IT professional, running and consulting several of Russia’s largest software firms. Since 2016 Leonid is active also as founder and chairman of the Internet Protection Society, a NGO focused on internet freedom and digital rights in Russia.
Virtual Seminar
Leonid Volkov
Russian Politician and IT-Expert
Seminars
Russian Power and Purpose in the 21st Century Seminars
China's future will be determined by how its leaders manage its myriad interconnected challenges. In Fateful Decisions, leading experts from a wide range of disciplines eschew broad predictions of success or failure in favor of close analyses of today's most critical demographic, economic, social, political, and foreign policy challenges. They expertly outline the options and opportunity costs entailed, providing a cutting-edge analytic framework for understanding the decisions that will determine China's trajectory.
Xi Jinping has articulated ambitious goals, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and massive urbanization projects, but few priorities or policies to achieve them. These goals have thrown into relief the crises facing China as the economy slows and the population ages while the demand for and costs of education, healthcare, elder care, and other social benefits are increasing. Global ambitions and a more assertive military also compete for funding and policy priority. These challenges are compounded by the size of China's population, outdated institutions, and the reluctance of powerful elites to make reforms that might threaten their positions, prerogatives, and Communist Party legitimacy. In this volume, individual chapters provide in-depth analyses of key policies relating to these challenges. Contributors illuminate what is at stake, possible choices, and subsequent outcomes. This volume equips readers with everything they need to understand these complex developments in context.
Richard Heydarian in conversation with Don Emmerson
In this seminar, scholar/journalist Richard Heydarian will discuss the principal arguments and ideas in his just-published book on the Indo-Pacific. He will do so in conversation with Southeast Asia Program director Don Emmerson. Propositions to be discussed will include: The 21st century will not belong to China.There will be no Pax Sinica in the Indo-Pacific. China’s bid for primacy will fail due to its overbearing hubris abroad and its massive challenges at home. Its effort to create a “neo-tributary” system in East Asia will not succeed, as evidenced by pushback regarding the Belt and Road Initiative and the South China Sea. Neither China nor America will dominate the Indo-Pacific. More likely to develop there is “an uneasy, fluid network of interlocking alliances, partnerships, and rivalries” in which middle powers such as Japan will figure prominently in efforts to address urgent and visceral challenges such as global warming and information war. Most needed in the longer run will be a coalition of powers able jointly to “hold the line against the coming anarchy that will sweep the Indo-Pacific mega-region” if nothing is done to rescue it from the political, socioeconomic, environmental, and technological risks and dangers that lie ahead. Copies of his latest book, from which these arguments are drawn, will be available for sale.
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Richard Javad Heydarian’s latest book is The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New Struggle for Global Mastery (2020). Earlier publications include Asia’s New Battlefield (2015), How Capitalism Failed the Arab World (2014), and articles and interviews in many outlets including The Atlantic, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He has interviewed heads of state and senior policy-makers across the Indo-Pacific, and has taught political science at Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University in the Philippines, and most recently was a visiting research Fellow at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He is an opinion contributor to South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, and Nikkei Asian Review, and is a columnist at the Philippine Daily Inquirer and television host at GMA Network.
About this Event: Russia has employed the semi-state Wagner Group security company in Ukraine, Syria, the Central African Republic, Libya, Mozambique, and Mali (so far). Wagner is tightly connected to Russia's military intelligence organization (the GRU), and partially funded by one of Vladimir Putin's cronies, Evgeny Prigozhin, who also uses it for private duties. So why is Wagner technically illegal (and even unconstitutional) in Russia? Its use is less costly in budgetary and political terms than using the uniformed military, and it provides (limited) plausible deniability for Russian actions. But it is also unclear what Russia wants from impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. Using the best available evidence, this presentation explores these mysteries.
About the Speaker: Kimberly Marten is a professor of political science (and the department chair) at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a faculty member of Columbia’s Harriman Institute and Saltzman Institute. She has written four books, including Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States (Cornell, 2012), and Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton, 1993) which received the Marshall Shulman Prize. The Council on Foreign Relations (where she is a member) published her special report, Reducing Tensions between Russia and NATO (2017). She is a frequent media commentator, and appeared on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. She earned her A.B. at Harvard and Ph.D. at Stanford, and was a CISAC post-doc.
Virtual Seminar
Kimberly Marten
Professor of Political Science (and the department chair) at Barnard College, Columbia University
Barnard College, Columbia University
Seminars
Russian Power and Purpose in the 21st Century Seminars
This article originally appeared on the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where Rose Gottemoeller is a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. She is also the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Russia is replacing older nuclear technology with more modern, more functional options. What are the implications for the United States, Europe, and the future of arms control?
Do the U.S. and Russia have different reasons for modernizing nuclear weapons? In the big strategic game, the Russians and Americans have the same reason for modernizing their nuclear forces: they want to maintain parity. If the two sides have the same number of nuclear warheads deployed, then they will not be tempted to shoot at each other. They also have a reason to avoid an arms race that would entail constantly seeking more nuclear weapons to try to achieve superiority—however temporary. As expensive as nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles are, parity has kept the costs down by holding the arms race in check.
In the past few years, Vladimir Putin does seem to be after nuclear weapons for another reason—to show that Russia is still a great power to be reckoned with. He has been trumpeting new and exotic systems that are unique, like the nuclear weapon delivery system known as the Burevestnik nuclear-propelled cruise missile.
These exotic systems have more of a political function than a strategic or security one. Their role is to signal Russia’s continuing scientific and military prowess at a time when the country does not otherwise have much on offer. Devilishly expensive and sometimes dangerous to operate, they are unlikely to be deployed in big numbers, as a 2019 fatal testing accident of the Burevestnik shows. If U.S.-Russian arms control remains in place, such systems definitely will not be deployed in big numbers, because they would displace proven and highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles in the Russian force structure. These ballistic missiles are the backbone of nuclear deterrence for Russia. The exotics don’t add to that deterrent. They have some show-off value, but they will do no more than make the rubble bounce.
What are European concerns with Russia's nuclear weapon modernization? The Europeans, most prominently the NATO Allies, are very concerned about Russia’s nuclear modernization programs. Their concerns revolve more around new nuclear missiles to be deployed on European soil than the intercontinental systems that threaten the United States. Poland and Lithuania, for example, are NATO countries bordering Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave in the heart of NATO territory. Russia has put increasingly capable missiles there, including the Iskander, a highly accurate modern missile that is capable of launching either nuclear or conventional warheads.
Likewise, the Europeans are of one mind about the threat posed by a missile known as the 9M729 (SSC-8 in NATO parlance), which is a intermediate-range ground-launched cruise missile that the Russians developed and deployed in violation of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The Allies all agree that this missile poses a threat to NATO. Although it has not been deployed forward in Kaliningrad, its range is sufficient to threaten all of NATO Europe when deployed in European Russia. It too is said to support both nuclear and conventional weapons.
Since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, the Russians have begun to build up basing sites for their advanced systems there too, including the Iskanders. If Russia brings nuclear weapons into Crimea, it will spark complex political, legal, and moral problems. The world community has largely held firm in condemning Russia’s seizure of Crimea and considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory. Should Russia bring nuclear weapons to Crimea, it will be violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in a fundamental manner, for Ukraine is a non-nuclear weapon state under the NPT. Russia in this case would be behaving in a manner no better than North Korea.
What is the role of arms control in managing U.S. and European relationships with Russia? The most basic role of arms control regimes is to create mutual predictability, ensuring that no country participating is uncertain about its security both now and into the future. In this way, arms control helps to keep defense spending in check, but it also allows countries to build up mutual confidence and stability, which can translate into broader security and economic ties. This assumes, of course, that the deal is properly implemented by all parties, which is why Ronald Reagan’s old adage “trust but verify” is so important. If participants are allowed to cheat on an arms control regime, then it becomes hollowed out, detrimental to the security of all.
The fundamental benefits of arms control, however, can be helpful in times of trouble. I like to think that all the work Russia, the United States, and Europe did together in the 1990s was enabled by the then thirty-year legacy of arms control cooperation. We worked together to protect nuclear weapons and materials from the former Soviet arsenal from being stolen or misused. The same goes for the safety of nuclear power plants. When Ukraine, Russia, the European Union, and the U.S. began to work together in the early 1990s to mitigate the effects of the 1987 Chernobyl disaster, existing relationships in the nuclear realm helped the cleanup project run smoother. Nuclear energy is clearly a different world from the nuclear weapons establishment, but the scientific underpinnings and the scientists and engineers working the issues are the same.
Nowadays, I think that we must contemplate what it will mean if no nuclear arms control regimes remain in force. For the generation that worked these issues in Russia, the U.S., and Europe, enough of a residual relationship exists that experts can grasp at opportunities for cooperation when they present themselves. Some mechanisms such as scientist-to-scientist dialogues are likely to remain, such as the Pugwash and Dartmouth dialogues and the National Academy of Sciences exchanges with the Russian Academy of Sciences. These were the first places where Soviet and Western scientists gathered together to confront the problems of nuclear war and to look together for solutions.
We should be concerned, however, that they may revert to the talk shops of the Cold War, with few opportunities to work together on practical projects. Meanwhile, pragmatic and persistent tools, such as the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers (NRRCs) that operate in the U.S. Department of State and the Russian Ministry of Defense, may find their missions sharply curtailed as they cease to serve any treaty purpose. The U.S., Russia, and Europe may thus be heading to a time when their means of communications in a nuclear crisis is no better than they had during the Cold War.
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Photo by Host photo agency / RIA Novosti via Getty Images
FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
SHCPE 2019 team with Ken-ichi Nakamura, President of the Prefectural University of Hiroshima
