This interview by Melissa De Witte originally appeared in Stanford News.

The upcoming summit between President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin is not rewarding the Russian leader for his bad behavior: It’s opening negotiations and delivering a warning to him instead, says Stanford scholar Kathryn Stoner.

Here, Stoner is joined by Stanford political scientist and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, Payne Distinguished Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller and Russia historian Norman Naimark to discuss what to expect at the summit in Geneva on Wednesday.

The meeting, the scholars say, could reset U.S.-Russia relations, signal deterrence on certain issues – including cybersecurity in light of attacks like the SolarWinds breach that the U.S. has blamed on the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service – and launch strategic stability talks related to nuclear weapons.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. For more information on what to expect about the Biden-Putin summit from FSI scholars, visit the FSI website.

Where does diplomacy now stand between the U.S. and Russia?

Naimark: Russian-American relations are at their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, perhaps even since the last years of Gorbachev’s rule. When relations are fraying between the world’s two most powerful nuclear powers, the coming of the summit on June 16 between President Biden and President Putin should be welcomed. It’s worth recalling the heightened military tensions just three months ago between Moscow and Washington, when Moscow moved tens of thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border and mobilized its air and sea power in the region. Both leaders have emphasized that they seek stability, reliability and predictability in their bilateral relations; at the same time, their respective administrations have warned that expectations should be kept at the minimum for any kind of serious breakthrough at the summit.

Stoner: We’ve lost a lot of leverage because of the withdrawal from global politics that started under the latter part of the Obama administration and continued with Trump with his America First platform, which meant America alone. There is some leverage, it’s just how much. We don’t necessarily want to destabilize Russia because it’s a big, complicated country with nuclear weapons, but all signs point to Putin staying in office until 2036. He’s not going away. I think we have to try to signal deterrence on certain issues, like trying to move into another former Soviet republic as he is doing with Ukraine, Georgia and potentially Belarus, but then cooperate in other areas where it is productive to do so.

What do you think about some of the criticisms toward Biden meeting with Putin? For example, that Biden meeting with Putin is only rewarding him for his bad behavior.

Stoner: There is a reasonable question about why Biden and Putin are meeting and if it is somehow rewarding Putin for bad behavior by having a summit with the President of the United States. Rather than rewarding Putin, however, I think this meeting could be Biden’s warning to him that if hacking and other cyberattacks continue, we have a menu of things we could do as well.

Naimark: There is no reason that the American president cannot talk about difficult subjects like cybersecurity, ransomware attacks, human rights, the release of Alexei Navalny, the protection of Ukrainian sovereignty and other important items on the American agenda while focusing on issues of mutual interest: the future of arms control, global warming and the regulation of the Arctic, and outer space. One can always hope that, like the last summit on Lake Geneva between Russian and American leaders [Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan] in November 1985, this one can lay the groundwork for serious improvements in relations in the near future.

Is this meeting a reset of diplomatic relations between the two nations?

Stoner: I know in Washington it is popular to say that Biden is not having a reset of relations with Russia when past presidents all have tried that. I think that’s wrong. I do think it is a reset in the relationship in that there should be more clarity and stability, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be friendly and universally cooperative, given that we still see many differences in perspectives and some antagonism too. Still, Russia and the U.S. need to talk because there are a lot of issues in common where it would be helpful to coordinate with Russia. After all, even in the depths of the Cold War, the leaders of both countries still talked. Russia has reestablished itself as the most formidable power in Europe and it looks like Biden is acknowledging that and the fact that the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore Russia.

Is there anything the two leaders will be able to agree upon?

McFaul: I used to organize these kinds of meetings when I worked in the government and back when President Medvedev was there. We would have these meetings as a way to force our governments to produce what is called in State Department-speak “deliverables.” We didn’t have meetings to have them, we wanted to get things done. In the first Obama-Medvedev meeting we had a long list of deliverables when they met in July of 2009.

But there is no way that will happen with Putin today because he doesn’t really want to cooperate, he doesn’t really want deliverables. That’s challenging for President Biden, I think, because he has said that he wants a stable, predictable relationship with Putin. I think that’s fine to aspire to, but I don’t think Putin is that interested in that kind of relationship, so that creates a challenge of substance for summits like this.

Gottemoeller: With such different threat perceptions, the two presidents are not going to agree in Geneva about what should go into the next nuclear treaty. They can agree, though, to put their experts together to hammer it out. They can also agree to put the two sides together to tackle the different threat perceptions and the question of what stability means. Finally, they can agree to a deadline, so the talks don’t stall. It won’t be a headline-grabbing outcome, but at least Moscow and Washington will get moving again on the nuclear agenda.

Where can Biden make progress?

McFaul: I think the most likely place to make progress is to launch strategic stability talks, which is an abstract phrase for beginning the process of negotiations about nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles that would be a follow-on to the New START treaty. Biden and Putin rightfully extended the New START treaty early in his term for five years, and I think that was very smart. I personally worked on that treaty, so I think it’s a good treaty and deserves to be extended. But it’s going to run out really fast because the next set of negotiations are going to be much more complicated. I hope they would start some process to begin those negotiations now.

Gottemoeller: Maybe the only place where President Biden can make progress with Vladimir Putin in Geneva is the nuclear agenda with Russia. Since the two men agreed, in February, to extend the New START treaty by five years, they have put out a clear public message that they intend to pursue a deal to replace New START and to launch strategic stability talks. They are not going to have identical ideas, however, about what those two goals mean.

Biden wants a new arms control deal that will control all nuclear warheads, whether launched on intercontinental strategic-range missiles or on shorter-range systems. He also wants to get a handle on some of the new types of nuclear weapons that the Russians have been developing. One new system, for example, uses nuclear propulsion to ensure that it can fly for many hours at great speed over long distances, earning it the moniker “weapon of vengeance.” These exotic weapons did not exist when New START was negotiated; now, they need to be controlled.

Putin, by contrast, focuses on U.S. long-range conventional missiles that he worries are capable of the accuracy and destructive power of nuclear weapons. The United States, in his view, could use these conventional weapons to destroy hard targets such as the Moscow nuclear command center. He also worries that the United States is producing ever more capable ways to intercept his nuclear missiles and destroy them before they reach their targets. In his worst nightmare, the United States undermines his nuclear deterrent forces without ever resorting to nuclear weapons.

What advice do you have for Biden?

McFaul: One, do not have a one-on-one meeting – just have a normal meeting. Two, I would recommend not having a joint press conference that just gives Putin a podium for the world to say his “whataboutism” stuff; it’s better to have separate press conferences because most of the world will be more interested in what Biden says compared to what Putin says.

Third, I think it’s important to cooperate when you can but also be clear about your differences and don’t pull punches on that. In particular, I want Biden to talk about Alexei Navalny, the Americans who are wrongly detained in Russia today, Crimea still being occupied, Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine, and parts of Georgia that are under occupation. They have been attacking us relentlessly with these cyberattacks, these Russian criminals who in my view have to have some association with the Russian government.

That’s a tough list, but I think it’s really important for President Biden to say those things directly to Putin. I have confidence that he can. I was at their last meeting. I traveled with the vice president in 2011 when he met with then Prime Minister Putin. Biden is capable of delivering tough messages and I hope he uses this occasion to do so again.

What would be a sign that their meeting was productive?

Stoner: One sign the meeting was productive would be if Biden and Putin could agree to establish a joint committee or council on some rules surrounding cybersecurity. Another would be if they make plans to talk again about either replacing or reviving the Minsk-2 agreement [that sought to bring an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine]. And three, a positive sign would be if they plan to do some negotiation on further reducing tactical nuclear weapons or strategic nuclear weapons. An agreement to disagree on some issues, but to continue talking on others would be indicative of at least some small progress.

In collaboration with Global:SF and the State of California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC presented session five of the New Economy Conference, "Navigating Chinese Investment, Trade, and Technology," on May 19. The program featured distinguished speakers Ambassador Craig Allen, President of the US-China Business Council; David K. Cheng, Chair and Managing Partner of China & Asia Pacific Practice at Nixon Peabody LLP; James Green, Senior Research Fellow at the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University; and Anja Manuel, Co-Founder and Principal of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC. The session was opened by Darlene Chiu Bryant, Executive Director of GlobalSF, and moderated by Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program.

U.S.-China economic relations have grown increasingly fraught and competitive. Even amidst intensifying tensions, however, our two major economies remain intertwined. While keeping alert to national security concerns, the economic strength of the United States will depend on brokering a productive competition with China, the world’s fastest growing economy. Precipitous decoupling of trade, investment, and human talent flows between the two nations will inflict unnecessary harm to U.S. economic interests--and those of California.  

Chinese trade and investments into California have grown exponentially over the last decade. But they have come under increasing pressure following geopolitical and economic tensions between the two nations, particularly in the science and technology sectors. Ambassador Craig Allen, David Cheng, James Green, and Anja Manuel explored the role of Chinese economic activity in California in the context of the greater US-Chinese relationship. Watch now: 

Space strategy is central to great-power competition and China believes it needs to excel and compete effectively in space, whether in civilian, commercial, or military usage, says Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro on Space Strategy, a podcast from the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). Listen below:

Sign up for APARC newsletters to receive the latest updates from our experts.

Mastro joined podcast host Peter Garretson, Senior Fellow in Defense Studies at AFPC, to examine how China views space and why space is key to any military conflict, particularly across the Taiwan strait.

The U.S. military is far superior to the Chinese, says Mastro, yet one main reason China might prevail in a conflict over Taiwan is that it might achieve its goals before the United States can amass enough forces to respond. “Whether the United States can do this is largely dependent on space."

During this conversation, Mastro discusses China's approach to negotiation, deterrence, diplomacy, and inducements; the potential for misunderstanding and escalation in targeting U.S. space assets; and the considerations that impact U.S.-China space cooperation. She also explains how freedom in space is critical to avoiding foreign dependence and why the United States must build a resilient military space architecture and not surrender global leadership in pursuing aspirational and inspirational space goals.

The New START Treaty

The New START Treaty, which was formalized in 2010, and builds on prior agreements put in place through the 1970s and 80s to actively reduce and limit the number of strategic nuclear weapons. The first START treaty in 1994 reduced the number of deployed nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia from 12,000 to 6,000 each. In 2002, that number was reduced further to around 2,200 weapons each through agreements in the Moscow Treaty. The New START Treaty Gottemoeller negotiated dropped that number again to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

This 30 percent overall reduction in nuclear armaments has brought deployed Russian and U.S. warheads to their smallest numbers since the nuclear age began.

“It’s really a challenge to actually do things in government,” emphasizes McFaul. “It’s easy to be something or someone, but to do anything, you have to be able to engage with another partner somewhere in the world. In Rose’s case, she had to engage with one of the toughest partners in the world: the Russian Federation.”

Doing vs. Being

How was Gottemoeller able to accomplish what she and her team did? Coming as an outsider to the Obama campaign and government, the initial months of contacting relevant people in the Department of State and working through the confirmation process were grueling, particularly with the added pressure of the looming deadline for the end of the first START treaty.

“That early pressure was absolutely vital for the ultimate success of the New START treaty,” says Gottemoeller. “These kinds of treaties usually take years to negotiate, but we only had from April to December of that year.”

With such a tight schedule, focus and drive were vital for moving the negotiations forward on time. Based on a clear directive from Presidents Obama and Medvedev, Gottemoeller knew the negotiations were to focus only on reducing strategic offensive armaments. The drive came from the perseverance and professionalism between her team and their Russian counterparts.

“When any negotiation starts, there’s a dance that goes on as the chief negotiators and the heads of the working groups establish their rhythm and get to know each others’ style. There were definitely rough patches, but overall we were able to establish good working relationships with everyone we needed to.”

In establishing this rapport, Gottemoeller’s prior affiliations with the Russian head negotiator, Anatoly Antonov, and her ability to speak directly with him in the Russian language were invaluable, particularly given Gottemoeller’s unique position as the first woman ever to negotiate a nuclear arms deal with the Russian Federation.    

“By the time [Antonov] and I got to the endgame negotiations, we’d developed this motto of ‘мы исправим это,’ or, ‘We’ll fix it.’ By having that mindset, we were able to figure it out, even with our personal differences,” Gottemoeller explains.

Ultimately, she and her team delivered a crucial piece of diplomacy in record time despite the setbacks. “I handed over the final papers on my birthday,” she remembers. “So, it was a personal day of celebration as well as a professional one.”

Advice for Future Negotiators

For upcoming graduates and young people looking to Gottemoeller and her incredible diplomatic career as an inspiration, she gives this encouragement:

“Negotiating about nuclear weapons is not rocket science. You become a good negotiator through your everyday living. It’s part of our natural life and natural living. Don’t let it overwhelm you just because you happen to be dealing with nuclear weapons. It’s still just about meeting interests and crafting compromises in order to achieve your goals.”

It’s a sentiment Director Michael McFaul quickly echoed as he reaffirmed the invaluable work Rose Gottemoeller has contributed both diplomatically and to the future of foreign policy.

“In academia, the literature is thin on the actual practice of diplomacy,” admits McFaul. “But Rose has done a great service to educating future diplomats and future negotiators. We need to be able to learn from case studies like this from the past so we can continue to achieve these kinds of things in the future.”

U.S. officials have long sought to negotiate limits on non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNW), a sensible next step for U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control. Such a negotiation, however, would raise difficult issues, beginning with the imbalance in U.S. and Russian numbers. A likely Russian position that all NSNW be based on national territory would force the U.S. government to face the different perspectives within NATO on the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. As Washington prepares for a possible negotiation with Moscow, U.S. officials should consider ways to manage this issue from the outset.  

An Elusive Goal 

Since concluding the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the United States has sought to limit non-strategic nuclear weapons, also referred to as tactical or sub-strategic nuclear weapons. On signing New START, President Obama said “we hope to pursue discussions with Russia on reducing both our strategic and tactical weapons.” Republicans criticized New START’s lack of limits on NSNW, and the Senate resolution of advice and consent to ratification for New START called for a negotiation with Russia “to secure and reduce tactical nuclear weapons in a verifiable manner.” The Obama administration proposed such a negotiation, but Moscow declined. 

When the Trump administration belatedly engaged Russia on nuclear arms issues in 2020, it also sought to include NSNW. Russian negotiators accepted a one-year freeze on the total size of the stockpiles between the two countries (including NSNW), but the agreement did not include verification measures and quickly fell apart. In a statement noting the Biden administration’s agreement to extend New START, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington would pursue with Russia “arms control that addresses all of its nuclear weapons.”  U.S. allies have generally supported negotiating limits on and reductions in NSNW.

New START limits the United States and Russia each to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. The treaty only constrains deployed weapons and associated launchers. It does not limit NSNW or non-deployed strategic weapons. The U.S. nuclear stockpile numbers 3,800 warheads, of which 230 are B61 nuclear bombs designated as non-strategic (the U.S. military has eliminated all other NSNW). Russia’s nuclear stockpile numbers just under 4,500 warheads, with some 1,900 categorized as non-strategic or defensive. Russia’s diverse NSNW arsenal includes weapons for delivery by land-, air-, and sea-based systems.

Russia has resisted an agreement on NSNW because it has a much larger NSNW force and regards those weapons as a means to compensate for conventional inferiority compared to NATO or China. Moreover, such an agreement would entail difficult verification challenges. If Moscow agreed to a negotiation that covered NSNW, then it would almost certainly seek to leverage its numerical advantage in NSNW to gain a U.S. concession, perhaps conditioning its readiness to negotiate limits on all nuclear weapons on U.S. readiness to negotiate limits on missile defense, which would be politically controversial in Washington. 

Limiting and Reducing NSNW 

Given the disparity in numbers, a narrow stand-alone negotiation on NSNW has little prospect of success. What incentive would Moscow have to cut to the U.S. level? A more viable approach would seek an aggregate limit covering all U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads. In such an arrangement, the U.S. numerical advantage in non-deployed strategic warheads would partially offset the Russian advantage in NSNW. Within such an overall aggregate limit, the sides could negotiate a sub-limit to constrain the number of deployed strategic warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), warheads that could be launched in minutes and that pose the greater threat to strategic stability. 

If the sides agreed on such a framework, then a lower aggregate limit would force the Russians to reduce their NSNW number. However, that aggregate likely would not be low enough to drive the Russian military’s NSNW level down to anything close to the U.S. number. 

Despite the challenges, the United States should seek limits on Russian NSNW. First, non-strategic nuclear warheads deliverable by systems such as Iskandr missiles directly threaten U.S. allies. Second, many of these weapons are not “small.” The modernized B61 bomb will have a maximum yield of fifty kilotons, three times the size of the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima, and Russian NSNW reportedly have larger yields. Third, the most likely path to a U.S.-Russian nuclear conflict is a conventional war that escalates when one side employs NSNW.

The Looming Dilemma 

Russian acceptance of such a negotiating framework—an aggregate limit on all U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons with a sublimit on deployed strategic warheads—would be welcomed in the United States and by allies, and rightly so. But it could end up posing a dilemma within NATO. 

The U.S. Air Force deploys 100-150 B61 bombs at a handful of air bases in Europe. Some of these B61 bombs are designated for use by U.S. aircraft. Others are maintained under U.S. custody but, in a conflict and with proper authorization, would be turned over to allies for delivery—sometimes referred to as “nuclear sharing.” The Belgians, Dutch, Germans, and Italians have aircraft and train for that purpose. 

In military terms, this small number of B61 bombs makes a marginal contribution in an overall stockpile of 3,800 weapons. U.S.-based aircraft (the B-2 and, in the future, B-21) could strike targets in Europe with B61 bombs, as could B-52s equipped with nuclear air-launched cruise missiles. The value of the Europe-based bombs is far more in political terms and assurance of allies. In peacetime, they are seen as symbols of the U.S. commitment to NATO’s defense and as coupling U.S. strategic nuclear forces to that commitment. If NATO were to use NSNW, or even signal the possibility of their use, then the alliance would aim to convey a political message that things were about to spin out of control and perhaps escalate to strategic nuclear exchanges.  Moreover, the process of planning, investing in, and exercising these systems is seen by alliance members as a unifying process helpful in assuring allies and deterring aggression. 

The dilemma? Suppose U.S. and Russian negotiators close in on an agreement limiting each side to 3,000 or 3,500 total nuclear warheads, with a sub-limit of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads and appropriate verification measures (an ambitious outcome, to be sure). The problem: the Russians almost certainly would insist on a provision requiring that all nuclear weapons be based on national territory. That would mean the removal of the B61 bombs to the United States. 

Many in the United States and Europe would regard such an agreement as a significant and very positive achievement. Belgian, Dutch, German, and Italian public would welcome an end to the unpopular presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in their countries.

The withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons could, however, end the involvement of a broad group of allies in NATO’s nuclear role. More importantly, such an outcome could be seen as calling into question U.S. readiness to use nuclear weapons in the alliance’s defense and signifying a diminution of the broader U.S. commitment to NATO. One could argue that allies should have confidence in the American president to use nuclear weapons if needed, regardless of where they are deployed, but the location of U.S. nuclear arms—in this case, their absence from Europe—could matter. To some, it could matter a great deal; they might even see it as decoupling the United States from European security.

If this issue were not managed carefully, then a split could develop within NATO. Those allies who see U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe as essential to their security, particularly in the Baltic and eastern European regions, might well oppose U.S. acceptance of the “base on national territory” provision—even at the expense of a new treaty. If U.S. negotiators went ahead and nevertheless accepted the provision, then opposition within NATO would complicate ratification prospects. If, on the other hand, U.S. negotiators rejected that provision out of deference to those concerns, and that blew up the chance for a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, one could expect a backlash and round of intra-alliance recriminations. (Knowing that this could be the case would only make it more likely that Russian negotiators would seek this outcome.) 

Thinking Ahead 

This is not to suggest that the Biden administration should not pursue limits on all U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, including NSNW. Such an approach is the logical next step after New START. The administration does, however, need to factor this issue into consultations with allies and into its negotiating approach toward the Russians from the very beginning. A number of ideas might alleviate the basing on national territory problem, including: 

Seek to require that NSNW be stored at declared storage sites—with monitoring and significant transparency—at some distance from facilities basing NSNW delivery systems. This would slow the process of mating non-strategic warheads to delivery systems in a crisis or conventional conflict. (If the treaty did not require basing on national territory, then this would mean relocation of U.S. B61 bombs to new storage sites instead of the air bases where they are now.) 

Seek to require that Russian NSNW be stored at sites more than some distance, say, seven hundred kilometers, from a NATO member’s territory. This would provide distance between NATO allies such as the Baltic states and stored Russian NSNW. (It would have to apply reciprocally if the agreement did not require that nuclear weapons be based on national territory.) 

Seek to ban nuclear warheads for short-range land-based missiles. This would eliminate NSNW that pose a particular threat to countries such as the Baltic states and Poland, though it could prove hard to negotiate, as the U.S. military has no equivalent.   

Propose that NSNW stored outside of national territory be counted as “deployed strategic warheads.” Each U.S. B61 in Europe would mean one less deployed strategic warhead on deployed ICBMs and SLBMs. In order not to have to cut U.S. deployed strategic warheads too much, the number of Europe-based B61 bombs could be reduced. (Could thirty or fifty not provide allies the same level of political assurance?)

Continue nuclear sharing. NATO allies’ aircraft could train with U.S. strategic bombers in exercises for the use of (U.S.-based) nuclear weapons in support of the alliance. NATO allies could also maintain and exercise dual-capable aircraft for the contingency in which a crisis developed and/or the treaty broke down, even if there were no B61 bombs in Europe. 

Put more boots on the ground. NATO members could bolster conventional deterrence and defense in countries such as the Baltic states and Poland by increasing the size of the multinational formations in those countries to 2,000-2,500 troops each. The United States, which leads the multinational battalion in Poland, could deploy a company to each of the units in the Baltic states.

As Washington develops its negotiating approach, it should consult closely with allies, bearing in mind that the approach could have a major impact on their security perceptions. In a crisis or conventional war, a U.S. president would either be prepared to order the use of nuclear weapons in support of allies or not; the location of the weapons would be a secondary consideration. But location matters for purposes of assurance in NATO, and consultations should weigh whether and how to assure allies other than through the physical presence of U.S. nuclear arms.

Washington has for some time sought to get all U.S. and Russian nuclear arms on the negotiating table. That is a worthwhile goal for U.S. and allied security. Persuading Moscow will be hard enough. It would be a shame if differences within NATO emerged to frustrate that objective. 

Originally for The National Interest

The administration of US President Joe Biden has indicated that it intends to seek “credible, serious, clear-eyed negotiations with [Russia] on hard strategic stability issues.” That envisages a broad set of issues, as strategic stability today is a far more complex concept than it was during the Cold War. It involves countries other than just the United States and Russia. And it is a matter not just of strategic offensive nuclear forces but of missile defense, long-range precision-guided conventional strike systems, and cyber capabilities, among others.

How US-Russian strategic stability talks develop and what happens in ensuing negotiations could well impact German and European security. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said Washington seeks to engage Russia in “arms control that addresses all of its nuclear weapons.” That would include Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons, which would mean that similar US nuclear arms, including weapons based in Germany and Europe, would be on the table. Missile defense and conventional strike also have implications for European security. These issues raise a number of questions for Berlin’s consideration, including:

Consultations. The Biden administration will be open to consultations with NATO allies on its approach to these varied questions. As to the structure, German officials might consider suggesting something along the lines of the Special Consultative Group (SCG), the mechanism used by NATO in the 1980s to consult on the negotiation that produced the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Regular meetings at NATO headquarters, reinforced by senior arms control experts traveling from capitals, ensured that allies understood US positions and the state of play in the negotiations, and allowed them an opportunity to voice concerns and ideas to US policymakers. Among other things, the SCG consultations helped allies to stay in sync, particularly in 1983 when the Soviets engaged in wedge-driving attempts.

Missile Defense. Russian officials say that missile defense must be reflected in the strategic equation looking forward, and they could well insist that Washington negotiates limits on missile defense, perhaps as the price for Russian agreement to negotiate on all nuclear arms. Moscow could seek limits on both the ground-based interceptors that defend the US homeland and the Aegis Ashore interceptors deployed in Romania (and soon in Poland) for Europe’s defense. US officials appear uninterested in constraining missile defense, a subject that would prove controversial in Washington, where Republicans appear to oppose any limits.

That said, if the Russians insist, one of the first big questions confronting the Biden administration will be whether the US and allied interest in a negotiation that covers all Russian nuclear weapons is so strong that the United States should accept a negotiation that could limit missile defense. Germany presumably would answer in the affirmative, but would other allies—particularly Bucharest and Warsaw—agree? Should the Biden administration decide that the trade makes sense, it would be helpful if it could point to a united NATO stance in support, and Berlin might help shape such a stance.

US Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons in Europe. If Moscow agrees to a negotiation that would limit all US and Russian nuclear weapons, forward-based US nuclear bombs in Europe will certainly get attention. In the past, Russian officials have said the bombs should be returned to the United States, and there is no reason to think Russian negotiators would not press for a provision requiring that all nuclear arms be based on national territory. Article IV of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty provides an antecedent: “Strategic offensive arms subject to this Treaty shall not be based outside the national territory of each Party.” (It does permit notified temporary deployments outside of national territory by heavy bombers.)

Many in the countries that host US nuclear arms—whose presence is not popular—would undoubtedly welcome a “base on national territory” provision in a US-Russian treaty covering all nuclear arms. However, other allies, for whom forward-based US nuclear weapons play an important assurance role as symbols of the US commitment to the defense of NATO, US acceptance of such a provision could be seen as weakening that commitment. As a country that is sensitive to the security anxieties of the allies to its east but where public support for removing US nuclear weapons is high, Germany could play an important role in formulating a consensus view within NATO on such a provision. In doing so, Berlin might consider ways, in an arms control treaty and through other steps to bolster conventional deterrence and defense, to assuage nuclear assurance concerns.

Precision-guided Conventional Strike Systems. Russian officials have expressed concern for more than a decade about long-range precision-guided conventional strike systems that could hit and destroy targets, including strategic targets, that previously required a nuclear weapon. They may well raise this with American negotiators. While NATO has ruled out a nuclear-armed response to Russia’s deployment of the dual-capable 9M729 missile in violation of the INF Treaty, it has not excluded a conventional missile. The US military is developing two missile systems—a 1,000-kilometer range ground-launched cruise missile and the Precision Strike Missile, both conventionally-armed—that lack the range to make sense for use against land targets in Asia but could be useful in Europe.

At some point, the question of deploying such missiles may arise, particularly as the US Army looks to enhance its long-range fires. Even if conventionally-armed, would deployment of these missiles be welcome in Europe? Germany and other European allies would have a better feel for the local politics and public views. If deploying such missiles were to appear too controversial, that might merit a second look at the Russian proposal for a moratorium on intermediate-range missiles in Europe—provided that it included the 9M729 (and forced its elimination or relocation from Europe) and applied appropriate verification measures.

There is a fair chance that serious US-Russian nuclear arms talks will resume later this year. They will touch on issues that affect Germany and NATO. Berlin should begin considering what it might do with Washington and other NATO allies to facilitate a successful outcome to those negotiations and bolster European security.

Originally for Internationale Politik Quarterly

This essay was first published in the political quarterly Democracy Journal. It is part of a four-essay collection, titled The Stakes in Asia, on the future of U.S.-Asian relations. This essay focuses on the nations of Southeast Asia, the three other essays on China, Japan, and South and North Korea. 

Geography and geology are not the same. Of the five mainland countries, four have seacoasts; only Laos is land-locked. All of the six maritime states are entirely or partly archipelagic. But Malaysia and Singapore are subcontinental in that they occupy the southernmost end of peninsular Southeast Asia. A projected three-stranded set of overland railroads connecting Malaysia and Singapore to mainland China, if completed, could socioeconomically enhance their subcontinental character. The strands would run southward from Kunming, the capital city of China’s Yunnan province, through Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam to Bangkok in Thailand and onward through Malaysia to Singapore. Completing these north-south connections has been a priority of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Fears of “mainlandization”—Sinification—have arisen in that context. China’s presence is already amply manifest in the northern parts of Myanmar and Laos, where economic and cultural enclaves have formed around the influxes of tourists and immigrants from the PRC. Expatriate and local Chinese dominate the economy of Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay, where young Ma Kyal Sin died. Mandarin is widely spoken there. If the BRI succeeds, if the north-south tracks are laid and maintained, and if traffic then flourishes back and forth to the mutual “win-win” benefit of China and all of the five Southeast Asian economies along the way, Beijing could further enlarge its footprint in the region.

Could does not mean will. The world economy shrank by more than 4 percent in 2020. Infrastructure is costly, and its returns are long-term. To varying extents in different countries, envisioned connectivity has become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, as governments have closed borders to reduce transmission of the virus and its variants. In 2019-2020, the pace of overseas lending by China’s policy banks slowed, and Chinese spending on megaprojects in the BRI fell to its lowest level ever. China’s latest five-year plan calls for “dual circulation,” abroad as well as at home, but the domestic economy is given priority.

That said, China’s economic growth in 2021 could reach 8 percent and thereby fuel Beijing’s campaign for influence in mainland Southeast Asia. In Laos, for example, aggressive Chinese lenders and corrupt local elites have indebted that country to the point that its lucrative electricity exports may soon be controlled by China. As one of the poorest members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Laos needs those revenues. Majority control over the country’s network of high-voltage power lines could give Beijing leverage that it could wield to ensure that Laos remains a compliant “friend” of China.

As illustrated by the case of China-facing Laos, the distribution of despotism in Southeast Asia tends to reinforce the mainland-maritime divide. “Many have said over the years that ASEAN is a club of dictators,” a Human Rights Watch official observed in 2016.

That harsh judgment is less of an exaggeration than one would wish. According to Freedom House, six of the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are “Not Free”: Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. More than half of ASEAN is despotic by this measure, and of those six authoritarian members, five are on the mainland. The only maritime autocracy is tiny Brunei, an absolute monarchy perched on the coast of Borneo facing the South China Sea. The remaining four ASEAN states—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore—are all maritime and rated “Partly Free.” The lone “Free” country in the region is Timor-Leste, which occupies three neighboring bits of territory in the Indonesian archipelago and is not a member of ASEAN, although it would like to join.

Three crude descriptions follow: First, mainland Southeast Asia is autocratic. Second, maritime Southeast Asia is semi-democratic—a middle or mixed position reflected in the balance between the two smallest sea-linked states by population, autocratic Brunei and democratic Timor-Leste. Third, ASEAN’s membership tilts authoritarian, being six-tenths autocratic, four-tenths semi-democratic, and zero tenths democratic by Freedom House standards.

China’s Role: ‘Stability’ Over Democracy

How should China and its strategy be factored into these comparisons? Is geography destiny? Xi Jinping and his advisors would like their Southeast Asian counterparts to think so. Consider Beijing’s proposal for an ASEAN-China Community of Common Destiny. Does “community of common destiny” express China’s empathy, its presumption, or its intention to possess and preempt? Beijing wants its Southeast Asian neighbors to treat the idea of sharing a community as reassuring proof of how much and how sincerely China cares about them and their region. But a common destiny precludes divergent scenarios and destinations. If China’s destiny is to remain a party-state dictatorship under one leader for life, does Beijing want that same fate to encompass the rest of Southeast Asia? Does it strive to “mainlandize” the entire region by reinforcing top-down rule in “Not Free” Southeast Asia and making the “Partly Free” maritime states “Not Free” as well?

China is not evangelically despotic toward its neighbors in an ideological sense. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is an unexportable mishmash—oxymoronic in theory, contingent in practice, and parochial by its very name. As a candidate for travel beyond the PRC, it lacks legs. Nor is China counting on converting Southeast Asians into loyal fans of a Chinese model. Beijing is vigorously trying to bolster its soft power and incentivize its neighbors to acknowledge and join a Chinese sphere of regional influence voluntarily. The ASEAN states collectively are already China’s largest trading partner and vice versa. But if public diplomacy and economic embraces fail, it is fatalism, not communism, that Beijing is betting on.

Shorn of all pretense, Xi Jinping’s hope is that China’s southern neighbors will look at a map and give up. Why? Because, as the PRC’s current top diplomat Yang Jiechi famously told his ASEAN counterparts in 2010, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.” As if big China were saying to its small neighbors: Our common destiny is to experience and accept the disparity between us, for we and you are destined to remain unequal, whether you like it or not. Take the South China Sea. We—the PRC—were always destined to absorb nearly all of that body of water based on Chinese sovereignty “formed over the course of over two thousand years,” to quote Jiechi in 2016.

The South China Sea is not lebensraum. It is not viewed in Beijing the way Berlin saw Poland in August 1939. Nevertheless, Xi’s China continues to manufacture destiny with Chinese characteristics in the heartwater of Southeast Asia by creating maritime facts on the water that Southeast Asians cannot reverse. These include China’s forcible possession of land features claimed by ASEAN’s littoral states; its conversion of those features into military bases from which it can threaten the region; and its orchestration of at-sea collisions, near-collisions, encirclements, and swarmings to stop Southeast Asians from fishing or from lifting undersea oil and gas even within their own Exclusive Economic Zones, all in clear violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Beijing hopes that someday its control over the South China Sea and the land features it has weaponized there will be “just a fact” that ASEAN’s members will have had to accept, their lack of China’s size and strength having convinced them that they have no choice but to kowtow. Rather than trying to seed the region with despotisms in China’s image, Beijing prefers to encourage Southeast Asian fatalism, and with it the passivity and resignation to subservience that sheer necessity would imply.

Although China’s political template is authoritarian, Xi is not an evangelist for autocracy in Southeast Asia. If, as has been claimed, Xi’s China is “ideologically bankrupt,” it has no surplus in ideas to spend convincing the world to mimic its doctrine. As exportable advice, the formula that Beijing does represent—regime legitimation by economic performance—is more pragmatic than ideological. There are, nevertheless, three ways in which Chinese foreign policy in Southeast Asia affects, and is affected by, the more despotic character of ASEAN’s mainland compared with its maritime member states.

As it seeks to influence its neighbors and the world beyond, Xi’s China may be ideologically promiscuous. But Beijing does love stability. When Adam Prezorskwi described democracy as “institutionalized uncertainty,” he noted its potentially beneficial effect. The unpredictability of electoral outcomes in a democratic system is stabilizing insofar as it motivates a losing candidate not to turn against the system but rather to run again within it. The chance of victory—positive uncertainty—may warrant another try.

But institutionalized uncertainty is anathema to the Communist Party of China. The power and authority of the CPC under a could-be leader for life supplies the institutionalized certainty that a stable dictatorship needs—or thinks it needs—to survive. Rapid economic growth and the systematic forestalling of civil society in China continue at least to postpone recourse to another Tiananmen massacre. In roughly comparable ways, institutionalized repression in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam has helped keep those dictatorships stable—so far. Beijing’s faith in the stabilizing power of institutionalized certainty makes dealing with foreign despots a subjectively rational choice. And doing so can at least simplify Chinese diplomacy. Democracies have more actors who need to be taken into account, including critics of China whose barbs are protected speech.

Consider Myanmar. Given Beijing’s economic and strategic stake in using Myanmar as a way station for greater Chinese access to the Indian Ocean, Xi is probably furious that Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has rendered Myanmar unstable and unpredictable. The general’s regime is not innately pro-China. But Beijing likely calculates that a democratic alternative to military rule could jeopardize China’s position even more. In the days immediately following the Tatmadaw’s seizure of power, Beijing did not even acknowledge that a coup had taken place, calling it a mere “cabinet reshuffle” and blocking the UN Security Council from criticizing what had occurred. Inside Myanmar, anti-China protests ensued, with accusations stemming from rumors that China might even have encouraged the coup due to its own despotic character and inclination. The rumors sound unfounded, but the fact that they circulated among democracy-minded opponents of the junta could only reinforce Beijing’s preference for military rule.

Xi’s China craves praise. Chinese “wolf warrior” diplomats in Southeast Asia have not been shy about urging and thus implicitly requiring recipients of Chinese “gifts,” including vaccines for local use against the COVID-19 virus, to publicly thank China for its generosity—preferably in profuse terms. In a democracy that values personal worth more than hierarchical deference and obligatory gratitude, kowtowing may be unpopular. In contrast, under a despot, obligatory upward fawning may be normal and thus more easily performed to please a foreign donor. An authoritarian patron may welcome such expressions of fealty as signs of submission. In addition, China’s often visceral dismissal of foreign criticism, compared with the normality of critique in democratic states, would suggest that Beijing prefers to deal with leaders of governments that enforce gratitude for reasons of material dependence on China, as opposed to those who refuse to self-censor. Looking back and forward toward the future, China’s history as a presumptuous empire and its Xi-led quest for “rejuvenation” to recover former glory, before its “century of humiliation” by the West, are not conducive to comportment as a Westphalian state dealing on a basis of equality with other states.

Third and finally, if authoritarian China is about product with little regard for process, whereas democratic society reverses those priorities, it stands to reason that China’s policymakers may, other things being equal, prefer to partner with autocratic heads of state who can get things done, never mind how.

Pushing Back and Looking Forward

Deterministically structural explanations of China’s influence in Southeast Asia—size, proximity, a magnetic economy—overlook the human factor: the capacity of the region’s people and leaders to question and reject dependence on tectonic conditions that stack the deck in China’s favor. To Beijing’s likely chagrin, that capacity is amply evident in the opinions of elite-level Southeast Asians who follow their countries’ foreign affairs. The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s consecutive annual surveys of the views of these individuals have revealed their rising mistrust of China and, conversely, their rising trust of the United States.

Sampled in 2018, these elites mistrusted China and the United States in equal measure. In that year, 52 percent had little to no confidence that China would “do the right thing” in world affairs, while 51 percent said the same thing about the United States. But in 2019 and 2020, that pox on both houses has consistently and markedly evolved in China’s disfavor. By 2020, 63 percent of the Southeast Asian respondents mistrusted China, compared with 31 percent who mistrusted America. If that shift seems odd in light of the destabilizing idiosyncrasies of Donald Trump, it should be noted that the 2020 survey was conducted late in the final year of his presidency and the questions were about what China and the United States could be expected to do in the future. China’s hope for loyal neighbors received a further blow in the answers to a question about whether ASEAN, were it forced to align itself with one of the two big rivals, should side with China or with the United States. Although 39 percent of the respondents opted for China, 62 percent chose the United States.

Opinions are malleable. The popularities of China and the United States will fluctuate in tandem with future events. Although the survey research cited above has portrayed China as untrustworthy, expansionists in Beijing could take comfort in the data on Southeast Asian perceptions of relative power as a matter of fact, trustworthiness aside. Asked in 2020 which country or regional organization (such as ASEAN or the European Union) was the most influential economic power in Southeast Asia, 76 percent said China. Merely 7 percent named America. China won as well, though by a less overwhelming margin, when the same question was asked regarding political and strategic influence. That China is most consequential in those regards garnered 49 percent agreement, compared with 30 percent who thought the United States fitted that description. In effect, the survey inadvertently endorsed China’s cultivation of acquiescent fatalism in Southeast Asia—destiny over opportunity, realpolitik over moralpolitik—to the marginal advantage of Beijing.

China is not significantly or consistently more or less popular in mainland Southeast Asia than it is in the maritime part of the region. Mistrust of China, for example, is highest in mainland Vietnam and in the maritime Philippines, albeit for different reasons. The Vietnamese remember their history of resistance to domination by China and resent its current bullying in the South China Sea. The latter behavior also angers Filipinos, whose own post-colonial history has tended, with exceptions, to involve accommodation with the United States. But the existence of a structural straitjacket that a Sinocentric understanding of “common destiny” would imply is more evident in the countries located closer to China that are accordingly less able to ignore their huge, overbearing, and censorial neighbor.

China is not willfully spreading autocracy in Southeast Asia. China’s relations with its neighbors are motivated by interest not ideology. With the stark exception of Vietnam, however, one can envision an authoritarian symbiosis of sorts developing between despotic China and potential satellite despotisms along its southern land border. Myanmar could become a test case in this context. If the junta crushes the opposition, if ASEAN does little more than slap the wrist of its murderous member, and if Western outrage drives the Tatmadaw into China’s arms, the growth of a Chinese sphere of influence based on authoritarian connivance could someday even split ASEAN roughly into its northwestern-subcontinental and southeastern-archipelagic parts.

Nevertheless, at least for now, the bravery of the martyred Ma Kyal Sin and her co-protestors in Myanmar, and of their counterparts in Thailand protesting against their own military regime, evokes, at least for now, a less despotic and subordinated future for Southeast Asia. Authoritarian instability is not an oxymoron. China’s own domestic stability and prosperity are not guaranteed. Its soft power deficit is real, and its overreaching under Xi Jinping could continue to vindicate Southeast Asian distrust. In the months and years to come, major outside actors—the United States, Japan, and India among others—could work with autonomy-seeking Southeast Asian states to slow the Chinese juggernaut in Southeast Asia.

A fresh wave of democratization in Southeast Asia is not on the horizon. But the destiny of even the already undemocratic mainland portion of Southeast Asia is not—not yet at least—made in Beijing.