 In the back? Yes, good. I'm Scott Sagan from Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. I want to welcome you to this panel. I've been asked in order to give time to our distinguished panelists not to introduce them in any detail, but to encourage you to get the app in which you can find their more fulsome biographies represented there. The instructions that I've been given and that I have passed on to them is that they are not to give speeches. They will begin by describing a scenario in which they think the use of nuclear weapons is most likely in their region or area of expertise. And they are to stop after four minutes with a nuclear weapons use and not describe what happens next because we're going to be comparing what could happen next throughout the panel discussion. And in order to deter lengthy speeches, I am going to, like Nikita Khrushchev, take off my shoe and pound it if someone goes on over the four minutes. We'll be going in alphabetical order, starting with Alexei Arbatov. How did you? Well, let me start with thanking Carnegie Endowment and, in particular, Carnegie Moscow Center. I recently left it, but I have spent there 13 years, which was a great time of my life, both professionally and socially. So thank you very much. By way of introduction, I would like to say that the most dangerous crisis might occur between Russia and the United States if their relations continue to deteriorate. In particular, in Russia, there was some hopes that the result of American elections would help to improve relations. Now these hopes are less pronounced. And if things go on like they were before, we may face a real clash in Eastern Europe. The new violence in Ukraine could erupt every day. The Minsk agreements are not implemented properly. And the technology is driving Russia and the United States towards lower and lower threshold of using not only tactical nuclear weapons, that is something that existed in the past, but even strategic nuclear weapons. And this technology is driving strategy and operational planning without any political guidance. At least that's how I see it. So I think that the order of priorities for Russian-American relations is all wrong. The order of priorities start to cooperate on fighting terrorism and then deal with everything else. I think this is not going to work. And the recent times have proved it. The first priority is to resolve the crisis in Ukraine and across post-Soviet space in general, the crisis between Russia and the West. Since Minsk agreements are not working properly, we have to supplement them with additional mechanisms to work. As Winston Churchill once said, however beautiful your strategy, you have to check results from time to time. So this relates to Minsk agreement, not changing them with something else, but helping to implement them. The saving INF Treaty is the number one priority and starting negotiations on the follow-on to start negotiations. And after that, if we move in this direction, make several positive steps, we would be able to coordinate our fight against terrorism much better than before, but not the other way around. And we need to have a nuclear weapon go off at the end of your four minutes. Yeah, the problem is that the planning is now going on for early use of nuclear weapons. If the war takes place, it will take place much closer to Russian borders than during the Cold War times. And Russian fears and stakes are that much more high, much higher. There are no mutually recognized dividing lines, either in Ukraine or Moldova, Georgia or Azerbaijan. And if the crisis erupts, it could draw into this violence Poland, Baltic states, Romania, Turkey. And that would draw NATO after those countries into direct clash with Russia. The conventional systems are developed now, which can be used against nuclear forces and CQB systems of nuclear forces. The technology is blurring the traditional lines between nuclear and conventional systems, between offensive and defensive systems, between regional and global systems. And this technology is getting out of control against the background of political confrontation and disintegration of nuclear arms control and nonproliferation regime. Thank you, Alexei. Yuri? Thank you. Well, I come from Estonia. And as Alexei mentioned, the Baltic Sea region, walking of Poland, the Baltic states, are often seen as a possible area for a military conflict. People say less about possible nuclear confrontation there. But obviously, when you speak about the military conflict, then the shadow of that option is always there. Now, let me say that the tensions, which, especially the media people, often see when flying into Estonia and looking for Russian troops pouring over the border or stuff like that. This is, of course, not the case. And I think we can take a very realistic point of view of what the risks are. Now, NATO, I believe, has done a lot to mitigate those potential risks, because after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is crossing the international-recognized borders, obviously, the military dimensions of deterrent became of crucial value. And let me point out three of them. It's enhanced forward presence, putting boots on the ground. It's recreating the concept of follow-on forces. And obviously, there is also a nuclear dimension, which perhaps few people noticed was actually discussed at the last NATO summit. And when it comes to particularly the Baltic states, and I will cast aside the option of a total nuclear exchange, then analysts have spoken of two possible options. One is a more sort of operational one, if you mean the use of tactical nuclear weapons in a conflict situation. You cannot exclude that Russian relevant concept says that in both local and regional wars, the deployment of tactical nuclear use, the tactical nuclear force, is possible. Very unlikely indeed, considering the real circumstances. The other, which I believe perhaps is a much more likely scenario, is whereby the use of nuclear force is threatened to de-escalate the situation. Russian Federation has this somewhat awkward concept, which could be summed up by saying escalate to de-escalate. And in the Baltic states, the area which can be covered with the so-called A2AD bubble, the nuclear force can be one of the tools of emphasizing that you shouldn't come, you shouldn't try to break the A2AD bubble, and the easiest way for the Allied forces to act is to de-escalate. Again, very unlikely that it would actually bring to any nuclear exchange simply because the stakes there are too high and the benefits are very, very, very low. Thank you. Thank you, Yuri. Vibhan Naran. Thanks to Carnegie for having me. I was asked to speak about South Asia. Everybody thinks they know the likeliest pathway to nuclear first use in South Asia. It is called a conventional wisdom for a reason. It starts with a terrorist attack presumed to be from Pakistan on an Indian metropole that kills score due to domestic political pressures banging for blood. The government of India orders the mobilization of its three main strike corps and commences offensive operations across the international border, not limiting its response to the Jammu and Kashmir sector and the line of control. The deepest thrust is undertaken by what's known as 21 Corps and its supporting elements in the desert sector. 21 Corps threatens to bisect Pakistan's north-south communication lines, putting Pakistani conventional forces on its heels. Unable to slow down 21 Corps, Pakistan flushes out, where we all know are now the Nasser Tactical Nuclear Weapons Batteries or Sabdali missiles, and its strategic plans division authorizes their use, either in demonstration shots against concentrated 21 Corps armor divisions or bridgeheads and logistics behind the main thrust to slow down the Indian offensive. India then promises what most presume is massive counter-value retaliation against Pakistani cities, leaving aside how credible or incredible that might be. This is how nuclear first use would unfold in South Asia, right? Well, maybe not so fast. There is increasing evidence that India will not allow Pakistan to go first and that India's opening salvo may not be conventional strikes trying to pick off Nasser batteries in the theater, but a full comprehensive and preemptive nuclear counter-force strike that attempts to completely disarm Pakistan of its nuclear weapons so that India does not have to engage in iterative tit-for-tat exchanges and expose its own cities to nuclear destruction. This thinking surfaces not from fringe extreme voices, such as, I dare say, Barth Karnad, or retired Indian Army officers frustrated by the lack of resolve they believe their government has shown since 1998, but from no less than a former Strategic Forces Command CNC, Lieutenant General B.S. Nagel, and perhaps more importantly, and authoritatively, from the highly respected and influential former National Security Advisor, Shiv Shankar Menon, in plain sight in his recent 2016 book Choices Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy. In short, we may be witnessing what I call a decoupling of Indian nuclear strategy between China and Pakistan. Although India threatens assured retaliation against China, those forces required to do so may allow it to pursue more aggressive strategies, such as escalation dominance or increasingly calls for a splendid first strike against Pakistan. But wait, you say, doesn't Indian official nuclear doctrine posture clearly espouse a no-first-use doctrine and threaten massive counter-value retaliation? As Scott Sagan and others, including myself, have pointed out, the sanctity of India's NFU has already eroded into its official doctrine by threatening nuclear use against chemical and biological weapons use, and the doctrine is silent about targeting, only threatening massive retaliation to inflict unacceptable damage. This could be counter-value and has long been presumed to be, but it does not have to be. Could this all be changing? Indeed, as Shiv Shankar Menon recently stated, India's nuclear doctrine has far greater flexibility than it gets credit for. First, although he ultimately concludes that no first use is ultimately in India's strategic interests, he further undermines its sanctity when he writes the following. There is a potential gray area as to when India would use nuclear weapons first against another nuclear weapon state. Circumstances are conceivable in which India might find it useful to strike first. For instance, against a nuclear weapon state that declared it would certainly use its weapons and if India were certain that its adversaries launched was imminent. In practice, this scenario could open the door for India to initiate preemptive nuclear use if, for example, it detected Pakistan moving tactical nuclear weapons batteries into the theater, no matter how imminent their use may actually be. Indian security managers would have no choice but to assume intent to use at that point. This thinking dovetails with the writings of former SFCCNC BS Noggle, who questioned the morality of no first use, particularly in a democratic state like India, asking how an Indian leadership could accept significant casualties if it knew a nuclear use by Pakistan were imminent. Just in November 2016, the sitting defense minister, Manohar Parikar, stated in his quote-unquote personal capacity insofar as that's possible that India should not declare one way or another, whether it would use nuclear weapons first or not. Increasingly, it is very clear that serious national security officials in India have every intention of moving away from a no first use policy. Menon clearly carves out an exception for preemptive Indian first use in the various scenario that is most likely to occur in South Asia. Indian leaders can disavow all of this as personal opinions, but when a sitting defense minister, a former strategic forces commander, and a highly respected national security advisor all question the sanctity of no first use, it all starts to add up. More interestingly, Menon elucidates what the nature of Indian first use might be. First, he refers to counter value targeting in the past tense. He writes quote-unquote instead the logical posture at first was counter value targeting or targeting an opponent's assets rather than counter force targeting, which concentrates on the enemy's military command structures, implying that the current strategy may have shifted. He further writes quote-unquote what would be credible would be the message India conveyed by how it configures its forces. If Pakistan were to use tactical nuclear weapons against India or believe to imminently be prepared to do so, even against Indian forces in Pakistan, it would effectively be opening the door to a massive Indian first strike, having crossed India's declared red lines. There would be little incentive once Pakistan had taken hostility to the nuclear level for India to limit its response, since that would only further escalation by Pakistan. India would hardly risk giving Pakistan the chance to carry out a massive nuclear strike of its own after the Indian force to Pakistan using tactical nuclear weapons. In other words, Pakistani tactical nuclear weapons use would effectively free India to undertake a comprehensive first strike against Pakistan unquote. Make no mistake he's talking about completely disarming Pakistan in an Indian nuclear strike so that it had no ability to retaliate in a third strike against Indian high value targets. In combination these paragraphs suggest that the party that goes first in the most likely pathway to nuclear first use in South Asia might not be Pakistan, but India if and when it believed that Pakistan might be ready across the nuclear threshold. Can India do this now? Almost certainly not. There's little evidence that it can find, fix and destroy Pakistan's nuclear forces in real time on land even if it believes that it only really needs to prioritize targeting the longer range strategic systems and can leave the tactical systems aside in order to achieve a significant damage limitation it is unclear whether India has a good fix of all the locations of Pakistani strategic forces. Vip and I'm taking off my shoe. All of the forces and capabilities that India needs to develop in order to achieve this strategy are being developed so our conventional understanding of South Asia's nuclear dynamics and who in fact might use nuclear weapons first and in what mode may need a hard rethink giving these emerging authoritative voices in India who are not content to see the nuclear initiative to Pakistan and this would mark a major shift in the Indian strategy if adopted and implemented a preemptive nuclear counter force by India with all of its attendant consequences. Thank you for not making me fulfill my threat. Caitlin tell me. Great thanks so much to Carnegie for the opportunity to participate. I was asked to speak about the possibility of U.S. China scenarios which I've looked at in some recent work specifically the possibility of potential Chinese nuclear escalation in the event of a conventional war with the United States and many of us kind of often wonder if China should even be discussed on a panel like this. We often don't worry about this problem too much because of course China has a long standing no first use pledge. It seems like it has highly centralized political control over nuclear weapons and so a lot of the potential dangers of nuclear use that we sometimes worry about with respect to other countries seem like maybe they wouldn't apply in the case of China and so those are all things that are kind of in the good news category. I think what's potentially in the bad news category is that if a conventional war did break out between the United States and China which admittedly is a low probability event although maybe less low probability than it used to be there's a good chance that the way that the United States might prosecute that conventional war could actually heighten the potential likelihood of Chinese nuclear use despite many of the factors that we often consider to be inhibitory of Chinese nuclear use and the main reason for this I think is that U.S. military strategy as China for conventional war sorts of scenarios is premised on rapidly short circuiting Chinese conventional military capabilities by engaging in a pretty extensive and in my view fairly aggressive series of air-enabled operations within the first island chain and even on the Chinese mainland and these would have implications potentially not only for China's conventional capabilities but also for the survivability of its still relatively small relatively fragile nuclear forces and this is especially true I think for potential conflict over Taiwan which is the scenario I've analyzed in the most depth because I think it would involve the highest stakes for China and arguably for the United States as well and also be likely to see the most large scale conventional fighting of the type that might activate some of the dynamics that I think are potentially of concern when you sit down and start to actually look for example at the U.S. target set of Chinese air defenses and missile bases, launch brigades launch sites, communications network networks, conventional ground forces conventional naval forces and transportation networks that a large scale U.S. conventional campaign would potentially encompass along the coast and inside eastern and potentially southeastern China depending on what type of scenario you're talking about this is a conventional campaign that actually has a significant potential to erode some components of China's retaliatory capability both directly and indirectly for example by going after conventional forces that are vital to the protection and support and operation of nuclear forces now China of course in the midst of this sort of campaign would still have some residual nuclear capability if for no other reason than many of China's most important nuclear assets are not located on the coast or located in interior China in areas that are not going to be geographically proximate to the most likely locations of the U.S. campaign but I think the critical question at that juncture is how China is likely to assess the residual survivability of that set of remaining nuclear forces and how China is likely to view the requirements of nuclear deterrence in a world where it's just experienced a really significant conventional deterrence failure which by definition is the world that we would be in if we were talking about a significant war between the United States and China over something like Taiwan and I think it's quite possible that in the midst of that sort of major conventional conflict seeing the United States starting to erode significant components of the nuclear deterrent or components of its conventional forces relevant to its nuclear deterrent China might start to infer that U.S. ambitions are unlimited that it's seeking potentially to gear up for an actual counter force campaign which might be a prelude to things like regime change and it you know sounds kind of crazy to talk about in peace time but actually when we look at the behavior of states in the midst of serious conventional wars especially unanticipated conventional wars that aren't going as well as countries might have expected them to states often radically and more pessimistically reassess the intentions of their adversaries and reassess what they might be willing to do to stop their adversaries and in fact when we look at China's only past instance of fighting a conventional war against a nuclear armed state the Soviet Union in 1969 we see that in fact China radically engaged in this sort of reassessment of Soviet intentions and in fact came very close to the precipice of preparing to use its nuclear weapons and so I think China could potentially in this sort of scenario see forms of limited nuclear escalation as a way to respond to a U.S. campaign that started to have these glimmers of potential counter force implications and I could basically see this taking two forms one is China could use nuclear weapons in a limited fashion for military advantage so for example it could use a nuclear weapon to try to expeditiously halt the components of a U.S. conventional campaign that it found to have the most threatening counter force implications so going after a U.S. air base or U.S. carrier strike group that was for example tearing down the air defenses that were protecting not only China's conventional forces but its nuclear forces or I think China could engage in limited nuclear use for coercive purposes for bargaining or signaling purposes for example a demonstration strike or strike against an isolated military target not for purposes of pure operational advantage but rather to signal to the United States that China is being crossed and that China considered the war to be taking on potential nuclear implications and in fact despite China's no first use pledge it has left ambiguity about whether it would consider the sorts of conventional attacks that I'm talking about on its nuclear or nuclear relevant forces to vitiate that pledge and so those are some things that I worry about. Let me use some comments to reflect on others that have been made about the desperate demonstration strike or the Neuron scenario about preemption in a war are the kinds of scenarios that you might have in mind Alexei and Yuri but you didn't say with specificity are you worried about first use by Russia in a preemptive manner because they're fear use by NATO or are you worried about a demonstration strike what specifically would you worry about the same question for Yuri? I was meaning that US or NATO precision guidance systems could attack Russian nuclear forces early warning raiders bombers and submarines which are collocated at bases in case of even a limited clash between Russia and NATO and that would provoke Russian response with nuclear weapons second point is that if there is a military confrontation which grows into a direct conflict then there will be no such thing as isolated local theater the present technology would immediately make it global just by the nature of technology and operational planning then most new US weapons in particular tactical B-61-12 bomb it's both strategic and tactical all new Russian systems sea and air based cruise missiles are dual purpose systems Russia is developing hypersonic systems just like the United States which also will be dual purpose system will be deployed probably on strategic launchers so we are facing technology which is really getting out of control and if there is just one match which brings us into direct collision all this technology will start working the paradox of today compared to 25 years ago we have an order of magnitude fewer nuclear weapons and we have a very stable strategic balance by definitions of the past no possibility of disarming nuclear strike nonetheless precisely in this situation selective use of tactical and strategic systems is contemplated by new communities in Russia it is a famous de-escalation strategy which was declared in 2003 and which never cancelled and you do not know how it is today probably still is being elaborated in the United States it's tailored limited nuclear options which are discussed now I do not imagine 30 years ago Gorbachev signed a declaration that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought can you imagine presently such a joint declaration negotiated and made public by American and Russian president would be very difficult they have never neither Russian president nor previous American presidents have never reconfirmed they believe in that neither do the leaders of the 7 nuclear weapons states have never pronounced such a declaration it doesn't mean that Russian and American leaders want nuclear war or hope to win in a nuclear war but they consider nuclear weapons as an effective mechanism to oppose aggression and that is stated in Russian military doctrine and in American nuclear posture however most of the conflicts after 1945 planned massive aggression but rather the crisis getting out of hand who was the aggressor during the Cuban Missile Crisis who was the aggressor during the war in the Middle East in 1957 in 1973 and we could face such a situation in the future because of the new very deep conflict and confrontation between Russia and the West and the leaders will find themselves in a situation when they are immediately losing control of a defense establishment on forces and the military technology which is being used according to operational plans which they never had seriously discussed and understood in advance Yuri, what specific scenarios are you most worried about? Well unfortunately there are specific scenarios which have been sort of realizing elsewhere and the main scenario I of course keep in mind and I would say many people in the Baltic states keep in mind is the Ukrainian scenario the Crimean scenario East Ukraine where you have one country a nuclear power crossing the internationally recognized borders which this country itself has recognized in many documents with conventional military forces and in addition to that bringing this nuclear component to play not so much sort of with any operational or tactical moves but with kind of visibility with declarations you remember Putin said in a newscast in a documentary he said afterwards you know that we had the nuclear weapons ready or during the conflict he said everybody should recognize that Russia is a massive nuclear power now signals like that are clearly meant to indicate that in addition to conventional aspects there is always the possibility of the nuclear aspect but we are not talking about the real military scenario I mean it has existed it has happened it is still happening so it is clear that in the Baltic states people are concerned that while we believe in the unity of NATO and readiness to protect us it is very important that NATO leaders would recognize that this readiness should also entail readiness to disregard what I would call a nuclear bluff kind of if you come we will do this or we will do that this is very likely to emerge should there be a crisis scenario very very likely so we have to psychologically understand that this option is there I am not speaking about the use I am speaking about the bluster that is certainly an issue when it comes to the NATO side obviously since Estonia is a member of NATO we do not see options of NATO behaving aggressively in our neighborhood we believe very much that NATO is a protective organization and I mean I have always or often been critical of the Russian military for various reasons but I know that they can count some people are saying putting a NATO battalion to Estonia would somehow exponentially raise the risk level I believe exactly the contrary I believe that this is a symbol of a serious NATO commitment which in effect avoids the risk of escalation at the same time a battalion speaks to all generals that we are talking about the military force compared to the enormous capabilities on the other side of the border I will not argue about Putin's quotations I am not his advocate but he didn't say what you said it was a different way that's not so important what is important is that of course NATO is a defensive alliance politically but this defensive alliance has moved to Russian borders during the last quarter century not the other way around and besides this nuclear paradox which I described there is a conventional paradox because the West looks at Russia and sees a conventional superiority over its weak neighbors and Russia disregarding and discarding the fears and concerns of those neighbors but Russia looking west considers those modest deployments as the forward echelon of a superior NATO conventional forces deployed across the rest of Europe and across the Atlantic deployed to Russian borders in contrast to strategic balance which we perceive more or less in the same way we look at this conventional balance in absolutely incompatible ways and that is an important issue which is to be resolved not by blaming each other in aggressiveness although I would not approve everything that Russia is doing in this geographical area but to understand this asymmetry and to deal with it diplomatically through all kinds of confidence-building transparency limiting exercises and eventually reducing force deployments as a first step for instance agreeing that NATO would not deploy more forces in the forward area than it has decided to deploy during this initial step and Russia will stop built up over its conventional forces in its territory in western and southern military districts there are two words that have not been spoken in this panel so far that I'm very surprised at Donald Trump maybe starting with I meant him in my initial state I got some hints maybe starting on this side do you have thoughts on how Katelyn and Vipin start with you and how a Trump presidency makes a difference in the scenarios that you're talking about or does it Katelyn? I'll jump in with just a couple of comments I mean the gist of the scenario that I was mentioning is that the United States in conducting a potential conventional campaign against China in defense of an ally Taiwan you can also imagine other scenarios in the region maybe even in East China Sea could in the US design be a conventional campaign aimed at Chinese conventional capabilities but could be misread by China as potentially having implications for the survivability of Chinese nuclear forces particularly because as I mentioned some components of the conventional campaign have the ability to infringe or even directly go after or threaten some components of Chinese nuclear forces and I'd be happy to talk in more detail about that but what I want to get across though is that the problem has to do with whether the United States fully appreciates how its military campaign may look to China and some of the pressures that that conventional campaign may place on Chinese Chinese nuclear capabilities and how Chinese leaders might react to that threat under the pressures of an intense conventional war and so one way to potentially ameliorate that problem or to think about how the United States might avoid it would be for there to be some strategic empathy in the design of US policy to have the ability among US policy makers and particularly campaign planners, military campaign planners to think about how are these actions going to be interpreted by our opponent do they have the ability to look more threatening particularly given kind of war time dynamics than perhaps we intend them to be and therefore to contribute to escalation that might be unintended and so I guess my only comment in response to your question would be that we should consider whether recent developments perhaps may make that more difficult whether we have leaders that are going to be taking into consideration those sorts of factors in designing a campaign and perhaps even more worrisome, I worry a bit that maybe we actually have leaders who are moving maybe in the other direction where they would be happy to have the US conventional campaign pose these potential types of threats and maybe not fully appreciate how our adversaries potentially would interpret them and react. I think to the extent that a Trump presidency affects South Asia it's really on the posture side when President Trump tweets about expanding and strengthening US nuclear arsenal I think that opens the floodgates for India and Pakistan to do so and both India and Pakistan are in the midst of an arms race, both are increasing their arsenal sizes both are increasing the diversity of their platforms and so if the US gives license to regional powers to also expand and modernize their arsenals or even resumes nuclear testing for example, both India and Pakistan are trying to miniaturize warheads India is trying to develop MIRV so is Pakistan Pakistan with the tactical nuclear weapons if the US were to resume testing nuclear weapons these regional states would follow suit and that would really accelerate their ability to develop more accurate smaller mobile missile sorry warheads for their mobile missile systems and that would really accelerate I think some of the worst dynamics in the South Asia arms race let me push a little further on this question because I've written in the past about the commitment trap problem that someone makes a threat for deterrent purposes not anticipating using implementing the threat and then the threat fails and public pressures encourage a leader to follow through on his or her threats we have today a president who not just worries about domestic political pressure but presidential pride to follow through on threats could be an important element here which I worry about Alexi do you worry about Putin feeling he has to follow through on threats if what you recall the bluff was seen as a bluff and therefore does commitment trap dynamics encourage use well such a tremendous decision as a decision to use nuclear weapons is not to be taken under public pressure if it is ever taken it will be a decision taken to avoid crushing defeat and in Russian doctrine it says that Russia may use nuclear weapons first if attacked by conventional forces which threaten the very state hood of the Russian Federation of course the state hood is a very unclear notion but it means that it's only in a very serious situation and not just to live up to one's bluff it's to avoid something that would be a disaster for the state that's how I see it with respect to President Trump I think one issue is becoming more or less clear he will not be interested in arms control as much as the preceding administration he does not have people around him who are knowledgeable in arms control as for instance as Carter was as your secretary of defense so if Russia will not take in its hands this issue and does not start much more active policy regarding INF treaty controversies follow on to start and other things then nuclear arms control regime is in a very big trouble and I do not think that there will be anything left of it in several years the other scenario that was never discussed here is to my mind as likely and perhaps more likely than the ones that were which is a nuclear use on the Korean peninsula some of the dynamics of what Thomas Schelling used to call the mutual alarm the reciprocal fear of surprise attack I think are strong there and have been I think heightened by recent statements from Secretary Tillerson openly talking about all options being on the table including what has been called anticipatory self defense do you worry about North Korea as much as you worry about the scenarios that you were asked to speak about today and if not why not so I actually worry about North Korea probably more than any of the scenarios that we were asked to speak about because I think to put it very simply North Korea does not have a lot of other good strategic ways of talking about take place there right I think and several others I think almost all of the dynamics that we all talked about and some additional ones because North Korean conventional capability is so weak they're you know the smart move for them in some ways I can see themselves you know saying to themselves is to have the ability to at least threaten or actually use nuclear weapons early on for any of the purposes that we've talked about to stalemate US conventional forces actively as you kind of alluded to paralyze or find and destroy North Korean nuclear forces very early in a conflict so I worry about that I also worry about the things the United States that the things the United States might do to potentially deal with potential North Korean nuclear use create cross pressures and problems in trying to prevent nuclear use in some of these other scenarios that we've talked about so for example you know I think if you believe that the United States on the first day of a war with North Korea needs to have the ability to find the KNOA it's the potential road mobile North Korean ICBMs the capabilities that the United States is developing and would be developing presumably to conduct those sorts of operations like having you know synthetic aperture radar mounted on satellites to hunt mobile targets things along those lines and if you think the United States needs to be able to you know shoot down potential North Korean missiles by deploying missile defenses in the region again not an unreasonable proposition that's all well and good but China I think in the region looks at US development of those exact same capabilities capabilities for counter force capabilities for damage limitation and I think that plays into potential Chinese fears in the event that we were in a conventional conflict with China that the United States has these capabilities that it could also be using against China and so you know not only do I worry about North Korea you know along the scenario that you mentioned but I worry that many of the things we would probably rightly be doing to to solve that problem or to try to deal with it on the first day of a war with North Korea if we got into a war with China really could potentially raise some of those Chinese suspicions that could lead to escalation for other reasons in that scenario so it's thorny. Other kind of dipping. Yeah I mean states with small arsenals where they worry about the survivability of those arsenals and are under direct pressure scare me and then you know states with leaders where the information processing is as pathological as is in North Korea terrify me if you're in North Korea and you think that the Americans and the rock are coming your smartest move is to go early and go massively because you don't know what's going to survive and you know there is we've talked about benefits of the survivability and I think Pakistan and India are getting to numbers where the idea of splendid first strike is hard to really envision despite what the Indian thinking may be evolving toward but against North Korea it's plausible and so you're getting into territory of first strike instability and then you add the pathologies of leadership on top of it and I don't think you know we haven't lived in our generation through anything potentially that terrifying. Yuri or Alex say anything on this or should we move questions from the audience? I could comment on that please. I cannot conceive of a situation where North Korea would start a massive conventional war or use its nuclear weapons because Korea needs its nuclear weapons to consolidate the regime and to tell North Korean people that they are advanced and so on they are nuclear power and so on but I can easily conceive of North Korea continuing continuing testing nuclear weapons and developing intercontinental ballistic missiles and if here in the United States this is considered intolerable and the United States use conventional forces to destroy to disarm North Korea then it might use nuclear weapons if any are left after such an attack. I would just note that a few years ago I was doing research in the Saddam Hussein archives here at the National Defense University and saw so many examples of Saddam's yes men telling him that his military capability was much greater than it was because he had asked them to get that capability and when they couldn't get it of course they couldn't tell him that. I worry for example when you see the pictures of Kim Jong-un with his generals and missiles on the drawing boards launching towards the United States that may just be pure propaganda but it could also be propaganda for their their lone leader and in these scenarios I think we need to worry very deeply about how much understanding he has of his own military limitations but as little as he has of the understanding he cannot imagine that North Korea would survive after American retaliation and they do not have any ballistic missile defense at all and would never have it. Fair enough. Let's open this up to the audience. There are microphones scattered on each area I will call on individuals if you could state your name and your affiliation and then ask a question addressed to one or more of the members of the group. Please. My name is Laura Rockwood I'm with the VC DNP I apologize I missed the very last part of what Alexei said but I didn't hear anybody posit the hypothetical of the United States taking the first action in the use of a nuclear weapon. Is that so inconceivable that we can't posit that as a hypothetical given what we're dealing with in today's environment? Who would like to answer that? Could it absolutely never happen? We can't roll anything out but I would say that nuclear weapons are most useful as a last resort. I think none of the scenarios we're talking about here are ones where states would relish the prospect of using nuclear weapons I think states would see the use of nuclear weapons in all of the contingencies we have discussed as the least bad option and I think the reality for the United States is given its incredible conventional military capabilities it strikes me as really unlikely that the United States would reach that precipice before an adversary did it seems like the United States has so many potential alternatives all the scenarios we were talking about or situations where states might believe that they didn't have a good conventional alternative and so I think for that reason US nuclear use is often considered much much much lower probability I would note that Alexei go ahead. After you. I would just note that in an article published in the American Political Science Review a few years back when Valentino Darrell Press and I demonstrated that 20% of the American public wants to use nuclear weapons against terrorists even when told in the scenario that they don't need to use nuclear weapons that we have conventional capabilities that are sufficient and that that's 20% that prefers to 60% would approve of that use if the president chose to do so some of these dynamics are very worrisome in this and in other scenarios. Alexei. The United States from the very beginning the United States had a strategy of first use of nuclear weapons and first use of strategic weapons only in the 70's that started to change with negotiations and strategic parity and so on but of course when we are talking about use of nuclear weapons we are talking about very drastic situation and that reminds me one of my arguments with one of Russian at that time Soviet generals when Brezhnev declared in 1982 no first use no nuclear first use on the part of the Soviet Union and that one of the closed sessions one general was describing how effective nuclear weapons might be used in a theater war and I ask him how about the declaration by comrade Brezhnev Soviet Union will never use nuclear weapons first and he was confused and thought for some time and then said but we will never be first to use it in peacetime next question Howard Moreland retired journalist and activist first of all this is an excellent plenary almost all my questions have been answered by the panel my question is basically the same as the other question about the US nuclear first use and I would like to focus on the football the nuclear launch codes which are supposed to be within arms range of the president at all times now in our missile silos it takes two officers to turn the key at the same time but that football is just for the president and my understanding is the plan would be preemptive massive preemptive strike against Russia that's what our weapons are designed for and that's the only use that would require the president to be able to grab the codes and launch them immediately and these codes are now in the hands of a man who has no impulse control over his twitter account and I would seriously wonder if he's even in the early stages of early stage dementia I think we ought to look at what can you put this into a question please shouldn't we look at what these launch codes are what permission have we given to Donald Trump by these launch codes who wants to answer that I would just note that there is a bill that's been introduced trying to add extra a two-man rule to the command and control system that currently does not have such a rule at the highest level yes my name is James Rani I'm a retired law professor and I'd like to second the comments of the earlier this is a brilliant panel I have something from a draft of a book I've written that I thought would be relevant to the comments by Mr. Rani it's by a Cold War warrior Paul Nitsi obviously explaining the danger of what I call in my book a pre-preemptive preventive strike and Nitsi says that anticipating a preemptive strike by the other a country might well feel it should strike even sooner than planned to head off the other countries preemptive blow I could foresee the possibility of a situation arising in which there would be such an interaction of fear that it would be almost impossible to conceive how statesmen could prevent the situation from deteriorating into war so I'd invite Mr. Narang's comments is that right is the question well since Professor Sagan who taught me everything I know about nuclear weapons was about to hit me with a shoe I couldn't I mean obviously there are we don't talk about the risks of the Indian strategy obviously if the Pakistanis think the Indians are going to go first they have every incentive to go first and go massively if Pakistan even believes that India is heading in this direction is entering the phase in the Cold War when the US and the Soviet Union had first strike instability and it's very very dangerous and so I don't know one of the reasons why I want to surface this debate and we started doing it in the South Asian nuclear community because this debate needs to be had about whether this is a good idea you understand the logic from the Indian side the sterile logic is why should we allow Pakistan to be able to retaliate against our retaliation we should just disarm them completely but that kind of thinking very quickly leads to the kind of instabilities that you talked about thank you sir very quickly I mean this has been covered already but I think one of the challenges we are facing today is and Alexi mentioned it in his intervention is that the rules of the game are not clear and when I speak rules of the game I also mean the system of escalation I mean during the Cold War the aspect which avoided massive strikes and counter strikes or any use of nuclear weapons was the clear ladder of escalation which was possible from leading us with the smallest sort of use of low level tactical nuclear weapon to the highest and most damaging exchange nowadays this connection this ladder has been well you might say it has been broken so it is not clear anymore what will lead to what and I believe that could be one of the potential risks when we speak about the leaders coming to the idea of a limited strike or escalate to the escalate or some of these more limited options I think that is something which which is there the new rules are not clear but it is also because the nature of the countries we are talking about has changed the nature of technology has changed that is clearly something which we have to consider I could agree more and I would like to emphasize something which I believe very important the present situation is very different from the past strategic nuclear weapons may be used not to avoid destruction on the ground like before before launch under attack launch on warning was considered as a possible operation because strategic forces could be vulnerable to counter force attack not anymore for instance look at Russian strategic forces the new heavy missile which is called Sarmat will be put in silos in the same silos in which old missiles were those silos have become vulnerable 40 years ago and will remain vulnerable they may be used in a selective use of nuclear weapons because there is a whole theory which is called airspace warfare in Russian literature in discussions there is a strong believe in Russian strategic community and at the very top political level that American conventional superiority in long range precision guided systems could threaten Russian strategic forces conventional forces industrial forces and then Russia after defending its forces as much as it can with airspace defense it's a new armed service which is designed for that but after defending as much as it can would be obliged to use selectively strategic nuclear weapons to de-escalate to stop this warfare so but as we mentioned before the crisis may develop in a very different mode and very quickly jump to the top stage of escalation and I think that is why the nuclear first use and nuclear use in general is presently the great danger in strategic relationship between Russia and the United States and the absence of any negotiations we have not been having negotiations for six years after ratification of the new start treaty there is no contact no understanding between the military of their strategic thinking we exchange information on reduction of strategic forces but we have lost completely mutual understanding of the role of nuclear weapons of the way war may start of the way deterrence works of the role in deterrence of conventional offensive and defensive systems and that is a very very it's a reason for a very serious concern over on the side yes good morning my name is Carlo Trezza from Istituto Affari Internazional in Rome my question goes in particular to Alexei Arbatov because he mentioned the fact that the most immediate risks should be addressed to avoid the perspective of nuclear war and so I would like to ask him to address the issue which has been developed in Europe in particular by the European leadership network of the hazardous incidents military incidents which would could take place or and sometimes already take place between Russian and NATO air sea forces and also on the ground whether these incidents cannot open the possibility of a nuclear conflict at the end thank you well I couldn't support more enthusiastically this work of European leadership network and I think that the danger of incidents is a serious problem maybe in a normal situation of military exercises which are now taking place in very close proximity to each other by Russia and NATO military accident would not necessarily lead to to confrontation and to a conflict but if this happens against the background of political crisis say in Ukraine and is perceived as a test of force by one of the other side it could immediately lead to massive escalation and that's why I said that before that that the escalate our military confrontation in Europe is the number one task in parallel with Ukrainian problem which has to be resolved we cannot leave it it will not dissolve on its own we have to apply major efforts to move forward with resolving the Ukrainian issue Yuri you had to comment on this yeah I agree that the work done on the hazardous military incidents theme is important but here I would like to make kind of a caveat or a note that we cannot allow these incidents to artificially be created to a negotiating trump card if I can use that word