By Christine M. Leah
Even with nuclear and conventional arms agreements, the tasks of strategy do not go away.
Nuclear reductions and disarmament are not necessarily smart ideas. Even with the successful elimination of nuclear weapons, the tasks of strategy – deterrence, extended deterrence, and arms control – do not go away. Instead, they become even more difficult to manage. This is especially true for conventional arms control which, throughout history, has received very little attention in Asia. That is disturbing, given that Asia is now the center of global strategic gravity. Whilst nuclear disarmament will not happen any time soon (especially given escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia and China), U.S. President Barack Obama’s initial goals of further reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile should force us to think very carefully about the desirability of relying on conventional military balances for deterrence, because a world with significantly fewer nuclear weapons would graphically expose conventional imbalances between states, which in many instances have remained partially hidden in the current nuclear age. It is upon these imbalances that any remaining system of deterrence would increasingly rely.
This is where arms control might be able to contribute: to reduce the probability of war, and to minimize death and destruction if war comes. Article VI of the NPT, for instance, contains a conventional disarmament “obligation.” This raises an important question: To what extent should the nuclear weapon states focus on reducing their nuclear arsenals as a precondition for conventional disarmament? In other words, which comes first? We have tended to think that it would first be a good idea to reduce nuclear weapons before reducing conventional forces. However, the discourse by all the nuclear weapons states except the United States indicates that nuclear weapons are seen as but one component of the overall military balance between states. So we should ask: What are the prospects for conventional arms control agreements in the Asia-Pacific?
Read the full story at The Diplomat