Introduction
Thank you to Dr. John Hamre, Seth Jones, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies for hosting us today, ladies and gentlemen.
And thank you to everyone who joined us in person or virtually at CSIS.
I must start by discussing the conflict in Ukraine.
The dreadful milestone of 150 days since Putin started this unjustified, illegal war, inflicting untold suffering on the defenceless people of Ukraine, was recently reached.
I’m afraid the conflict fits a pattern of reckless and intentional behaviour by Russia to undermine the international security system.
The unauthorised annexation of Crimea, the use of chemical and radiological weapons on British soil, and the numerous violations that led to the INF Treaty’s collapse are all examples of this pattern.
And as a global community, we will continue to hold Russia responsible for its destabilising actions.
new security directive
What is taking place in Ukraine is also a symptom of a much larger struggle over the future of the post-Cold War international system.
This contest has profound implications.
The outcome will determine whether we live in a world where regionally aggressive powers like China and Russia can pursue’might is right’ agendas unchecked or a world where all states can ensure their sovereignty, competition does not escalate into conflict, and we work together to protect the planet.
As this competition progresses, a perilous new era of proliferation is beginning, one in which more weapons systems are readily available and whose damage potential is growing as a result of technological advancement.
We must begin considering the new security order.
Both the renewal of an effective arms control framework and effective deterrence in all of its forms, which together have historically ensured strategic stability, require immediate attention.
Recently, it has been urged upon policy makers to develop skills for navigating chaos.
That is helpful advice in part. But as we get ready to navigate the challenging terrain ahead, it’s crucial to construct some handrails to direct our thinking.
In the 1950s and 1960s, decision-makers had to navigate a similar hazy landscape.
Since the development of nuclear weapons, there has been conflict between “strength” and “stability.”
Both “strength” and “stability” are characterised by having the quickness, initiative, and surprise necessary to ensure security.
Academics and decision-makers created the idea of strategic stability during this time, building on the ideas of Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Samuel Huntington.
Strategic stability, put simply, was the creation of a balance that reduced the possibility of nuclear conflict.
It acknowledged the necessity of ongoing communication in a climate of “competitive armament.”
It was carried out primarily through the use of deterrence and arms control.
NATO reaffirmed the importance of strategic stability to our collective security in Madrid last month.
However, we must be upfront about the danger to strategic stability.
Because of Herman Kahn, during the Cold War, we thought in terms of escalation ladders: generally predictable, linear processes that could be watched and addressed.
Due to advances in science and technology, particularly rapid technical growth, the transition to hybrid warfare, and growing rivalry in new domains like space and cyber, we now face a considerably wider spectrum of strategic threats and paths to escalation.
All of these are made worse by Russia’s persistent transgressions of its treaty obligations, China’s rapid and massive buildup of conventional and nuclear weapons, and Russia’s disregard for any engagement with arms control agreements.
Indeed, the former and current directors of the CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues, Rebecca Hersman and Heather Williams, have argued that escalation wormholes—rapid, unpredictable failures in the deterrence system that lead to strategic conflict—are now more likely to occur.
Furthermore, despite some worrying hiccups, the two monolithic blocks of the Cold War, the USSR and NATO, were able to agree on a doctrine that is no longer shared.
Moscow, Beijing, let alone Pyongyang or Tehran, have murky doctrine.
In order to prevent a collapse into uncontrolled conflict, the question is how to re-establish strategic stability for the new era while finding a balance amid unprecedented complexity.
The new NATO Strategic Concept outlines the course we must now take.
It will be challenging. But we must try out of moral and practical obligation.
A wider-ranging and more comprehensive strategy
The circle can only be squared if we renew arms control and deterrence while adopting a more comprehensive strategy.
The UK published the Integrated Review in March of last year, which was the most comprehensive and in-depth examination of foreign relations and national security since the end of the Cold War.
The Integrated Review’s focus on integration was a deliberate response to the blending of the lines separating domestic and foreign policy, trade and development, prosperity and security, and war and peace.
We have already begun to move toward deeper integration in our deterrence strategy in both the US and the UK.
From the UK’s perspective, integrated deterrence entails using all available tools of state power to achieve a goal, including political, diplomatic, economic, and military ones.
It entails adjusting our responses—military, diplomatic, or economic—to the unique situation while taking into account our understanding of the objectives of our enemies.
Integrating efforts across government and society at large is another aspect of integrated deterrence.
It entails collaborating more closely with our allies and partners – through NATO, as well as new organisations like AUKUS – and fortifying our ties with allies in the Euro-Atlantic, Indo-Pacific, and globally.
And we need to improve and strengthen deterrence by denial, which is perhaps long overdue.
We must make sure that the weak can defend themselves in order to prevent violence in the first place in a time of revanchist hostile powers committed to the idea of zones of influence.
However, preventing this from causing unavoidable proliferation is a key challenge.
The next step should be to advance a dynamic new agenda that is multi-domain, multi-capable, and brings together a much wider range of actors in order to develop our thinking on integrated weapons control.
In the past, regimes that placed restrictions on particular capabilities have made up arms control, combined with discussions about strategic stability aimed at lowering risk.
The Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons are just a few examples of the existing architecture that is still essential.
For the past 52 years, the NPT has served as the cornerstone of nuclear security and civil nuclear prosperity, and the UK is still committed to seeing it fully implemented.
At the upcoming Review Conference, we will collaborate with all States Parties to reinforce the treaty as the unbreakable cornerstone and framework for our joint initiatives.
However, the truth is that the things we need from a contemporary arms control system will not be achieved by the current mechanisms by themselves.
Despite providing the conflict resolution, confidence-building, and transparency that Moscow claims to want and that reason would suggest it should want, many other long-standing agreements have collapsed as a result of Russian violations.
These include Open Skies, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, all of which were created to promote stability in the Euro-Atlantic region.
Other proposals, like the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, simply do not take into account the challenges that must be overcome to accomplish comprehensive disarmament on a long-term basis.
Additionally, many of the frameworks still in use were created for a reality that is no longer real.
They provide uneven coverage and leave out several potentially dangerous current and developing technologies;
They frequently rely on a distinct differentiation between cases for civilian and military use;
They were primarily created for a bipolar environment;
They don’t completely account for how quickly technology is developing and how quickly information is shared, which can undermine the effectiveness of control lists.
Additionally, they rely on an information environment that is becoming more corruptible and susceptible to false information.
Including weapons control in all spheres of proliferation
Additional integrated arms control will need to cover a number of interconnected and converging proliferation categories.
First, we must examine the broad range of weapons, including cyber weapons, low-tech drones, small arms and light weapons, chemical and biological capabilities, where entry and ownership barriers are low and decreasing.
Although the verdict is still out on cyber, these weapons may not be able to change the strategic balance on their own, but they will interact in unpredictable ways with more general strategic competition.
Second, we must examine new weaponry or technological advancements that could only be made by superpowers and that pose a threat to the strategic equilibrium.
Cyber is once again a crucial capacity in this group, along with space-based systems, “genetic weapons,” nuclear-powered cruise missiles, directed energy weapons, and hypersonic gliders.
We must also maintain vigilance because as technology advances, some of the second group may eventually change into the first.
For instance, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, only three states have specific land-attack cruise missiles in 2001.
Today, these weapons are available to at least 23 states and one non-state actor. That final point is crucial. Without adequate control, many non-state actors could acquire new abilities.
Thirdly, we must constantly be on the lookout for traditional nuclear weapons being developed by rogue states.
These weapons are dangerous on their own, of course, but they also run the risk of encouraging their regional neighbours to follow suit.
A nuclear war cannot be won and should never be waged, as the P5 leaders agreed in January of this year and as Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev said in a memorable way.
A fourth category is the fact that current nuclear powers are funding cutting-edge nuclear research and building new “warfighting” nuclear capabilities, which they are incorporating into their military doctrines and political rhetoric in an effort to exert pressure on others.
For instance, China’s nuclear modernization programme, which will increase the quantity and variety of nuclear weapon systems in its arsenal, is a cause for serious concern.
When taken as a whole, this is a terrifying prospect.
Our long-term objective should still be binding legal structures.
However, there is no chance that the main countries will band together very soon to forge new agreements.
Therefore, as agreed upon in the NATO Strategic Concept, reducing strategic risk should be our urgent priority.
Integrated arms control principles
I’d want to provide four guiding ideas for how we should pursue integrated weapons control now.
The first rule is that we ought to have a practical emphasis on forming and controlling behaviours.
That does not preclude the creation of fresh legal agreements to govern capabilities.
Where they are helpful and feasible, we should continue to pursue them.
We should also look for opportunities to upgrade current ones, as the UK did when it supported the extension of New START.
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy due to the scope and complexity of the proliferation landscape.
Setting red lines for the grey zone Since it develops as the new arena for strategic competition, we need to establish new standards for behaviour in the context of hybrid and technologically enabled warfare.
By elevating our thinking above tit-for-tat exchanges on specific systems or technology, it is more probable that we will be able to discover an initial point of agreement and mutual benefit.
And we can be inspired by, for instance, the effort our two nations have spearheaded in the UN to establish a framework to lower space dangers through standards, guidelines, and principles.
This has sparked a worldwide debate about what constitutes responsible space behaviour.
Here, I applaud the US for pledging not to test damaging, direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles earlier this year.
This model of norms and behaviours already has solid groundwork for growth.
For instance, the UK Attorney General stressed the significance of applying non-intervention principles to the cyberspace earlier this year.
She suggested holding an international conference on the kinds of online behaviour that might be illegal during times of peace, like using the internet to sabotage the distribution of life-saving drugs or vaccines.
The second tenet is that we ought to broaden the discussion.
Major powers have historically been in charge of maintaining strategic stability.
However, this group cannot negotiate strategic stability on its own in the current environment.
There remains a clear need for certain, specific conversations between limited partners.
But we need to make a far stronger case that building and maintaining stability is in every nation’s interest and that there is a shared pool of responsibility.
Future deliberations on arms control should – where appropriate – be global by design, extending not just to traditional allies and partners in Europe but to a much wider group of countries.
And we need to create a bigger tent, thinking beyond states to industry experts, to companies and technologists who will play a critical role in understanding the risks and opportunities of dual-use and other new technologies, and in setting the standards that govern them.
The third principle is that we should start with dialogue.
We must create and preserve space and channels for dialogue to build trust and counter disinformation.
In time, this may lead towards our long-term aim of new or updated binding agreements.
But there is a significant intrinsic value in dialogue itself. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we want “jaw-jaw, not war-war.”
During the Cold War, we benefited from a series of negotiations and dialogues that improved our understanding of Soviet doctrine and capabilities – and vice versa.
This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war.
Today, we do not have the same foundations with others who may threaten us in the future – particularly with China.
Here the UK strongly supports President Biden’s proposed talks with China as an important step.
Trust and transparency built through dialogue should also mean that we can be more active in calling out non-compliance and misbehaviours when we see it.
At the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in August, we’ll also emphasise how crucial it is for Russia to uphold its verbal and physical commitments to the NPT.
The fourth and final principle is that confidence-building measures should be renewed and strengthened as soon as possible.
The purpose of measures to boost confidence is to help mitigate or even get rid of the things that lead to mistrust, fear, tension, and hostility.
Through an exchange of trustworthy and interrupted, frequently personal information on each other’s intentions, they assist one side in accurately interpreting the actions of the other in a situation prior to a crisis.
When states are transparent about their military capabilities and plans, confidence and trust increase.
Because of this, governments are able to report to the UN each year how much money they spend on the military at home as well as any recent transfers of weapons.
I’m worried. Is there a more obvious illustration of how these mechanisms can fail than the invasion of Ukraine?
I was told “it’s just an exercise” when my friends and I questioned the increase in forces at the border.
We were right to not believe it, as we didn’t. However, we must work to return to a state where “assurances” like that are meaningful.
So we now need to re-energise the existing Euro-Atlantic architecture, and extend the approach into new geographic regions.
As we seek to strengthen confidence-building measures there is also a major opportunity to harness new technology and make better use of open source materials to improve our capabilities and capacity to identify, share and verify information.
For example, the UK’s recently-published Defence AI strategy sets a clear ambition for Artificial Intelligence to play a key role in counter-proliferation and arms control, including for verification and enforcement.
Again, confidence building is an area where I believe we should – as a global community – be able to make progress irrespective of wider political contexts. The indices of self-interest and mutual benefit are both clear to see.
Conclusion
Let me be clear: this new agenda for arms control will be difficult to deliver. We will need to take incremental steps, but we can make progress.
History shows us that we can forge a path through uncertainty.
After World War Two, the world had no template for managing the atom bomb’s destructive power. So we came up with fresh frameworks.
Years were needed. However, it was doable. It was completed. And even with the start of the Cold War, it was still feasible.
In fact, when tensions between the West and the USSR were at their highest, some of the most important developments in arms control—including both nuclear arms control and the founding of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—took place.
To be clear, the frameworks for arms control are only one side of the story. They are still susceptible to abuse and violation.
Effective deterrence techniques and tools that are adapted to emerging and current threats are essential.
Therefore, let’s not ignore either side of the coin—deterrence or arms control—and begin by laying the groundwork for a strategic stability in these dangerous times.