Russia’s desire to be a great power, nuclear deterrence and naval strategies are the reasons behind its rapid Arctic military build-up, a Stanford expert says.

The issue is complicated. “There are three basic drivers: military-strategic calculations, economic development, and domestic objectives,” said Katarzyna Zysk, a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Zysk has a forthcoming paper on this topic to be published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Last year, she presented her findings at the conference, "The Russian Military in Contemporary Perspective," held by the American Foreign Policy Council. She also discussed her research at the Hoover Institution's Arctic Security Initiative meeting in November 2016. 

Putin’s foreign policy

Despite claims it would not do so, Russia since 2012 in particular has embarked on a large-scale military modernization in the Arctic across basically all defense branches, with a special focus on the air and maritime domain, Zysk said.

“The military ambitions have expanded with the more nationalist and isolationist turn in Russian policies after (Vladimir) Putin’s return as president in May 2012,” said Zysk, an associate professor at the Norwegian Defence University College who specializes in Russia’s security and defense policies.

In 2014, Russia decided to deploy military forces along the entire Russian Arctic coast, from Murmansk to Chukotka, and on permanent basis. A modernization effort is underway, too.

This trend has deepened the asymmetry of power between Russia’s forces and those of other countries in the region, such as the United States, Zysk said.

“The Arctic contributes to maintaining Russia’s great power status, which has been one of the main driving forces behind Putin’s foreign policy in recent years,” she said.

‘Startling’ military build-up

The Arctic appears as one of the most stable Russian border regions, which makes the rapid defense build-up by a Russian government with a slowing economy quite perplexing to many observers, noted Zysk.

Apart from the economy, she explains the military strategies involved:

“Russia has revived the Cold War ‘Bastion’ concept in the Barents Sea: In case of conflict, the Northern Fleet’s task is to form maritime areas closed to penetration for enemy naval forces, where Russia would deploy strategic submarines and maintain control. In the areas further south, Russia would seek to deny control for potential adversaries. It also gives Russia a possibility to attack an enemy’s sea lines of communication,” she said.

On top of this, Russia’s modernization efforts are focused on modernizing its nuclear deterrent, including building fourth-generation strategic submarines of the Borei class: three are completed, and five are under different stages of construction, according to Zysk.

Russia is also building new attack submarines, as well as new frigates and corvettes, though the shipbuilding industry is struggling with delivering these on time, she added.

Also, the Artic provides Russia a strategic gateway to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Zysk said, which is important given that Russia’s naval forces are separated between four theaters of operations – the Pacific, the Arctic-Atlantic, the Baltic and the Black Sea.

As a result of climate change, Russia may be able to more freely move its warships between its main bases along the Northern Sea Route, she added.

“Importantly, the forces in the Arctic are not going to stay only in the Arctic. With the increased mobility, the military units can be transferred rapidly to support Russia military operations in other regions, as we have observed in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has used a brigade deployed in the High North. The trend is likely to continue, also because Russia’s military capabilities remain limited, despite the ongoing modernization,” she said.

Perceived threats

Russia considers that if it engaged in conflict with other great powers, such as the United States, the Arctic would be a major target, Zysk said. Russia has also rehearsed scenarios when the biggest part of the Russian Navy based in the Arctic, the Northern Fleet, would be activated during conflicts escalating in other regions. That’s a reason for the strengthening of its defenses in the region.

“In the Russian assessment, an aerial attack from the Arctic region may pose military threats to the entire Russian territory. In particular, however, Russia is concerned about the sea-based nuclear deterrent deployed in the Arctic. As a result, Russia has devoted a strong focus to increasing air defense and air control across the Arctic,” she said.

Apart from threats from state actors, environmental accidents, trafficking, terrorist attacks on industrial infrastructure or increased foreign intelligence also make the Arctic, in Russia’s view, a vulnerable territory. Finally, the issue of Russia’s vast energy reserves and other rich natural resources in the Arctic are another factor. The development of the Arctic is seen as one of the solutions to what ails the Russian economy.

Zysk said, “Since the early 2000s, the Russian political and military leadership has systematically argued that there will be an acute shortage of energy resources worldwide, which may lead to a conflict, and that the West, led by the United States, may attempt to seize Russia’s oil and gas.”

While this assessment is controversial, Zysk points to statements by the top Russian political and military leadership, including Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, that suggests the Russian leadership believes such scenario may occur by 2030.

“It may also explain some of the military investments in the region, such as reactivating 13 military airfields across the Arctic, paratroopers’ exercises and amphibious landing operations along the Northern Sea Route,” she said.

In addition, the Arctic holds a symbolically important place in Russia’s history and national identity, according to Zysk.

“Displays of military strength, accompanied by rhetoric that portrays Russia as the Arctic superpower, resonate well with the Russian public, especially in communities where feelings of nationalism and isolationism run deep,” she said.

As a result of the military modernization, she added, Russia is today better prepared to participate in complex military operations than a decade ago, especially in joint operations, strategic mobility and rapid deployments.

“Russia’s ability to limit or deny access and control various parts of the Arctic has increased accordingly,” Zysk said.

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MEDIA CONTACTS

Katarzyna Zysk, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 723-6840, kzysk@ifs.mil.no

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

CISAC fellow Joseph Torigian writes in this new War on the Rocks article, "The Shadow of Deng Xiaoping on Chinese Elite Politics," that China's leadership never came to terms with the lessons of the Cultural Revolution. In recent decades, top leadership power has become increasingly concentrated in singular figures like Deng Xiaoping and current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, rather than expanding into a collective leadership framework. Joseph Torigian is a postdoctoral fellow researching the politics of China, Russia, and North Korea with a specific focus on power struggles.

After Zhao Ziyang was made acting general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 1987, key party elder Chen Yun asked Zhao why the Politburo Standing Committee never had any meetings. Zhao was in a bind – while Chen wanted more opportunities to express his opinions, preeminent leader Deng Xiaoping wanted to simply tell Zhao what to do. Zhao told Chen, “I am just a big secretary. As for a meeting, we can have one after you discuss with Comrade Xiaoping.” Chen muttered to himself, “A big secretary…”

Anecdotes like this one challenge the narrative that Deng, who became China’s top leader a few short years after Mao Zedong’s death but never formally assumed the party’s top post, was the father of collective leadership and institutionalization in elite Chinese politics. According to this viewpoint, after Mao’s disastrous Cultural Revolution, a radical political experiment that included the persecution of huge swathes of the Chinese elite, China’s leaders, led by Deng, are said to have introduced rules to deliberately prevent such a catastrophe from ever occurring again.

For example, Alice Miller has written of “a deliberate effort engineered by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s to establish an effective collective leadership system that builds in checks and balances among the leadership oligarchy against attempts by any individual member – and especially by the party general secretary – to assert dominating power over the others.” Carl Minzner has concluded that “The searing experience of the Cultural Revolution convinced [Deng] and other leaders of the need for deep change… Unlike Mao, Deng never exercised one-man rule.” According to Susan Shirk, “Xi is trying to live the antithesis of what Deng Xiaoping recommended.”

We can now see that this is a myth. New research based on previously unavailable documents and memoirs decisively shows that in fact Deng does not deserve credit for introducing real changes that would restrict the power of top leaders. Journalists, analysts, and scholars writing about Chinese leadership struggles should take note.

This might seem like a tiny footnote to the arc of history, but there is more at stake. Deng, who enjoyed an astounding level of authority, was probably the last leader who could have brought real change to Chinese politics. The 1980s in China are often portrayed as a time of introspection and change in elite politics, but that is not the case. The decade was instead defined by “old person” politics and a failure to truly come to terms with the lessons of the Cultural Revolution.

These findings suggest that even if elite Chinese politics later became increasingly shaped by traditions and principles in a relative sense, policymakers have reason to doubt the robustness of those rules a hypothesis supported by recent news from Beijing about current Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Without unambiguously legitimate rules guaranteeing both collective leadership and a stable succession, Xi may feel he has little to lose and much to gain by concentrating personal power in his hands.

The Evidence

Certainly, Deng never concentrated everyday decision-making in his own hands, and he did bring more institutionalization to the promotion of cadres. He never formally led the party or the government, and he even gave up his Politburo Standing Committee membership in 1987 and chairmanship of the Central Military Commission in 1989. But on the key issue of the power of the top leader, evidence for Deng’s own lack of respect for rules is ubiquitous in the historical record.

New evidence shows Mao Zedong’s initial successor, a man named Hua Guofeng, actually did embody a spirit of consensus and collective leadership. Marshal Ye Jianying described Hua as “modest, careful, sincere, he has a democratic style.” He was a figure fundamentally different in personality from Deng. In the words of the great China watcher Michel Oksenberg, while Hua was the “reconciler” Deng was the “asskicker.” Mao called Deng a steel factory, and Marshal Ye described Deng as a man that monopolized power and did not listen to the opinions of other people. According to party elder Li Rui, “Deng Xiaoping was half a Mao Zedong.”

Warren Sun and Frederick Teiwes show that no real policy differences between Hua from Deng on economic reform. However, Deng used mean-spirited political machinations and false charges to climb to the predominant position within the party. For example, Deng accused Hua of blocking old cadres from returning to work and maintaining a dogmatic political ideology – two charges that have now proven to be false.

Scholars who believe Deng took rules and norm-based governing seriously often point to a famous speech he gave to the Politburo in August 1980. Then, Deng said, “It is not good to have an over-concentration of power” and called for a solution to “the problem of succession in leadership.” According to Miller, Deng’s desire to channel competition “within institutional constraints” was explicit in this speech, which she calls “a text that bears continual re-study and so merits placement on analysts’ bedside tables.”

Yet taking Deng at his word fails to appreciate the political context. At the time, Deng was seeking to complete Hua’s political defeat and needed to provide a theoretical justification. The notorious leftist politician Deng Liqun wrote that“this speech by Comrade Xiaoping in actuality was directed against Hua Guofeng, it was preparation for Hua to leave his position, to find a theoretical justification.” When a friend of Zhao Ziyang pointed out that this speech was a reason many people believed that Deng supported real inner-party democracy and institutionalization, Zhao, then under house arrest, discounted this analysis: “At this time Deng was primarily addressing Hua Guofeng, he was struggling against Hua Guofeng.” In October 1980, a decision was made to no longer distribute Deng’s August speech because of the political instability in Poland caused by strikes and the formation of Solidarity.

The defeat of Hua Guofeng was not only a transition in authority. This historical moment also represented the closing of a different path for Chinese politics – one of collective leadership. Unlike Deng, individuals like Hua and Ye didlearn the lessons of the Cultural Revolution and tried to honestly make collective leadership work.

Hua later told a group preparing his official biography:

After the destruction of the “Gang of Four” and when I was Chairman, collective leadership was very strongly emphasized, democratic centralism. It was not one or two people who could make decisions, collective leadership was needed. If collective leadership was good, matters would be dealt with well. The party center all lived at Yuquanshan together, stabilizing measures were all discussed collectively. All of my speeches were discussed by the Politburo collectively.

In fact, Hua was so democratic that he refused to fight for his position because he was afraid it would hurt the party:

If the party had another internal struggle, the regular people would suffer. I stubbornly resigned from all positions. I told Marshal Ye before I did it. Some said that I was a fool. Some said that I was too honest. I do not regret it.

Almost two years before Deng’s August 1980 speech, Hua had already spoken of the importance of collective leadership, both at the famous Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress and preceding work conference in 1978. Deng’s only reference to collective leadership at those proceedings was negative: “Lenin said: using collective leadership as an excuse to avoid responsibility is the most dangerous disaster.” In Deng’s mind, the party could only have one “mother-in-law” – himself.

Deng also rejected attempts by Hu Yaobang, Hua’s replacement as general secretary of the party, to create a true system of collective leadership. Hu had wanted to create a “chairman system [主席团]” in which every individual was considered equal, had a single vote, and each would take turns running meetings.

In 1987, Deng removed Hu in a way that offended many party leaders, including Xi Jinping’s own father. The process was so obviously against party rules that when Jiang Zemin replaced Zhao Ziyang as leader in 1989, he refused to be installed in a similar process.

The protests in the spring of 1989 centered on Tiananmen Square ended with force, despite the personal opposition of a majority of the PSC, military leadership, the Chinese state legislature, and even many key revolutionary elders. In 1992, Deng flaunted his relationship with the military and threatened to remove the newly elected party secretary, Jiang Zemin, even though at the time Deng held no formal high-ranking position in the party or state.

Some scholars have argued that Deng’s power was limited because he had to compete with other formidable revolutionary figures like Chen Yun. Chinese historian Yang Jisheng, for example, describes Chinese politics in the 1980s as consisting of “twin peaks.”

However, the evidence suggests that Deng clearly dominated. Chen’s health was so bad that, after cancer surgery in 1979, he refused to plan his life any more than two years ahead. Through the early 1980s, Deng and Chen had no major differences on policy. But after reform deepened and their differences grew more important, Chen was unable to block Deng’s plans to expand the number of special economic zones, introduce price reforms in 1988, or prevent the reform process from starting again in 1992. Deng often refused to hold meetings to avoid giving Chen an occasion to argue with him. Shortly before the violent end to the Tiananmen protests in 1989, Chen even referred to Deng as the “boss” with a Chinese word that has mafia connotations (头子). This expression was so problematic that in official versions of the speech it was changed to “core.”

Deng’s behavior is especially important given the lively discussions during the 1980s at the elite level in China about how political reform within the party really could be achieved.

Before he was removed from the leadership because of his opposition to a violent solution to the Tiananmen Square protests, former party secretary Zhao had already complained: “Many of our rules and regulations are only principles, I’m afraid that it is necessary to create specific guidelines.” He concluded that “now we always over-emphasize a ‘core,’” and that it would be necessary to more clearly delineate the relationship among various decision-making bodies.

But Deng rejected the formalization of party rules, suggesting that it was too reminiscent of a “separation of powers” and would hurt the party’s advantage of centralized leadership. For Deng, collective leadership left a potential for disagreements to split the party and imperil the drive for modernization. Instead, Deng argued that “any leadership collective must have a core, without a core the leadership is unreliable… In actuality I was the core of the second generation.”

Serious discussions of real change ended after Tiananmen Square. Zhao Ziyang, the former general secretary of the party, believed that after Deng no one would have the power to accomplish real reforms of the party. Instead of using his special authority as a revolutionary elder and military leader to lay the foundations for truly collective leadership, Deng had instead continued to emphasize the importance of a single leader unchecked by “inner-party democracy.”

Recent news from Beijing supports the argument that norms shaping collective leadership and succession are weak. At the sixth plenum of the 18th Party Congress in October, Xi Jinping was elevated to the status of “core” leader – a title never given to his predecessor, Hu Jintao. Before the plenum, major Western news outlets were already reporting that next year Xi will change the age-ceiling for membership of the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee  and refuse to name a successor. In October, one party official described as “folklore” the supposed rule that 68-year-olds must retire from the Politburo Standing Committee, thus raising the possibility that Xi ally Wang Qishan will remain on that body despite his age.

Ambiguous rules make judgments about the future difficult. The “institutionalist” school of Chinese politics may still be right. We may not see a drastic change in leadership norms in 2017. But if that proves to be the case, Deng does not deserve the credit. In the meantime, we can see his influence in what has happened already – the naming of Xi as “core” is not a rejection of Deng’s legacy but a return to it.

Doubts about the future are already a factor of instability. Zhao’s words from before his removal may therefore prove prophetic: “With the current system, when there is no crisis it is very good. But this system cannot guarantee there will be no crisis. Chinese people are disputatious behind the scenes but face to face they are polite. Therefore, Chinese politics is never predictable.”

Today, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “doomsday clock” moved 30 seconds forward to 2 and a half minutes to midnight. The closer the minute hand gets to midnight, the closer the bulletin predicts humankind is to destroying itself. The symbolic clock was created in 1947 when Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer (the father of the U.S. nuclear program) founded the publication.

The following experts from the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies offered these perspectives:

William J. Perry, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), said: "Last year the Doomsday clock was set at 3 minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to global 'midnight' since the iciest days of the Cold War. This ominous pronouncement reflected my own fears that we were now in greater danger of nuclear catastrophe than we were during the Cold War, with the growing threat of nuclear terrorism, the continued risk of accidents and miscalculation, and the possibility of regional nuclear war and continued nuclear proliferation around the world."

He added, "Today the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that we have moved closer to global catastrophe, for the first time setting the clock 30 seconds ahead to 2 and a half minutes to midnight, approaching a time not seen since the United States and Soviet Russia first developed the H-bomb. We must heed this dire warning as a call to action. There are concrete steps that we can take to reduce the risk of nuclear annihilation, but we must start today."

Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and senior fellow at CISAC, said, "The bulletin’s keepers of the clock made the correct call to move the clock 30 seconds closer to midnight. The disregard for fact-based analysis of issues such as global climate change during the recent presidential campaign is truly alarming. However, my immediate concerns focus on the world having become a more dangerous nuclear place."

He said, "Developments in North Korea top the list: 2016 was a very bad year as Pyongyang greatly expanded its nuclear complex to increase the size of its arsenal to perhaps as many as 20 to 25 weapons, conducted two more nuclear tests to enhance the sophistication of its weapons, and launched two dozen missile tests. All of this while Washington cut all communications with a regime about which we know so little, while continuing the failed policies of sanctions and leaning on China to solve the problem."

"Confrontation," Hecker said, "has replaced cooperation between Russia and the United States. For the first time since the end of the Cold War the specter of a nuclear arms race was raised in 2016. President Putin put the finishing touches on suspending or terminating most of the cooperative nuclear threat reduction programs with the United States. Nuclear safety and security concerns appear to have taken a back seat to nuclear saber rattling and cyber attacks."

He noted, "Tensions between China and the United States have increased substantially over Beijing’s more muscular role in international affairs, particularly with its actions in the South China Sea. Moreover, tensions over Taiwan prompted by President Trump’s comments about the One-China policy renew the possibility of conflict."

"South Asia has inched closer to potential nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan. India’s expanding economy and its concerns about Chinese military expansion has prompted it to strengthening its nuclear arsenal by moving toward a full triad – land, air and sea-based nuclear weapons. Pakistan, its much smaller and weaker neighbor, feels increasingly threatened by India’s expanding military. It has moved to what is called a posture of full-spectrum nuclear deterrence, which includes very dangerous tactical battlefield nuclear weapons that lower the nuclear threshold," Hecker said.

"Preventing and responding to potential acts of nuclear terrorism require close international cooperation. Unfortunately, all signs point in the opposite direction at a time when the atrocities perpetrated by terrorists are increasing. Greatest among these pullbacks was President Putin’s decision not to participate in the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington, DC. With President Obama’s tenure having ended, this very effective collaborative international effort is now in limbo," he said.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Chaney Kourouniotis, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations: (6650) 724-9842, chaney.kourouniotis@stanford.edu

Space is more important than ever for the security of the United States, but it’s almost like the Wild West in terms of behavior, a top general said today.

Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, spoke Jan. 24 at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His talk was titled, “U.S. Strategic Command Perspectives on Deterrence and Assurance.”

Hyten said, “Space is fundamental to every single military operation that occurs on the planet today.” He added that “there is no such thing as a war in space,” because it would affect all realms of human existence, due to the satellite systems. Hyten advocates “strategic deterrence” and “norms of behavior” across space as well as land, water and cyberspace.

Otherwise, rivals like China and Russia will only threaten U.S. interests in space and wreak havoc for humanity below, he said. Most of contemporary life depends on systems connected to space.

Hyten also addressed other topics, including recent proposals by some to upgrade the country’s missile defense systems.

“You just don’t snap your fingers and build a state-of-the-art anything overnight,” Hyten said, adding that he has not yet spoken to Trump administration officials about the issue. “We need a powerful military,” but a severe budget crunch makes “reasonable solutions” more likely than expensive and unrealistic ones.

On the upgrade front, Hyten said he favors a long-range strike missile system to replace existing cruise missiles; a better air-to-air missile for the Air Force; and an improved missile defense ground base interceptor.

‘Critically dependent’

From satellites to global-positioning systems (GPS), space has transformed human life – and the military – in the 21st century, Hyten said. In terms of defining "space," the U.S. designates people who travel above an altitude of 50 miles as astronauts.

As the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, Hyten oversees the control of U.S. strategic forces, providing options for the president and secretary of defense. In particular, this command is charged with space operations (such as military satellites), information operations (such as information warfare), missile defense, global command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, global strike and strategic deterrence (the U.S. nuclear arsenal), and combating weapons of mass destruction.

Hyten explained that every drone, fighter jet, bomber, ship and soldier is “critically dependent” on space to conduct their own operations. All cell phones use space, and the GPS command systems overall are managed at Strategic Command, he said.

“No soldier has to worry about what’s over the next hill,” he said, describing GPS capabilities, which have fundamentally transformed humanity’s way of life.

Space needs to be available for exploration, he said.

“I watch what goes on in space, and I worry about us destroying that environment for future generations.” He said that too many drifting objects and debris exist – about 22,000 right now. A recent Chinese satellite interception created a couple thousand more debris objects that now circle about the Earth at various altitudes and pose the risk of striking satellites.

“We track every object in space” now, Hyten said, urging “international norms of behavior in space.”

He added, “We have to deter bad behavior on space. We have to deter war in space. It’s bad for everybody. We could trash that forever.”

But now rivals like China and Russia are building weapons to deploy in the lower levels of space. “How do we prevent this? It’s bigger than a space problem,” he said.

Deterring conflict in the cyber, nuclear and space realms is the strategic deterrence goal of the 21st century, Hyten said.

“The best way to prevent war is to be prepared for war,” he said.

Hyten believes the U.S. needs a fundamentally different debate about deterrence. And it all starts with nuclear weapons.

“In my deepest heart, I wish I didn’t have to worry about nuclear weapons,” he said. Hyten described his job as “pretty sobering, it’s not easy.”

But he also noted the mass violence of the world prior to 1945 when the first atomic bomb was used. Roughly 80 million people died from 1939 to 1945 during World War II. Consider that in the 10-plus years of the Vietnam War, 58,000 Americans were killed. That’s equivalent to two days of deaths in WWII, he said.

In a world without nuclear weapons, a rise in conventional warfare would produce great numbers of mass casualties, Hyten said. About war, he said, “Once you see it up close, no human will ever want to experience it.”

Though America has “crazy enemies” right now, in many ways the world is more safe than during WWII, Hyten said. The irony is that nuclear weapons deterrence has kept us from the type of mass killings known in events like WWII. But the U.S. must know how to use its nuclear deterrence effectively.

Looking ahead, Hyten said the U.S. needs to think about space as a potential war environment. An attack in space might not mean a response in space, but on the Earth.

Hyten describes space as the domain that people look up at it and still dream about. “I love to look at the stars,” but said he wants to make sure he’s not looking up at junk orbiting in the atmosphere.

‘Space geek’

Hyten has served in the Air Force for 35 years. He originally wanted to be an astronaut, but his eyesight was too bad. He got a waiver, and graduated Harvard in 1981 with an engineering degree on a ROTC scholarship. He entered the Air Force thinking he would only do four years. But then he had a close-up view of what a young Air Force officer could find in the last frontier of space as satellites and military space science were booming.

“God, I love space,” he said.

In introducing Hyten, Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, described him as a person of unwavering dedication and profound insights who understands the gravity of situations. “A self-described space geek,” she said.

Hyten lauded CISAC for its research and educational work on national security, and said he enjoyed being around people willing to test out new ideas and discuss potential solutions for vexing problems.

Earlier in the day on campus, Hyten met with William J. Perry, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at CISAC; George Shultz, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; and Condoleezza Rice, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Hoover Institution.

General Hyten was nominated for reassignment to head the U.S. Strategic Command on Sept. 8, 2016. He commanded Air Force Space Command from 2014 to 2016.

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MEDIA CONTACTS

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Improving the U.S.-China relationship is a focus at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

CISAC continued this tradition in co-sponsoring the 8th Sino-U.S. Security Relations and Cooperation Conference in Beijing from Dec. 14-15, 2016. The conference was hosted and co-sponsored by the Foreign Ministry's China Institute of International Studies (CIIS).

Ambassador Su Ge, president of CIIS, attended the conference and delivered an opening remark. FSI’s Thomas Fingar and Teng Jianqun from CIIS chaired the conference.

Fingar said, “Although held at a time of uncertainty about the future of U.S.-China relations, the conference included constructive exchanges on strategic stability, obstacles to cooperation in space, and other sensitive topics.”

He added, “The exchanges were frank and constructive because they built on the foundation of understanding and trust developed through years-long exchanges between CISAC and CIIS. In the next phase, small teams of American and Chinese experts will develop joint blueprints to enhance understanding of issues critical for nuclear stability and space cooperation.”

CISAC co-founder John W. Lewis has been active for many years encouraging and supporting better ties between the U.S. and China. He is an expert on Chinese politics, U.S.-China relations, China's nuclear weapons program, U.S. policy toward Korea and health security issues in northeast Asia.

During this most recent Beijing conference, scholars and security experts from both the U.S. and China held in-depth discussions on topics including cybersecurity, outer space cooperation, maritime dispute management, missile defense, grey zone cooperation, and China-U.S. nuclear issues.

The American attendees included scholars from CISAC (Fingar, Brad Roberts, and Joseph Torigian); Brad Roberts, director, Center for Global Security Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Major General Roger W. Burg, former commander, 20th Air Force; Vice Admiral Michael Connor (retired), U.S. Navy; Lieutenant General Susan J. Helms (retired), U.S. Air Force general and former NASA astronaut; Lieutenant General James M. Kowalski (retired), U.S. Air Force general; Steven M. Benner,chief, Strategy and Campaign Division, U.S. Strategic Command, among others.

The Chinese experts came from a variety of institutions – CIIS, China Academy of Engineering Physics, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force, Rocket Force College, China Defense Science and Technology Information Center, PLA Navy Academy of Military Science, PLA South Command, Chinese Academy of Social Science, Renmin University of China, National Defense University, Tsinghua University, etc. 

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Siegfried Hecker wrote the following op-ed for the Jan. 12 edition of The New York Times:

Since my first visit to North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex in 2004, I have witnessed the country’s nuclear weapons program grow from a handful of primitive bombs to a formidable nuclear arsenal that represents one of America’s greatest security threats. After decades of broken policies toward Pyongyang, talking to the North Koreans is the best option for the Trump administration at this late date to limit the growing threat.

North Korea broke out to build the bomb because President George W. Bush was determined to kill President Bill Clinton’s 1994 “Agreed Framework,” a bilateral agreement with the North to freeze and eventually dismantle the North’s nuclear program. Hard-liners in the Bush administration viewed it as appeasement. Mr. Bush labeled the North, along with Iran and Iraq, part of an “axis of evil” in January 2002.

At the first bilateral meeting with Kim Jong-il’s regime in Pyongyang in October 2002, Bush administration officials accused North Korea of violating the Clinton pact by clandestinely pursuing the uranium path to the bomb. Washington had already detected this effort in the late 1990s, but it was deemed an insufficient threat not worthy of jeopardizing the gains made by the plutonium freeze.

For the Bush administration, the clandestine uranium effort was all it needed to walk away from the Agreed Framework. Yet Mr. Bush’s team proved unprepared for the consequences and stood by as North Korea resumed its plutonium program and built the bomb.

During six visits between 2004 and 2009, I watched the North continue to try to engage Washington, while the Bush administration preferred the six-party talks led by China, believing that the North would have greater difficulty cheating in the context of multilateral diplomacy. In a 2004 visit, I was even allowed to hold a piece of plutonium — in a sealed glass jar — to convince me and Washington that North Korea had the bomb.

In September 2005, China orchestrated a six-party joint statement calling for a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula. When the Bush administration concurrently slapped financial sanctions on Pyongyang, the North Koreans walked out of the six-party talks and responded with their first nuclear test in October 2006.

I was in Pyongyang three weeks later and found that although the test was only partly successful, it marked a turning point in the North’s nuclear program. North Korea became a nuclear weapon state and insisted that all future negotiations proceed from that reality. Mr. Bush left office with the North most likely possessing up to five plutonium-fueled nuclear weapons and an expanding uranium program.

North Korea greeted the Obama administration with a long-range rocket launch, followed by a second nuclear test in May 2009 — this one, successful. Unlike the Bush administration, which faced the prospect of the North’s violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Obama administration faced the North’s steady march to an expanding arsenal.

Mr. Obama was also unwilling to engage directly with Pyongyang, insisting instead that the North denuclearize before starting talks. It appears the Obama administration also viewed the regimes of Kim Jong-il and his son and successor, Kim Jong-un, as repugnant and hoped for their collapse, while also staying in step with two conservative South Korean administrations. Mr. Obama’s preferred path has been to tighten United Nations and United States sanctions and to pressure Beijing to rein in Pyongyang. Neither strategy has stopped the Kim regime from expanding its nuclear program.

Pyongyang upped the ante on its nuclear program with a remarkable revelation during my seventh and last visit in November 2010: the existence of a modern uranium centrifuge facility in Yongbyon. That facility served notice that the North was now capable of pursuing the second path to the bomb. No outsiders are known to have been in Yongbyon since my 2010 visit.

Satellite imagery of the Yongbyon complex combined with official North Korean propaganda photos and three additional successful nuclear tests point to a robust and rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal. My best estimate, admittedly highly uncertain, is that North Korea has sufficient plutonium and highly enriched uranium to build 20 to 25 nuclear weapons.

The North also launched some two dozen missiles in 2016, including partly successful road-mobile and submarine-based missiles that could potentially carry nuclear warheads.

President-elect Donald J. Trump faces a much graver threat from the North than his two predecessors. Pyongyang can most likely already reach all of South Korea, Japan and possibly even some United States targets in the Pacific.

The crisis is here. The nuclear clock keeps ticking. Every six to seven weeks North Korea may be able to add another nuclear weapon to its arsenal. All in the hands of Kim Jong-un, a young leader about whom we know little, and a military about which we know less. Both are potentially prone to overconfidence and miscalculations.

These sensitive nuclear issues require focused discussions in a small, closed setting. This cannot be achieved at a multilateral negotiating table, such as the six-party talks.

Mr. Trump should send a presidential envoy to North Korea. Talking is not a reward or a concession to Pyongyang and should not be construed as signaling acceptance of a nuclear-armed North Korea. Talking is a necessary step to re-establishing critical links of communication to avoid a nuclear catastrophe.

Mr. Trump has little to lose by talking. He can risk the domestic political downside of appearing to appease the North. He would most likely get China’s support, which is crucial because Beijing prefers talking to more sanctions. He would also probably get support for bilateral talks from Seoul, Tokyo and Moscow.

By talking, and especially by listening, the Trump administration may learn more about the North’s security concerns. It would allow Washington to signal the strength of its resolve to protect its allies and express its concerns about human rights abuses, as well as to demonstrate its openness to pragmatic, balanced progress.

Talking will help inform a better negotiating strategy that may eventually convince the young leader that his country and his regime are better off without nuclear weapons.