Deter, Compete, and Engage: Europe’s Responsibility within the Arms Control Regime after Ukraine, with or without the United States

Strategic Stability: Nuclear Dynamics and Geopolitical Competition

Arms control for the sake of arms control is the best description for the European approach after the Cold War; however, this is unlikely to remain a valid policy avenue in an era in which relations between the great powers have soured and mutual trust is in short supply. Yet, historically, arms control is intended to manage competition between bitter rivals, not between friends. 

Much of the difficulty in talking about arms control is that there is an assumption that rivals and adversaries share the same understanding of strategic stability and the forces—whether political or technological—that are undermining it.12 As rivals often do not share a similar understanding, I distinguish between two types of strategic stability: strategic stability (type I), which focuses on the dynamics between nuclear-armed great powers that directly relate to the types and quantities of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems; and strategic stability (type II), which emphasizes the tensions between nuclear-armed great powers that are satisfied or dissatisfied with the international status quo. 
 

Strategic Stability (Type I)
 

Strategic stability (type I), in turn, contains two aspects: arms race (or deterrent or first-strike) stability and crisis stability. Arms race stability exists when neither of two nuclear-armed rivals or adversaries believes they or the other can successfully destroy the other’s second-strike capability, and thus the benefits of adding nuclear warheads or more or different delivery systems do not outweigh the costs and risks of doing so. Most of the first generation of strategic stability work emphasized this dimension.13 Later generations of arms control scholars included crisis stability, which is achieved when a nuclear-armed state or its agents does not believe that their second-strike capability is actively jeopardized by the nuclear or conventional actions of an adversary during a crisis, and therefore does not have incentives to escalate a (potential) conventional conflict to the nuclear level.14 Unlike the former, the time horizon is very short for crisis stability, but the same weapons systems can undermine both arms control and crisis stability.

One of the paradoxes of the nuclear age—and arguably its central paradox—is that efforts to maintain a survivable arsenal can often undermine the confidence of others in their own weapons. Moreover, the search for survivability may be combined with a deep unease among policymakers about the vulnerability of their society. Consequently, nuclear-armed states tend to resort to one or more of eight policies, five of which deal with the credible ability to retaliate even after a first move by the adversary and three of which deal preemptively with vulnerability by exploring which first move they themselves could make.

States have five approaches to credibly threaten retaliation. Four of these look to achieve a secure second strike through material and technological means. The fifth approach takes a procedural and organizational route to ensure retaliation. States can pursue 1) redundancy, by building a nuclear arsenal too large to destroy; 2) hardening, by ensuring fixed launch sites are too protected to destroy; 3) mobility, by ensuring they have numerous land-based, sea-based, or air-based launchers that can be moved around to avoid destruction; or 4) concealment, by hiding land-based, sea-based, or air-based launchers from destruction.15 States can try to avoid the costs (both material and technological) associated with a secure second-strike capability through 5) procedural and organizational adaptation to strengthen the resiliency of the nuclear command-and-control arrangements and thus diminish the risk of counterforce or decapitation strikes, whether by delegating launch authority to more commanders, by changing their nuclear posture to launch-on-warning; and/or by placing their nuclear forces in a condition of high readiness.16 This is a more destabilizing approach than the previous four. 

All five approaches count on the adversary’s fear of a credible retaliatory strike with nuclear weapons. This threat of punishment is fundamentally directed against the things that matter most to that state’s leaders, whether the survival of their society or their personal survival, and is intended to deter states from escalation. 

Precisely because they fear for their survival, states may also employ one or more of three so-called damage limitation approaches that attempt to limit or eliminate the threat of an adversary’s nuclear arsenal.17 Damage limitation can be pursued through 6) a conventional or nuclear counterforce first strike to destroy the adversary’s nuclear arsenal (to be successful, such a strike would in turn rely on some combination of sheer numbers, destructiveness, precision, or surprise); 7) missile defense systems designed to completely intercept an attack either by a weaker adversary or by an adversary whose arsenal has already been partially destroyed through a counterforce attack; or 8) the disruption or destruction of the adversary’s nuclear command, control, and/or communications so as to delay or prevent a response and ensure a window of opportunity to destroy the adversary’s arsenal.

Recent scholarship on the nuclear revolution underlines U.S. policymakers’ deep discomfort with mutual vulnerability. Robert Jervis argues that nuclear powers would not have incentives to compete if they could achieve a secure second-strike capability.18 However, the United States particularly has continued to explore damage-limitation strategies, specifically through counterforce options.19 The United States has a clear motive to do so: it provides extended deterrence to faraway allies, and the credibility of that deterrence and the willingness of American leadership and the public to accept complete vulnerability on the behalf of others are inherently weaker if the United States does not compensate. Having damage limitation options has therefore, among the nuclear-armed states, always been particularly attractive to U.S. leaders, who consequently have been less comfortable with strategic stability (type I).

Finally, as advanced conventional weapons become increasingly able to achieve strategic effects—that is, deterrence by punishment or by denial—and gain counterforce potential, they should be included in future arms control arrangements.
 

Strategic Stability (Type II)
 

Strategic stability (type II) centers on the extent to which potential rivals accept existing great-power arrangements at the regional or global level, including territorial boundaries, exclusive economic zones, maritime approaches, or other agreements. Strategic stability (type II) helps to explain broader systemic dynamics. While the United States and most European states tend to emphasize the stricter nuclear definition of strategic stability, China and Russia implicitly use the broader definition and treat agreement there as a precondition for further discussions.20 Following the logic of strategic stability (type II), one could argue that Russian and Chinese revisionism, specifically toward Ukraine and Taiwan respectively, is destabilizing; however, those states would argue that the United States, by overreaching in the aftermath of the Cold War, took on a revisionist posture and thus destabilized relations between the great powers. Both Russia and China have built up extensive lists of current and historical grievances.21 Moreover, both feel that they are encircled by hostile U.S.-led coalitions of regional states. The Chinese response to this perceived imbalance—namely, to develop countermeasures capable of blunting the U.S. ability to project naval and air power into its vicinity (China’s so-called Anti-Access/Area Denial, or A2/AD, capabilities)—has in turn precipitated U.S. responses with consequences for the nuclear domain.22 Similar conventional-to-nuclear dynamics apply to the Russia-NATO relationship.23

The current destabilizing trends in nuclear strategic stability (type I) are fundamentally caused by deep political tensions between the great powers. While these tensions find their most dangerous expression in the nuclear domain, an understanding of strategic stability (type II) helps define the options for arms control. Whether states hold a status quo or revisionist perspective will shape, all other things being equal, the extent to which they will either accept mutual vulnerability or instead seek an advantage. For example, China’s current nuclear buildup could be intended to ensure it has more space to maneuver in the conventional domain.24  

Yet, while strategic stability (type II) drives a great deal of the dynamics in strategic stability (type I), it is more difficult to address. Such fundamental disagreements on acceptable great-power arrangements, in turn, underline the need for arms control or confidence-building measures to manage and diminish the dangers of escalation. Moreover, developments at the level of strategic stability (type I)—for example, failures of arms control agreements—can, in turn, impact strategic stability (type II).25 For example, Russia became more convinced that the United States was looking to unsettle post–Cold War arrangements in Europe when the latter suspended the ABM Treaty in 2002. 
 

Endnotes

• 12David S. Yost, Strategic Stability in the Cold War: Lessons for Continuing Challenges, Proliferation Papers (Paris: Institut Français des Relations Internationales, 2011). For the conceptual difficulties in defining strategic stability, see Ulrich Kühn, “Strategic Stability in the 21st Century: An Introduction,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 6 (1) (2023): 1–8.
• 13In their original work on strategic stability, Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin conceptualize arms control as preventing deterrent instability. See Thomas C. Schelling and Morton H. Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961).
• 14Robert Powell, “Crisis Stability in the Nuclear Age,” American Political Science Review 83 (1) (1989): 61–76; James M. Acton, “Reclaiming Strategic Stability,” in Strategic Stability: Contending Interpretations, ed. Elbridge A. Colby and Michael S. Gerson (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: U.S. Army War College Press, 2013), 117–146; Glenn A. Kent and David E. Thaler, First-Strike Stability: A Methodology for Evaluating Strategic Forces, R-3765-AF (Santa Monica: RAND, 1989); Elbridge A. Colby, “Defining Strategic Stability: Reconciling Stability and Deterrence,” in Colby and Gerson, eds., Strategic Stability: Contending Interpretations, 47–84; and Forrest E. Morgan, “Crisis Management, Crisis Stability, and Force Structure,” in Crisis Stability and Long-Range Strike: A Comparative Analysis of Fighters, Bombers, and Missiles (Santa Monica: RAND, 2013), 9–34.
• 15Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence,” International Security 41 (4) (2017): 9–49.
• 16Giles David Arceneaux, Nuclear Command and Control and Strategic Stability, ed. Paul van Hooft and Tim Sweijs (The Hague: Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, 2023).
• 17Herman Kahn is arguably the first and most famous exponent of this approach that refuses to accept vulnerability to existential threats. See Herman Kahn and Evan Jones, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960), 20. For a modern example of this approach, see Matthew Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 16–20, 39–64.
• 18Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).
• 19Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2020); Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy,” International Security 30 (4) (April 2006): 7–44; Brendan Rittenhouse Green, The Revolution That Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Austin Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, “Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38 (1–2) (2015): 38–73; and Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy.
• 20Tong Zhao, “The Case for China’s Participation in Trilateral Arms Control,” in Trilateral Arms Control? Perspectives from Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, ed. Ulrich Kühn, Research Report no. 002 (Hamburg: Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, University of Hamburg, March 2020), 68–95; Alexei G. Arbatov, Vladimir Z. Dvorkin, Alexander A. Pikaev, and Sergey K. Oznobishchev, Strategic Stability after the Cold War (Moscow: IMEMO RAN, 2010); David Santoro, “Getting Past No: Developing a Nuclear Arms Control Relationship with China,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 6 (1) (2023): 68–86; Bruno Tertrais, Real and Imagined Challenges to Strategic Stability (The Hague: The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, February 2022); and Kühn, “Strategic Stability in the 21st Century: An Introduction.”
• 21Russian grievances include the enlargement of NATO, NATO’s war in Kosovo, the invasion of Iraq, the suspension of the ABM Treaty, and the intervention in Libya. Chinese grievances include the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, U.S. aid to Taiwan, and the U.S. construction of balancing coalitions against China in the Indo-Pacific region.
• 22Caitlin Talmadge, “Would China Go Nuclear? Assessing the Risk of Chinese Nuclear Escalation in a Conventional War with the United States,” International Security 41 (4) (April 2017): 50–92; Joshua Rovner, “Two Kinds of Catastrophe: Nuclear Escalation and Protracted War in Asia,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40 (5) (2017): 696–730; and Fiona S. Cunningham and M. Taylor Fravel, “Assuring Assured Retaliation: China’s Nuclear Posture and US-China Strategic Stability,” International Security 40 (2) (2015): 7–50.
• 23Van Hooft, Ellison, and Sweijs, Pathways to Disaster: Russia’s War against Ukraine and the Risks of Inadvertent Nuclear Escalation.
• 24Fiona S. Cunningham, “The Unknowns about China’s Nuclear Modernization Program,” Arms Control Today 53 (5) (2023): 6–14.
• 25George Perkovich, Engaging China on Strategic Stability and Mutual Vulnerability (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2022).

Global and European Trends

The need to reinvigorate arms control in and by Europe is driven by developments within Europe as well as by global trends. The challenges for arms control are complex in ways that they were not during the Cold War, and Europe is vulnerable in ways that go further than the effects of Russia’s renewed aggression in Ukraine and its belligerent attitude toward NATO Europe. It must also consider the broader global trends that drive strategic instability of both types. These trends—specifically, nuclear multipolarity, intensifying geopolitical competition, and technological developments—not only suggest the need for but also complicate efforts to reinvigorate the global arms control regime. Yet, a reinvigorated arms control regime would offer a way to eventually build a more sustainable security regime within Europe.
 

Nuclear Complexity and Multipolarity
 

Compared to the Cold War, the current nuclear order is no longer largely defined by the bilateral relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.26 The world now has more nuclear powers and more linkages among regions, complicating each power’s ability to signal to any single potential adversary its willingness to agree to limits on warheads or delivery systems or for any pair of nuclear-armed rivals to set the terms of stability globally.27

At the heart of the overlapping deterrence dyads is the United States, by virtue of its perceived worldwide interests and its treaty commitments to guarantee extended nuclear deterrence in Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere. The triangular relationship among the United States, China, and Russia defines the other relationships by connecting developments and events in Europe to those in Asia and vice versa. In Europe, the United States (and, to a lesser degree, France and the United Kingdom) deters Russia. In Asia, the United States looks to deter China primarily and North Korea secondarily. The addition of India and Pakistan adds another layer of complexity. While India is primarily focused on deterring Pakistan, it also deters China. Pakistan, for its part, is exclusively focused on India. North Korea is deterring the United States and multiple nonnuclear regional powers, including Japan, a latent nuclear power. Paul Bracken calls the emergence of regional nuclear powers a defining feature of the second nuclear age that followed the Cold War.28 During the first nuclear age, the sense of predictability in a largely bipolar order allowed for the establishment of a mutual view of shared risks and likely solutions that made possible the ongoing arms control processes and bilateral agreements of that era.29 This mutual understanding of the world’s nuclear environment no longer exists.30

Linkages between regions due to nuclear multipolarity express themselves in multiple ways. As has become clear with the INF’s demise, the United States is reticent to reinvigorate agreements with Russia unless it can also come to terms with China on risk reduction and on medium-range ballistic missiles. China, however, is reticent to come to terms given the disparity in arsenal sizes.31 China is also now engaged in a rapid buildup of its nuclear arsenal (though it still has a considerable distance to cross before it approaches the size of the U.S. arsenal).32
 

Geopolitical Competition
 

The intensification of geopolitical competition between the United States on the one hand and China and Russia on the other has followed the decline of U.S. unipolarity that existed in the two decades after the Cold War and that gave way to the third nuclear age.33 China and Russia were dissatisfied with the status quo and, despite having security- and status-related reasons to challenge the United States, lacked either the opportunity or the means to do so. China’s astounding economic rise, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, combined with the continuing domestic divisions within the United States, has created the conditions in which Moscow and Beijing could finally consider pursuing their respective grievances against Washington. Consequently, two key, unsettled regional arrangements in Europe and Asia have become relevant again: 1) the status of Russia and its neighborhood, exemplified by the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine; and 2) the status of China and the Western Pacific, exemplified by the tensions over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea. 

The United States is pivotal to the regional balancing arrangements in both Europe and Asia, and successive administrations have increasingly expressed fears that the United States cannot maintain deterrence in both regions.34 Moreover, in the eyes of America’s allies, U.S. intentions are now less clear as a direct result of President Donald Trump’s ambivalence toward international systems during his administration and the uncertainty surrounding not only his possible return to office but also the uncertain effects of polarization within the United States.35 From a European perspective, the slow but inexorable shift of U.S. attention toward the Indo-Pacific region across successive U.S. administrations since the turn of the century further ensures that Europeans are likely to have to make greater efforts on behalf of their own security. The European sense of urgency has become only stronger since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.36 In the context of perceived gains by revisionist powers, losses in strategic stability (type II) mean losses in strategic stability (type I). As they look to challenge the status quo in their respective regions, Russia and China have fewer incentives to invest in arms control measures that are likely to reinforce the status quo. In turn, as it feels its relative position decline, the United States has less incentive to limit its own development of weapons or delivery systems with the potential to offset perceived deterrence gaps.
 

Technological Developments
 

The third trend is the vertical and horizontal proliferation of emerging technologies, including advanced conventional weapons.37 This proliferation is not a coincidence, as other states are also competing with the United States for conventional precision strike capabilities to impede U.S. power projection.38 These technologies include newer precision-guided weapons (including hypersonic weapons), cyberweapons, artificial intelligence (AI), unmanned vehicles, and anti-satellite weapons. They were not necessarily developed to gain advantages in the nuclear domain but rather in the conventional one. However, they undermine both arms race (or deterrent) stability and crisis stability within strategic stability (type I). These emerging technologies increase opportunities for damage limitation strategies, undermining arms race (or deterrent) stability. They also place additional pressure on decision-makers by shrinking decision-making windows and increasing the likelihood of misperception. They create instability along four distinct axes: transparency, precision, speed, and disruption.

Transparency. Transparency increases along with the growing number of sensors, including the proliferation of space-based sensors, as well as the ability to connect and process data from those sensors, including through AI-assisted “data fusion.”39 Though the extent to which the latter will be possible is uncertain, one possible implication of increased transparency for strategic stability (type I) is heightened difficulty in concealing the mobile launchers, strategic bombers, and, potentially, submarines heretofore necessary for ensuring a secure second strike. If systems are believed to be easier to track and hold at risk, the perceived danger of disarming counterforce options becomes more acute, increasing the likelihood that a state will consider or resort to launch-on-warning and preemption.

Precision weapons. The horizontal and vertical proliferation of precision weapons, including hypersonic weapons, has grown in intensity over the past two decades.40 This has also increased the options available due to greater transparency, further undermining strategic stability (type I) through the increased ability to destroy platforms used for delivery of nuclear weapons, whether mobile launchers, strategic bombers, or (potentially) submarines, as well as the ability to penetrate missile silos. This has implications for strategic stability (type I), both by undermining arms race stability, by making counterforce options more attractive, and by challenging crisis stability, by adding to the risk of inadvertent escalation if, during a conventional exchange, states are uncertain whether their adversary is committed to a first-strike option.41

Disrupt C3I. Cyberweapons increasingly have the ability to disrupt command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I), and the effectiveness of these cyberweapons may be further boosted by AI.42 Actions in cyberspace may be difficult to differentiate.43 The implication for strategic stability (type I) is that crisis stability could be undermined by increasing the potential to disrupt nuclear command and control.44 Larger investments in kinetic and nonkinetic anti-satellite weapons—such as directed energy weapons—could have a similar effect.45  While useful in a conventional warfighting scenario, they would be difficult to differentiate from actions intended to disrupt nuclear command and control.46

Speed. The increased speed of hypersonic weapons and of AI or autonomous weapons adds an additional stressor. Speed might matter offensively, as would be the case with hypersonic weapons, or defensively, as with AI-assisted missile defenses that can undermine strategic stability (type I).47 The latter would affect both a nation’s confidence in its secure second-strike capability (necessary for arms race stability) and its ability to make decisions needed for crisis stability.48
 

Endnotes

• 26Steven E. Miller, “The Rise and Decline of Global Nuclear Order?” in Steven E. Miller and Alexey Arbatov, Nuclear Perils in a New Era: Bringing Perspective to the Nuclear Choices Facing Russia and the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2021).
• 27Cooper, Arms Control for the Third Nuclear Age, 22–25.
• 28Paul Bracken, The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics (New York: Macmillan, 2012).
• 29Cooper, Arms Control for the Third Nuclear Age, 5. Robert Legvold and Christopher F. Chyba, “Introduction: The Search for Strategic Stability in a New Nuclear Era,” Dædalus 149 (2) (2020): 6–16; Thomas C. Schelling, “Foreword,” in Colby and Gerson, eds., Strategic Stability: Contending Interpretations, vii–viii; and Steven E. Miller, “A Nuclear World Transformed: The Rise of Multilateral Disorder,” Dædalus 149 (2) (2020): 17–36.
• 30Cooper, Arms Control for the Third Nuclear Age, 17–22.
• 31Steven Pifer, “The Future of U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Control,” in AIP Conference Proceedings, vol. 1898 (Washington, D.C.: AIP Publishing, 2017), 020001.
• 32Caitlin Talmadge and Joshua Rovner, “The Meaning of China’s Nuclear Modernizationv,” Journal of Strategic Studies (2023): 1–33.
• 33Cooper, Arms Control for the Third Nuclear Age, 6–7.
• 34Hal Brands and Evan Braden Montgomery, “One War Is Not Enough: Strategy and Force Planning for Great Power Competition,” Texas National Security Review 3 (2) (Spring 2020): 80–92; Jim Mattis, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, 2018); and U.S. Department of Defense, “Fact Sheet: 2022 National Defense Strategy” (2022).
• 35Bert Thompson, Ulrich Kühn, and Tristan Volpe, “Tracking the German Nuclear Debate,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 15, 2018 (last updated March 5, 2020); Tobias Fella, “Nuklearwaffen: Warum Deutschland Keine Atombombe Braucht,” Tagesspiegel, August 10, 2018; and Christopher Woody, “Trump Has Germany Thinking about Getting Nuclear Weapons, but Some Think It’s a ‘Totally Phoney Debate,’” Business Insider Nederland, August 5, 2018.
• 36Paul van Hooft, “The United States May Be Willing, but No Longer Always Able: The Need for Transatlantic Burden Sharing in the Pacific Century,” in The Future of European Strategy in a Changing Geopolitical Environment: Challenges and Prospects, ed. Michiel Foulon and Jack Thompson (The Hague: Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, 2021), 31–34.
• 37Andrew Futter and Benjamin Zala, “Strategic Non-Nuclear Weapons and the Onset of a Third Nuclear Age,” European Journal of International Security 6 (3) (2021): 257–277.
• 38Jonathan D. Caverley and Peter Dombrowski, “Cruising for a Bruising: Maritime Competition in an Anti-Access Age,” Security Studies 29 (4) (2020): 671–700; Van Hooft, “All-In or All-Out”; Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich, “Future Warfare in the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, U.S. AirSea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia,” International Security 41 (1) (Summer 2016): 7–48; and Aaron L. Friedberg, Beyond Air-Sea Battle: The Debate over US Military Strategy in Asia (London: Routledge, 2014).
• 39Lieber and Press, “The New Era of Counterforce”; and James Johnson, “Artificial Intelligence: A Threat to Strategic Stability,” Strategic Studies Quarterly 14 (1) (2020): 18.
• 40William Alberque and Timothy Wright, “Revitalizing the Missile Technology Control Regime,” Arms Control Today, December 2021. For more on hypersonic weapons, see Ian Williams, “Adapting to the Hypersonic Era,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Nuclear Nexus, November 2, 2020, 13; and Dean A. Wilkening, “Hypersonic Weapons and Strategic Stability,” Survival 61 (5) (2019): 129–148. Questions about the actual effectiveness of hypersonic weapons exist. Ivan Oelrich, “Cool Your Jets: Some Perspective on the Hyping of Hypersonic Weapons,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 76 (1) (2020): 37–45; and Cameron L. Tracy and David Wright, “Modeling the Performance of Hypersonic Boost-Glide Missiles,” Science and Global Security 28 (3) (2020): 135–170.
• 41See, for example, the debate on the strategies considered by the United States to counter Chinese A2/AD. Talmadge, “Would China Go Nuclear?”; and Rovner, “Two Kinds of Catastrophe.”
• 42James M. Acton, “Cyber Warfare and Inadvertent Escalation,” Dædalus 149 (2) (2020): 133–149; and Lu Chuanying, “Forging Stability in Cyberspace,” Survival 62 (2) (2020): 125–136.
• 43Gregory Koblentz, Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age, Council Special Report no. 71 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, November 2014).
• 44Christopher A. Ford, “Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership,” Arms Control and International Security Papers 1 (21) (2020): 9.
• 45Linda Dawson, War in Space: The Science and Technology Behind Our Next Theater of Conflict (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018); and Todd Harrison, Kaitlyn Johnson, Joe Moye, and Makena Young, Space Threat Assessment 2021, CSIS Aerospace Security Project (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2021).
• 46Forrest E. Morgan, Deterrence and First-Strike Stability in Space: A Preliminary Assessment, MG-916-AF (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2010); Christopher Bidwell, Bruce MacDonald, and JD MacDonald, Emerging Disruptive Technologies and Their Potential Threat to Strategic Stability and National Security (Washington, D.C.: Federation of American Scientists, September 2018); and Talmadge, “Would China Go Nuclear?”
• 47Koblentz, Strategic Stability; and Christopher F. Chyba, “New Technologies and Strategic Stability,” Dædalus 149 (2) (2020): 156.
• 48Johnson, “Artificial Intelligence”; Kenneth Payne, “Artificial Intelligence: A Revolution in Strategic Affairs?” Survival 60 (5) (2018): 7–32; and Matthijs M. Maas, “How Viable Is International Arms Control for Military Artificial Intelligence? Three Lessons from Nuclear Weapons,” Contemporary Security Policy 40 (3) (2019): 285–311.

Specific Russian Trends

From a European perspective, these trends interact with Russia’s increased reliance on nuclear weapons under Putin and the likely effects of the war in Ukraine on Russia’s further decline.
 

Growing Role of Coercion
 

Over the past twenty years, Russia has increasingly resorted to both implicit and explicit threats of the use of nuclear weapons. This more coercive approach is not strictly in line with how its nuclear doctrine was understood.49 Throughout the past decade and a half, many experts believe that Russian planners pursued an “escalate-to-de-escalate” nuclear strategy.50 By raising the specter of the limited use of tactical nuclear weapons in the opening stages of a conflict with NATO, Russia sought to prevent the reversal of its expected gains.51

Nuclear threats have also been central to Russian behavior during the war in Ukraine as a way to deter direct NATO involvement.52 The annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts created a pretext for Russia to more credibly threaten to escalate to nuclear weapons. The importance of nuclear coercion is likely to increase proportionate to the decline of other Russian means of influence, whether the credibility of its conventional armed forces or its ability to blackmail Europeans with withholding its oil and gas supplies (the so-called energy weapon).53
 

Concerns about Russian Capabilities Post-Ukraine
 

In addition to increasing its reliance on threats of nuclear escalation, during and after its war with Ukraine Russia may also be more likely to escalate conflicts. Revanchist sentiments among Russian leaders are likely to increase, especially if Russia suffers a military defeat in Ukraine; conversely, a Ukrainian defeat could embolden them. More points of contact exist as the inclusion of Finland into NATO, and soon Sweden, brings the alliance closer to the Russian Kola Peninsula. Most of the nuclear arsenal crucial for Russia’s second-strike capability is located on the Kola Peninsula, along with many of its nonstrategic nuclear weapons.54

Russian leaders and experts already fear that the security of their second-strike capability has been weakened.55 Developments of particular concern to them are space weapons, precision strike (including hypersonic) capabilities, missile defense, cyber weapons, non-U.S. nuclear weapons, and nonstrategic nuclear weapons. The central Russian concern is that U.S./NATO “aerospace” capabilities will allow the West to bypass Russian air and missile defenses, thus leaving it vulnerable to a nuclear or conventional counterforce attack.56 Russian concerns also center on the increased U.S. missile defense capabilities made possible by Washington’s 2002 withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. Furthermore, the U.S. investment in the Prompt Global Strike program prompted a particularly strong reaction.57 Finally, Russian planners fear the capability of the United States and NATO to disrupt and destroy the nuclear C3I infrastructure through anti-satellite weapons and cyber weapons.58
 

Endnotes

• 49Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2022,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 78 (2) (2022): 98–121; Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky, Moscow’s Aerospace Theory of Victory: Western Assumptions and Russian Reality (Washington, D.C.: CNA, 2021); Dima Adamsky, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2019); Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, “The Russian Rogue in the New Nuclear Posture Review,” in “Policy Roundtable: The Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review,” special issue, Texas National Security Review, February 13, 2018; and Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, “Russian Strategic Deterrence,” Survival 58 (4) (2016): 7–26.
• 50Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, “Russian Nuclear Strategy and Conventional Inferiority,” Journal of Strategic Studies 44 (1) (2020): 3–35; and Anya Loukianova Fink and Olga Oliker, “Russia’s Nuclear Weapons in a Multipolar World: Guarantors of Sovereignty, Great Power Status and More,” Dædalus 149 (2) (2020): 37–55.
• 51Ven Bruusgaard, “Russian Nuclear Strategy”; and Pavel Podvig, “Russia’s Current Nuclear Modernization and Arms Control,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 1 (2) (2018): 256–267.
• 52Elisabeth Braw, “Behind Putin’s Nuclear Threats,” Politico, August 18, 2015; and “Ukraine Conflict: Putin ‘Was Ready for Nuclear Alert,’” BBC News, March 15, 2015, sec. Europe.
• 53Williams and Adamopoulos, “Arms Control after Ukraine.”
• 54Kristensen and Korda, “Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2022,” 107–108; Tamara Patton, Pavel Podvig, and Phillip Schell, A New START Model for Transparency in Nuclear Disarmament: Individual Country Reports (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2013), 32–33; Adamsky, “Russia’s New Nuclear Normal”; and Van Hooft, Ellison, and Sweijs, “Pathways to Disaster.”
• 55Leading Russian experts on international security, arms control, and strategic stability were sent questionnaires about threats to strategic stability. The results of this survey are reported in Alexander G. Savelyev and Olga M. Alexandria, “What Factors Affect Strategic Stability?” Russia in Global Affairs 20 (1) (2022): 93–111.
• 56Dmitry Stefanovich, “Proliferation and Threats of Reconnaissance-Strike Systems: A Russian Perspective,” Nonproliferation Review 27 (1–3) (2020): 97–107; Alexey Arbatov, Vladimir Dvorkin, and Petr Topychkanov, “Entanglement as a New Security Threat: A Russian Perspective,” in Entanglement: Russian and Chinese Perspectives on Non-Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Risks, ed. James M. Acton (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2017), 40; and Savelyev and Alexandria, “What Factors Affect Strategic Stability?”
• 57Polina Sinovets and Valeriia Hesse, “Russia’s Foreign and Security Policy: The Evolution of the Escalation Strategy,” in Sinovets and Alberque, eds., Arms Control and Europe, 23; James M. Acton, Silver Bullet? Asking the Right Questions about Conventional Prompt Global Strike (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013); and Savelyev and Alexandria, “What Factors Affect Strategic Stability?”
• 58Savelyev and Alexandria, “What Factors Affect Strategic Stability?”

European Needs and Strategic Stability

The European approach to arms control is ill-suited to address these trends. In the European context, arms control and nonproliferation were often presented as ends in and of themselves, with Europeans taking an explicitly multilateral approach. Multilateralism worked out particularly well within Western Europe during the Cold War, and then to deal with a reunified Germany and the addition of multiple former Warsaw Pact states to the European Union. The relief that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union was immense, and together with the limits imposed on European power and autonomy during the unipolar era, the end of the Cold War arguably led to the deep institutionalization within Europe of multilateralism as an approach that relied less on raw power. Europeans then hoped to reshape how international politics writ large were performed.59 Arguably, the European multilateralist approach to nonproliferation contributed to strategic stability (type I). 

However, the European use of multilateralism was also intended to achieve broader systemic effects that fall under strategic stability (type II); for example, by creating other mechanisms for mutual accommodation so as to dampen the likelihood of revisionism. In that sense, arms control and confidence-building measures such as the Helsinki Accords and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Vienna document that aimed to increase transparency, including with regard to conventional forces, were successful in facilitating the peaceful end of the Cold War. Arms control and nonproliferation clearly helped to safeguard the achievement of the first stable peace in Europe for a century. They ignored, however, the gradually deteriorating state of European and global security. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has definitively dispelled the particular illusion that Europe had found a definitive way out of its violent history.

The European approach to multilateralism as an end in and of itself was also intended to distinguish it from the increasingly unilateral approach adopted by the United States in the twenty-first century. The George W. Bush administration withdrew the United States from the ABM Treaty and invaded Iraq—ostensibly to preempt the reemergence of the Iraqi nuclear program. Washington then also pursued measures to prevent rogue actors from accessing nuclear material, for example, through the Proliferation Security Initiative, which looked to interdict and seize materials shipped to states and nonstate actors of concern.60 Europeans, by contrast, focused efforts on containing Iran’s uranium enrichment program by offering economic incentives, to considerable success. In response to the unilateralism of the George W. Bush years, “effective multilateralism” emerged as a popular slogan in European diplomatic circles.61 U.S. policy under President Trump further undermined European attempts at multilateralism. The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the INF Treaty after Russia’s violation, as well as from the Open Skies Treaty. The Trump administration then unilaterally violated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that the three major European powers—the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—and the EU as an institution had put a great deal of effort into initiating. The Missile Technology Control Regime (MCTR) and restrictive export control policies have arguably still worked to slow down the proliferation of ballistic missiles; however, thirty-one states and nonstate actors possess or can produce such missiles.62

A tension has thus evolved between the arms control approaches of the United States and Europe. U.S. interests in arms control to manage the competition with the Soviet Union and then Russia have always, with some partial exceptions, mixed the need to maintain a qualitatively superior edge and have the freedom to maneuver during escalation. The partial exceptions are associated with the Obama and Biden administrations. In his 2009 Prague speech, Barack Obama explicitly iterated his preference for a world without nuclear weapons—not a new notion per se but one that seemed to point to disarmament. Then, as a candidate, Joe Biden pushed for a No First Use pledge from the United States, though this seems to have fallen by the wayside once he was in office. Official U.S. policy has remained essentially unchanged, however. 

The U.S. nuclear posture was and is strongly shaped by America’s status as a guarantor of extended nuclear deterrence to allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Consequently, the United States maintains a first-use nuclear doctrine.63 Even during periods of ostensible great-power peace and stability in the 1990s and early 2000s, the United States continued to pursue damage limitation strategies.64 U.S. allies remain concerned that Washington will not be able to fulfill security guarantees if the United States cannot credibly threaten to escalate (or “to escalate sufficiently”) before or during the initial changes of a conventional conflict. Whether proliferation can continue to be inhibited without U.S. extended nuclear deterrence is questionable. When President Trump proved hostile to alliances and questioned the nonproliferation norm, discussions about indigenous nuclear programs emerged among Washington’s European and, especially, Asian allies.65

Thus, so long as the United States plays an extraregional hegemonic role, it will, from the point of view of the other great powers, undermine strategic stability (type II). This creates incentives for Russia and China to offset U.S. conventional and nuclear preponderance with their own advanced conventional weapons, by exploring emerging technologies, and, in the Russian case, by ensuring a flexible nuclear arsenal with a variety of yields that gives it options to escalate, or, in the Chinese case, by improving the security of its second-strike capability. In turn, the United States considers greater flexibility in its arsenal to be important to managing asymmetries at the regional level.66

European approaches to arms control start from a different point. Undermining the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrence guarantees is not in European interests (or those of America’s Asian allies). Nor is taking European states that participate in NATO nuclear sharing—Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium—out of the sharing arrangement, nor is it for the European member states to leave NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group. However, Europeans face different stakes, as Russian attempts at nuclear coercion are far more likely to be directed at targets on European territory.

Because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a new context, the European multilateralist approach is likely to be dead on arrival—at least toward Russia. (It remains an option for Europeans if and when they seek to engage with China, for example on emerging technologies.) Russia is unlikely to be open to multilateralist approaches as long as the regime perceives itself to be locked in a struggle for its own survival or (perhaps) even the survival of Russia as a state. Therefore, Europeans could consider other, less-cooperative approaches to arms control and engagement with Russia as they reinforce their collective defense and deterrence capabilities through increased defense spending.

With the tottering position of New START and no progress on its renewal, limits on Russia’s deployed warheads are effectively no more.67 However, because, from a European perspective, New START largely focuses on strategic weapons, the loss of risk reduction measures and transparency is particularly worrying. The end of the ABM Treaty and the slow buildup of missile defenses in Europe have undermined Russian confidence in the security of their second-strike capability. Putting the genie back in the bottle through a new treaty curbing ballistic missile defenses would be difficult given the benefits of the same missile defenses to defend against conventional strikes.

With the collapse of the INF Treaty in 2019, any constraints on Russian ability to build land-based launchers for medium-range weapons (short-to-medium ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers and intermediate ranges of 1,000–5,000 kilometers) have been removed. This is particularly relevant for Europe as most European states are less than 5,000 kilometers from a Russian border. States seeking to defend against the launch of such missiles would face very short reaction times, a fact that would increase fears during a crisis. The MCTR continues to limit the proliferation of ballistic missiles to some extent but does not address the development of dual-capable hypersonic weapons.68 Yet, it is the one arms control measure still in place that seems to enjoy some Russian support.69 The loss of the CFE Treaty removed limits on conventional buildups, which may become less of an issue as Europeans rebuild their armed forces in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Before its invasion of Ukraine, Russia had signaled its willingness to engage in a theater-based arms control approach that would address some of the gaps regarding ground-launched missiles in the short to intermediate range.70 Russia also expressed a preference for including France and the United Kingdom in any discussions on arms control.71 U.S. willingness to participate ended with the invasion of Ukraine. However, both the Trump and Biden administrations looked to expand New START to include nonstrategic weapons.72 As Russia has the advantage in nonstrategic weapons and is itself focused on U.S. strategic weapons, such an approach would be difficult.

Ideally, Europe would need any future arms control regime with Russia to address 1) the short-to-intermediate-range missile threat, either banning them outright or addressing them through caps; and 2) low-yield, so-called tactical nuclear weapons. Moreover, given uncertainty about the capabilities of the Russian military after the Ukraine war, any military-to-military contacts that boost transparency would, again ideally, help to diminish the chances of misperception and aid in risk reduction.
 

Endnotes

• 59The EU published a security strategy that explicitly emphasized multilateralism as an answer and riposte to the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy, which was considered highly unilateral. European Council, “European Security Strategy: A Secure Europe in a Better World,” December 12, 2003.
• 60Michal Onderco and Paul van Hooft, “Why Is the Proliferation Security Initiative a Problematic Solution?” Chinese Journal of International Politics 9 (1) (2016): 81–108.
• 61Meier, Yes, We Can? 2.
• 62“Non-State Actors,” Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.
• 63Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2020); and Alexander Gabuev, “Why Russia and China Are Strengthening Security Ties,” Carnegie Moscow, September 24, 2018.
• 64Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy; Lieber and Press, “The New Era of Counterforce”; and Long and Green, “Stalking the Secure Second Strike.”
• 65Thompson, Kühn, and Volpe, “Tracking the German Nuclear Debate”; and Uk Yang, “Is South Korea Going Nuclear?” 38 North, February 3, 2023.
• 66David J. Lonsdale, “The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review: A Return to Nuclear Warfighting?” Comparative Strategy 38 (2) (2019): 98–117; Katarzyna Zysk, “Escalation and Nuclear Weapons in Russia’s Military Strategy,” RUSI Journal 163 (2) (2018): 4–15; Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review: 2018 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, February 2018); and Francis J. Gavin, James Acton, Austin Long, et al., “Policy Roundtable: The Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review,” special issue, Texas National Security Review, February 2018.
• 67START, the bilateral treaty first agreed to in 2010, limits U.S. and Russian nuclear warhead delivery systems (ground-launched missiles, submarine-launched missiles, and bombers) to 800 overall, with 700 deployable at any given time, and a strategic nuclear warhead arsenal of 1,550. However, doubts exist about the value of START to U.S. interests, specifically because of the growth of Russia’s shorter-range nuclear forces. Franklin C. Miller, “Outdated Nuclear Treaties Heighten the Risk of Nuclear War,” Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2022.
• 68Missile Technology Control Regime: Annex Handbook (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, 2017); and Kolja Brockmann, Controlling Ballistic Missile Proliferation: Assessing Complementarity between the HCoC, MTCR and UNSCR 1540, HCOC Research Papers no. 7 (The Hague: Hague Code of Conduct, June 15, 2020).
• 69“Control of Missile Technologies Must Remain Technical—Russian Foreign Ministry,” TASS, April 8, 2020.
• 70Arms Control Association, “Russia, U.S., NATO Security Proposals,” March 2022.
• 71Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, “Russia Wants Britain, France to Join Wider Nuclear Talks with U.S.,” July 29, 2021.
• 72Miles A. Pomper, William Alberque, Marshall L. Brown Jr., William M. Moon, and Nikolai Sokov, Everything Counts: Building a Control Regime for Nonstrategic Nuclear Warheads in Europe, CNS Occasional Paper no. 55 (Monterey, Calif.: Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, May 2022).

European Support for Arms Control after Ukraine

Despite the obvious need to reinvigorate the arms control regime to address growing strategic instability (type I) within Europe, a need that has become all the more acute following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Europe arguably has little appetite right now to invest political resources in the arms control process—at least while Russia still occupies Ukrainian territory. Moreover, some Europeans believe that achieving strategic stability (type II) will require Russia’s eventual reintegration into a European security architecture, while others believe that the only route to long-term strategic stability (type II) is for Russia to be weakened for the foreseeable future, even if that promotes short-term instability. For West European states that are further removed from Russia’s conventional threat but not its nuclear threat, the nuclear challenges arguably have greater priority in the short term. For Central and East Europeans, more proximate both to the Russian threat and to historical memories of Russian aggression against them, the long-term weakening of Russia remains the priority.

Neither view regarding the desirability of engaging Russia is disconnected from the risk of nuclear weapons inherent to strategic stability (type I). As long as Russia exists as a threat to the Central and East European states and can reinforce that threat with nuclear weapons, no real stability can be possible in the long term. Alternatively, if Russia—or the current regime—perceives mounting threats to be existential, it could opt to use nuclear weapons in the short term to diminish NATO pressure. Such an outcome could be deliberate—particularly if it involves the use of tactical nuclear weapons—or inadvertent, the result of misperceptions about NATO conventional actions. Attempting to address strategic stability (type II) concerns with Russia is also likely to be of dubious efficacy. That any outcome could satisfy Russia’s (or the current regime’s) designs on what it considers its sphere of influence is unclear. Moreover, any long-term settlement acceptable to Europeans seems impossible to achieve with the Putin regime—and uncertain with its eventual successor. That is, the two European perspectives weigh the relative risks of strategic stability at levels (I) and (II) differently.

The way forward for European arms control—if any option exists—is thus not obvious. The lowest-common denominator between the two perspectives is to prevent a Russian victory in Ukraine, but Europeans disagree amongst themselves on how extensive a Russian defeat would need to be, and, as the war drags on, the willingness within Europe to support negotiations and accept Ukrainian territorial concessions may diverge. Likewise, Europeans are broadly in agreement on the need to reinforce conventional deterrence and defense after the three-decade-long “geo­political holiday.” Still, at the time of writing, they disagree on how this should happen. Should a defense buildup be centered exclusively on NATO, or should it include the EU too? Should a military buildup emphasize short-term, off-the-shelf U.S. armaments, or should Europe prepare for long-term autonomy by increasing its defense-industrial complex? In response to the deteriorated European security situation, France has explicitly called for European involvement in arms control talks with Russia, and President Emmanuel Macron has made overtures to the EU’s skeptical Central and East European member states.73
 

Endnotes

• 73Tara Varma, “‘We Lost an Opportunity to Listen to You’: Why Macron Is Embracing Eastern Europe,” Brookings, June 6, 2023.

On or Off the Sidelines

Europe faces difficult and limited options for reinvigorating the arms control regime. This may prove particularly problematic for the issues of instability with Russia that most affect Europe. With “effective multilateralism” rendered moribund for the foreseeable future, with uncertainty regarding the direction of American politics, with China’s reticence to engage with the United States, and with Russian aggression on its borders, Europe should be more proactive. I suggest three prospective avenues, none of which are straightforward. They would, however, put into practice the arguments made in Europe about the need to achieve greater strategic autonomy and to take on greater responsibility.
 

Europe–United States
 

Europeans should make arms control and strategic stability one of the priorities of the transatlantic relationship. Europe’s inability to maneuver freely in the arena of arms control results from its structural dependency on the United States for security and intra-European divisions that limit progress on security and defense. However, with the United States now preoccupied by the rise of China and the Indo-Pacific region more broadly, not to mention its domestic divisions, interests on both sides of the Atlantic would be served by a redistribution of existing burdens. A transatlantic redistribution of burdens would require the Europeans to take on greater responsibility for their own security, which would require strengthening their conventional deterrence as well. The alternative is a fractured Europe in which states that feel threatened by Russia and its weapons will make greater demands on the United States or pursue their own nuclear deterrent capabilities. The European dependency on the United States is also institutional, as thanks to decades of underinvestment in nuclear issues and arms control, the epistemic community has shrunk. Structural investment in rebuilding a critical mass of scholars and experts on both sides of the Atlantic is necessary. NATO could potentially take the lead in engaging both Russia and China. Europeans wield significant influence in the Atlantic alliance, and the U.S. presence adds credibility and weight.
 

Europe-China
 

Europe may be able to act as an interlocutor for Chinese strategic stability and arms control measures, preparing the way for a more comprehensive approach between China and the United States.74 As a disinterested—or at least less directly involved—party that does not from the Chinese perspective undermine strategic stability (type II) to the same extent, Europe could possibly play this role by leaning in on its economic and institutional engagement with China. The EU is arguably the right body to engage with China, though the United Kingdom should also be included for reasons of both political weight and its status as Europe’s second nuclear-armed power. NATO, too, might be able to facilitate the establishment of concrete rules of the road with China for emerging technologies.75 While the Europeans could lead the initiative, NATO, because it is an alliance that includes the United States, would have the advantage of greater credibility, potentially leading to positive spillover into other areas of contention between China and the United States. If China and the United States were able to create more strategic stability (type I) between them in the Western Pacific, the United States would have more room to maneuver as it seeks to engage with Russia in Europe. 

However, whether Europe can play a role facilitating agreement between the United States and China regarding arms control and confidence-building measures is questionable, as European states are themselves becoming more directly involved in the Sino-American competition. The increasing European naval presence in the Indo-Pacific region and Europe’s participation in the export controls on advanced technology transfers to China (albeit under pressure from Washington) limit the likelihood of its long-term trust-building efforts achieving success, as does the increasing Chinese belligerence in the region and toward European states. That said, expanding exchanges between the Chinese and European expert communities might be one way to understand how to dampen the escalatory pressures inherent to the current bloc-forming dynamics.
 

Europe-Russia
 

In response to the increased uncertainty regarding the role of the United States in Europe, Europeans need to build the means to engage directly with Russia on arms control. After all, they have the most to lose from Russian aggression and Russia’s buildup of short-to-intermediate-range missiles and low-yield nuclear weapons, but Europeans will struggle to have any direct impact on the progress of bilateral Russian-U.S. arms control for three reasons.76 First, so long as Russia seeks to address its own strategic stability (type I) concerns, it is likely to prefer to talk exclusively with the United States because the United States has most of the capabilities that unsettle Russia and because dealing with the United States on equal footing allows Russia to signal its own great-power status.77 While Russia’s belligerence toward NATO and aggression against Ukraine are overdetermined by a variety of issues—from security concerns about NATO enlargement to domestic Russian politics—a significant part of recent Russian behavior was shaped by the loss of prestige and status after the end of the Cold War.78 The nuclear card still remains the strongest card Russia has left to play and it represents the one dimension of power in which it has no equal outside the United States. A second reason European efforts to influence Russian-U.S. arms control may prove ineffective is that the Russian government may generally be less able to engage in discussions with either Europe or the United States, as the cadre of competent arms control experts and negotiators on the Russian side has declined. Finally, Russia’s concerns are centered on strategic stability (type II). Essentially, Russia’s focus is on its status in Europe, the threats it perceives from the expansion of NATO and the EU to its border, the operations of nongovernmental organizations in Russia that it fears were undermining the regime as had happened in Ukraine and Georgia previously, the decline of its perceived sphere of influence, and the uncertain status of Ukraine.79

The last point is particularly difficult; officials and arms control experts in Europe do not agree on what if anything could be offered to Russia that would satisfy or even minimally address Russian concerns at the level of strategic stability (type II). Many Europeans do not view Russian concerns as legitimate and would have more difficulty still accepting Russian assurances as credible. European willingness to accommodate Russia on broader political concerns is thus extremely limited for the foreseeable future, certainly so long as Putin remains in power. Even given these conditions, the European willingness to discuss arms control with Russia on strategic stability (type I) concerns, specifically risk reduction and arms control, is arguably greater than the willingness on the part of Russia to talk with the Europeans—even when accounting for the extreme skepticism that any such efforts would encounter from NATO and the EU’s East European member states. 

Rather than taking a multilateralist cooperative approach centered on making gains in strategic stability (type II), Europeans could take an approach that instead focuses on using Russian insecurities and fears about the security of its second-strike capability and which belong to instability (type I). Such a European approach would build on the Cold War history of competitive approaches to arms control. The Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT) worked because U.S. negotiators were willing to accept quantitative limits because of their arsenal’s qualitative advantages and their Soviet counterparts’ ability to rely on the quantitative advantages of their arsenal.80 The NATO “doubletrack” decision counted on the placement of short-to-intermediate-range missiles as one track to open negotiations with the Soviet Union on its own missile placements.81

A competitive European approach would be premised on using the increasing investments in defense already underway as a consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine to build capabilities that would further unsettle Russian confidence in the security of its second-strike capability. Unlike its Cold War antecedents, a current-day European approach would depend on advanced conventional weapons that, by making use of significant gains in precision and destructiveness, are suitable for strategic purposes.82 Adding new nuclear powers to Europe or significantly expanding the French and UK arsenals by adding new types of delivery systems or new variations in warhead yields would likely be significantly destabilizing.83 At present, neither the French nor the British arsenal is designed for active warfighting and essentially contains no nonstrategic weapons.84 An approach that relies on a European assortment of advanced conventional weapons that could achieve strategic effects would require Europeans to take an explicitly strategic perspective as they invest in arms acquisitions, which, at least among the EU member states, could be framed as strategic autonomy, strategic responsibility, or sovereignty in action.

A European competitive approach based on advanced conventional weapons would need to meet three criteria. First, weapons would need to be scalable, countable, and thus verifiable if they are to be conducive to mutually agreed limits, reductions, and transparency. Second, weapons acquisitions would need to be planned to allow Russia sufficient time to respond. A gradual buildup that suggests a slow but sure decline in the Russian position over one to two decades is likely to be more effective than presenting Russia with a sudden reality and dichotomous choices. Third, weapons acquisitions must not directly threaten the survival of the Russian regime. Using these criteria, Europe should consider investing in three broad categories of advanced weapons that are likely to incentivize Russia to negotiate: 1) advanced airpower, specifically stealth and low-altitude flight; 2) high-precision conventional weapons such as cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons; and 3) missile defense.85

As Europeans set their priorities for arms control agreements or measures with Russia, their most urgent goals are to readdress the short-to-medium-range missiles and conventional forces previously covered by the INF and CFE Treaties. However, the European states are not likely to be unified on which approach to emphasize. For the West European states, the ground covered by the INF Treaty is arguably more important; the Central and East European states are likely to care more about managing potential conventional imbalances closer to their borders.

European defense investments that focus on building more robust conventional deterrence options also make sense in light of the wider, strategic stability (type II) consequences of the U.S. focus on the Indo-Pacific region and military competition with China. Should the U.S. commitment to European security grow less firm as a consequence of the demand on U.S. resources in the Indo-Pacific region, or as a consequence of U.S. domestic instability, then a revanchist Russia might rely even more heavily on its nuclear coercive threat to readjust the European status quo and pursue its revanchist ambitions. As long as the United States perceives deterrence gaps in the European theater, it is likely to compensate through nuclear means.86 For these reasons, investments in advanced conventional weapons—that is, the expansion of European capabilities to allow deterrence through denial—can contribute to stability in European security.87
 

Endnotes

• 74Tong Zhao, Europe’s Role in Promoting US-China Arms Control Cooperation (The Hague: Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, February 2022).
• 75Natalia Drozdiak, “NATO to Seek Engagement with China over ‘Responsible Use’ of Military AI,” Japan Times, April 19, 2023.
• 76Meier, Yes, We Can? 1.
• 77Russian experts who underlined the threats to the Russian secure second-strike capability also highlighted a need to address these systems before 2026, noting that by 2036 they must all have been addressed in some form of agreement. Savelyev and Alexandria, “What Factors Affect Strategic Stability?”
• 78Kimberly Marten, “NATO Enlargement: Evaluating Its Consequences in Russia,” in Evaluating NATO Enlargement: From Cold War Victory to the Russia-Ukraine War, ed. James Goldgeier and Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2023), 209–249.
• 79Russia made clear that it sought a legally binding limit on NATO enlargement, an end to the cooperation of Ukraine and others with NATO, limits on military deployments and exercises in certain geographic areas, a moratorium on further deployment of medium-range missiles, and an end to NATO’s nuclear sharing. William Alberque, “The US Arms Control Agenda: Impact on Europe,” in Sinovets and Alberque, eds., Arms Control and Europe, 13.
• 80John D. Maurer, Competitive Arms Control: Nixon, Kissinger, and SALT, 1969–1972 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2022).
• 81Susan Colbourn, Euromissiles (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2022).
• 82Acton, Silver Bullet?
• 83On adding new nuclear powers to Europe, see Thompson, Kühn, and Volpe, “Tracking the German Nuclear Debate”; Bruno Tertrais, “The European Dimension of Nuclear Deterrence: French and British Policies and Future Scenarios,” FIIA Working Paper 106, Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Helsinki, November 22, 2018; and Céline Jurgensen, “L’Europe, La France et la dissuasion nucléaire,” Revue défense nationale 6 (821) (2019): 56–68.
• 84Bruno Tertrais, “A Comparison between US, UK and French Nuclear Policies and Doctrines,” Centre de Recherches Internationales, March 2007; Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “United Kingdom Nuclear Weapons, 2021,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 77 (3) (2021): 153–158; Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “French Nuclear Forces, 2019,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 75 (1) (2019): 51–55; and Niklas Granholm and John Rydqvist, Nuclear Weapons in Europe: British and French Deterrence Forces, FOI-R–4587–SE (Stockholm: Försvarsdepartementet, April 2018). France has not excluded the option of a nuclear first-use, but its arsenal is not designed for such a purpose—though it does have prestrategic weapons for a nuclear “shot off the bow.” Bruno Tertrais, French Nuclear Deterrence Policy, Forces and Future, Recherches & Documents no. 1 (Paris: Fondation Reconnue d’Utilité Publique, 2019).
• 85Paul van Hooft and Davis Ellison, Good Fear, Bad Fear: How European Defense Investments Could Be Leveraged to Restart Arms Control Negotiations with Russia (The Hague: Hague Center for Strategic Studies, 2023).
• 86For example, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review argues in favor of equipping U.S. submarines with low-yield nuclear weapons. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, 2018.
• 87Alexander Lanoszka and Luis Simon, “The Post-INF European Missile Balance: Thinking about NATO’s Deterrence Strategy,” Texas National Security Review 3 (3) (2020): 12–30.

Conclusion

The European arms control regime is in bad shape. Russian nuclear belligerence has grown in recent decades, culminating in the invasion of Ukraine, and, aided by wider global trends, resulting in the destabilization of European security. European approaches that focus on multilateralism to strengthen stability at the political level (strategic stability type II) are not likely to be effective in the face of 1) the undermining of arms race and crisis stability within strategic stability (type I) by nuclear multipolarity and emerging technologies; and 2) the reemergence of challenges to the status quo by Russia and China in Europe and Asia that undermine strategic stability (type II).

Russia is unlikely to emerge from the war satisfied with its status, even if it prevents Ukrainians from retaking their lost territories. As Russia can be expected to become more reliant on its nuclear threat, few options for cooperative engagement remain. More important, Europeans, especially those in Central and Eastern Europe, will have no appetite for offering political concessions to Russia. The increasing U.S. focus on the Indo-Pacific region and on trilateralism with Russia and China as a condition for arms control further risks sidelining Europe. Given the European need to limit the threat of Russian short-to-intermediate-range nuclear weapons, Europe has few options to shape the situation. Yet, Europeans could ensure that arms control becomes a central issue in transatlantic relations in the medium term and could attempt to use their multilateralist approach to engage China in the hopes of dampening the escalatory pressures in Asia. Beyond contributing to a general public good, European engagement with China may also provide the United States with more maneuverability in Europe in finding agreement on arms control with Russia.

Finally, Europeans could consider a more independent approach and use their ongoing investments in conventional defense and deterrence to strengthen their ability to pressure Russian delivery systems in a transparent and gradual way. While not without risk, such an approach could incentivize Russian negotiators to talk with Europeans to ensure that their most important remaining strategic and coercive tool does not further depreciate in value. Whatever actions Europeans end up taking, they should be made in the full awareness that they need to take greater responsibility for their own security in the new geopolitical context, and this includes taking an active role in the European and possibly the global arms control regime.