GovWire

Introduction

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, thank you to Dr John Hamre and Seth Jones, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies for hosting us today.

And thank you to all joining us here at CSIS or virtually.

I must begin by talking about the war in Ukraine.

We recently passed the grim milestone of 150 days since Putin launched this unprovoked, illegal war, bringing untold suffering to the innocent people of Ukraine.

Im afraid the conflict fits a pattern of Russia acting deliberately and recklessly to undermine the global security architecture. Thats a pattern that includes the illegal annexation of Crimea, the use of chemical and radiological weapons on UK soil, and the repeated violations that caused the collapse of the INF Treaty.

And we will continue to hold Russia to account for its destabilising actions as an international community.

A new security order

What is happening in Ukraine is also a manifestation of a much broader contest unfolding over the successor to the post-Cold War international order.

This contest has profound implications.

It will decide whether we live in a world in which regionally-aggressive powers such as China and Russia can pursue might is right agendas unchecked or a world in which all states can ensure their sovereignty, competition does not spill over into conflict, and we cooperate to protect the planet.

As this contest unfolds, we are entering a dangerous new age of proliferation, in which technological change is increasing the damage potential of many weapons, and those weapons systems are more widely available.

We need to start thinking about the new security order.

Both elements that have guaranteed strategic stability in the past effective deterrence in all of its forms, combined with a renewal of a functional arms control framework need urgent attention.

Policy makers have been urged recently to learn to navigate the absence of order. That is in part good advice. But it is important to build some handrails to guide our thinking as we prepare to negotiate the complex landscape ahead.

In the 1950s and 60s, policy makers faced similarly uncertain terrain.

The advent of nuclear weapons had created a tension between strength and stability.

Strength having the speed, initiative, and surprise to ensure security and stability there being nothing for either side to gain from striking first.

Out of this period, academics and policy makers developed the concept of strategic stability, building on the work of Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn and Samuel Huntington.

In simple terms, strategic stability meant establishing a balance that minimised the risk of nuclear conflict. It recognised that an atmosphere of competitive armament generated the need for continuous dialogue.

It was delivered through two core components deterrence and arms control.

In Madrid last month, NATO reaffirmed strategic stability as essential to our collective security.

But we should be honest strategic stability is at risk.

During the Cold War, we thought in terms of escalation ladders thanks to Herman Kahn: largely predictable, linear processes that could be monitored and responded to.

Now, we face a much broader range of strategic risks and pathways to escalation, driven by developments of science and technology including rapid technological advancement, the shift to hybrid warfare, and expanding competition in new domains such as space and cyber.

These are all exacerbated by Russias repeated violations of its treaty commitments, and the pace and scale with which China is expanding its nuclear and conventional arsenals and the disdain it has shown for engaging with any arms control agreements.

Indeed, Rebecca Hersman and Heather Williams former and current directors of the CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues have argued that we are now more likely to see escalation wormholes sudden, unpredictable failures in the fabric of deterrence causing rapid escalation to strategic conflict.

Moreover, the Cold Wars two monolithic blocks of the USSR and NATO though not without alarming bumps were able to reach a shared understanding of doctrine that is today absent.

Doctrine is opaque in Moscow and Beijing, let alone Pyongyang or Tehran.

So the question is how we reset strategic stability for the new era finding a balance amongst unprecedented complexity so there can be no collapse into uncontrolled conflict.

The new NATO Strategic Concept sets the direction on which we must now build.

This will be difficult. But we have a moral and a pragmatic duty to try.

A more expansive and integrated approach

The circle can only be squared if we renew both deterrence and arms control, taking a more expansive and integrated approach to both.

In March last year, the UK published the Integrated Review, our broadest and deepest review of national security and international policy since the end of the Cold War.

The Integrated Reviews emphasis on integration was a deliberate response to the blurring of the boundaries between war and peace, prosperity and security, trade and development, and domestic and foreign policy.

In both the US and UK, we have already started moving to deeper integration in our approach to deterrence.

From a UK perspective, integrated deterrence means bringing together all of the levers of state power political, diplomatic, economic and military to deliver effect.

It means tailoring our responses, be they military, diplomatic or economic, to the specific context taking into account our understanding of our adversaries motivations.

Integrated deterrence also means working in a more joined up manner across government and society more broadly.

It means working more closely with our allies and our partners - through NATO, but also through new groupings such as AUKUS, and strengthening our relationships with partners in the Euro-Atlantic, Indo-Pacific and around the world.

And we must give due, arguably overdue, regard to improving and strengthening deterrence by denial. In an age of revanchist aggressive powers, committed to the concept of spheres of influence, we must ensure that the vulnerable have the ability to defend themselves, thereby deterring aggression in the first place.

A central challenge though is to avoid this leading to inevitable proliferation.

So the next step should be to develop our thinking on integrated arms control, advancing a dynamic new agenda that is multi-domain, multi-capability and draws together a much wider set of actors.

Historically, arms control has consisted of a set of regimes imposing limits on specific capabilities, alongside strategic stability dialogues focused on risk reduction.

Much of the existing architecture remains vital - such as the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

That last, the NPT, has been the cornerstone of nuclear security and civil nuclear prosperity for the last 52 years, and the UK remains committed to its implementation in full.

We will work with all States Parties at the forthcoming Review Conference to strengthen the treaty as the irreplaceable foundation and framework for our common efforts.

The reality, however, is that current structures alone will not deliver what we need a modern arms control system to achieve.

Many other long-standing agreements have fallen apart as a result of Russian violations, despite them offering the conflict management, confidence building and transparency that Moscow claims to seek, and that logic would dictate it should desire.

These include the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe; the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and Open Skies, all of which were designed to provide stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Other proposals such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons simply do not address the obstacles that must be overcome to achieve lasting global disarmament.

And many of the frameworks that are still in place were designed for a world that no longer exists:

• They offer patchy coverage and dont cover all capabilities, including some dangerous new and emerging technologies;

• They often rely upon a clear distinction between civilian and military-use cases;

• They were largely designed for a bipolar context;

• They do not fully take into account for the pace of technological development and information-sharing, which can challenge the efficacy of control lists; and.

• And they rely on an information environment that is increasingly susceptible to corruption and disinformation.

Integrating arms control across categories of proliferation

Further integrated arms control will need to extend across several interlinked and overlapping categories of proliferation.

First, we need to look at the increasingly large set of weapons where the barriers to entry and ownership are low and getting lower such as cyber weapons, low-tech drones, small arms and light weapons, and chemical and biological capabilities.

These weapons alone may not change the strategic balance though the jury is still out on cyber but they will interact in unpredictable ways with broader strategic

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