The Perception Gap and the China-US Relationship
Tong ZHAO | Asia Pacific Leadership Network
In this paper, Dr. Tong Zhao, visiting scholar at Princeton University, and Senior Fellow at the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, assesses the dangerous and growing perception gap between the United States and China and argues that it is significant enough to cause more consequential outcomes than the Ukraine war. Zhao posits that the Ukraine war is partly the result of the deep perception gap between Russia and the West, as the majority of the Russian public and policy elite appear sympathetic, if not supportive, of Putin’s actions. However, the US-China perception gap is even wider than that between Russia and the West and is causing extremely negative readings about each other’s behavioral patterns, inner characteristics, and credibility, undermining efforts to reduce tensions.
Rethinking Arms Control with a Nuclear North Korea
Toby Dalton and Jina Kim | Survival
Three decades of efforts to secure North Korea’s denuclearisation failed to arrest Pyongyang’s development of a nuclear arsenal. With growing dangers of conflict escalation and nuclear use, it is time to consider alternative policies that address the reality of North Korea as a nuclear possessor state. Comprehensive arms control is worth exploring as one potential approach to managing nuclear dangers on the Korean Peninsula. Previously, conventional arms-control and denuclearisation negotiations with North Korea proceeded in parallel. However, the increasing complexity of deterrence resulting from changes in military capabilities, especially in South Korea, now necessitates a comprehensive process that creates linkages across conventional and strategic domains to address not just North Korean and South Korean, but also US, capabilities. Though comprehensive arms control promises to be politically fraught and technically complex, policymakers and experts should debate whether it could yield a more secure Korean Peninsula than existing policies that have long since failed.
North Korea Displays Enough ICBMs to Overwhelm U.S. Defense System Against Them
ALEXANDER WARD | POLITICO
North Korea has just revealed a large enough number of missiles to conceivably overwhelm the United States’ defense against them, blowing a hole in decades of denuclearization and homeland security policies… “It punches a hole in 20-plus years of U.S. homeland missile defense policy predicated on defending against a ‘limited’ missile threat from North Korea. That threat is no longer limited and the United States cannot count on missile defense to confer anything close to invulnerability to North Korean retaliation in a conflict,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of “Kim Jong Un and the Bomb.” Critics of the ground-based midcourse defense system, or GMD, say it wouldn’t take so many North Korean missiles to get past it. It might only take one.“The testing has been utterly unrealistic,” said James Acton, who co-directs Carnegie’s nuclear policy program.
Russia: U.S. Demands to Resume Nuclear Arms Inspections 'Cynical'
Reuters
Russia's foreign ministry said on Wednesday that demands from the United States to resume inspections under the New START nuclear arms control treaty were "cynical" given Washington's support for Ukraine. The ministry also warned that Washington's actions towards Russia posed a "real risk" of a direct military clash between the two nuclear powers, the RIA news agency reported. "The demands of the United States to renew inspections at Russian sites are clearly cynical," RIA quoted the ministry as saying in a statement that also accused Washington of seeking to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia in Ukraine.
If Arms Control Collapses, US and Russian Strategic Nuclear Arsenals Could Double In Size
Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen | Federation of American Scientists
Both the US and Russia have meticulously planned their respective nuclear modernization programs based on the assumption that neither country will exceed the force levels currently dictated by New START. Without a deal after 2026, that assumption immediately disappears; both sides would likely default to mutual distrust amid fewer verifiable data points, and our discourse would be dominated by worst case thinking about how both countries’ arsenals would grow in the future.
UN Nuclear Chief Underscores Importance of Iran Talks
DANICA KIRKA | Associated Press
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Tuesday underscored the urgency of resuscitating diplomatic efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear program, saying the situation could quickly worsen if negotiations fail.Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the diplomatic effort “is not at its best point,” but it wasn’t his place to declare whether the process was “dead or alive.” However, he said progress is not impossible.“I hope to be able to re-set, restore, reinforce that indispensable dialogue,” he said during a discussion at the Chatham House think tank. “Without that, things are going to get worse.”