Sir Stephen Lovegrove, The British National Security Adviser, gave a very important speech a few days ago at CSIS in Washington DC. He intimated that the risk of a nuclear event amongst the superpowers is rising while the backdoor communications channels are closing. Everyone knows that technological advances mean the speed of delivering a nuclear weapon has increased exponentially and the time to address such an event has collapsed. The British say that Russia has threatened to deploy nuclear weapons using thinly veiled language at least 35 times since the war in Ukraine began. Is it a bluff? Ukraine wasn’t.
So, the aptly named Lovegrove made a simple but dramatic proposal. Let’s go from informal back-door pleading to a formal front-door proposal and reinstate a mutually agreed arms control regime. Let’s swap the grim possibility of spilling blood for the brighter possibility of using ink to sign a deal. That is the best circuit breaker we have. It’s a clever way to get the key parties to stand down and avoid accidents that nobody wants. Let’s be clear; China increasingly looks willing to lob a nuclear threat (or weapon), probably at an American ally, as well. Their bet will be that the US and the world won’t have the stomach to defend Taiwan, especially if it means facing a genuine nuclear threat. On July 31st China successfully again tested its new and feared DF-ZF Hypersonic Glide Vehicle. The US equivalent failed yet again a month ago, not that one offsets the other. 1+1 here = a disaster. Putin is right when he says no one can win a nuclear war. Meanwhile, North Korea is now threatening their use against South Korea. Iran says it could turn “New York into hellish ruins”. The UN Secretary-General now says we are one miscalculation away from “nuclear annihilation”.
As a result of all this, Lovegrove proposed to establish a new framework for weapons negotiations and inspections. He said, “During the cold war, we benefited from a series of negotiations and dialogues that improved our understanding of Soviet doctrine and capabilities and vice versa. This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war. “Today, we do not have the same foundations with others who may threaten us in the future – particularly with China” “because we have entered a “dangerous new age of proliferation”.
Well, President Biden’s dialogues with Russia, China, Saudi, etc. are not going very well. Concerns are rising as China expands its nuclear test facilities and capabilities. The Head of Stratcom, Admiral Charles Richard says the threat from China is expanding at a breathtaking pace.” American Vice Admiral Michael Boyle, Commander of the 3rd Fleet, is calling for a new centralized command control structure so the US can respond faster in the Indo-Pacific. He said, “The U.S. is closer to conflict in the Pacific than it is to peace, the head of U.S. 3rd Fleet said, and the command structure must change to reflect that.”
Note that RIMPAC, the bi-annual Naval wargames held by the US in the Pacific, is currently underway, The US has a huge number of naval vessels in the Pacific (an “Armada” according to The Warzone) including The USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group . “38 surface ships, four submarines, nine national land forces, more than 170 aircraft and approx. 25,000 personnel” are now in the Pacific. Putin is again claiming that the Kuril Islands belong to Russia and plans to hold military drills around these islands in late August. Chinese naval vessels have been spotted near the Senkaku Islands which are contested by both China and Japan. Three island chains - Taiwan, the Senkaku, and the Kurils are “in play”, not just Taiwan.
Now let’s add the possible visit by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan. Notice that Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former CIA Director and Secretary of State, is aligned with Ms. Pelosi and encouraging her to defy Beijing by going to Taiwan. We haven’t seen this much bipartisanship in decades! He is definitely running for the Presidency now. The point is that domestic politics in the US is in play here. The next Congressional elections will probably see the House of Representatives return to Republican control and the Senate might be Republican too, in which case, this is a last-ditch opportunity for the Democrats to get tough on foreign policy, a vote-winning position. Meanwhile, internal politics in China may prompt Xi to provoke a confrontation in order to silence his internal critics, as I recently argued here.
Nancy Pelosi’s possible trip to Taiwan provoked China to threaten military action in response. She once held up a pro-democracy banner in Tiananmen Square which makes Beijing worry. We can’t underestimate the Chinese willingness to act. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said this during a press conference, “China is committed to the policy of peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems. No one should underestimate the strong resolve, will and ability of the Chinese people to defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity. Anyone who dares to challenge China’s red line will find themselves on a collision course with the Chinese people.”
China’s Global Times made the point succinctly in the tweet above. If she tries to fly in, they’ll respond. Some speculate that she might try to enter Taiwan by submarine. This raises another hot issue. China is livid that British nuclear submarines under an American command structure will now be operating out of Australia (China’s backyard) under the new AUKUS deal. China’s position is that a non-nuclear power, Australia, is being used to proliferate nukes in the region. The subs won’t carry nuclear weapons. They are just nuclear-powered. Nonetheless, the Chinese are arguing that this provides a “dangerous precedent”. See China’s: A Dangerous Conspiracy: The Nuclear Proliferation Risk of the Nuclear-powered Submarines Collaboration in the Context of AUKUS.
Further complicating matters is the new “limitless friendship” between China and Russia. It matters that on July 31st, On Russia’s “Navy Day”, smack in the midst of all this, President Putin announced a new naval doctrine. The main threat to Russia is the US, he said, giving the Russian Navy permission to begin building and protecting Russian assets abroad. He announced this from St Petersburg, his hometown and the place where Peter the Great launched Russia as a naval power. Now Putin intends to make Russia a great naval power again. He specifically listed the “Arctic, Black, Okhotsk, and Bering seas, as well as the Baltic and Kuril straits” as areas of “national interest” and announced that Russia will now create new naval bases in the “Mediterranean Sea (particularly the East where massive new gas fields have been found), the Asia-Pacific region, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf (especially in the Red Sea where Sudan has recently given Russia a port)” as well as in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov”. Russia will also deepen its ties with “India, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq”. The implicit assumption is that Russians abroad need to be protected. This irridentist view has been at the heart of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Now Russia’s attention has turned to the handful of Russians who live on the remote Arctic island called Svalbard. Russia has already built a wide array of new “military bases, missile launch pads and radar stations” across the Arctic. China too continues to build up its naval presence in the Arctic and the Baltic.
So, will anybody launch a nuke? The answer is that the threat of a nuke is vastly more powerful than a nuke itself. Russia’s threats to deploy nukes are taken more seriously. China’s threats intimate war more than nuclear events. We were close to a real nuclear exchange back in 1962, and yet it was averted. We got that close a couple of times since then. This kind of posturing is real. But, the reality is that, so far, in every instance, such threats end in negotiations.
That’s why Sir Stephen’s speech matters. Lovegrove is now offering a way out. Swap blood for ink. The markets should rally on any sign that policymakers stop reaching for launch buttons and start reaching for pens. The peace dividend that could come from a new arms agreement would be formidable. Pelosi is determined to stop in Taiwan. The response will be noisy but will accelerate this process.
Subscribe to stay informed on new developments as they bubble up.
Please contact me about public speaking events via LinkedIn or my website DrPippaMalmgren.com. I am on Twitter under @DrPippaM.
Swap Blood for Ink
I'm voting in both Malmgren's for President and Vice President--2024... Don't care which fills which role.. Just get them into the highest office we can.
I sure hope that cooler heads prevail, but I fear that recent history has demonstrated there are a vanishingly small number of cooler heads in the game.