Shownotes Transcript
I think the threat to the NPT is real. And the cascade effect, if one ally gets out of the barn, and I'm looking at you South Korea, the risk of accidents accumulates as more states get nuclear weapons. That's not good for us. How annoying has France been over the course of the Cold War? I love them, but their one France is enough. We didn't want France starting a damn nuclear war we'd have to finish.
Having a nuclear weapon is not the least desirable way for Japan actually, I mean, because the least desirable option for Japan is to bandwagon with China. We have to avoid such kind of option. So when we will face a truly existential situation, like we do not feel the confidence on the U.S. extended deterrence anymore,
probably will decide to have a nuclear weapon anyway. Nuclearization! What is Trump doing to America's extended deterrence and how might the world react? I got Polymarket to make it a market of will a U.S. ally get a nuke in 2025? It's currently trading at 8%. Are we buyers or sellers? Also, is extended deterrence
Actually, America first. For guests, we have on today Vipin Narang, professor at MIT who served as acting assistant secretary of defense responsible for nuclear deterrence policy during the Biden administration. Pranay Vati, a senior fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at MIT. He worked arms control and nonproliferation on Biden's NSC. And dialing in from Tokyo today, we have Junichi Fukuda, senior research fellow at Tokyo's Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
Welcome to China Talk, everyone. Thanks, Jordan. Thank you. Let's start with a little history of American extended deterrence. Where did this come from and what did it get us over the past 75 plus years? Extended deterrence. OK, so the history of extended deterrence is the notion that the United States will use its range of capabilities, not just nuclear, but including nuclear deterrence.
to defend its formal allies and partners against nuclear attack from a common adversary in the Cold War that was the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, but also a high-consequence non-nuclear strategic attack, which is a mouthful, but really means an existential threat to our allies.
And it was born and developed in the 19, I would say mid 1950s, the concept of extended deterrence because after World War II, the European states had been wrecked by World War II, did not have the ability to defend against the emerging Soviet threat. The United States was forward deployed, continued to maintain its forward conventional deployment. And we had one huge advantage and head start over the Soviet Union, which was nuclear weapons.
And the Eisenhower administration very quickly realized that against a conventionally superior Soviet Union, we might have to increasingly rely on nuclear weapons to defend our forces and our allies that we're still rebuilding after World War II. And so the concept of extended deterrence sort of evolved, and we never did it out of altruism or charity. It was good for the U.S.,
Because preserving the openness of Western Europe and our East Asia allies, particularly South Korea and Japan after the Korean War, after World War II, allowed us to keep the economies and the political systems of our allies open and free, democratic and capitalist. And that was in our interest. It created open markets for the U.S.,
And then over time, I think one of the core reasons why extended deterrence became so important, and this is a link that is often lost, but all of us have written about this, is that extended deterrence, we stumbled into the idea that extended deterrence is actually our best non-proliferation tool.
We can keep our allies from pursuing their own nuclear weapons for their defense if they believe that our nuclear umbrella is credible in deterring the common adversary. And Kennedy's prediction that we'd have 36 nuclear weapon states in n number of years was largely stanched, I would argue, by a credible extended deterrence architecture that the United States has developed and tended to and evolved and
and worked with allies, not just to deter the common adversaries, China, Russia, North Korea, but to assure allies that we would come to their defense. And we can talk about what makes that credible. And I think there's a lot of interesting discussion in Europe today about what it took for the U.S. not just to deter the common adversary, but to assure our allies that
And I will just say a preview that it really requires, in my view, being able to convince the ally that you can fight on their behalf.
Without losing American cities and without losing allied cities. And so the core of making extended deterrence, and we should talk about this, is being able to substantially or meaningfully limit the damage that Russia or China can impose on the ally and the U.S. homeland. Yeah. And let's I would say on the not proliferation point.
It is a remarkable record of extended deterrence stanching ally proliferation. I would argue that only France...
is out of our 34, 35 formal allies, however you want to define it, France is the only state that consciously decided to get nuclear weapons because it believed that the U.S. umbrella would not and never could be credible for the defense of France. And we can talk about some of the corner case, but France is really the only example I would point to where it was a lack of perceived credibility of extended deterrence that caused a formal ally to get some nuclear weapons. So up until now, it's only been one, and we hope it remains that way.
So let's stay on this like Berlin for Boston dynamic, because I think the sort of assumption over the course of the Cold War and after it was that no president was really going to trade Boston for Berlin. So what you needed to do is bring a sort of defense deterrence package to bear that could plausibly threaten to keep Berlin free while not leading to the sort of escalatory spiral that would leave...
Cambridge, Massachusetts in thermonuclear flames. So what were some of the strategies over the past 75 years that the U.S. used to try to make that credible both to Moscow and to our friends in Asia and Europe? I think it comes with, you can't sort of remove the military dynamics and military strategy from this, right? But at the same time, ultimately, what the head of state
In one country, the United States, the sort of nuclear guarantor and the head of state in the allied country, the recipient of the nuclear umbrella.
they need to sort of be simpatico. There needs to be a close relationship, a political relationship between the United States and the 35 allies that Vipin referenced, our sort of nuclear umbrella allies. And so when you put that at risk or you question whether the US will live up to any defense arrangement, let's say hypothetically, the United States declares at the presidential level it will not defend an ally unless it spends X percent of its GDP on defense.
Regardless of whether the United States retains its nuclear modernization program, maintains forward-deployed dual-capable aircraft like we do in Europe, forward-deployed weapons, shows our B-2s off every time North Korea tests a missile, all of those sort of mechanics can continue. But at the end of the day, every ally knows that it's the U.S. president who makes that ultimate decision whether to use a nuclear weapon in defense of an ally or not.
Just like it's an American president who is going to say yes to a military intervention or other sort of important national security decisions. And so when the U.S. president is not committed to extended deterrence strategy in the way that we have for the past 70 to 80 years, that immediate doubt creates what we're seeing today, which is a bunch of countries wondering if the U.S. will actually live up to the guarantee and backtrack.
Because they have doubts, particularly in the case of Poland, for example, or South Korea that we've seen recently. They start talking about how they need to hedge against U.S. abandonment of the nuclear guarantee. Just this week, we've seen continued articulation by French officials about what a Euro deterrent could look like. You've seen Poland say that they welcome U.S. weapons and French weapons at the same time.
But at the end of the day, you need to combine this sort of military strategy and this sort of political relationship in one. One way in which we did that, Vipin and I, in our last job, we worked very closely with South Korean counterparts to establish a national presidential level Washington declaration when President Yoon visited South Korea.
for a summit in Washington, D.C. in April of 2023. And that required, again, this combination of what was happening below the surface, a lot of interactions that Vipin was leading at the Defense Department with his Ministry of Defense counterparts in South Korea, as well as a lot of interaction at the White House with our counterparts in the presidential office in Seoul to ensure that
There was public language that South Korea and the United States could agree to that sort of showed a reshored commitment, an enhanced commitment to extended deterrence with commitments by both countries, right? South Korea needs to recommit to the NPT. We need to recommit to South Korea's defense. We're willing to do so in a more transparent way that gives South Korea a little bit more insight into how the U.S. thinks about nuclear planning, gives them a little bit more say in how nuclear operations could be conducted. But ultimately, we had to do both the military and political work.
to try to reassurance right in that particular bilateral situation. So let's stay on history a little more. We've got the like credible military, like I can actually bomb the places component and we've got the credible political, like actually care about your country enough to do something about it if it gets attacked. Yeah. So we called it, we called it hardware and software, right? So the hardware piece of it in some ways is actually a lot easier.
Because it's do you have flexible capabilities to your point, to Pranay's point, to be able to limit damage to the ally in the homeland? And that's a dynamic. You know, the theory of the case is relatively simple, but implementing it is not. And that's sort of something DOD spends a lot of time thinking about. But Pranay's point, I think, is really, really important, which is we under emphasize the importance of the software piece, both historically and today. And the only change really from the Biden administration, the Trump administration is a software piece.
Right. And that alone, as you're seeing and why we're having this podcast, I assume, is because like that software glitch. Right. It's almost like a blue screen of death for some of these allies. Will we be there? Not they don't question the capability. They question, you know, when the time comes, will we actually attempt to limit damage on the ally in the U.S. homeland and fight on their behalf?
Let's just do a tiny bit more history. Like what it would have been the sketchiest software moments, you know, since since 1950. Obviously, I think the Eisenhower administration right out of the gate, you know, there was a concern that, you know, we would, you know, the theory of the case was we're going to reduce our conventional footprint. But the conventional footprint in.
Western Europe was so reassuring to allies because it was to, you know, in shelling terms, we had skin in the game. If we had no skin in the game, the fear was we wouldn't actually, you know, pull the trigger if the if the Red Army came crashing through. And then the debate was.
You know, if we're relying on, you know, nuclear weapons to go first and go early as the Eisenhower administration transition to the Kennedy administration, it was did we have flexible enough options so that, you know, we had a theory of escalation management. And, you know, there have been, you know, various ups and downs.
But I think what we're seeing today is and I don't want to over index on the contemporary and I defer to my colleagues here. But, you know, what we're seeing is new, which is do we even care about our allies? Right. Like Article five.
is, you know, sort of a hallowed pillar of NATO and essentially our commitments to South Korea, Japan, Australia. And I think for the first time we've had an administration that basically says, you know, we might not honor Article 5 and you might be on your own if you don't pay enough. Or, you know, I think one of the bigger implications of the Signal chat leak was in it's not just what they say in public, but in private. The vice president basically said, like, I hate Europe.
And if I were Europe, I might question the willingness of the United States, not the ability, but the willingness of the United States to step in when the time comes. Thinking about the crisis of extended deterrence and the gravity of the extended deterrence, I think we have to think about the case during the 1970s, early 1970s or later, late 1960s. At that time, the so-called Guam Doctrine or Nixon Doctrine was issued by the American side, the conventional forces withdrawing from the Pacific area,
in line with the withdrawal from the Vietnam War, that creates a crisis actually. And there was no clear nuclear extended debate at that time. You know, it was a time when most of the country is thinking about whether to sign the NPT Treaty or not. It's the 1970s. And at that time, Japan, US alliance didn't say clearly about the nuclear umbrella.
Actually, the word "nuclear umbrella" was first used in 1975. But still, Japan decided to sign the NPT Treaty. That is the time of the Tante. So we had to decide because the tension between the US and the Soviet Union was reduced at that time. So we could decide to join the NPT. But actually speaking, there was no extended nuclear debate at that time, at least officially.
That is a case we have to think. It's a kind of analogy to think about the current situation. The United States withdrawing from forces and the credibility of extended deterrence seems to be in crisis. So we have to learn much from the episode during the 1970s, early 1970s, I think.
So I guess maybe the maybe the distinction between then and today was it was detente, right? Like you didn't really see like a nuclear war on the direct horizon. Like China was busy having its cultural revolution. The Soviet Union was being friends. Like it wasn't the most scary time in like, you know, thermonuclear history. Right. So does that really change the dynamic versus versus today?
So because, you know, that was a detente era, so tension was reduced so that we didn't really have to think about the implication of the extended tolerance crisis. We simply accepted it. But in the current situation, U.S.-China relationship is very worse and the U.S.-Russia relationship is not good. So the tension is increasing. But United States seems to, you know, withdrawing
how to say, to reduce intention to engage in the outer world. That would create a crisis, I guess. One other element of history, Jordan, that might be worth mentioning. This is something that I always try to write about when Vipin and I write together, and he always deletes this paragraph. So I thought it's good to put it in a podcast. But there's a really funny story, I think, on extended deterrent software from the early 1960s, when a German chancellor visited JFK a
upon him winning the White House. And Conrad Adenauer sort of represented the CDU kind of center, center right in West Germany at the time. He was like the opposite of JFK in so many ways. I mean, he was like 85 years old. JFK was this young sort of, you know, whipstart new president,
Kennedy was very obsessed with this question of allied proliferation. I think they've been sort of walked through the history of why and what was happening in the world in the 50s and 60s. And Aiden, there's this quote from sort of declassified documents recording his meeting with Kennedy. They basically made the point like, you know, I hear that you guys have weapons in West Germany, but I haven't seen them. You know, I've never seen them. And I've been told repeatedly that those warheads are there.
But I haven't been shown them. Right. And so he really wanted his defense minister to know, like, what is actually happening? What is the U.S. actually doing in West Germany and their little slice of territory? What do they have based there? And Kennedy assured Aiden I was like, yeah, it doesn't make any sense. So I'll our defense secretary, Bob McNamara, will brief you and your defense minister on the U.S. stockpile operational plans, when we would actually use them if the Warsaw Pact attacked.
And to me, that was sort of like the beginnings of the types of thing requests we in the U.S. government would regularly hear from allies about, like, what are you actually doing in a nuclear scenario? Right. And as I think mentioned, the Washington Declaration and a lot of the work that the U.S. does with South Korea does with Japan, some of the work that VIP led at NATO.
We do these sort of tabletop exercises or scenario based discussions or simulations because we want to sort of demonstrate that the US has kind of thought through extended deterrence scenarios. And that's sort of that marrying of hardware and software that makes extended deterrence work. But it's sort of origins date all the way back to that conversation.
So if we're doing like a relationship analogy, we're like, all right, we're just we're going to give you a tour of our place. We're going to, you know, let you let you bring some toothbrushes into the bathroom. But I mean, you had this sort of 75 year dance that the U.S. was doing and its allies, which
which was like broadly trending in one direction of like trying to chill everyone out, make sure they don't, they feel nice and safe and cozy so they don't storm out and get their own nuclear weapons. So the question now is like, what does the decay function of that look like?
Right. Because I don't think the Trump administration is going to be like burning our B2s anytime soon. So the capability isn't really going anywhere. But the the trust from both dimensions of like whether the U.S. is going to do it. But like but that software side is like it's got some real hiccups. So, um, I don't know, like.
Where do we start on this? I'll say one thing on hardware, though, real quick, Jordan, which is I wouldn't sleep on the hardware adjustments that were ongoing, or at least we were sort of laying the foundation for at the end of the Biden administration, including ensuring that the modernization program for each leg of the triad, replacing each leg of the triad at the same time.
at the same time for the first time in history. And we're facing some problems, right? So the Sentinel ICBM is going to be about a decade plus, maybe two delayed. And, you know, there is, there needs to be at least a,
a lot of attention and focus to ensure that the modernization program does not fall further off track. And, you know, some of the president has not, and the administration has not issued an executive order on,
nuclear forces, it has on sort of Golden Dome, the missile defense architecture, which is not unrelated, but that's a very long-term sort of architecture. The here and now is, where are we on this modernization program? And how are we dealing with the emergence of a China that we didn't anticipate or account for when we sized the modernization program 15 years ago? And this is where Prenet
myself, John Finer, Jake, all said, look, we don't need as the combined forces of our adversaries. Right. But we might need more than what we thought we had when we started thinking about new start numbers in 2010, when Russia was a partner, when China and North Korea had not embarked on their expansions. And so the hardware piece of this, I think if I were sort of an ally, I'd be like, well,
There's mixed signaling. The president has said he doesn't want to spend any more money on nuclear weapons. So that might be one concern. But the bigger piece, I think, is Pernay and Fukuda-san have mentioned is, look, the software piece right now is not this isn't a decay function. This is a discontinuity. Right. I think the posture towards, you know, our European allies is is is.
you know, night and day from what it was in early January 25. And if I were in the Indo-Pacific and, you know, I'd love to hear Fukuda-san's thoughts on this. There's a lot of uncertainty because the president and the administration have simultaneously said China is the pacing threat and we're going to focus on China, but at the same time continued on the economic front to hammer Japan and South Korea together.
in ways that may make the credibility of the promise that we might defend them against an existential attack from China or North Korea far less credible, and I would say arguably significantly less credible than it was in January 25. I think the big question, like, you know, from a—
You really need to figure out whether this is all about right-sizing burden sharing between the United States and its allies or whether this is about pursuing kind of a more of a retrenchment ideology. Right. And so if you're an ally, if you're Japan, let's say, you can come to the United States and say, look, we get it.
You want to make sure that we're all paying our fair share. You want to make sure that Japan is focused on China as your number one priority. And we're doing our part to help sort of an extended deterrence strategy, what Indo-PACOM feels it needs to do in the region in Taiwan Strait crisis, let's say. And so we're going to recommit to whatever you need us to do. In the conventional space where Japan is developing air and missile defense capabilities, long range conventional strike capabilities,
Blue Water Navy. They're willing to open their shipyards up to replenishment and repair of U.S. naval vessels, etc. And the U.S.,
You need to make sure that that nuclear umbrella, that guarantee is strong. So that's the basic trade. But let's work on that strategy together. So if it's just a burden sharing question that the U.S. is bringing forward, that's a strategy to bring to the White House and say, OK, we can figure this out together. Let's figure out what the right payment amount is, what the right capabilities are. But let's do it in a strategy that is bilateral or trilateral, if you want to include bilateral.
South Korea or quadrilateral if you want to include Australia as another extended deterrent ally in the Indo-Pacific. But if this is about pursuing a foreign policy of retrenchment, if that's what an America first foreign policy is, and I think that's a fight that's happening within the administration unseen to us.
then I don't know that there's much you can do, right, as an extended deterrence ally. You can only be so convincing because at the end of the day, what you need is a United States that is willing to be engaged with the ally, a United States that's willing to be transparent with the ally, and a United States that's willing to, again, fulfill that sort of software element of extended deterrence. But frankly, being credible on the software side seems antithetical to a strategy of retrenchment.
And so you really need as an ally to figure out whether this is just about getting burden sharing right in this sort of new political climate or the United States is sort of packing up and looking to sort of reduce its commitments abroad because it's a lot harder in the second scenario. That's what's giving rise to a lot of allies wanting to hedge. Yeah. So...
June and she I mean it's hard because the answer is both right I mean I said it's like there's some people who think a and there's some people think B and like we have a president changes my who changes his mind every 30 seconds so like what do you do
Well, yeah, we're thinking about the hardware issue. I think the modernization of the U.S. strategic nuclear forces, I don't worry much about it because anyway, the United States has modernized its strategic nuclear weapons and there is an option of so-called uploading the nuclear weapons.
you know, warhead on the existing platform. So I do not worry much about the strategic nuclear forces, but I'm a little bit worrying about the future trajectory of developing a theater-level nuclear forces, such as a, you know, through , sea launchers, cruise missiles, from submarines, you know, these kinds of theater-level nuclear weapons would be necessary to defend Japan in the future. But considering the current administration's stance of cutting a defense budget,
I'm wondering about whether such kind of a new nuclear capability, share-level nuclear capability would ultimately be realized. This is a hardware issue. And on the software issue, I mean the political relationship between the United States and Japan, there's much possibility to think. First of all, there's a conflict in the trade area. The United States increased the tariff on Japan, and we are currently negotiating about it.
Yeah, there's a possibility that the Japanese people would think that it would be difficult to rely on the United States in the security terms while we are fighting economically with the United States. That could be one possible scenario. But at the same time, still the Trump administration is trying to, you know,
to cope with the challenge of China, it seems. Most of the security experts in the Trump administration seem to be so-called prioritizers. They would withdraw from the European theater, but they would concentrate on strengthening the capability in the Indo-Pacific theater to cope with China's raid. So that would make us more relieved.
That would create some kind of assurance to us. So the issue is difficult to analyze right now, actually. Overall, I would say we are still confident to continue the alliance relationship right now in the future. It's a little bit unpredictable, yes. Yeah. It's interesting, Junichi, because you have seen this incredible earthquake in European politics.
by like a handful of speeches, right? And it seems to me that
It's only really people like you who are paying attention, not necessarily like the entire like Japanese political establishment or the entire South Korean political establishment. Am I wrong? Like, do you think it or do you think it would really take something as explicit as like a J.D. Vance or a Pete Hegseth speech saying like, we don't care about you guys to lead to the sort of light bulbs turning on that seem to have happened in Poland and Germany? Yeah.
Yeah, that's an item, and we do not like that kind of scenario. But in the future, we don't know, actually. There seems to be some kind of conflict in the administration. The one side is speaking to cope with China, to fight against China. It's necessary to maintain the U.S. hegemony in the Indo-Pacific area. But the other side of the faction or people in the administration, they seem to be a total isolationist.
withering U.S. forces from every theater of the world. And they think they have to concentrate much resources on U.S. domestic politics. So I'm not sure about the future of current administration. Maybe there will be a fight within the administration in the future.
Yeah. I mean, I guess like the fact that there even is a fight, right, is a new thing from a, you know, post 1945 perspective. Right. So like maybe maybe now is a good time to talk about the politics of like arming people.
both in South Korea and Japan. Like, if we do end up... I mean, even if we stay today in this kind of awkward, subterranean debate, either on that trajectory or on the scarier trajectory of some J.D. Vance text coming out saying, I couldn't give two shits about Japan. Like, what...
What are the potential things that that could do to Japan and South Korea's nuclear postures?
Well, actually, Japan's nuclearization is kind of the issue that's sitting there unthinkable. You know, not so much people are openly talking about it. But, you know, since I am studying about nuclear deterrence issues, I have much opportunity to talk about the issue and hear the issue, actually. I went last month, I went to the Lawrence, New Burma, to take part in the conference, working conference there. And every American people, American experts talking about both
possibility of Japan would nuclearize in some future. So the one condition I think, if Japan is really thinking about the nuclearize itself, it's when we
are not confident on the credibility of U.S. extended talents. When this happens, I think Japan would decide to nuclearize, but not right now. Secondary scenario would be if South Korea would nuclearize itself, Japan might be interested in doing so afterward. But exactly what kind of nuclearization
I would say from a U.S. perspective, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which the United States is better off if any ally proliferates at this point.
I don't know. We've seen some comments by the vice president, for example. He said that, you know, does it make sense for the U.S. to station nuclear weapons in Poland? That was one indication that at least proliferation of U.S. weapons to other allies was not necessarily on the table, though that struck me as not the product of an interagency process, but more his reaction to a reporter's question. It's going to be hard, though, right? If you're a Trump administration,
and you want to preserve status quo as it relates to a number of countries that possess nuclear weapons you want to uphold the nuclear non-proliferation treaty um and you also want to uh renegotiate burden sharing agreements or retrench one of the sort of two paths that they might be out of the two factions that might be fighting right now um all these things are kind of coming into conflict and if you're an ally um you know you can't so
So Japan is a very advanced nuclear country. They have a lot of nuclear technology, reprocessing capability. They've committed to not possess, not produce, not introduce nuclear weapons into their territory as part of the peace constitution. But they're an important partner for the United States on nuclear energy, on extended nuclear insurance and nuclear disarmament. So this sort of like Japan uniquely features all of the contradictions of nuclear policy in one in one bilateral relationship.
But if you're a Japan or a South Korea or a Poland, you know, you regardless of how high tech your nuclear sector is, you cannot snap your fingers and have a nuclear weapon or its delivery capability. Right. The these types of facilities you need to produce a nuclear weapon, the types of liquefied
legal and regulatory unwinding you need to do to be able to go that route. You need to withdraw from the NPT. You need to sort of see if U.S. export controls and sanctions are going to slam you the moment you decide to pursue a nuclear weapon. That's all time for an adversary to react as well.
And that's not just economic, right? If you're North Korea and you see South Korea decide to pursue a weapon and you see a U.S. extended deterrence guarantee that's a little bit shaky, given the comments that have been made so far, why wouldn't you go kill that facility? Why wouldn't you start that conflict? And so the risk of a conflict starting if an ally who the U.S. does not necessarily support
guarantee as strongly the security of anymore, it's pretty high. And so that is one consideration that really needs to be thought of carefully by countries when they're trying to weigh, hey, do we need to do this or not? If you're in America first,
person, which we all are actually like. I don't like this label that the Trump administration is America first and the Biden administration wasn't. We were America first to our theory. The case, though, was what you know, if you put America first, you we you don't want allies to get nuclear weapons for, I would say, at least three reasons. One is we have historically opposed ally proliferation in Washington because we wanted to minimize the number of independent decision centers in America.
initial employment or escalation decisions, which is a very, very sanitized way of saying we didn't want France starting a damn nuclear war. We'd have to finish. And, you know, the French who I love to death, Prenet and I spend a lot of time with our French counterparts. OK, he's shaking his head, but I do love the French. But one France is enough and they'll deny it till they're blue in the face. But the French strategy from Washington's perspective is
was always that their independent nuclear capability was designed to be employed when they decided the Paris's and the French president's vital interests were at stake. But they knew they couldn't finish the fight and that the U.S. would have to mop up and limit damage against the Soviet arsenal. And I think that that thinking somewhere in the back, whether it's explicit or not, persists today when we talk about the credibility of a Euro deterrent. That is the fundamental problem with the Euro deterrent. France can start a fight, but it can't finish it.
Similarly, other allied nuclear powers will never be able to develop the damage limitation capability of the United States on their own, which means an allied proliferator is getting a nuclear capability that's going to start a nuclear war that is going to chain gang the U.S. into it. And that's what the U.S. has always wanted to avoid, which is why we opposed allied proliferation. I think that's a really important strategic point.
The second argument is, you know, there's a very Waltzian view. Ken Waltz famously wrote, more may be better if you sort of retrench back, just let your allies get nuclear weapons to defend themselves. But the risk of accidents goes up, right? You've got small states in a lot of these cases with limited arsenals facing much more nuclear capable adversaries who have head start's.
And they may have itchy trigger fingers. They may not know how to they may not have organs and institutions to effectively manage these weapons. So the risk of accidents accumulates as more states get nuclear weapons. That's not good for us. And the third reason is what Pramne and Fukuda-san mentioned, which is I think the threat to the NPT is real. And the cascade effect, if one ally gets out of the barn, and I'm looking at you, South Korea, because, you know, there's increasingly, you
broad consensus among political support in South Korea and for at least developing or thinking about a hedge, the damage you do to the NPT across the world
I'm not sure the NPT could survive a democratic state in good standing and the NPT withdrawing and getting a nuclear weapons capability. I think Japan would think about following. I think Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. You could go on and on. It's the number of countries that if the floodgates were opened, would go through the door and the cascade effect is potentially real. And Pernay's point is really important. You're going to have these countries all pursuing nuclear weapons.
against in an environment where their common adversary, their adversary was going to have a vote and has a head start. And no state has been able to acquire credible nuclear weapons capability in our historically, you know, no less than five years from a decision to do so. And oftentimes a survivable arsenal takes a decade or decades to
So I would adjust your betting market, right? An ally, an allied proliferator in 25, I would say 0%. It's not going to, the timeline just doesn't work. But if you said 2030, I would say over 50%. So it'd be interesting to see what the betting markets think about timeline. But I think by 2030 or 2035,
I would put a lot of money. I'm not a betting man because I don't have a lot of money as an academic, but I would put a lot of money that we have at least one ally with a credible latent capability by 2030, 2035 if this persists. Fippen, just wait until you get all those Polish and Saudi contracts to help write their nuclear doctrine. You guys can reach Pernay, my agent, at prvati at mit.edu.
That's a lot I want to pick up on. I think first, like, I had a fun 03 question last night. Like, how annoying has France been over the course of the Cold War? And they were so annoying. I love them, but their one France is enough.
And it's like, this is the whole thing. Okay, America first. Like, nukes, they are very powerful. They give you a ton of leverage. They let you tell other countries what to do, and you can constrain them, and you can shape whether or not they start wars. I mean, I just did a show with Tyler Jost about, he's at MIT, I forget. I was on his committee. He was a Harvard PhD. But I was also, by the way, on Shashank's committee. But he never finished. Shashank.
What a loser. You know, where like the U.S. was basically able to tell Chiang Kai-shek in 1962, like you can't invade. Sorry, because he didn't have nuclear weapons. Like the ability for us to like keep the world cool. And as you said, Vipin, like stop things from starting that we would have to finish, like does not actually keep America more safe. It makes the world a lot more dangerous. And that whole like, yeah, five year window of thinking about
Putin is going to sit on his hands while Poland develops nuclear weapons. I mean, like we've just seen this playbook with Israel and Syria and Iran. It's like you're going to do something about it. And then like, OK, so now we're in a world in which Poland, you know, some Polish site just got bombed by a bomb.
by some Russian bomber. Like, where does the world go there? Like, nowhere happy. A Poland that is still in NATO, by the way, right? So that's an Article 5. Like, you're risking a war with Russia over a counterproliferation strike. It's a real... Look, these are low-probability events, but... The attempts to retrench could actually, like, speedrun you through to that great power confrontation that you're looking to avoid, right? Because you have to maintain... I mean...
Some of the arguments we've had with French colleagues, to go back to that point, Jordan, is you don't need to do extended deterrence strategy exactly the way the United States has done it. We've pursued a pretty expensive, we've pursued reliant on nuclear, we've pursued a strategy that requires a fantastically large defense budget.
And so maybe the French, you know, in the Euro deterrent attempt that's ongoing, they don't need 3800 nuclear warheads. They don't need a triad in the same way we do.
Maybe they can do more with conventional forces and missile defenses. But at the end of the day, you need to actually have an approach that accomplishes the same objective, which is reassuring your sort of eastern flank allies who are on the front lines with Russia that you could actually engage in a conflict and either meaningfully deter or defeat the aggression that Russia's embarked upon against that ally. And that's really hard to do. The United States has spent seven plus decades trying
continually working at it. We're never done, right, working on extended deterrence. And as Kudusan knows really well, the meetings that happen between the United States and Japan throughout the year on extended deterrence are very extensive and regularly scheduled and ongoing. And it requires staffing on both sides and expertise on both sides. That is not something that another country can just kind of plug into and replace if the United States were to withdraw those commitments from an ally. You know, what's like...
so frustrating to me about this is like the level of thinking of a lot and not all but a lot of the sort of like MAGA inflected foreign policy is like this like middle school debate like imagine the world where it's so like we're just gonna get to Jordan by the way don't insult middle school debaters like that but I mean it's it's really like like
Like there are in order to get to like, there's a reason the world is the way, like, I thought that we're, we're conservatives. Right. So like, we have to like Chesterton fence, right. Like,
And like, by the way, getting to our new world, like there's a transition period and it can be really dangerous and terrible. And like, you know, like the cut off the cut off the nose to spite your face stuff of like, all right, like, OK, we're we're spending like an extra, I don't know, 500 billion dollars a year to stop 20 countries in the world from getting nuclear weapons. Like it's a great deal. It's a great deal.
a world historic deal. I mean, like you would have taken this a hundred times out of a hundred if you were sitting there in 1945 and like Alamogordo or whatever. No, it's just this has been a bipartisan consensus. Republican, Democrat, you know, Pernay and I, you know, find ourselves actually having more in common with traditional Republicans. Sometimes, you know, it's we sort of shock ourselves at how much we have in common with the traditional Republican
view on strategic deterrence, extended deterrence. And you're seeing those voices being marginalized in the Trump administration, if not outright, you know, sort of thrown out of the Trump administration. And this is this is a different flavor that we have not seen in the post World War Two era. We've seen there was bipartisan consensus that we we were committed to extended deterrence. And the debate was how best to do it. And there are reasonable debates about how best to do it. But there is no
fundamental fundamental debate about the fact that we should do it and That's why this moment I think is a little different. I don't know where the Trump administration is gonna end up because I think it's Fukuda-san and Pernay both mentioned this is there there's their various voices and
And it's but at the heart of extended deterrence, credibility is predictability and consistency. And the very fact that this debate is happening, I think, creates problems for the credibility of extended deterrence. Junichi, how are you feeling about all this?
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, actually speaking, you know, at the level of administration, I do not know about the future because, you know, President Trump is so unpredictable. But at the level of Congress, there will be a very concrete bipartisan agreement about we have to, you know, United States has to continue the extended deterrence towards the allies. Because two years ago, there was a congressional report coming from the, you know, Bipartisan Commission, which is a strategic posture report.
I read it and the report's recommendation emphasized to continue or even increase the credibility of the extended deterrence. So at the level of Congress, there will be a bipartisan agreement in the future too. So let's see. Administration is just four years, but the Congress continues.
I appreciate your optimism. I'm curious, Junichi, like, you know, when you got into this field, like, was... I don't know. It's... Like, what was the bound... Like, you know, when you first...
started studying sort of nuclear extended deterrence and nuclear policy. Like what were the craziest things people were talking about and how much more crazy is the conversation we had over the past 45 minutes than anything else you've seen before? Well, I started studying international relations at the end of the 1990s. So at that time, the most serious thing that people are talking about, it's probably, you know, it's a, you know, kind of a
big terrorism, you know, in 1991. Or before that, probably the large regional civil war, maybe. But definitely not a nuclear war between the great powers. It's obvious. But currently we are talking about a nuclear war, right? So the situation changes greatly. So we have to think about and think of it. Pranay, I cut you off earlier. No, just one of the
points you raised earlier, I think one thing that we're seeing now and need to see more of is the nuclear policy, like as a sort of subject area was really just kind of freaks and weirdos, right? I mean, for the past 30 years, I got very isolated and people who are nuclear, the people who are nuclear experts are really like nuclear experts, right? And so,
We're reminding ourselves now with this debate about extended deterrence, about how connected U.S. nuclear strategy is to other elements of U.S. grand strategy and foreign policy goals. So nuclear strategy at its sort of inception after, you know, after Trinity, you know,
the first atomic weapons test. As nuclear strategy was developed, it became part of American grand strategy to sort of confront and contain communism, to rebuild a lot of countries that were decimated, including close allies and including former adversaries in Germany and Japan, which created this remarkable market for American goods and ingenuity as part of the Marshall Plan and other foreign aid efforts. And
if you disconnect kind of extended nuclear deterrence from foreign policy from our economic strategy in the world um
Then you can kind of have this conversation about like, oh, like, well, should we extend nuclear deterrence anymore? Should we continue to forward forward based troops, et cetera? But the reality is it's all been connected for 70 plus years. And, you know, Vipin and I wrote this piece that was talking about how we put so much effort in the 50s and 60s to rebuilding the world as much as we could to ensure that that sort of the United Nations, the
economic integration, the sort of globalism that the world is fighting against now with the nationalist trends and every democracy would help keep countries from fighting another world war.
Now you're trying to take away essentially the economic pillar of that with the economic strategy that the administration has embarked upon. And at the same time, questioning some of these sort of sacred cows of extended nuclear deterrence. And our assumption, I think, when Vipin and I wrote about this in January, was, well,
economic benefits the united states are what's going to lead everyone back to kind of a coherent extended nuclear deterrence strategy once again the reality is when you take away that kind of economic interdependence and the and the sort of political relationships that come with it it really does draw into question okay like how serious will the united states be on extended nuclear deterrence if over the coming years and decades we're less
reliant on international trade because there's this effort to sort of retrench and reshore everything, whether it's industry, whether it's military, what have you. And so that's something to pay attention to is, again, these things are all connected to one another. And retrenchment, if it happens, can happen across the board in a way that grossly negatively impacts U.S. national security.
All right. So we've made it a pretty long time without even talking about China's nuclear modernization. Junichi, why don't you give us a brief primer on what has been happening over the past decade in the PRC and China?
Even though it seems like the Trump debates aren't necessarily coming from as an important data point, what that modernization has meant for countries in the region as they're processing their strategic environment? Well, for making details, a number of China's nuclear assets are quite limited, like maybe 200 nuclear weapons.
And at that time, people were talking about China's nuclear strategy, so-called minimum deterrence. But actually, minimum deterrence is a Western concept, and China's thinking might not be the same one. And gradually, China changed its attitude to other nuclear weapons. And recently, China, you know,
rapidly increase the number of nuclear weapons almost 100 nuclear warhead additional they are acquiring one additional 100 nuclear warhead every year and in the long run the number of China's nuclear strategic nuclear arsenal maybe you know going to the 1,000 1,500 or you know maybe you know making some kind of party with United States and Russia so for the you know
purpose of the increase of the strategic nuclear arsenal? I do not know. But probably there are many reasons why China is doing so. The one is apparently to gaining, you know, national prestige, to reach the same social status or international prestige status with Russia and the United States is one purpose, maybe. So they are trying to making a parity with them.
and uh jazza reason i guess is uh to create some kind of strategic stability stability paradox in the case of taiwan straight contingency maybe uh if china increased the number of the strategic nuclear arsenal they might need the united states to intervene in the china's you know uh
aggression toward Taiwan. That would be a purpose for them, I guess. But ultimately, we do not know their aim in the end. But they are saying that by 2049, they are going to build a world-class military, which might be the same scale as the United States. So the nuclear forces will be developed at the same, like a current US strategic nuclear arsenal.
Yeah, eventually they're going to make a parity. From Japan's perspective, does 200 versus 1,500 matter? Currently, it doesn't matter so much, but they are increasing. Ten years afterward, what will happen? That is our concern. Our concern is not the short term.
Our nuclear concern is much middle or longer term. Like the problem during the 2030 to 2035 or something like that. Yes. Why? What is more nukes with better delivery capabilities? What does that matter strategically? Because if China have 1,000 or 1,500 nuclear weapons,
They might be able to data United States to intervene in the Taiwan Strait contingent. Decoupling. That is decoupling. Stability paradox. That would be a grave concern for us. In the short term, we are concerning much about the conventional capabilities. China's increase of conventional capabilities, changing the local military balances.
that would create China's invasion toward Taiwan by 2027. This is our short-term concern. But in terms of the nuclear issue, I think the concern would be like during 2030 to 2035 or beyond, you know, middle or longer-term issue. China's expansion is real. It is faster than we anticipated. It is designed to break the United States' foresizing principle.
We don't know why it's doing it, but we have to prepare for the possibility that is developing a nuclear posture and strategy to give it cover for regional aggression and coercion against U.S. interests and U.S. allies.
And we took it very seriously in the Biden administration. For the first time, you know, we had this these arcane documents, you know, the nuclear posture view everyone can read. It's sort of unclassified. But what follows from the parent document, the nuclear posture view, is something known as presidential nuclear weapons employment guidance, which Pernay and I worked on together. There's an unclassified report to Congress known as the 491 report.
And I would read it very closely. It, it, it, for the first time, you know, when the, the previous employment guidance was the Trump administration, uh, I believe it was 2019 employment guidance. Um,
China was just emerging. And so there was a recognition that China was going to challenge the US force posture, but it hadn't become as clear as to how and what China was going to do. And so this is an evolutionary document. There's a lot of continuity between presidents, including the Trump administration and then the Biden administration employment guidance. But it takes for the first time seriously
the prospect of a multiple peer sort of strategic challenge, whereas China could be treated as a quote unquote lesser included case previously, it no longer can be. But what's really important, I think this is a point that's often lost, is it's not just the numbers, right? China will hit 1,000 by 2030. We estimate 1,500, which is quantitative parity at new start levels by 2035. It's the composition of how they're developing their force.
If China had been, you know, sort of consistent with this longstanding assured retaliation strategy and just put everything into a sea based force like the UK does, we wouldn't have to adjust our force posture, nuclear force posture at all. It is the development of hundreds of hardened silos out in the hinterland spaced perfectly that are nothing other than a warhead sponge for the United States. Given U.S. strategy to limit damage to the U.S. homeland and to allies,
China knows that we have to target and hold at risk those forces. And given that we only have 400 ICBMs with single warheads under New START and we only have a certain number of SLBMs at sea at any given time because of New START, hundreds of ICBMs in the hinterland essentially eat through our entire strategic or at least a large number of our strategic forces and could make us vulnerable against Russia.
And we're seeing collusion and coordination between Russia and China. If we're in a fight with Russia and we have had to expend some nuclear forces to maintain strategic deterrence with Russia because they've used it in Ukraine, China may sense an opportunity because we no longer have the forces required to maintain strategic deterrence against China. And so their force structure is very carefully and, in my view, smartly designed to break ours and our sizing principles.
And we left thinking and knowing we had to respond to that in ways that enable us to maintain strategic deterrence and regional deterrence in a multiple peer world for multiple theaters, especially given the coordination collusion between Russia and China. And don't sleep on North Korea. And so we had this, you know, over year long process of.
to assess adjustments to the U.S. force posture for strategic deterrence in this world and regional deterrence, as Fukuda-san said, you know, slick amend. The department said we're going to do it because Congress mandate we're going to do it, but also has deterrence advantages. And we, you know, Pernay gives me a lot of grief, but, you know, the security environment continues to deteriorate. And I think we can no longer deny that there is value in having a purpose-built
maritime regional deterrence capability that frees up your strategic platforms for strategic deterrence. And so I don't think we can sleep on this challenge. And I worry about, you know, the administration just trying to quickly call call it a day and make a deal with Russia on arms control.
to extend New START without considering what would happen and what the implications would be for China. Because in the first Trump administration, Marshall Billingsley actually tried to coordinate arms control strategies. And I'll defer to Pranay because he knows a lot more about it than I do. But that approach is absolutely crucial. These have to be coordinated, at least in our own theory of the case. What are we willing to accept with Russia because we cannot forget about China and vice versa? Pranay, you want to tell me where I was wrong? No.
No, no, no, I would never. Well, I think this is, I'll just highlight one other point here, which is, I mean, for everything that Vipin and Fukuda-san have raised regarding
how China is changing its posture, what it's doing, right? The warhead buildup, choosing to place on silo ICBMs, which are pretty vulnerable to a nuclear strike and thereby need to get out of the ground quickly if there is actually a nuclear war. I mean, that's sort of survivability for the Chinese nuclear force in a different way that the U.S. would have to contend with. And the Chinese are also modernizing, you know, cyber and counter space and conventional precision strike, a whole range of capabilities, which you could bucket as,
counter intervention because the U.S. is also arming itself for a potential fight in the Indo-Pacific, or they could also be used to aggress, right? They could be used as part of a strategy to coerce under the nuclear umbrella. The fact of the matter is a lot of this is going to be dependent on one person's decision making and
And whether or not he decides China's sort of historic nuclear doctrine since the time of Mao, which is to be restrained, minimum deterrence, no first use policy, all of those things that we've sort of we've understood to be China's nuclear strategy. If any of those things are changing.
We probably wouldn't be the first to know because we have been unable to sustain a diplomatic dialogue with China on the sort of strategic stability and nuclear policy set of issues for the past decade or two. The Biden administration had one consultation with PRC colleagues on this particular topic, but as is the case with many other national security related issues in the US-China relationship, if
If China sort of does this and sees if the kind of if the political winds are favorable for U.S.-China discussions on a whole range of topics, then maybe they'll talk about nuclear issues as well. If they are unfavorable, which they have been for the past several years, whether it's because of balloons or Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan or Trump, the Trump administration's inauguration, then.
if they are negative trending, then they're not going to talk to us about these issues. So how are U.S. policymakers supposed to understand the nuance of China's policy as it relates to its modernizing posture if they can't get in the same room and set aside any attempt at an arms control agreement or efforts to limit through diplomatic means China's buildup? It's not going to happen unless the two sides are able to sit down and talk. And no one has been able to sort of
encourage that conversation to take place. We had, again, one meeting in the Biden administration. We've tried to cajole, arm twist, coerce, incentivize all the different ways to have a second meeting and we weren't able to get it done. It's not all negative, of course, on the way out.
President Biden and President Xi were able to establish a joint understanding related to the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear employment decisions, essentially agreeing that a human should stay in the loop for any nuclear employment or termination of employment decisions that are made by, you know, at the presidential level. And the two countries also exchanged notifications in advance of intercontinental ballistic missile tests.
And those are small things. They sort of build some confidence. But at the end of the day, the big issue is China's the only country that's a nuclear weapons state under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is
quintupling its arsenal. And the United States and China have to talk about that. Or again, in the worst case scenario planning that takes place in the Pentagon, we have to assume that China is looking to build an arsenal that is qualitatively equivalent to the United States that's looking to break U.S. nuclear strategy, as Vipin mentioned. And the U.S. will have to respond to that with its own buildup. And I don't think anyone wants to see that world. Junichi, I think you've been the most
positive, sanguine out of all four of us for the course of this conversation. Do you want to take us out on a high note of what are you looking forward to over the next few years? Well, actually, I'm not particularly optimistic because I'm saying that having a nuclear open by Japan is pretty much difficult. The hurdle is very high, politically high, economically high. So
we simply don't want to think about it. That is why we are always considering how to strengthen the credibility of extended talents and we will maintain the alliance relationship. But as you all say,
Obviously, the future is unpredictable, especially under the Trump administration. So we have to think about this. But having a nuclear weapon is not the least desirable way for Japan, actually. I mean, because the least desirable option
or Japan is to bandwagon with China. We have to avoid such kind of option. So when we will face a truly existential situation, like we do not feel the confidence on the US extended deterrence anymore, probably we will decide to have a nuclear weapon anyway, even though it will destroy the NPT treaty. But that is not the most desirable way, of course.
Why are you so confident that that is the preferred path versus an accommodation with China? Because to bandwagon with China, we will have to compromise Japanese sovereignty. And thinking about Japan's long history with China, there is no occasion such kind of decision has made. You know, Japan has actually 1,500 years history, at least.
And during such history, there is only one time our country was occupied by foreign power. That is from 1945 to 1952 by the United States. We haven't experienced China occupying our land.
This is the difference between South Korea and Japan. South Korea has a long history of... South Korea was actually in China's tributary system historically, but we...
We have no experience of being a part of China's tributary system. So we cannot bandwagon with China anyway. To avoid that, maybe you have to think about independent nuclearization when we lost our confidence on the alliance.
We can't end on that. Give us one more thing. No, I think I'll try and be a little more optimistic, which is, look, there's a lot of uncertainty right now. And it is, you know, we went from, you know, one administration that was very, very careful with its words in order not to send mixed signals or give the impression that there are different factions within the administration. We tried to, I think for the most part, you know, we spoke with one voice and we were very, very disciplined.
on these issues. The Trump administration's different style.
And the president speaks a lot, and that's not always consistent. He doesn't like nuclear weapons, but he also, you know, if that's true, then he should love extended deterrence. But that link, you know, isn't often obvious. And there are certainly there's a fight within the Trump administration for the soul of foreign policy as in grand strategy, as Pernay said. And I think we just have to take a beat and wait and see which way this goes.
Um, it is not, the sky is not yet falling on extended deterrence on NATO. Um, the NATO ambassador, um,
you know, was very clear about the U.S. commitment to NATO. I think it would be prudent for allies. And this was true in the Biden administration. You know, we tried to get the allies to contribute more and they did. And allies should always, you know, the burden sharing issue is real and bipartisan and consistent. And all of that, you know, I think is is not bad for American security, no matter which administration is in office. But there is a world in which this goes in a different direction.
And so I think it's just it's important for allies to start thinking about what a world without American leadership looks like in the alliance and the alliances. But also, you know, leave open the possibility that, you know, the the the bipartisan continuity that we've seen on these issues actually ends up.
you know, winning in practice. So I still think it's early. It's only been 90 days or 100 days. And so, you know, I'm still in wait and see mode and I still hope for the best. But I think it is it's not imprudent to prepare for, you know, a very different world also. I'll just say this issue is so central to U.S. national security.
And the more that people outside the nuclear space learn about extended nuclear deterrence, the history of it, our strategy today, what we've done and why, from people like Vipin, who've held important jobs at the Pentagon or others in allied countries who learned about this and experienced it as sort of a recipient of extended nuclear deterrence.
Every time I see someone learn something, sort of foreign policy generalists learn about extended nuclear deterrence, I feel like a light bulb goes on. They understand that this is so core to what the United States has been able to build in the world to the benefit of the average American person. And so they're
I'm somewhat optimistic that over time, as more and more people are aware of these issues, as they take a critical look at other foreign policy decisions that are being made that might undermine extended nuclear deterrence, they're going to stand up and speak out in support of kind of not just the status quo approach, but how do we improve extended nuclear deterrence? It just...
And I want to thank you, Jordan, for having us on, because I think podcasts and writing on this topic and news hits and everything is only going to help people understand why we do things the way we do and extended nuclear deterrence and understand that more states with nuclear weapons is inherently a bad thing for the United States. And I think reflexively, people in the current administration understand that as well.
And the key is going to be connecting all of these different dots that lead them to the conclusion that like, OK, this is why we have to do X in extended nuclear deterrence. So that's my optimism. All right. Let's close on some some reading recommendations. How about two from each of you? Junichi, you want to start to two books?
Two books. So two new books. Under the Nuclear Shadow by one of my former students, Fiona Cunningham, just came out. It is about China's approach to strategic... We can't do that. We did a show with her last week. Oh, you did, Fiona. Well, no, but I literally just got the copy and it is fabulous and I commend it. And second one... They can be old. They don't have to be new.
Well, I mean, if we're talking so I would say the updated version of managing nuclear operations is a very weedy. So one is very high level. I think it's like Fiona's is a is a is a good read for anybody who cares about China. And but on the other end of the sort of weedy detail spectrum, Charlie Glazer, Austin Long, Brian Radzinski reedited the classic managing nuclear operations book.
with updated chapters from like Frank Miller, Jim Miller, and others that I think give a great 101 on how U.S. nuclear strategy and policy is made. And if you care about that, I would highly recommend that. It's a very, very good update to classic Ash Carter, Steinbrenner, and I'm forgetting the third co-editor of the first 1987 volume.
Are we telling people not to read Annie Jacobson, Nuclear War? I haven't read it, so I can't speak to whether it should be recommended or not. You guys are so diplomatic. I'm going to say don't read it. It reads like a journalist who doesn't really know what they're talking about. It can catch one or two historical errors just from...
my knowledge of things. Like it just, it was one of those things where just like the energy it gave me was like someone with too much of an agenda to be careful with their sources. So I like the OG stuff. Like actually, you know, do you think of, I just taught my class on extended deterrence and there's an obscure article by James Schlesinger in 1962 on why we extend deterrence in,
Western Europe and NATO. And that, like, the arguments haven't changed. It's the same arguments in 1962 that there are in 2025. And it's a rand, I think it's a rand chapter somewhere. It's very hard to find, but I was just blown away that, like, I hadn't really read it carefully. And some...
A lot of this is reinventing the wheel. And I'm very, very humble about the fact that like Schelling, Brody, Schlesinger, Earl Ravenal, these are all international security articles, Ash Carter, those that have gone before us, Frank Miller, they've thought about all this stuff before and we've forgotten because we had an interregnum of 35 years where we didn't have to think about
the importance of extended deterrence and nuclear deterrence more broadly. So I think for the audience, go back to the originals and you'll be shocked that not much has changed. All right. We'll throw we'll throw a link to that in the show notes. Pranay, Junichi, anything anything come up? Yeah, I got two. One is actually a report
by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, I believe Tong Zhao and Dmitry Stefanovich were the two authors. And they write kind of from a Chinese and Russian perspective why those countries care so much about U.S. missile defense and its implications for the strategic relationship. So for people like me who also have to care about arms control policy and are trying to understand how the administration is going to approach these sort of hypothetical denuclearization talks
with Russia and China. I think it's a really important read. There are two authors who are friends who have studied this space really well. And it's not a book. So, you know, in 50 or 60 pages, you can get a pretty good understanding from two real experts. Another one that I've read recently and started kind of as the Ukraine conflict progressed, and I was still at the NSC and have just finished recently, is an old book from the late 80s by Richard Betts on the
called Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance, which I thought was really interesting. It sort of, it both reminds us sort of nuclear policy experts that nuclear weapons aren't magic and the attempts to sort of use them in world crises, either to sort of get an adversary to back down or to sort of coerce for other military means in the context of Vietnam War, for example, sort of had really mixed results at best. And so I think walking through that history is really important for the era that we're entering now, where we've seen a country like Russia
repeated almost daily nuclear threats in the context of a conventional war that it started. So those are my two recommendations for you, Jordan. Well, I have chosen two books, yes. The first one is rather classical, that the Green Snyder's Detail and Defense toward a Theory of National Security. This book is quite important because it says a problem of stability and instability paradox.
paradox, and it's directly applicable to the current situation in the Pacific. So if you think to study about the stability-instability paradox, I recommend you to read about Green's "Deterrence and Defense". The other one is Dr. Brad Roberts' case for US nuclear weapons in the 21st century, in 2015, I think.
This is a widely read book in Japan actually. This is directly talking about what to be the option to strengthen the extended deterrence towards the allies in the Pacific. So lots of the Japanese experts who are interested in this subject read this book. So if you read this book, you can talk with the Japanese experts. So I recommend this book, yes.
Awesome. All right. Well, thanks to the U.S.-Japan Foundation for sponsoring this episode. It's the first in a series about Japan-adjacent stuff. I promise not all of them will be this dark, but we have a few other super dark ones, too. This was a pleasure. We end every episode with a song. Any songs come to mind? Who's next? All right.
A few weeks ago, the American press reported that China had exploded a nuclear bomb. Now this was a great leap forward for China, of course, but it was an even greater leap forward for the American press because for the first time they called it China instead of Red China. For 18 years they've been hoping it would just go away.
And for the first time, they called it a bomb instead of a device. So with China possessing the bomb, it makes us wonder, who's next? First we got the bomb, and that was good, because we love peace and motherhood. Then Russia got the bomb, but that's okay, because the balance of power is maintained that way. Who's next?
France got the bomb, but don't you grieve, cause they're on our side, I believe. China got the bomb, but have no fears, they can't wipe us out for at least five years. Who's next? Then Indonesia claimed that they were going to get one any day. South Africa wants two, that's right, one for the black and one for the white. Who's next?
Egypt's gonna get one too, just to use on you-know-who. So Israel's getting tense, wants one in self-defense. The Lord is our shepherd, says the psalm, but just in case, we better get a bomb. Who's next?
Luxembourg is next to go, and who knows, maybe Monaco. We'll try to stay serene and calm when Alabama gets the bomb. Who's next? Who's next? Who's next? Who's next?