SPEAKER_01 0:00

The United States really doubted that the information the Russians were sharing on their troop numbers was accurate. And so this deep mistrust. And I think this precipitated a lot of the literature on the role of trust in arms control negotiations. I don't think it is trust that's driving, I think it is uncertainty. But it was uncertainty about their intentions and negotiations, as well as a host of other uncertainties.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

In today's show, we are looking backward to look forward when it comes to how geopolitical competition and diplomacy play out. Specifically when it comes to arms control uncertainty, and of course the interception of space. I'm pleased to host Dr. Amy Nelson, and she discusses her new book, the arms control hemisphere. The CSP is the deputy executive director, Amy is director of the future security. Remember, you can find Mumbai's on my website, on YouTube, and any public platform. Topics cover national security like today, science and technology in the space sector, space traffic, exploration, and much more. Let's go over to Russell and Amy as they do some deep strategic thinking about geopolitical uncertainty.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Thanks, Colleen. I'm excited to be here. I'm very excited to welcome Amy Nelson. Amy is the director of the Future Security Scenarios Lab at New America with a background in many think tanks. We actually crossed paths at the Stimson Center more than what more longer ago than we want to admit. Thank you very much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Thanks for having me, Russell.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Of course, you're here not just because you're a great conversationalist and I'm looking forward to this. You're here because you have the book out, as Colleen said. I'm very excited about the book, The Arms Control Paradox: Managing Uncertainty in an Insecure World. I know it took many years. You mentioned just before that it was our tarum at Stimpson that started this in your acknowledgments. Your acknowledgments unfolded over many years.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

That's right. That's right. This grew out of my dissertation. I would say it doesn't, it no longer resembles the dissertation in many ways, but it grew out of that and um just continued off and on over the years as I moved into new jobs that did or did not allow me to continue to work on it. And at one point I was like, why am I still doing this? You know, but um uh I felt an imperative to write this book. I felt um I felt like there was something I really needed to say. I felt like there was a set of ideas I really had to communicate. And for whatever reason, I persisted. So here we are.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Well, I think all of us who write will take heart in that. Uh you know, we all hit that block of like, what am I doing here? It's nice to hear the pitch. I admit that I'm one of the people who reads dissertations and certainly reads books that come from dissertations. Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Increasingly.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

For once, I did not, I did not feel that reading your book. It felt like an actual policy book standing on its own.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Um, I would say also the world conspired to make the topic relevant again. When I started all of this, I got I got some eye rolls. Arms control. Why are you writing about arms control? This is that's so cold war of you, you know. Um, but it's back in a big way.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

That is the great thing, is if you can look, if you can take the past to try to look forward, that's an amazing accomplishment. I hadn't quite realized that. Neat to hear you say it. I I'm particularly excited about this book because arms control is a difficult topic for space.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Yeah, it's fraught. It's a difficult topic, writ large. It's fraught, it's polarized, it's emotional, and it's difficult for space, especially.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

I'm glad you think that. I wasn't actually going to use such dramatic words there. I was just gonna make fun of it of like we're always talking about like how you might do arms control for space, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

There's a aspirational, yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Aspirational. I'm not sure I even agree with the aspirational. It's much closer to what you talked about, the just the crank turning part of there's a constant standing discussion in the space policy community. We have a permanent committee at the UN with Copious, like it's it's a real thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

It's kind of an it would be nice kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Would it be nice? Well, the problem is that I mean, that's one of the contested natures. Would it be nice as an open question? And in fact, I think there are plenty of people who would say, no, it's great that we haven't done it. My next thing I was going to tease is while this is a running discussion, there's not a lot to show for arms control in space. You use a broad definition, not just the formal treaties, but also norms.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

And even there, yeah, space doesn't have that mutual imbalanced force reduction version of arms control, 16 years of negotiations that produce nothing, which I discuss in the book.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

I'm very much excited. You're going to throw the case studies to you. That will be way outside of my expertise, but I'm excited to hear from you. Uh but I think you've given us a way to grapple with how space and arms control might fit. You've kind of got dropped out of that daily conversation we're having and gotten more about it. So excited to hear about the book and relate it to space. Uh I was a little intimidated. I thought I was gonna bring the space to the conversation, but uh Amy came with lots of notes, and turns out I can just throw all of it back to her. Why don't we start with the basics? Okay. The title is Arms Control Paradox.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

What is the paradox?

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah, the paradox is that arms control is a tool for managing uncertainty. It works well. We get good, effective agreements that are robust and durable when arms control manages a sufficient amount of uncertainty relative to the security environment. And the paradox is that um you cannot get an agreement under high uncertainty conditions. And there's actually a huge data set that goes along with the project that doesn't appear in the book that um I will publish separately later this year. Um, but it shows how uh one of the things it reveals is as uncertainty increases, the probability of reaching an agreement diminishes to zero effectively.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Well, uncertainty was really what hooked me. That that was something that you don't hear in the arms control literature. Yeah. And it definitely applies to space. There's all kinds of reasons we have a great deal of uncertainty in space right now.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yeah, you you hear about it a little bit, I would say, in the arms control literature. Um, uncertainty about capabilities and intentions as major drivers of state behaviors, but that's where it begins and ends. Um but arms control is is driven by uncertainty of all kinds. Yes, uncertainty about capabilities and intentions drives states to the arms control negotiations, but uncertainty about technology change, uncertainty about the viability of the regime you're negotiating with, the ratification of the agreement, whether you you trust that the agreement will be implemented, whether your adversary is at the table to negotiate sincerely, all of these affect the process. And so I was really motivated to write the book by the idea that maybe we had under-theorized the role of uncertainty. And having spent some time previously in neuroscience of decision making, looking at how people behave under conditions of missing information, I was like, not only is this motivating arms control uncertainty, it is driving a whole host of patterns and behaviors we haven't digested yet.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

I love it, right? You're the simple version of capabilities and intentions that doesn't even begin to grapple with the uncertainty that is in space. The list you offered, we're just seeing tremendous technological change in a way you you can't really take anybody's word about what is happening because nobody has the full picture, nobody understands, and that's only looking at one side. Once you add in what is China doing, what is Russia doing, the conversation gets ever more difficult.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Yeah, absolutely. The number of players at the table really can complicate negotiations in ways that inhibit progress, as space has demonstrated.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Well, I'll be curious about that. I'm not sure, but I am excited to talk about how that uncertainty matters and what we do with it. Um if you'll allow me to abuse the book a little bit, I also enjoyed how much you seem to identify sort of three different eras. You didn't actually say that, so I'm a little nervous adding my own version, but you had these three versions, three eras. One, the sort of like glory days of armed control, where we're seeking stability, which you give says that lasts at least through 1972, the arms, uh the uh anti-ballistic missile treaty. And then you talk about the downward spiral, about how arms control has kind of lost its way.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Well, Schelling said that, not me. I sought an explanation for it, but please go on.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Uh well, you provide a date of this moment where it's not working, or where it has really ceased to hold, is maybe the US withdrawal from the ABM treaty in 2002.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

That was a big one. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

And so there's 30 years in between where Shelling is already observing, but we've got lots of arms control going on still. That three eras really seem to work well. Am I abusing that?

SPEAKER_01 10:29

No, I think I think you're right on the money there. I think it also tracks generationally, right, and how we think about problems in the world. You know, just even now with the introduction of AI, the pursuit of optimization, right? We're thinking about problems differently. And so I think your your your breakdown tracks with what we saw in arms control and and kind of how we can understand the world in different ways at different times.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Uh I need more on the AI.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

AI is not quite 2002.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Right. You're talking about just the what technology changes, or today we have different evidentiary thresholds, different standards. We have the introduction of open source information. We're becoming accustomed to huge amounts of data and information running on data. And then the question becomes how do we how do we optimize? How do we understand what we're seeing through optimization? Right. And um, in a previous era, transparency was the thing. If we can just um get greater transparency, first through national technical means was acceptable, then on-site inspections, um, data exchange, and this was robust and rigorous for a while there, but now it's all uh it's a drop in the bucket relative to what's needed. It's contested, and we're back to this, we're back to the old data dispute that defined several negotiations at the height of the Cold War. Um, and so we're in the a new era where we have a ton of data, a ton of information. We're not exchanging data directly, we're not doing on-site inspections, and so what is the information that would be stabilizing in this new environment? I don't think we've answered that question yet.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah. Uh how much do you think each side actually has that data? You you said we're not exchanging data, huh?

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah. On our strategic forces, for example, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Right. And certainly with New Start, everybody kind of understood the counting rules because it was at the end of a long where basically all these weapons had been scoured.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

And so it fit in well with the like, yeah, we can do one more of these. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Uh but is that true for other things besides the nuclear weapons? Is it even true for the nuclear weapons now?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

No, with the demise of the INF treaty, right? All bets are off. US and Russia can make whatever they want, right? And deploy whatever they want in the region where it was previously prescribed. Um, but we also have drone technology and cyber capabilities and hypersonics coming online and the new submarine launched cruise missile, which we've discussed extensively. So it it's uh even if you could get an accounting, even if you you could add up the sum total of what everyone has, I don't think you could calculate strategic stability. I think that's lost its meaning in the current environment.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

One of our more successful CSPS publications uh was questioning what the nature of a ballistic missile was. That you can't have this simplistic and walks through the different ways things can maneuver and how that changes. So we're we all are all about trying to get to a higher technical understanding of the variation.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

That's so interesting because comparing apples to oranges is one of the things that slows down treaty negotiations significantly. How many Soviet SS-20s equals one US pushing missile, for example, during the INAT negotiations?

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Uh I but I still want to come back to like not just comparing across sides within the same. Do we even know? Does e anybody actually know what's happening in space hasn't really ever happened before?

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

On the nuclear side, you know, nuclear cruise missiles have been around for a long time. Uh, yes, technology allows them to do slightly different things, but there is a through line to where they've gotten here.

SPEAKER_03 14:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

In space, yeah, I'd argue we really have new things happening. Which seems like would help your framing.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Uh, because it creates more uncertainty.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Because it creates more uncertainty, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I can't stop thinking now about Rose Gottmuller's discussion of new kinds versus new types in the context of the New START treaty. Um, and now we have not only new kinds, new types, but new categories in which the new types sit, right? So one level up.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Ah, yeah. The new categories.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Um just uh I don't know, satellite-based technology, command and control is never factored into uh an arms control treaty. You tell me, you tell me what emerging space-based capabilities we're contending with right now.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Uh certainly when you get to the command and control, space is playing an ever bigger role everywhere from this airborne uh moving target indicator, ground-based moving target indicators, all of which is it's now possible, or at least we're exploring doing in space, doing from the use, civilian these are civilian and military capabilities, even though certain satellites may be military only, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Difficult to distinguish.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Tool use.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Maybe uh I guess I'm that the entanglement between conventional and nuclear seems to hold first and foremost there. For for your the your the purposes you're describing.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Sure, or both, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

But it's certainly a lot happening.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah. Um which yeah, no, uh invoking dual use because uh Jane Bayman and Tristan Bowlby have a great paper that talks about emerging technologies, uh whether or not they're dual use and prospects for reaching an agreement. Uh and they they have a lot to say about space.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

That's great. Now I feel guilty for not having common. Having read their stuff, I feel guilty about that. Uh while we stick on space using the three eras. Space seems to think like the outer space treaty, the premier space arms control agreement, yeah, and 1967, right in the heart of your stability era.

SPEAKER_03 17:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Do you think that's right? Do you think that is a good representation of what you were saying this era was trying to do?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Sure, it was building out an arms control architecture based on a shared understanding of strategic stability. That shared understanding existed between the US and the Soviet Union, and now we have more actors, more capabilities, um, and it's not clear how to calculate strategic stability. So we are we are no longer in that era. What is the utility of the outer space treaty in the modern era? We, you know, anytime we talk about arms control for space, of course it comes up because it's all we have, but it it does very limited work, right? And and may or may not have been violated several times, right? Things we we can't prove. Um and I would say that the outer space treaty would have been an effective foundation for further architecture in space. But if an agreement isn't effectively mitigating a sufficient amount of uncertainty relative to the security environment for a particular actor, recognizing different actors can define this differently, it diminishes in utility and therefore overall efficacy over time.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Which sounds like a great way. We both kind of agreed space is a wild time right now. We both are anchored at the Outer Space Treaty 50 years ago. It's hard to tell the story of space. There just aren't that many clock points in space. But your case studies do take us through that on the arms control side.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Can you give us the thumbnail tour of your four cases?

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, absolutely. So I included two conventional and two nuclear, and one successful of each and one unsuccessful. So I was looking for a variation, really trying to understand what the patterns were in the negotiation. Um, and so for um for SALT one, super high uncertainty environment. And so it really is a classic case as far as the book is concerned, as far as um, you know, stability era arms control is concerned. Um, and negotiators devoted a significant amount of time to the negotiations and a significant amount of time to understanding definitions, understanding one another, using the negotiations for what I call uncertainty management. So early on, the US came to the table with four different options and then could better understand what the Soviets understood and were seeking based on the options that they liked. Um and then ultimately they broke the negotiation down into two components, two that resulted in two completely separate agreements, one offensive and one defensive. So we got the strategic arm first strategic arms limitation treaty or SALT one, and we got the ABM treaty, the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Um, this was a really effective way to solve the stability problem because it um it it it did something we would we would the lesson we should heed today, it saved the hard stuff for later. So, which isn't to say that the that capping offenses was easy, but it was much easier at the time relative to the the conversation that was happening around defenses, where the technology was newer, it was just emerging, it was unclear. Um, there was much more uncertainty about what each side had with respect to um defenses than offenses. So there was, you know, little tussles throughout about the extent to which the two agreements were linked and one was conditional on the other, but um ultimately it was a really effective way for dealing with a high uncertainty situation, got a really effective set of agreements because it limited both offenses and defenses. Um and then Reykjavik. Um, this is one of my favorite cases. There's so much written about this, it's such a colorful example. There's a brand new film out about it. It is like endlessly amusing just on its own, even without cinematic flair. Um, both leaders were deeply spooked when they came to the table at Reykjavik. And they both really wanted like to go big. They wanted a big agreement that was gonna um measurably, palpably shift the security environment. Um, and this was for various reasons that that I get into in the book. Um but they had very different approaches. So Gorbachev has what I refer to as an uncertainty management approach. He is seeking information, he is proposing phased reductions, right? Which is a really effective way to cope with uncertainty because only you only move on to the second phase if the first phase is successful, and you only know if you can trust your treaty negotiation partner when that happens, right? And so, and it's taking a long view. It's not like An instant, immediate sort of thing. Gorbachev wanted, was open to getting rid of all nuclear weapons. He wanted a stage package. He wanted a 10-year reassessment. He wanted, he agreed to inspections for the first time. Right. So this was just kind of like groundbreaking stuff. You know, those Soviets had never been amenable, but the breadth of this package that Gorbachev was bringing to the table was so significant and so mind-blowing. Reagan was more thinking more narrowly. He was open to quantitative reductions of nuclear weapons, but he really wanted to maintain his strategic defense initiative, SDI, or Star Wars, as a hedge. So he wasn't embarked on the same process of sequentially managing and reducing uncertainty. He really was fearful of the Soviets and fearful of what could change. He kept invoking, you know, this madman theory. Who knows? Things can change, a madman could come into office next. We just don't even know, right? So Reagan is consistently thinking about the singular risk and holding on to what could have otherwise been negotiated away had he not been, you know, attached to that hedge. And significantly, SDI is was an emerging capability. It required continued testing. It wasn't fully developed or deployed, much like Iron Dome today. And so he needed to continue developing it. Gorbachev was open, open to him continuing to develop it under certain conditions, but those uh in the laboratory only. But but Reagan, that that wouldn't work for Reagan. And in the end, they had such different approaches to this problem, they walked away without an agreement.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

I have to give Aaron Bateman credit for this, although you can see it throughout the conversation of how difficult it is to deal with Reagan and STI.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Because he really does see this as this will achieve peace, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

The problem is everybody else is like, as soon as you field this, you have offensive weapons, right? You know, as soon as you go to Cap Weinberger, as soon as you go to his very most senior advisors, anybody who's doing technical help immediately, which in space becomes you're fielding ASATs. These are the same things. But it's so difficult to query because Reagan himself won't even acknowledge that side. That that your point of there is no offensive defense because there is no offensive side to SDI in Reagan's head, even though everybody else is like, oh, and I can imagine how I'd use this offensively. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There was a deep failure of meeting of the minds on this.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

And that's interesting that you give Gorbachev credit for coming in with your uncertainty framework. Then I assume that's your language.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah, I think that in his memoirs and in various descriptions, they talk about the package, right? A packaged approach, and they talk about this this in conjunction with his view on stability. Um, but uh it's very consistent with what I describe in the book as uncertainty management.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Now I have to go back and tease you a little bit. Okay. When you were describing SALT 1, you tipped into saying uh it was a success because it had limits.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Yes.

unknown 25:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

And I realize you're just shorthanding only limits.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Right, right, right. Well, now you now you're backpedaling, right? So you slipped into the sort of the shorthand that you kind of make fun of of, hey, wait a minute, what's your theory of change? How does just quantitatively limiting all the way down? Right. Uh again, terribly dating myself, but you know, Bob Gates was great about this during New Start, where he's like, every president I've worked for has always wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons. And if he had a good interlocutor, they would press him, like, so when are you gonna be ready to go to zero? And he would admit that, like, hey, you know, you can go down the numbers as far as you like.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

That last step, he never, you know, he never undermined it because New Start was well within, but he always grappled with that point of how much is too much to cut, or the difference between quantitative reductions and global zero.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

I would I'm sorry, I was trying to give you credit. In your book, you lay out sort of that there's not actually a theory there of how you get world peace. You have to jump to utopia.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

That's right. Thank you. Just pursuing limits.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Just pursuing limits doesn't actually get you that's right, inherent stability.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah. They are not one and the same, right? But they are effective when they codify the parity that is required for a stable environment, um, which was which described 19 the early 1970s to a T.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Which gets back to your point of well, what are your counting rules? And then draws us to the next point of walking into the SALT one conversation, that was the problem. Nobody could give you counting rules because it wasn't clear what each side thought they were going to do with their stuff.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Not only do we have imperfect information about each other, yeah. Again, what what are we trying to do with that? Again, having lived through a new start, you know, especially since things like hypersonics got left out, the counting rules were pretty easy. But that wasn't true when it started.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Yeah, and it's it's tricky, right? In order to understand the role of a capability in stability or instability, you need to understand its mission or how it would be used and the scenario in which it would be used. Oftentimes these scenarios are very helpful at the negotiation table because they help the two sides come together. But if you lock on to a single scenario and don't allow room for the fact that the future may look different, you've now negotiated something with very limited utility, right? That's too narrow relative to the security environment and doesn't allow for change, right? Doesn't isn't like future-proof, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Which kind of gets us back to space where we seem to be, and in fact, before we talk about it, I'll tee up your conventional ones of nobody's quite sure what all of these new space tools are for. Right. There's still an open idea of how you're going to use them, even though, man, we seem to be in an era, right? The Secretary of the Air Force has just said, we are in an era where we, the United States, have space weapons. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

What those are.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

He didn't quite explain what that is and how we the United States will use them.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

Which makes it a little bit difficult. Uh and in fact, to some extent, we've characterized what the Russians are doing more than the Russians have characterized what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

But before we get into that, sometimes in space now we're we're still talking about its role in the broader nuclear balance. And other times we're talking about space itself as a warfighting domain, which we don't mean, uh, certainly from the US perspective, doesn't seem to mean as part of a nuclear war fighting.

SPEAKER_03 29:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Luckily, you didn't just do nuclear arms control, you did conventional. So let's hear about your two conventional cases.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Well, and then there's also space's critical infrastructure. Um, yeah, so the book has two conventional cases. It's the mutual balance force reduction talks, which were then followed by, or you could even say culminated in the conventional forces in Europe talks. So they're separate cases, but they they go together and um and uh conventional arms control is less prominent throughout history, uh, throughout our history, um, and less um takes place less often in the form of formal negotiations leading to legally binding treaties. Um, so MBFR is fascinating because it was 16 years of negotiations with no agreement reached. And you just wonder, like, oh my god, how did this go on for so long? And what was going on?

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Mutual and balanced force productions.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Yes, mutual and balanced force reductions. And even the name was tricky because both sides didn't agree on what um what the conventional balance leading to stability was. So I can't remember right now, but uh M MBFR itself was a was a compromise and an indication that the two sides weren't completely aligned on this. So 16 years, no deal. Uh the the big the big sticky issue is a data dispute. Um, the United States uh uh really doubted that the information the Russians were sharing on their troop numbers was accurate. Um, and so this deep mistrust. And I think this precipitated a lot of the literature on the role of trust in arms control negotiations. I don't think it is trust that's driving, I think it is uncertainty, but it was uncertainty about their intentions and negotiations, as well as a host of other uncertainties. Um, and then in the end, they had to narrow the scope of what they were negotiating over so significantly just to reach common ground that what they could have signed as a treaty would have been relatively meaningless uh relative to the security environment, would not have measurably improved either side's um security. Uh and it it you know uh it failed. It did not, it did not lead to an agreement, but it did set the stage for the conventional forces in Europe or CFE treaty, which followed almost immediately after, and just as soon as the Soviet Union fell, the the wall came down, um, and uncertainty about Soviet intentions diminished significantly. Um, so and then negotiators were then able to broaden the scope of the agreement, of the territory covered, of the categories of treaty limited equipment or TLE, all the different kinds of things included in the treaty. And then after that, they were able to add more. They were able to add more confidence building mechanisms, um, uh in uh pathways for information exchange and on-site inspections and notifications of military movements. Um, the treaty had a joint consultative group that like actively met and maintained the treaty for decades. It was layered in with the Vienna document and the open skies treaty. Um, and so it created this really robust architecture that was very effective for a very long time and driven predominantly by access to information.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Now that you're out of the writing stage and just here on the show, do you have a quick story about why conventional is thornier than nuclear?

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Why conventional is thornier, why MBFR, for example, took so long. Well, so many countries had conventional weapons. Um that's more players in the mix. And during a key difference between MBFR and safety negotiations was MBFR negotiations were like pact-to-pact. It was NATO versus the Warsaw Pact, and getting alignment within the group is an added layer of complexity that also inhibits arms control negotiations. Um and CFE didn't didn't have that. It was states negotiating for themselves and signed as a multilateral treaty.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Look at you actually have the history on it. I was going for the much simpler point of just you can use conventional forces for so many different purposes. That's right. I you know, even before you start worrying about the effects of nuclear weapons, like they just Yeah, that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Are the number of potential scenarios or pathways that war could occur through conventional weapons manifestly greater, right? In a nonlinear way, such that you can only get a conventional agreement when uncertainty is low and you you're not imagining effectively the ways that war would break out conventionally.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

We're drawing to the end. Can we turn and look to the future?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Uh and we seem to have different dynamics. Okay. In the US-Russia relationship, trust seems like the right word, right? That that the big problem is are the Russians actually going to put a nuclear weapon in space, which is a pretty darn clear violation of the Outer Space Treaty.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

The United States went out of its way to say this is a particular red line. Like, what are you doing? And you know, we don't need another negotiation with you. This is already a clear red line that's already written down.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

That's all we have, really, for space.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

All you're doing is violating, you're not helping us at all.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

And Russia said, No, we're not. Yeah. Which great.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

There's some uncertainty, but that's some, you know, that's not quite interesting uncertainty. Yeah. In contrast, the uncertainty between the US and China seems much closer to what you described headed into SALT 1. Yeah. You we brought up the the MTIs, the moving target indicators, which really are technical change, right? That you can now do this with, they've been incredible resources in airborne assets for decades. Uh the US military, most advanced militaries now have some way to use that, which is this incredible powerful use. But it's only recent technology that has allowed that to happen, potentially in space, which the US is pursuing very aggressively, and the Chinese don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

And they keep saying, hey, you're playing with the nuclear. And we keep going, no, we're not. We're we're thinking about maybe replacing JSTARS, the airborne version for GMTI. We're thinking about whether we can get a more global version of AWACS, the airborne version of airborne uh moving target indicators, right? Like you can just see this and how much of the Americans are like, well, there's just an opportunity here.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

Yeah, for modernization. For modernization. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:07

Uh and then the Chinese they sound a little apoplectic. They're like, what are you doing? And I there just seems to be a real asymmetry in the back and forth convers. Don't get me wrong, yeah. I don't think the Chinese are helping by not joining by not starting the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

But of course, but we'll talk about no first use.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

And this is your whole point of when arms control is a process to exchange information, not just in a verification, but to like, you know, what are you worried about?

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:41

Because if I'm not actually trying to use this, I may be willing to accept some limitations.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

That maybe I can even do in a way, right? Like I may not be willing to give, I we are clearly in a stage where we are not willing to give up capabilities, not least of which because we're not quite sure what they are. We in the United States are not willing to give up. But if what the Chinese are worried about are not what we are expecting for the capabilities, maybe there is room there, but you have to actually converse about that. You have to actually negotiate about that.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

You do, you do. And and your your point is right on the money. There's there's so little um shared runway here. There's so little um shared concept, shared definitions, shared understandings. The United States spent decades negotiating with the Soviets and later Russians and really came to use the same vocabulary, for example. And we don't have that with the Chinese. I think also back to your earlier point about quantitative reductions, the value of numbers, I think there's greater value in information today than there is in quantitative limitations. And if you could effectively use that as the currency or the reward for coming to the negotiation table, you might have a way forward. So by that I mean, you know, this is akin to something Michael Hanlon and I have have written about. Um, but creating um institutionalizing sort of effectively what had become the consultative commission on the that that met to support an agreement, but really make this the thing. Uh so states are negotiating over access to information and they're able to receive information once they disclose or what they disclose has been verified. And then if what they've disclosed turns out to not be correct, maybe you lose access to information. And it would be interesting to see what kind of currency information makes for in this space.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Yeah, uh, I I take your point. Yeah, especially, especially in the space realm, like what information is that there's some uncertainty about that as well. We we really are, and things are changing much faster than in any other domain or technical area that I've seen in my professional career.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Which complicates your story.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Yeah. And the other side of that coin is how secret can you really keep anything anymore? So even if there is uncertainty about what states are developing or deploying, how how long realistically can they keep it secret?

unknown 39:14

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

Uh this was great. We covered a lot of ground.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

We sure did.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Is there something about the book or some insight that I failed to ask you about that you think folks would uh uh appreciate knowing?

SPEAKER_01 39:33

Oh, interesting question. The book really gets into it develops a theory for how we got here. And I think that's where your three phases come from. And the theory is that we we got kind of hung up on risks because risks are things we can measure or we or things we think we can measure. Um, and the theory part of the book really goes into how we behave when we think we've measured something that is risky to us and requires some kind of countermeasure. I think increasingly as we we move through this new era that we're in, this new security environment that's characterized by high complexity and high uncertainty, we should really only expect more of this. And that means this idea about risk applies tenfold, that we um we create impediments for security when we get too fixated on specific risks we've been able to identify and quantify. And so I guess the point I want to make is that uh flexibility, seeking continuously seeking out new information, um, creating adaptable, even adaptable information sharing arrangements or agreements. This is really what the current moment I think calls for.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

That's great. Uh and it provides a way forward. I really love how much you've come off the you know, good versus bad. As analysts, it's always tough to talk about the nuclear side because we just have so fewer empirics. I'm pretty sure that's a good thing that we don't have practice in it. Yeah as space starts entering that, it's clear we do need to prepare for the US is and should prepare for a war in space. Yeah. Whether we actually want to fight the war to find out how it works.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

More space war games, I say.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Is there something? Is there a better way to do it? It seems like you've provided a way to think about that. Congratulations, amazing work. And most importantly, thank you for coming on and talking about it with us.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Thank you so much, Russell. This was so much fun.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

Colleen, thank you for letting us have the conversation, and we look forward to a further discussion.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Great discussion and deep into aspects of strategic decision making of the 21st century. So I'm gonna stay tuned for how that pans out. To our audience, listen and watch all of our shows, spanning five and a half years of space policy and strategy, anywhere you get your podcasts. To get notified, you can subscribe at csps.org slash space policy show. Or just follow us on social media. Until next time.