Asia, the US and Extended Nuclear Deterrence

Atomic Umbrellas in the Twenty-First Century

Andrew O'Neil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136693670
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the end of the Cold War, significant attention has focussed on the issue of nuclear deterrence and in particular whether formal nuclear security guarantees from nuclear weapons states to non-nuclear weapons states involving the possible use of nuclear weapons have a place in the twenty-first century global strategic landscape. Growing support for nuclear disarmament in the US and elsewhere has seen serious doubts being raised about the ongoing utility of extended nuclear deterrence.

This book provides the first detailed analysis of the way in which extended nuclear deterrence operates in contemporary Asia. It addresses the following key questions: What does the role of extended nuclear deterrence in Asia tell us about the broader role of extended nuclear deterrence in the contemporary international system? Is this role likely to change significantly in the years ahead? O'Neil uses a theoretical and historical framework to analyse the contemporary and future dynamics of extended nuclear deterrence in Asia and challenges many of the existing orthodox perspectives on the topic.

Providing a new perspective on debates surrounding extended nuclear deterrence, this book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations and security studies, but also to policy makers and professionals.

1

INTRODUCTION

 

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, nuclear weapons continue to shape international relations in profound and important ways. Despite unprecedented arms control and disarmament measures since the end of the Cold War, there are many thousands of nuclear warheads remaining in the arsenals of the five ‘declared’ nuclear powers recognized under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and many hundreds more in the inventories of the four nuclear weapons states not recognized by the NPT. The total number of nuclear weapons has declined significantly over the past two decades, but this has primarily been the consequence of deep cuts to the respective stockpiles of Russia and the United States, former Cold War adversaries that still today retain 95 per cent of all nuclear weapons worldwide President Barack Obama's widely celebrated Prague speech in 2009, in which he reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons, promised something of a renaissance in nuclear disarmament efforts globally.¹ However, demand for nuclear weapons remains strong, and there are few indications that nuclear disarmament is a serious prospect. This is not merely because aspiring nuclear powers, such as Iran, see nuclear weapons as a necessary strategic instrument to safeguard national security. Demand persists among the established nuclear powers for reasons that relate to deterrence, status, and a sense of uncertainty about how the international security environment will evolve in future years. As we shall see in this book, demand for nuclear weapons, in the form of extended nuclear deterrence guarantees, remains strong among countries that have no intention themselves of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons loom large in Asia's twenty-first century landscape. Of all the regions in the international system, Asia is the least receptive to the case for nuclear disarmament. Regional nuclear proliferation has remained steady over the past tw decades and all the new entrants into the global nuclear club since the end of the Cold War have been located in Asia. This includes North Korea – perhaps the most unpredictable and insecure state in the international system – and Pakistan, which confronts long-term challenges in effectively securing command and control of its nuclear forces. Underlying territorial rivalries based on centuries of mistrust coupled with uncertainty about the evolving configuration of the regional security order, has meant that demand for the ultimate weapon remains steady in Asia. Viewed in the context of major advances in the sophistication of delivery systems possessed by regional powers, this trend is of concern. When we think of the potential theatres where the use of nuclear weapons is possible in the twenty-first century, it is difficult to go past Asia as the prime region of risk. If the nature of this risk is to be understood, and potentially addressed by policy makers, we need to grasp the fundamental dynamics of how choices about nuclear weapons are made by regional states. Countries that possess nuclear weapons are not the only key players in influencing these dynamics. Non-nuclear states that have security alliances with the dominant nuclear-armed great power in the region, the United States, also play an important role in shaping Asia's nuclear environment.

The ‘nuclear umbrella’, as it is colloquially referred to, is very much a product of the Cold War when the United States extended nuclear deterrence guarantees to various allies in the international system. The most notable application of extended nuclear deterrence was in Europe where the NATO alliance instituted nuclear-sharing arrangements to underscore the ‘one-in, all-in’ commitment enshrined in Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty. In Asia, the existence of the nuclear umbrella was evident within the framework of bilateral US treaty arrangements with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and, until the US rapprochement with the People's Republic of China, Taiwan. What role has extended nuclear deterrence played in Asia? How important is it likely to be in the twenty-first century? Will its relevance and value decline? These questions have not been addressed adequately in the literature, but they remain critical to understanding broader issues associated with regional security in Asia and in framing more detailed discussion about the future of nuclear weapons in this region. They are also important because regional level analysis of nuclear developments is central to understanding the role of nuclear weapons internationally and the question of whether nuclear disarmament is a realistic longer-term policy goal.

Outside of NATO, only three countries can credibly claim to be covered by extended nuclear deterrence assurances from the United States: Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Of course, the exact nature and substance of these relationships are quite distinctive. Assurances to NATO partners are conferred within the framework of a multilateral alliance that is underpinned by a security treaty binding all member to come to the direct assistance of another member state if it is subjected to armed attack. By contrast, the US's extended nuclear deterrence arrangements in Asia are based on bilateral treaties none of which have an automatic trigger equivalent to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Moreover, unlike NATO, there are no nuclear-sharing arrangements in Asia and, up until the creation of the US–South Korea Extended Deterrence Policy Committee in 2010, there were no formal institutional mechanisms for regular consultation between Washington and its individual allies on extended nuclear deterrence. The US's nuclear umbrellas in Asia are less formal and therefore more uncertain in scope than its extended deterrence commitments in Europe. The fact that no US nuclear weapons have been stationed on the territory of Asian allies since the removal of tactical systems from South Korea in 1991 presents an additional contrast to Europe, where several NATO allies continue to host US nuclear forces.

This book does not argue that all US allies are covered by extended nuclear deterrence. The three case studies covered in the analysis deal with countries that have been given explicit nuclear assurances in writing (Japan and South Korea) and implicit assurances in the form of Washington not contradicting the strategic guidance of an ally that promulgates the existence of a US nuclear umbrella (Australia). No other states in the Asian region, including US allies Thailand and the Philippines, meet these important criteria. Washington may very well decide to extend nuclear assurances to these states in the future, but with no evidence that this has taken place, it makes little sense to include Thailand and the Philippines as case studies in this book. Some analysts claim that Taiwan continues to fall under the US nuclear umbrella, but there is minimal evidence of this.² While the People's Republic of China cannot be absolutely certain that the United States would not extend its nuclear umbrella over Taiwan in the event of cross-Strait hostilities, there is no mutual security treaty between the United States and Taiwan. As Richard Bush points out, the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) is not a security treaty and ‘only states a US policy of having the capacity to resist coercion against Taiwan, not an explicit commitment to use those capabilities. The only thing a US administration must do in a crisis is report to Congress.’³ Significantly, in contrast to its other formal Asian security alliances, there is no clause contained in the TRA that obliges the United States to consult with Taiwan if it is subject to armed attack or a direct threat.

Since the end of the Cold War, renewed attention has focused on the issue of nuclear deterrence and the question of whether security guarantees from nuclear weapons states to non-nuclear weapons states involving the possible use of nuclear weapons have a place in the twenty-first century global strategic landscape. Growing support for nuclear disarmament in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere has been accompanied by serious doubts about the ongoing utility of extended nuclear deterrence. Many analysts argue that, by reifying nuclear deterrence as an element of the security guarantees that lie at the heart of its alliance networks, the United States is stymieing progress towards reducing the number of nuclear weapons to levels where complete disarmament can become a feasible option for policy makers.⁴ Others have claimed that, due to doubts about whether any US administration would ever seriously contemplate employing nuclear weapons in situations other than when US national territory is directly threatened, extended nuclear deterrence is merely a rhetorical device aimed at reassuring nervous allies. As one analyst has observed, ‘there is no such thing as “the nuclear umbrella” … one US administration after the other has told allies what they wish to hear, calculating that a little loose rhetoric is surely less harmful than an anxious ally’.⁵ Richard Ta nter and Peter Hayes concur, identifying what they see as ‘the presently literally incredible fictional nuclear assurances in East Asia’.⁶

To be sure, none of these points about extended nuclear deterrence are new. The nuclear umbrella was very much a product of the US's Cold War grand strategy of containing the Soviet Union and protecting key allies, but doubts nonetheless persisted about the credibility of extended nuclear deterrence. From this perspective, it is understandable why questions are raised about the future relevance of the nuclear umbrella in a context that is quite different from the Cold War. Critics charge that extended nuclear deterrence is increasingly outmoded in a world where the high geopolitical stakes of the Cold War no longer exist and where the benefits of the nuclear umbrella are no longer apparent. This broad claim is based on three assumptions that constitute a key framework of inquiry for this book, and which are developed in greater depth in Chapter 2. The first assumption is that the positive effects of the nuclear umbrella are exaggerated and that the benefits of extended nuclear deterrence are questionable at best. The second is that rational actor behaviour in relation to nuclear weapons – upon which the essential logic of extended nuclear deterrence is founded – is based on logic that has become increasingly tenuous in the post-9/11 era. The third assumption is that extended deterrence commitments involving conventional weapons can be just as effective in reassuring allies and deterring adversaries as those involving nuclear weapons.

Through detailed case study analysis, this book examines each of these assumptions and concludes that, while they may have some applicability in Europe where the salience of extended nuclear deterrence has been slowly declining, they are of limited relevance in the Asian context. The US's closest security allies in this region continue to regard the nuclear umbrella as a core part of their respective bilateral alliances, and this is becoming more, not less, central to their strategic relationships with Washington. As this study reveals, it is significant that the presence of extended nuclear deterrence in each alliance relationship remains largely the product of demand-side pressures. Far from imposing nuclear security guarantees on reluctant allies, successive US administrations have been noticeably ambivalent about committing unambiguously to extended nuclear deterrence in Asia. Ironically, this has become less so since the end of the Cold War, but it has been US allies that have typically taken the initiative in extracting agreement from Washington regarding the applicability of the nuclear umbrella. At the very least, this signifies that the US's allies believe that extended nuclear deterrence is both beneficial and necessary for their security. The fact that Japan, South Korea, and Australia are substantial conventional military powers in their own right tells us something about what they want most from their extended deterrence relationships with Washington.

All three of these countries have formal security alliances with Washington and each ally enshrines the nuclear dimension of the US alliance in its formal policy documents. There is, however, no one-size-fits-all approach to extended nuclear deterrence among the US's Asian allies. Japan, South Korea, and Australia value extended nuclear deterrence, but they have quite different motives in seeking it, and their preferred scope of coverage differs. Tokyo's increasing focus is on China's evolving nuclear and conventional force modernization program, and the preference of Japanese policy makers is to maintain a high level of ambiguity in US strategic doctrine to preserve the option of nuclear use in response to conventional threats. Seoul, for its part, is understandably fixated on North Korea and the thorny question of what it takes to deter Pyongyang from carrying out high level military provocations on the Korean peninsula. Australia confronts no immediate threat to its security and sees extended nuclear deterrence as an important component in its strategy of hedging against a potential deterioration of Asia's security landscape and the longer-term possibility of it being subjected to nuclear coercion. Consequently, the types of extended nuclear deterrence assurances provided by Washington in Asia are tailored to address different strategic purposes. All three of the US's Asian allies are united in the view that having had a degree of protection under the US nuclear umbrella in the past, it is important they preserve this as an additional security multiplier in the twenty-first century.

This book provides the first detailed analysis of extended nuclear deterrence in contemporary Asia. The analysis argues that while extended nuclear deterrence remains critical in inhibiting proliferation pressures through strategic reassurance, its role in actively dissuading China and North Korea from undertaking destabilizing behaviour is less clear. A paradoxical theme throughout this book is that demand for the nuclear umbrella among policy makers in Seoul, Tokyo, and Canberra does not seem to have been linked with particularly strong views that extended nuclear deterrence has been a decisive, or even significant, factor in shaping the past behaviour of adversaries and would-be adversaries in Asia. Whether correct or not, there has been a shared assumption among Japanese, South Korean, and Australian policy makers over time that nuclear assurances provide an additional layer of deterrence on top of the close conventional military cooperation arrangements that underpin each alliance. For these states (with the possible exception of South Korea), preserving the nuclear umbrella in the long term is less about specific contingencies and relates more to a generic uncertainty about Asia's future security climate. This logic in respect to nuclear weapons generally was captured by former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2008:

Our nuclear arsenal is vital [because] we simply cannot predict the future. Who can tell what the world will look like in 10 to 20 years? As someone who spent most of his career in the intelligence business, I can assure you that our track record for guesswork hasn't been all that great. We have to know our limitations. We have to acknowledge that the fundamental nature of man hasn't changed and their adversaries and other nations will always seek whatever advantages they can find. Knowing that, we have to be prepared for contingencies we haven't even considered.⁷

The less certain Asia's security environment becomes, the more important the nuclear umbrella will be for the US's Asian allies.

This book is divided into three discrete parts. Chapters 2 and 3 provide a framework for the case study chapters that follow. In Chapter 2, I examine the nature of extended deterrence as a strategic concept and outline the contemporary debate in the literature about the role and significance of the nuclear umbrella in the twenty-first century. This book is about extended nuclear deterrence, but it is nevertheless important to understand the sorts of basic (and more obscure) assumptions that permeate the calculations states make about deterrence generally. Appreciating the nature of the relationship between theories of deterrence and ho deterrence relationships operate in practice lies at the heart of this study. Chapter 3 outlines the sub-regional forces that shape Asia's security dynamics and distinguishes between the various security complexes that comprise the broader region. The chapter also charts the broader geopolitical shifts underway in the region, most notably the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States as a regional hegemon. The chapter closes with a discussion of how Asia's nuclear environment has evolved since 1945.

This book is a case-led study that examines how the United States and its key Asian allies have managed the extended nuclear deterrence dimension of their strategic relationships.⁸ Grasping the various developments and nuances underlying each alliance relationship is a crucial pre-requisite for understanding how and why extended nuclear deterrence has evolved in Asia. Each case study provides insights into the individual country's alliance relationship with the United States, but it also contributes to further understanding the dynamics of the nuclear umbrella in Asia overall. Against this background, the second part of this book comprises three case studies of extended nuclear deterrence in Asia that follow an identical format. The chapters on South Korea, Japan, and Australia are divided into three sections, which cover each country's security environment; the nature of the bilateral security alliance they have with the United States; and the nature of each country's extended nuclear deterrence relationship. The case study analysis contained in Chapters 4–6 underscore the point that the contemporary situation is largely the product of key historical developments. As a result, while contemporary in flavor, much of the analysis is retrospective in its focus. All of this is a necessary foundation for drawing essential conclusions, which are contained the final part of the book, Chapter 7. This chapter evaluates the differences and similarities across the three cases examined and, on the basis of these conclusions, appraises how extended nuclear deterrence is likely to evolve in twenty-first century Asia.

2

EXTENDED NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

Frameworks and perspectives

Introduction

In its most basic form, deterrence is a form of strategic coercion based on a state's ability to dissuade an adversary from using military force by persuading them that the costs of doing so will be greater than the potential gains. In conceptual terms, deterrence is the deliberate manipulation of costs and benefits by Party A based on the assumption that Party B will rationally...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Extended nuclear deterrence: Frameworks and perspectives
• 3 Asia's security, power transitions, and nuclear weapons
• 4 South Korea and extended nuclear deterrence: Anxieties and asymmetry
• 5 Japan and extended nuclear deterrence: Ambivalence over ambition
• 6 Australia and extended nuclear deterrence: A search for existential security
• 7 Extended nuclear deterrence in twenty-first-century Asia
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index