Asian Security – Contemporary Security Policy

Promoting the “Rules-Based Order” through strategic narratives

In a new article, Rebecca Strating studies strategic narratives around the “Rules-Based Order” (RBO) in Asia-Specific. She studies three asymmetrical bilateral maritime disputes that involve the UK, India and Australia, and finds that RBO narratives constrained the behaviours of the states that adopt the term.

In November 2022 the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly announced that the UK would open negotiations with the Republic of Mauritius on the sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago, a small group of atolls claimed by both states in the Indian Ocean.

This announcement indicated a reversal of UK policy. London had previously rejected Mauritian sovereignty claims and expressing its commitment to ceding sovereignty only when the Chagos islands were no longer required for its defence purposes. In 1966, the UK leased the biggest island – Diego Garcia – to the United States, where it set up its key military base in the Indian Ocean that was subsequently used in major US military operations. As the Indian Ocean is increasingly subject to strategic contestation, both the UK and US has viewed UK’s continuing sovereignty of Chagos Archipelago as important to countering the regional presence of the People’s Republic of China.

Given the strategic value of Diego Garcia to the UK and its relationship with the US, what explains the new government’s approach?

Mauritius and its supporters have engaged in a campaign based on strategic litigation and public diplomacy to put reputational pressure on the UK both domestically and internationally. This campaign has emphasised how the UK – by refusing to deal with the legacy of colonialisation in the Indian Ocean – was actively undermining the international ‘rules-based order’ (RBO) that it has sought to defend in its own strategic narratives.

This campaign has been long-running. In 2010, Mauritius initiated an arbitration under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) protesting the UK’s declaration of a Marine Protected Area around Chagos islands. The UK initially responded by disputing the tribunal’s jurisdiction to hear the case. When the ruling largely fell in Mauritius’ favour, the UK interpreted its newly-defined legal responsibilities in a minimalist way.

In 2019, Mauritius asked the UN General Assembly to request an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on Chagos sovereignty in 2019, which UK narratives cast Mauritius as inappropriately ‘internationalising’ the bilateral dispute. The resultant ICJ advisory opinion rejected UK sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago on the grounds that Mauritius’ decolonisation was not lawfully completed. The same year, the UN General Assembly voted in favour of strongly condemning British occupation of Chagos Islands, calling for complete decolonisation. In 2021, a Special Chamber in the Mauritius-Maldives maritime boundary dispute re-affirmed the ICJ’s advisory opinion as having legal effect.

Cumulatively, these legal rulings and the associated discourses around them has made it more difficult for the UK to defend its sovereign and maritime claims around the Chagos archipelago to an international audience, especially in light of its own RBO narratives.

This article uses the Chagos example as one case study to demonstrate how states can become ensnared in their own strategic narratives that are designed to compel emerging great powers to abide by existing norms and international law.

In the context of dramatic power shifts in Asia, regional allies and partners of the US such as the UK, Australia, Japan, and India, have adopted new ‘Indo-Pacific’ strategic narratives to stabilise, promote and defend their preferred vision of an RBO, one in which ostensibly all states – even global and authoritarian powers – comply with existing and commonly agreed upon standards of behaviour.

‘Indo-Pacific powers’ are particularly concerned about the revisionist intentions of China. Beijing’s maritime assertions in the South China Sea are the key example used to argue that China desires to ‘re-order the region’ by ‘bullying’ its smaller neighbours in maritime disputes and pursuing ‘unilateral changes to the status quo’ through coercive activities that violate or ignoring UNCLOS. Beijing’s rejection of the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal ruling in the case initiated by Philippines – which found China’s ‘historic rights’ claim in the South China Sea inconsistent with international law – as a challenge to the prevailing RBO.

Yet, as these states encourage emerging powers to abide by the ‘rules’ in their strategic narratives, they can be held to the same standard in their own asymmetrical disputes. RBO narratives can promote greater state compliance with international law and norms, but this tends to be among states who adopt the narrative rather than its targets: emerging revisionist powers who violate, ignore, or seek to re-write international law.

The article compares the rhetoric and actions of three Indo-Pacific powers in asymmetrical bilateral maritime disputes: the Timor Sea United Nations Compulsory Conciliation between Australia and Timor-Leste, the Bay of Bengal Maritime Boundary Arbitration between India and Bangladesh, and the Chagos Island Marine Protected Area Arbitration between the UK and Mauritius.

In each case study, there is evidence that reputational concerns became as important – if not more so – than material considerations, although this played out in different ways across the case studies.

The bigger powers – Australia, India and the UK – came to interpret the disputes in the context of their overarching strategic interests and concerns about great power revisionism, particularly in maritime domains.

Ultimately, RBO narratives constrained the behaviours of the states that adopt the term. Adopters were compelled to take different approaches in their own maritime disputes with smaller powers to reduce the perceived inconsistencies between their RBO rhetoric and their actions. For states, this suggests that there are risks involved in invoking the RBO in their strategic narratives. In an increasingly contested region, reputation and credibility can play an important role in regional diplomacy as Indo-Pacific powers seek to persuade other states that the existing order is preferable to authoritarian alternatives. This produces positive affects for the legitimacy of international regimes such as UNCLOS even though it is not necessarily the intended outcome of Indo-Pacific states’ rhetorical strategies. The RBO, however, is less effective in changing the approaches of the primary disrupters, including authoritarian powers such as China and Russia.

Rebecca Strating is the author of “The rules-based order as rhetorical entrapment: Comparing maritime dispute resolution in the Indo-Pacific”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

The Indo-Pacific and the decline of the rules-based order

The combination of antagonistic nationalist currents within East Asia and US resistance against the emergence of a post-Cold War order scuttled decades-long efforts to effectively institutionalize an Asia-Pacific region. Facing ever increasing rivalries over how to fill the ensuing void, Christian Wirth and Nicole Jenne analyse in a recent article how foreign- and security-political elites embarked on strategies for safeguarding the “rules-based order” across the enlarged “Indo-Pacific.”

The past two decades have seen a lot of talk about the need to preserve what many in Europe and the US call the liberal international order and whose institutions and norms have governed international politics since 1945. Particularly in the neighbourhood of rising China, what has now become known as “rules-based order”, we are told, needs to be defended.

Yet, it is hard to defend, let alone bring back, something that has never existed.

Contrary to the framing of the rules-based order, the institutions and norms that undergird the international order of the Asia-Pacific region since the 1950s, remain predicated on a system of military alliances between the United States and its East Asian partners; a system that had been designed to contain the now inexistent Communist bloc.

Unless juxtaposed to authoritarian China, the system where East Asian regional states form the “spokes” converging on the US “hub” neither bears a particularly strong imprint of liberal values, nor has its static conception been flexible enough to adapt to the socio-economic conditions of the globalized world as it emerged in the 1990s.

In this sense, the institutions of the Asia-Pacific rules-based order share some commonalities with the remainders of its former nemesis, the institutions and norms undergirding the Chinese state. It has become precarious and increasingly costly to maintain.

Especially in the past decade, US and its East Asian allies have seen themselves compelled to drastically increase defence expenditures and enhanced centralized control over expanding national security interests in the name of safeguarding the rules-based order. While the US and its allies have increased their military capacities and strengthened their determination to share the euphemistic “burden” of upholding international stability and security, this burden has itself been increasing.

But how did we get this far? Has a post-Cold War order not been emerging?

Our study finds that the costs for maintaining “order” and “stability” have been ballooning after three decades of efforts at imagining and promoting the institutionalization of a post-Cold War order across the Asia-Pacific largely failed. While Southeast Asian governments successfully developed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) framework, early efforts on the part of Australian and Japanese leaders to enmesh East Asian states, including China, as well as the US, in Asia-Pacific wide frameworks faltered.

The obvious reasons therefore have been diverging views about the future of regional order among East Asian elites and governments. Yet, instead of leading the rebuilding of order in the wake of the monumental changes in the early 1990s, US decisionmakers have contributed to the deepening of the problem of order. Anxious about the possible emergence of an Asian bloc, potentially replacing the hub-and-spokes bilateralism, they have been seeking to neutralize East Asian initiatives for advancing regional multilateralism. Crucially, they also refused to lead such efforts themselves.

This lack of pro-active order-building has increased the predicament for US allies in East Asia.

Torn between their deepening economic dependence on China and strengthening military ties with the US, Australian and Japanese elites have once again pioneered efforts to expand the regional sphere. With the hope of retaining their status and forestall the perceived ascent of China’s regional hegemony, they embraced the idea of an Indo-Pacific region. The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations followed their lead.

Thus, the study finds that, albeit directed against China for preserving the US-led rules-based order of the Asia-Pacific, the expansion of the region to South Asia signifies a dilution also of US power and influence. Numerous actors, such as ASEAN, India, and even the European Union, have jumped on the wagon and pronounced their own views on the Indo-Pacific.

The enlarged Indo-Pacific region provides a larger set of possibilities to cooperate for the majority of states who have sought to find a middle ground between the US and China. Mostly following pragmatic foreign policy practices, they recognize that enlisting on either side in the Sino-Allied struggle offers at best short-term benefits while increasing political and economic risks.

Although this amorphous Indo-Pacific meta-region is unlikely to become formally institutionalized any time soon, it signifies the gradual superseding of hub-and-spokes bilateralism. The US (and its allies) are not alone anymore in defining this strategic space. At the same time, the enlargement of the imagined region dilutes China’s (and India’s) influence. Thus, the ensuing order will remain a mix of conflict and cooperation.

Facing such a fluid “international order”, thinking in Indo-Pacific dimensions can help decision-makers bear the uncertainty over the future of relations between states and remove much of the perceived insecurity caused by tunnel views of linearly shifting power and anxiety about the decline of a liberal or rules-based order that never existed in the imagined form.

Dr. Christian Wirth is Research Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. Dr. Nicole Jenne is Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Institute of Political Science, and a researcher at the Centre for Asian Studies (CEA-UC) of the same university. They are the authors of “Filling the void: The Asia-Pacific problem of order and emerging Indo-Pacific regional multilateralism”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

Defense treaties increase domestic support for military action

Using survey experiments in a new article, Jeffrey D. Berejikian and Justwan Florian show that when Americans are informed about the U.S.-South Korea mutual defense treaty they are more willing to support the use of U.S. combat troops in South Korea and accept casualties.

American political leaders often frame U.S. security interests by emphasizing the specific details of U.S. defense commitments. For example, during a recent high-profile diplomatic visit to the Philippines in July of 2021, Secretary of State Blinken privately affirmed the US commitment to President Duterte. The United States also signaled its intentions to China directly. An American warship was deployed to conduct freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to coincide with the visit.

However, in addition, Secretary Blinken took time to both publicly call attention to the specific details of a longstanding alliance between the US and Philippines and explain its meaning; “We also reaffirm that an armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke US mutual defense commitments under Article IV of the 1951 US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.”

When political leaders focus public attention on existing security commitments in this manner, it is unlikely that they are only attempting to send a signal to potential adversaries. The conventional wisdom is that, in direct state-to-state communication, actions speak louder than words. For instance, as noted above, during Blinken’s trip the US sent a clear signal to China’s leaders by detaching a naval vessel to the region.

We believe that public statements are better understood as political acts designed to mobilize domestic opinion and communicate to potential adversaries that there is sufficient popular support to follow through on promises to defend a security partner. Indeed, mobilizing domestic political support within an alliance during a crisis is critical to the success of deterrence threats, and emphasizing formal security commitments is, in part, intended as a guardrail against shifting domestic foreign policy preferences.

So, does this communication strategy work? The answer is unclear. Foreign policy research has traditionally focused on the degree to which formal alliances shape the expectations of external audiences—allies and adversaries—in the lead-up to conflict. Interestingly, recent scholarship has demonstrated that international law sometimes also works in the opposite direction; it can shape domestic attitudes about conflict behavior.

For example, there is evidence that the public is less likely to support military action when it violates explicit legal commitments to protect human rights. This result extends to the broader obligation that governments should attempt to protect civilians during conflict. However, because the primary focus of existing research is on human rights law that emphasizes moral obligations to others, this scholarship might not extend to self-interested national security concerns.

To answer this question directly, we conducted a novel survey experiment on a representative sample in the United States. We presented respondents with a narrative describing a military crisis on the Korean peninsula. Half of our respondents received a cue about the American mutual defense treaty with South Korea. The other half of our respondent pool did not receive this treatment. Subjects were then asked (1) whether they would support the use of U.S. combat troops in defense of South Korea, (2) how many U.S. military casualties they would be willing to accept, and (3) how many North Korean civilian casualties they would tolerate.

In a second wave, respondents received a stronger and more detailed experimental treatment that included information about the specific content of the U.S.-South Korean defense agreement. In addition, our experiment included several questions designed to evaluate the causal mechanisms by which defense treaties might potentially influence public support for military action.

Our research produced several interesting findings. First, emphasizing the defense treaty between Washington and Seoul increased support for military action on behalf of South Korea. However, the magnitude of this effect depends on the specificity of the information provided. Merely noting the fact of a prior commitment only affects attitudes of self-declared Independents. Democrats and Republicans, by contrast, were initially less responsive to our subtle priming on the U.S-Korean defense agreement. However, once individuals receive more detailed information describing the specific legal nature of the treaty – modeled on the kind of statements by American officials noted above – the gap between Independents and partisans largely disappears.

Second, we find that the reason defense treaties increase support for military action is that they elicit a belief that the United States is morally obligated to defend its ally and that backing down damages America’s international reputation. Third, formal alliances increase public “casualty tolerance.” Individuals in our treatment groups were both more tolerant of U.S. military deaths and more willing to accept North Korean civilian casualties than other respondents in the study. Interestingly, the subtle prime only influenced casualty tolerance among strong conservatives. However, again, as subjects received information about the specific legal nature of the U.S. obligation the gap between strong conservatives and others largely disappeared.

So, is framing conflict decisions around prior security commitments an effective way to shape public perceptions about conflict? The results reported here suggest that it is. Highlighting an existing promise to defend allies increases public willingness and resolve for military action. We find that this effect is not uniform across individuals and that support for military action and casualty tolerance increases as people receive more specificity about their country’s obligation.

These results demonstrate that security commitments, in addition to shaping the expectations and incentives of external actors, also contour the domestic political incentives for foreign policy action. This is, in part, why pollical leaders take such great pains to detail the nature of their country’s defense obligations to domestic audiences, even as they are communicating directly with allies and potential adversaries. Taken as a whole, these findings reveal a nuanced set of relationships between security commitments and individual-level attitudes about conflict and, as a result, generate new insights into the conditions under which leaders can use existing security agreements to mobilize the public.

Jeffrey D. Berejikian is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia, and Associate Professor in the Department of International Affairs. Florian Justwan is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Idaho. They are the authors of “Defense treaties increase domestic support for military action and casualty tolerance: Evidence from survey experiments in the United States”, Contemporary Security Policy, available here.

Strategic narratives in the Sino-American COVID-19 “blame game”

In a recent article, Linus Hagström and Karl Gustafsson analyze the Sino-American narrative struggle over the meaning of COVID-19. They argue that the limited success of Chinese and U.S. efforts to gain support for their strategic narratives about the pandemic illustrates the limitations of strategic narratives as both concept and political practice.

“Strategic narratives” has become a popular concept in International Relations research and foreign policy practice alike. Scholars and practitioners have increasingly accepted that narratives matter and can affect world politics by attracting or even fooling global audiences into acquiring a particular understanding of reality. Many states currently spend huge resources on projecting their own stories to the world. Hence, much like discussions on “disinformation,” “propaganda,” “information warfare,” “sharp power,” and “fake news,” current commentary often seems to assume that international actors are able to control narratives and use them strategically.

One issue over which much ink has recently been spilled is the COVID-19 pandemic. After the pandemic hit the world in the spring of 2020, it did not take long until scholars and pundits began to comment on how the world’s two most powerful states—the United States and China—were seeking to construct and propagate strategic narratives about events as they were unfolding. They suggested that the narrative power struggle over the meaning of the pandemic could have implications for the future of world order and the ostensibly ongoing power shift from the United States to China. Some suggested that China’s strategic narratives were superior to that of the United States, and that this could even be a harbinger of China’s emergence as a global leader.

In our article, we examined the construction, dissemination and reception of Sino-American strategic narratives about the pandemic, as well as whether or how they invoked more deeply institutionalized, pre-existing master narratives and with what effects. We also explored to what extent and how those narratives were referenced and reproduced by decision makers in Australia, India, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—five regional states seen as vital to the future of the current U.S.-led world order.

We found that both China and the United States sought to use narratives strategically. The United States projected two main strategic narratives: (1) COVID-19 originated in China, the country tried its best to hide the outbreak and refused to cooperate with investigations, and China duped the WHO, which is pro-China; and (2) the United States has taken a proactive approach to COVID-19 that is better than anywhere else in the world and the Trump administration has been highly successful.

China also promoted two main narratives: (1) China is the champion of the international system because its domestic crisis management is resolute and effective, and because internationally it is based on multilateralism and assisting other countries by providing medical aid; and (2) the United States engages in politicization and stigmatization, such as the Wuhan lab conspiracy theory, which is more dangerous than COVID-19 itself, and it wasted the time that Chinese sacrifice had given it.

However, we found that all of these narrative were largely unsuccessful. While elements of the U.S. narratives were referenced and reproduced in Australia and to some extent in the United Kingdom, the number of such references was very limited. Indian, South Korean, and Turkish statements praised cooperation with the United States, but did not reproduce U.S. narrative content. Similarly, key elements of the Chinese narratives appeared in statements from all five states, but China was only explicitly mentioned when cooperation with the country was praised. China did not figure at all when support for multilateralism, international cooperation and the WHO was discussed, or when stigmatization of Asians was criticized. Officials in Australia, India, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom primarily emphasized their own efforts and successes in fighting COVID-19, seeking to present themselves in a positive light. Instead of supporting either the United States or China, they had their own agendas and agency.

Based on our findings, we argue that there is reason for caution about the usefulness of strategic narratives as a policy tool. In addition, we argue that the analysis and use of strategic narratives cannot just take narratives about specific issues, such as COVID-19, into account, but must also pay attention to more deeply institutionalized, pre-existing master narratives. Not all Chinese narrative elements originated in China, and some of them—especially the emphasis on multilateralism and international cooperation—were quite general.

Hence, to the extent that Chinese narratives gained some international traction, they did not do so by spreading falsehoods, but rather by appealing to master narratives that are widely shared throughout the world. This demonstrates the limitations strategic narratives, as China’s narrative entrepreneurship around COVID-19 both appealed to and seemed constrained by pre-existing master narratives integral to the current U.S.-led world order.

Our findings suggest that the most significant narrative power resides not with particular states, but with influential master narratives. Therefore, when exploring the possibilities for changing global narrative power dynamics, we should analyze not only the diffusion and reception of strategic narratives, or even just changing master narratives, but also how key actors situate themselves in relation to existing master narratives. With the Biden administration more intent than the previous Trump administration on upholding and strengthening the current U.S.-led liberal world order with its emphasis on multilateralism and international cooperation, it may become more difficult for China, or any other state, to take control of or use these global master narratives for their own strategic purposes.

Linus Hagström is a Professor of Political Science at the Swedish Defence University. Karl Gustafsson is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Stockholm University. He tweets at @KarlGustafsson5. They are the authors of the article “The limitations of strategic narratives: The Sino-American struggle over the meaning of COVID-19,” Contemporary Security Policy, forthcoming, which can be accessed here.

Adolescent Girls in Protracted Crises: Promoting Inclusion and Advancing Peace

In protracted conflicts and crises, adolescent girls experience physical and sexual gender-based violence — as well as structural violence — in a manner that can be substantially different from women and boys, and unique to their demographic. Unsurprisingly, these experiences of violence often beget further insecurity, rendering girls more vulnerable across a range of issues.

In a new article, Eleanor Gordon and Katrina Lee-Koo report the findings of their research with adolescent girls aged between 10 and 19, and their communities across four protracted crisis contexts: Lake Chad Basin (Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon), South Sudan and Uganda, as well as crises facing displaced communities in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh and Beirut, Lebanon. In their article, they reveal the breadth and complexity of the security threats facing adolescent girls in protracted crisis contexts, highlighting the roles that the intersection of age and gender has in shaping girls’ experiences of violence.

Adolescent girls spoke of their exposure to a broad spectrum of violence, across all aspects of their lives. This included physical violence, conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, harassment and threats, and early and forced marriage. They reported experiencing this violence in their homes, at school, in public spaces and in transit. In many cases the ways in which this violence manifested and the impact it had upon their lives was unique from women and adolescent boys. For example, the increase — in all four crisis contexts — or early and forced marriage is a form of violence uniquely experienced by adolescent girls. While the triggers were slightly different in each context (and included issues such as the family’s economic insecurity, concerns about girls’ physical insecurity, experiences of sexual violence and pre-existing local customs), in all contexts both their age, and their gender made them vulnerable.

Alternatively, girls reported that in issues that might impact all members of the community — such as food insecurity, limited access to healthcare, and changes in access to education and patterns of paid and unpaid labour — it manifests uniquely for adolescent girls. For example, in South Sudan girls reported being more likely to be taken out of school to contribute unpaid labour in the home; in Cox’s Bazar there was little support among adult populations to educate girls beyond primary school. Again, these patterns of behaviour draw upon attitudes to girls that are based upon their age and gender.

With the experiences of crisis were quite unique for adolescent girls, our research revealed that their voices and experiences rarely inform programmes aimed at improving the security and well-being of people caught in these crisis contexts. The consequences of this are that girls’ security concerns are not adequately addressed. This reality is in sharp contrast to policy guidance and research in the peacebuilding and humanitarian response sectors which underscore the importance of inclusion to the development of responsive and, ultimately, effective programming. We found that the ‘inclusivity norm’ has skipped over adolescent girls. We argue that it is the combination of the complexity and specificity of adolescent girls’ experiences of violence in crisis contexts, coupled with marginalisation of adolescent girls in responses to such violence, that so significantly compromises their security.

We argue that in order to address the security needs of adolescent girls, programmes need to be informed by their lived experiences as the girls themselves articulate them. Adolescent girls are experts in their own lives – capable of identifying the threats to their security, in some cases navigating them, but also conveying what their needs and priorities are. Importantly, their agenda can be different from those set by their parents, community representatives or external actors. This advances the case that adolescent girls need to be meaningfully included in programme development, implementation and evaluation, and have the ability to influence decisions and affect change.

There are undeniably barriers to including adolescent girls in crisis response programming. These include security, logistical, financial, linguistic, cultural and attitudinal barriers. Furthermore, measures need to be taken to ensure inclusion doesn’t further compromise the security of girls or expose them to further threat. Furthermore, it needs to be recognised that adolescent girls are not a homogenous group and it is, therefore, important to avoid tokenistic engagement. Instead, we promote genuine partnerships with adolescent girls that include diverse groups.

While these challenges have stymied inclusive and responsive programming, we argue that they are not insurmountable. Overcoming these challenges will, however, require recognition from external actors and communities that violence against adolescent girls is not just a threat to the girls themselves but also a threat to the overall fabric of peace, and that adolescent girls are well-placed to inform approaches to addressing the threats that face them. Such an approach will capitalise upon the knowledge and skills that adolescent girls have developed, and employ their will and capacity to inform effective ways of addressing insecurity.

Eleanor Gordon and Katrina Lee-Koo work at the School of Social Sciences at Monash University, Australia. They are the authors of “Addressing the security needs of adolescent girls in protracted crises: Inclusive, responsive, and effective?”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

Resentful Reliance: Why Myanmar and North Korea pursue different strategies to limit Chinese influence

In a recent article in Contemporary Security Policy, Jonathan T. Chow and Leif-Eric Easley explain why, despite comparable international pariah status and heavy dependence on China, Myanmar sought diplomatic diversification through reform and opening while North Korea doubled down on pariahdom by further developing nuclear weapons and missiles.

Myanmar and North Korea were long known as Asia’s “pariah states,” internationally sanctioned and ostracized for human rights violations, authoritarian repression and, in the case of North Korea, persistent efforts to develop nuclear weapons. In 2011, however, Myanmar’s repressive ruling junta surprised many observers by making a strategic decision to reform and open, stepping aside from power and ushering in a quasi-civilian government. Meanwhile, North Korea has pressed ahead with its nuclear weapons program, hardening its pariah status.

With relatively few international partners willing to cooperate with them, Myanmar and North Korea relied heavily on China for trade, investment, diplomatic support, and military assistance. However, citizens in both countries objected to China’s growing economic and political influence. In Myanmar, concerns centered on China’s ties to ethnic armed groups fighting against the central government and the environmental and social effects of Chinese-led infrastructure projects like the Myitsone Dam. Consequently, Myanmar used liberalizing reforms to signal its willingness to adhere to international norms and attract new diplomatic partners.

North Korea relies even more heavily on China than Myanmar did, and resents Beijing’s willingness to endorse United Nations sanctions regarding its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Yet, North Korea eschewed reform and opening and instead doubled down on its pariah status by racing to advance its nuclear and missile programs before pursuing diplomatic engagement. Our research identifies three factors behind Myanmar and North Korea’s different approaches to mitigating pariahdom and reliance on China.

Not All Authoritarians are Alike

First, North Korea and junta-era Myanmar differed in how well their leaders could protect themselves from retaliation after giving up control. Myanmar’s military junta could allow liberalizing reforms and relinquish day-to-day governing responsibilities while retaining its arms and the ability to usurp power. Myanmar’s new constitution grants the military broad autonomy from the civilian government and sweeping emergency powers, as well as immunity from prosecution for actions committed under the junta.

In contrast, North Korea’s ruling Kim family exercises control through a pervasive political ideology centered on “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-un. The leader employs brutal repression and the dispensing of luxury items and social privileges to co-opt North Korean elites. There is little room for the Kims to pursue liberalization if reforms would undermine the regime’s legitimizing mythology, reduce the Kims’ monopoly on favors, and allow the emergence of rival factions that might seek to replace the regime.

Reducing Risks of Partnership with a Pariah State

Second, Myanmar and North Korea differed in their ability to credibly signal to potential diplomatic partners that liberalizing reforms are genuine and not merely tactical. Such signals are important in mitigating the reputational risks that new partners might incur in engaging a pariah state.

In Myanmar, Nobel Peace Laureate, long-time political prisoner and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi served as a credible signaler of the junta’s reformist intentions. Before her image was tarnished by Myanmar’s human rights violations during her current tenure in government under a power-sharing arrangement with the military, Aung San Suu Kyi’s endorsement of the junta’s reforms was vital to persuading Washington to reduce sanctions. Her endorsement reduced the political risks that US leaders faced in pursuing engagement with a pariah state. Myanmar’s military leaders understood Aung San Suu Kyi’s crucial signaling role, giving them confidence that their reforms would yield a positive response from Washington.

North Korea, by contrast, lacks credible signalers. The regime so thoroughly suppresses political opposition that virtually none exists. Defectors typically keep a low profile to avoid retaliation against their families still living in North Korea, while those who are vocal tend to be very critical of the regime. This would make it more difficult for North Korea to demonstrate to other countries that any political reforms it adopts are genuine. Meanwhile, Pyongyang’s propaganda maintains that its efforts at engagement are not recognized by the international community.

Weighing the Security Implications of Engagement

Third, Myanmar and North Korea differ in how diplomatic engagement with new partners relates to their security. Myanmar’s leaders perceived their chief security threat to emanate from the numerous ethnic armed groups around the country. Before pursuing reforms, the junta established a series of ceasefires with the majority of these groups, allowing it to concentrate force on the remaining holdouts. By the time reforms were underway, diplomatic engagement did not entail a significant security risk to Myanmar’s ruling regime.

On the other hand, North Korea faces a dilemma wherein diplomatic diversification requires putting its claimed nuclear deterrent on the negotiating table. The Kim regime has long pursued nuclear weapons to protect against invasion and overthrow. While such capabilities somewhat reduce Pyongyang’s reliance on Beijing in terms of security, they are a major source of North Korea’s pariah status and hence increase economic dependence on China. Potential economic partners like the United States, South Korea and Japan demand that North Korea take steps toward denuclearization to earn sanctions relief, but the Kim regime believes that doing so would put its security at risk. Hence, unlike Myanmar, North Korea is caught between its security priorities and its desire to reduce reliance on China.

Escaping the Pariahdom Trap

Our research demonstrates that overreliance on another country is not sufficient to trigger reform in pariah states. Regime type, the presence of credible signalers, and the relationship between security and diplomatic diversification all shape the costs and incentives that pariah state regimes face in determining whether or not to liberalize and open up.

Pariah states want to pursue reforms from a position of strength, whether that means ensuring protections for regime leaders after they step down, creating mechanisms to seize back power, or building a nuclear deterrent. Myanmar was able to attain a position from which to launch reforms and begin to reduce reliance on China. For the Kim regime, however, the price of shedding pariah status and attracting new diplomatic partners appears too high to risk. Hence, for the foreseeable future, North Korea will continue to depend heavily on China.

Jonathan T. Chow is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wheaton College, Massachusetts, USA; Leif-Eric Easley is an Associate Professor in the Division of International Studies at Ewha University in Seoul, Korea. They recently published “Renegotiating pariah state partnerships: Why Myanmar and North Korea respond differently to Chinese influence,” Contemporary Security Policy, 40:4, 502-525, available here.

Why Australia remains a close ally despite Donald Trump

In a new article, Mark Beeson and Alan Bloomfield show that it takes more than Donald Trump to upset American-Australian security relations. The alliance with the United States is deeply ingrained and institutionalized in Australian strategic culture.

To say that Donald Trump has had a big impact on international politics would be putting it mildly. Whether by design or accident his administration has managed to overturn many taken-for-granted verities of the international order that Trump’s predecessors fashioned after World War II. Even the future of pivotal Western institutions, such as NATO, is uncertain. Friends and foes alike are therefore reconsidering their relationships with Washington.

And yet for all the uncertainty and anxiety Trump’s unpredictable and ‘transactional’ approach to policy-making has created, some relationships and institutions are surprisingly durable. Our article focuses on Australia, but its findings suggest that while what we call the ‘Trump Effect’ has had a major impact on some of the more theatrical aspects of international politics, underneath the colour and movement some institutionally embedded alliance relationships are very resistant to change.

We find that grand strategy is one policy area that is hard to change. Canadians may be highly offended by some of Trump’s antics, for example, but they do not consider the United States to be an enemy and the border will almost certainly remain undefended. Likewise, the deeply institutionalised intelligence sharing arrangements that distinguish the ‘Anglosphere’ nations – the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – also look likely to remain operative.

Australia provides a compelling illustration of just how entrenched grand-strategic ‘truths’ can become. We argue that despite the fact the Trump Effect negatively impacts on Australia’s interests, it is highly unlikely that Canberra would distance itself significantly from Washington in the foreseeable future; indeed, it is unlikely Australian policy-makers would even consider doing so given how deeply they have been socialised to view the relationship as ‘indispensable.’

This rigid thinking may surprise observers unfamiliar with Australian grand-strategic discourse. Australia enjoys unique natural defensive advantages given it shares no land borders with other states and its distance from potentially threatening great powers. It is also very wealthy: Australia’s 25 million people live in the 14^th largest economy in the world (and their taxes pay for the 13^th largest defense budget). Objectively, Australia seems especially secure. Consequently, the pervasive sense of anxiety that has pervaded Australian strategic planning for a century now takes some explaining.

In Australia’s case, relative isolation from the Anglo great powers has always been seen as a source of vulnerability and insecurity. This made more sense a century ago: for example, on the eve of World War I the enormous continent was inhabited by only 4 million people. But as noted just above, Australia is a powerful state in its own right now. So why, even though the impact of the Trump Effect is clearly negative, are Australian policy-makers seemingly unable to even begin thinking about distancing themselves from the source of these disturbances?

We found that it required a major external shock in World War II to bring about the first significant grand-strategic change in Australia’s history, the shift of allegiance from Britain to the US. In other words, only the credible threat of invasion by a hostile great power, Japan, which was conquering – and savagely exploiting – most of Asia, proved a sufficiently compelling ‘critical juncture’ to cause substantial change.

Another less-radical but still significant grand-strategic shift occurred around 1970 when Australians believed that they had been abandoned by London, and that Washington’s commitment to Asia had weakened substantially. This second shock was sufficient to cause a critical juncture leading to the dethronement of ‘forward defence’ doctrine and the rise of ‘continental defence’ logic. But Canberra’s commitment to the US alliance hardly wavered.

We find the Trump Effect comes nowhere close to delivering the same sort of exogenous shocks; consequently, we advise observers to expect ‘no change’ in Australia’s grand strategy. Accordingly, we submit that to account for the way policy-making elites in different countries calculate their different national interests, scholars must consider the role that their distinctive strategic cultures play in shaping policy outcomes.

In Australia’s case, it is not just sense of inherent vulnerability that accounts for the surprising durability of its alliance relationship with the US. What makes Australia’s ties to the US relatively impervious even to the Trump Effect, we suggest, is the way the bilateral relationship has been institutionalised over the decades – in treaties (most notably ANZUS), at the executive level but also at lower-bureaucratic levels, through multiple avenues of ‘Track 2’ diplomacy, etc. – which goes a long way to explaining why, over 70 years of public opinion surveys, support for the alliance averages in the high-70s percent and has never fallen below 63 percent.

Indeed, it is striking that policy-makers from both major political parties almost never criticise the alliance; only after leaving office do (a very few) retired senior politicians rediscover their critical, independent faculties. By this stage, of course, it’s too late to make much difference.

It is also worth noting that the rise of China as a regional economic powerhouse and strategic rival has reinforced rather than undermined the centrality of ANZUS. Given its economic importance to Australia, no one talks openly about ‘containing’ China; but Australia is about to spend a lot money on re-armament to ensure it can play its customary role in supporting Washington’s strategic ambitions, including (by implication) those directed against Beijing. Indeed, the idea that Australia might bandwagon with a rising China is virtually unthinkable, and those who dare to suggest Australia should work hard to upgrade its relationship with China run the real risk of being publicly pilloried.

In short, Australia’s supportive, strategically-dependent role is deeply ingrained and institutionalised as part of its distinctive strategic culture; and it is likely to withstand even the mercurially-disruptive presence of Mr Trump too.

Mark Beeson and Alan Bloomfield work at the University of Western Australia. They recently published “The Trump effect downunder: U.S. allies, Australian strategic culture, and the politics of path dependence”, Contemporary Security Policy, Advance online publication, available here.

THAAD and Nuclear Deterrence on the Korean Peninsula

The deployment of THAAD in South Korea has resulted in considerable controversy. In a new article, Inwook Kim and Soul Park however argue that THAAD is vulnerable to readily available, relatively inexpensive, and highly effective countermeasures. They therefore suggest that the threat of retaliation should continue to be a dominant deterrence strategy.

In July 2016, huge political controversy and diplomatic friction erupted in Northeast Asia over the United States and Republic of Korea’s announcement to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), a latest ballistic missile defense (BMD) system, designed to intercept short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles at their terminal flight stage.

Though justified as South Korea’s defensive measure against North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats, multitude of actors in the region opposed the deployment. They pointed out issues such as environmental concerns or intra-alliance politics, but most contentious was its possible ramifications on U.S.-China strategic balance in the region.

Unsurprisingly, a desirability of the THAAD deployment quickly became a subject of intensely politicized issues and debates, presenting significant challenges to regional politics and security.

Our recent article is motivated by this seemingly irreconcilable, complex, and consequential controversy. Rather than confronting these debates as a whole, however, we choose to focus on the two fundamental questions that underlie the debates: whether THAAD is a capable defense system, and how best to ensure South Korea’s national security against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.

Is THAAD’s interception capability what it promises to be? Although some are more critical than others, the conventional wisdom can be summarized as “qualified optimism,” or that THAAD is not perfect but net-positive to South Korea’s missile defense.

However, we find assumptions of this widely-shared assessment too static because it fails to properly take into account military countermeasures North Korea would be prompted to undertake in order to neutralize the new BMD system.

To address this gap, we give analytical primacy to the dynamic nature of arms race, more specifically, to the availability, cost, and effectiveness of military countermeasures North Korea can develop. Examining a variety of countermeasures against BMD systems, we find that manipulation countermeasures, those designed to exploit the THAAD’s technical vulnerabilities, are readily available, relatively inexpensive, and highly effective.

Three such countermeasures are particularly noteworthy. First, North Korea can deceive the THAAD system by making discrimination of real warheads from decoys difficult. By “mimicking the appearance of real reentry vehicle when viewed by various optical or radar sensors,” decoys have been an effective measure to confuse the radar and hence reduce a chance of successful missile interception.

Second, missiles could be turned into tumbling or spiraling in their terminal phase of flights. They make the missile flight movements erratic and unpredictable, against which THAAD and its radar is yet to demonstrate monitoring and interception capability. So far, the BMD tests have only been conducted against incoming missiles with stable and straight flights.

Third, North Korea can simply outnumber the THAAD interceptors. One THAAD battery comes with only 48 ready-to-launch interceptors and they take up to one hour to reload. It is also estimated to cost $800 million per battery. From Pyongyang’s point of view, the use of numerical superiority is an attractive option as no new technical knowledge is necessary and it imposes significantly higher cost to Seoul to maintain the numerical parity of THAAD interceptors.

In short, as missile technology decisively favors offense over defense, we find the technical and financial viability of defending North Korea’s missile threats through the construction of a missile defense system questionable at best.

Rather than to deploy the THAAD system to beef up defense capabilities, we argue that the current extended nuclear deterrence framework based on massive retaliation should continue to provide strategic stability on the Korean peninsula. In other words, a “deterrence gap” does not seem to exist against a nuclear-armed North Korea that warrants additional enhancement of defense capabilities.

In our article, we examine two key components of nuclear extended deterrence. First, the current nuclear balance and projections moving forward all remain highly favorable for the United States against regional nuclear states. As it stands, the overwhelming U.S. nuclear and conventional retaliatory capability can easily overwhelm North Korea’s small arsenal even in the most pessimistic of scenarios and without the added THAAD defense capability.

Such strategic nuclear arsenals are further supplemented with U.S. military commitment to the Asia-Pacific region at the conventional level. Thus, massive retaliation based on the current and conventional balance should serve as strong deterrence mechanism against any North Korean nuclear attacks or military provocations.

Second, extended nuclear deterrence remains a viable option as long as the U.S. remains committed to its allies against nuclear North Korea. To this end, successive American administrations in the post-Cold War era have continuously reaffirmed its security commitment to the U.S.-ROK alliance and to the maintenance of extended deterrence in East Asia. This policy stance has remained unchanged under the current Trump administration as key officials have continuously identified its alliance with South Korea as being the “lynchpin for peace and security” in the region.

Tellingly, as North Korea continued to conduct nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests in 2017, it was the logic of massive retaliation and not the logic of denial that underpinned the Trump administration’s strategic posture. More crucially, credibility does not necessarily have to operate with 100% assuredness. Pyongyang only need to believe that the U.S. might respond to an attack for extended deterrence to remain credible. In fact, the credibility of extended nuclear deterrence has been institutionalized even further within the U.S.-ROK alliance framework as the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group (EDSCG) was regularized under the Trump and Moon Jae-in’s administrations.

In sum, how should South Korea maintain “deterrence under nuclear asymmetry”? Given the relatively inexpensive countermeasures readily available and with the technological imbalance favoring the missile offense over the THAAD defense capabilities, the threat of retaliation against a nuclear North Korea should continue to be a dominant deterrence strategy.

However, we caution against outright rejection of THAAD’s deployment. THAAD has never been a mere technical issue but increasingly become one concerning alliance credibility. Therefore, while Seoul and Washington are ill-advised to treat THAAD as a reliable defense system, they still should evaluate its benefits and costs in the larger context of alliance credibility management.

More broadly, our article draws attention to a lack of appreciation for security dilemma among practitioners–security is a product of interactions between two or more states and therefore the optimality of weapons acquisition must be assessed with the adversary’s ability and willingness to respond.

Inwook Kim and Soul Park are respectively Assistant Professor at the Singapore Management University and Lecturer at the National University of Singapore. They recently published “Deterrence under nuclear asymmetry: THAAD and the prospects for missile defense on the Korean peninsula”, Contemporary Security Policy, Advance online publication, is available here.

Defense cooperation 2.0: The challenge of trilateral and quadrilateral defense arrangements in the Indo-Asia-Pacific

Despite heightened tensions in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region–and increased calls for trilateral and quadrilateral defense arrangements–the United States and its allies find it difficult to establish multilateral defense cooperation. In their CSP journal article, Stephen Burgess and Janet Beilstein analyze recent developments.

There is a growing call for multilateral defense cooperation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, given China’s territorial expansionism and increasing influence and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) nuclear missile program. A power transition is taking place in the IAP that is causing the United States and its allies and partners to cooperate more closely to balance against a rising China.

China is more of a military and economic power now than ever before, including in the maritime domain. Also, the DPRK can threaten the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan, and the United States with nuclear weapons. These trends mean that the United States is no longer confident that it can dissuade and deter rivals by itself or with the help of only one less powerful ally, such as Japan. Instead, the United States is looking to develop trilateral and quadrilateral arrangements that can be force multipliers and reinforce the regional status quo.

While the DPRK presently only threatens the ROK, Japan, and the United States, the deepening trilateral defense cooperation may serve as a template for a broader balancing coalition against China. In November 2016, Japan and the ROK signed a General Sharing of Military Intelligence Agreement (GSOMIA), which will make information-sharing on DPRK missile launches and missile defense cooperation easier.

In addition, the GSOMIA could enhance trilateral intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) with the deployment of the fifth generation F-35 fighter, which has advanced networking capabilities. The ROK could also integrate its ISR platforms with the U.S. P-8, Japan’s P-1 and reconnaissance satellites, providing for more effective anti-submarine warfare in the ROK’s economic exclusion zone. Established procedures for information-sharing and interoperable network systems are being developed so that coalition partners will have a common operating picture.

In the future, the agreement to allow the United States to deploy its Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) and AN/TPY-2 radar system could enable the ROK’s missile defense system to be linked into those of the United States and Japan and provide early warning of missile launches in the region.

Trilateral defense cooperation involving Australia, the United States, and Japan, on the other hand, revolves around a combination of the development of interoperable air and maritime capabilities and concern about freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. In 2010, Japan and Australia signed an Acquisition and Cross-Sharing Agreement and, in 2012, a GSOMIA, which paved the way for greater trilateral cooperation in the sharing of logistics and information.

Submarine and anti-submarine warfare are areas of increasing cooperation, given China’s growing submarine fleet and forays into the Western and South Pacific and Japan and Australia’s acquisition of new submarines and P-8 surveillance aircraft. The three countries have plans for the joint development of amphibious capabilities. The three countries have stepped up joint exercises in the Western Pacific, including the Cope North exercises around Guam starting in 2014, which have involved the U.S. Air Force (USAF), the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The RAAF also hosts the biennial Exercise Pitch Black, in which many regional air forces participate.

The acquisition of the F-35 by Australia, Japan, and the United States provides the opportunity to take a leap forward in trilateral interoperability and air superiority. Repair and maintenance of the F-35 will take place in Australia and Japan. Increasing cooperation among the three air forces is especially important, given increasing challenges by the PLAAF over the ECS and SCS. Trilateral air force cooperation over the SCS and ECS would be helped by the development over a joint base in Guam.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has focused on building India’s strength to balance against the growing challenge from China and moved toward greater multilateral defense cooperation with the United States, Australia, and Japan. India has revived the Malabar multilateral naval exercises in the eastern Indian Ocean, and India, Japan and the United States have held joint naval exercises in the South China Sea.

China’s offensive assertiveness on its border with India–most recently in the PLA’s confrontation against Indian forces on the Doklam Plateau between Bhutan and Sikkim– provides a rationale for quadrilateral defense cooperation and raises the need to access advanced defense technology and expertise.

In particular, the intensifying bilateral security relationship between Japan under Prime Minister Abe and Prime Minister Modi and India is laying the foundation for a robust quadrilateral defense cooperation framework. They committed to align Japan’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy” with India’s “Act East Policy” through enhanced maritime security cooperation, improved connectivity in the wider Indo-Pacific region, strengthening cooperation with ASEAN, and promoting discussions between strategists and experts of the two countries. They pledged cooperation in defense equipment and technology in areas such as surveillance and unmanned system technologies and in defense production.

It is clear that regional powers are building their military capabilities and coalescing in reaction to the rise of China and the DPRK threat. Multilateral defense cooperation may slow China’s offensive assertiveness and show resolve in the face of DPRK provocations. However, until China and the DPRK engage in major escalation, the effectiveness of cooperation will continue to be limited due to divergent national interests. If and when escalation occurs, coalitions will be prepared to respond; the question is how united they will be and how much force they will use.

Stephen F. Burgess is Professor of International Security Studies, U.S. Air War College. Janet Beilstein is International Education Program Specialist at International Officer School, Air University. They are the authors of “Multilateral defense cooperation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region: Tentative steps toward a regional NATO?”, Contemporary Security Policy, Advance online publication. It is available here.

Why China bothers about THAAD Missile Defense

The United States has announced that it will deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to the Republic of Korea. China has objected as it fears encirclement. The United States should continue to engage with China via official and other channels to mitigate concerns and avoid misperceptions.

On July 8, 2016, South Korea and the United States announced the decision to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to the Republic of Korea. The THAAD defense system will eventually be deployed and operated by U.S. Forces in Korea (USKF) “to protect alliance military forces … and not directed toward any third-party nations.” The purpose of the deployment was to establish a defense against the growing North Korean missile threat. China, however, has strongly objected. Chinese analysts argue that the THAAD radar will be able to surveil the entire Chinese mainland.

To reassure China that the range of the radar is limited, the United States had offered to provide a technical briefing to China on the system on the sidelines of the most recent Nuclear Security Summit. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced: “We realize China may not believe us and also proposed to go through the technology and specifications with them … and prepared to explain what the technology does and what it doesn’t do and hopefully they will take us up on that proposal.” China declined the offer. Commenting on the issues, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said that China does not view matter “as simply a technical one.”

Hong Lei is correct. The matter is not a technical one. China fears encirclement by the United States and its allies. It is not the THAAD radar that is impelling official Chinese objection. The radar would not be able to provide any new information beyond what the United States is already capable of obtaining. The U.S. early warning satellites can already track the heat signatures of missiles (including Chinese missiles) during their powered flight throughout the world. The THAAD radar would have to be able to observe “the decoy-deployment process of [Chinese] strategic missiles” after missile burnout to affect the Chinese deterrent in a meaningful fashion. It then has to continue to track and discriminate warheads and decoys. However, the operating parameters of the THAAD radar, proposed for possible deployment in South Korea, cannot permit it to track warhead and decoys launched along trajectories of Chinese Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) heading to the United States.

Presuming parameters within reasonable margins, a THAAD radar would have a maximum range of approximately 800 kilometers under even highly optimistic conditions. As shown in Figure 1 below, at a range of 800 kilometers, a THAAD radar deployed in South Korea would have essentially zero ability to track and discriminate Chinese missiles heading to the United States. Even one possible trajectory that might be momentarily observable could be lofted to avoid THAAD radar detection.

THAAD_range — Figure 1. Coverage of THAAD Radar (with 800-Kilometer Range) against Strategic Chinese Missiles. Note: The blue dots represent the locations of mobile Chinese ICBM units. The black dot represents the locations of silo-based Chinese ICBM units. The red lines represent the trajectories of Chinese silo-based/mobile ICBM missiles. Finally, the yellow dome represents the extent of an 800-kilometer range THAAD radar located in Pyeongtaek, near Seoul.

So, what is motivating Chinese opposition to the deployment of THAAD in South Korea? A prominent argument is that even mild U.S. missile defense postures in the region will over time accumulate increasing capabilities, and can, therefore, be quickly converted to a larger threatening posture. Some Chinese claim that the United States is beginning to form a balancing coalition with Japan and South Korea with the intent to encircle China with an interlinked missile defense system. Others argue that this possibility would fundamentally alter the strategic balance and stability between the U.S. and China and, in turn, could force China to increase its nuclear arsenal.

It is certainly in neither nation’s interest to foster such increases in nuclear weapons. Recognizing this, the U.S. has repeatedly pointed out that the regional missile defense systems do not and are not intended to alter the strategic stability. For example, the recent U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Review stated: “Engaging China in discussions of U.S. missile defense plans is also an important part of our international efforts … maintaining strategic stability in the U.S.-China relationship is as important to the administration as maintaining strategic stability with other major powers.” The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review also made similar commitments.

The United States should continue to engage with the Chinese on both official and other channels to mitigate concerns and avoid misperceptions. Misinformation and misperception should not be fueling disagreements. However, such engagements also need to take into account Chinese offensive missile capabilities. Currently, ranges of Chinese missiles extend to U.S. bases as far away as Guam. China is also believed to have around 1,200 short-range missiles. China’s medium-range missile inventory may include as many as 400 CSS-6 missiles (with a range of 600 kilometers) and around 85 CSS-5 missiles (with a range of 1,750 kilometers). China also possesses a significant number of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Why does China need such a large arsenal of offensive missiles? One potential explanation is that these missiles could target U.S. forward-deployed forces, allied forces and bases in the region. Under such a scenario, missile defense in the Asia-Pacific region could offer limited defenses against Chinese short- and medium- range missiles, thereby strengthening regional deterrence and stability. If China, indeed, wants to limit U.S. missile defenses in the Asia-Pacific, it should cooperatively work to diminish the threats from all missile arsenals in Northeast Asia.

Jaganath Sankaran is a Research Scholar, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), University of Maryland, College Park, USA. Bryan L. Fearey is Director, National Security Office, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA. They are the authors of “Missile defense and strategic stability: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea”, Contemporary Security Policy, 38, forthcoming. It is available here.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not represent those of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Energy or any other U.S. government agency.