Russia’s Lego Approach to Space Warfare

Russia has been acquiring and demonstrating anti-satellite and counter-space at a rapid clip. What drives all these Russian efforts? Jaganath Sankaran shows in a recent article that Russians believe they need to respond to the unbridled American weaponization of space and that high-precision aerospace weapons will be a decisive factor in future conflicts.

In November 2021, the Russians conducted a hit-to-kill direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test, striking a defunct Tselina-D satellite and creating more than 1,500 pieces of space debris. Gen. James Dickinson, head of U.S. Space Command, called the Russian ASAT test an attempt to “deny access to and use of space” to the United States and undermine strategic stability. Russians quickly retorted that it was America that sought comprehensive military superiority. Russians cast the test as a proportionate and defensive attempt to restore deterrence against the United States. They accuse the U.S. of being duplicitous and silent about its ASAT efforts. They dismiss all criticisms of their ASAT efforts as “propagandistic information attacks.”

Russia has been acquiring and demonstrating anti-satellite and counter-space at a rapid clip. For example, in January 2020, Russia’s Kosmos-2542 and Kosmos-2543 satellites performed complex coordinated maneuvers in the vicinity of a military reconnaissance satellite, the KH-11. Six months later, in July 2020, the Kosmos-2543 satellite fired a high-velocity projectile showcasing a potential weapon designed to bombard another satellite and incapacitate it quickly. In 2017, three Russian “nesting doll” satellites—Kosmos-2519, Kosmos-2521, and Kosmos-2523—engaged in high-velocity orbital maneuvers. The Russian have also developed ground-based laser and jamming weaponry to target satellite systems.

What drives all these Russian efforts? Russian military literature reveals two primary motivations behind its anti-satellite and counter-space programs. First, Russians believe they need to respond to the unbridled American weaponization of space. They assert that the “U.S. keeps on conducting the full range of research” that will eventually lead to the deployment of “real space weapons within the shortest time frame.” Russia believes it has to do the same to keep up with American technological advancements.

Second, Russian analysts suggest that state-of-the-art U.S. and NATO high-precision aerospace weapons, supported with satellite-based targeting and navigation, will be a decisive factor in future conflicts. Russians offer recent NATO operations against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya as evidence that political-military operations can now be conducted without engaging the adversary’s army. Russian military leaders speculate that such campaigns, executed using high-precision weapons, may have made it possible to strike a fatal blow to Russia. The argument goes that Russian anti-satellite and other counter-space weapons will “deter aggression” by the U.S. and its allies “reliant upon space” to execute an aerospace strike against Russia. And if such a deterrent fails to hold, these weapons might offer Russian leaders the ability to target critical military satellites. Irrespective of the accuracy of these Russian assertions, the vast majority of Russian analysts continue to display a severe “fear of Western technological superiority.”  While these fears may reflect a worst-case scenario, they influence Russia’s space weapons and arms-control policies.

The U.S. and its allies will need to manage these Russian fears and the consequences. Managing space security will require a prudent combination of unilateral defensive and multilateral cooperative measures. Unilateral measures that reduce the vulnerability of satellites and increase their resiliency are vital. An immediate priority is to avoid the continued acquisition of legacy and expensive satellite systems that present “large, big, fat, juicy targets.” Instead, cheaper and more distributed satellite constellations enable both dispersions of critical space assets and rapid reconstitution in an adversary attack. The Space Development Agency (SDA), established in 2019, is developing cheaper satellites that would be more resilient to disruptions or attacks. These SDA satellites can complicate an adversary’s anti-satellite efforts.

Additionally, dialogue with Russia to institute cooperative behavioral norms and arms control arrangements is essential. In a welcome move, the Biden administration has unilaterally committed not to conduct “destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile testing.” The commitment was justified in explicit terms of establishing norms. The White House Fact Sheet notes: “the United States seeks to establish this as a new international norm for responsible behavior in space…[and] called on other nations to make similar commitments and to work together in establishing this as a norm, making the case that such efforts benefit all nations.” Now, the focus should be on gaining such commitments from Russia, China, and other states.

Finally, when geopolitical conditions permit, policymakers in the U.S., Russia, and China need to explore arrangements to restrict advanced aerospace weaponry, possibly with an instrument similar to the INF Treaty. Achieving meaningful future restrictions on these weapons will be the challenge that needs to be faced to achieve space security and strategic stability.

Jaganath Sankaran is the author of “Russia’s anti-satellite weapons: A hedging and offsetting strategy to deter Western aerospace forces”, Contemporary Security Policy, which is available here.

Russian great power identity in the debate on “killer robots”

Russia prominently opposes new regulations for autonomous weapons systems (AWS), or so-called “killer robots” which can select and attack a target without human intervention. In a new article, Anna Nadibaidze explores the deeply rooted identity-related factors underpinning the Russian position in the global debate on AWS held at the United Nations.

Reports about the use of weapons systems with autonomous features, specifically the Russian-produced KUB loitering munition, in the war in Ukraine have strengthened the already existing concerns about the role of military autonomy and artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare. Only a few days before these reports came in, the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on lethal autonomous weapons systems was meeting in Geneva to discuss potential ways forward on the regulation of AWS. The Russian delegation has blocked any kind of substantive progress by constantly claiming to have been “discriminated” against by the measures taken by the EU following Moscow’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Throughout the years of the GGE sessions, which have been taking place within the framework of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) since 2016, Russia has been vocal about its belief that technological developments in the areas of AI and robotics do not make it necessary to adopt any kind of new regulation on AWS because the latter are sufficiently regulated by current international law.

Given that the CCW operates by consensus principles, de facto giving a veto power to all states, Russia’s agreement to develop a potential new instrument is needed to move forward in the debate, which has had only a discussion mandate so far. Approximately 30-40 states parties, along with several civil society organizations, are arguing for the necessity of a new legally binding regulation on AWS. Can Russia’s position be reconciled with theirs?

Great power identity in Russia’s position on AWS

In order to understand whether Russia could potentially agree to developing a new legally binding instrument, it is vital to examine its position in depth and from different perspectives.

Russia is one of the key developers of weapons systems with autonomous features and has shown strong interest in integrating higher levels of autonomy and AI as part of the modernization of its armed forces. From the rationalist perspective, the Russian position in the GGE debate is associated with strategic interests and quest to gain strategic advantage without any international restrictions.

While I do not dismiss these arguments, I argue for a more thorough investigation of Russia’s position and exploring deeply rooted factors, namely the Russian leadership’s self-perception as a historical great power, which has been a prominent feature of Russian foreign policy, especially since Vladimir Putin came to power.

My analysis of statements that the Russian Federation delivered to the CCW from 2014 to 2022 demonstrates that two integral principles of Russian great power identity have been guiding its position in the global debate on AWS. First, Russia promotes a multipolar world order based on many centers of power. Second, it seeks to ensure recognition of its perceived parity with other great powers and its equal participation in global affairs. These principles feature not only in the literature about Russian foreign policy, but also in its language used in statements on AWS at the CCW meetings.

Russian discourse on the global governance of AWS displays worries about the “politicization” of the debate and fears that the discussion would be monopolized by some states without taking into account others’ (Russian) interests and opinions. Russian statements display worries about the adoption of a polarized definition of AWS, for instance, when stating, “it is unacceptable to artificially divide weapons into ‘bad’ and ‘good’ ones based on the political preferences of certain States”.

The Russian conception of human control, a key element in the AWS discussion, is based on sovereignty. Russia believes that every state should decide on its definition of human involvement in the use of force and weapons systems. While it “does not doubt the necessity of maintaining human control over the machine”, it finds it unacceptable to be imposed with universal definitions and argues for “specific forms and methods of such control” to “be left to the discretion of States”.

Moreover, the Russian position presents technology in a positive light, not agreeing with what it perceives as “alarmist assessments” about fully autonomous weapons inevitably emerging. Russian delegations have constantly pointed out the benefits of military autonomy and warned against making hasty decisions which could “undermine the ongoing research in the field of peaceful robotics and AI”.

What does this mean for the future of the GGE debate?

As I show in my article, Russia’s position on AWS is deeply rooted and is not only guided by strategic costs/benefits analyses. It is facilitated by the Russian leadership’s strong belief about Russia being a great power in the post-Cold War multipolar world, on par with other great powers and deserving recognition, especially in topics touching upon international security.

With current ongoing tensions, the Russian leadership increasingly perceives any action from states it classifies as “unfriendly nations” as attempts to isolate Russia from global governance, or so-called “Russophobic” actions.

These identity-related factors make the Russian position on AWS more intractable and harder to resolve, especially for campaigners using humanitarian-based arguments to raise concerns about the development of “killer robots”, for instance their threat to human rights and human dignity. With its self-perception of a great power and guarantor of global security, Russia is likely to be more open to security-based arguments such as those pointing out the risks of AWS to strategic stability.

In Russia’s view, the CCW represents the perfect balance between humanitarian concerns and national security interests, while the consensus voting rule fits with its broader concerns with being able to have its say. It is therefore unlikely to accept an independent process outside of the CCW, as suggested by several civil society organizations in light of the stalled process at the GGE, or any process which would strip it of its veto power. If an independent discussion were to take place, Russia’s self-perception as a great power and the importance that it attributes to being seen as indispensable in multilateral negotiations is likely to lead it to criticize the process and accuse its organizers of disrupting global security.

Anna Nadibaidze is a Ph.D. Research Fellow at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark and researcher for the European Research Council funded AutoNorms project. She is the author of “Great power identity in Russia’s position on autonomous weapons systems”, Contemporary Security Policy, and the report “Russian perceptions of military AI, automation, and autonomy”, published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Why authoritarian states participate in liberal international interventions

Do troop contributions lead to democratic change in troop contributing countries as some argue? This is not necessarily the case as Martin Welz argues in a recent article on Chad’s contributions to international interventions.

Troop contributions of authoritarian states pose an empirical puzzle. For the participation in international interventions indicates the support for a liberal-cosmopolitan order that entails the protection of human rights on the international level, while authoritarian regimes deny such rights to their own citizens. The nascent research on this puzzle has produced contradictory findings. Some assume that the participation of authoritarian states in international interventions eventually leads to the implementation of a liberal-cosmopolitan order in such countries in the medium and long term. Others challenge that perspective and speak of a “myth of democratic peacekeepers” or go as far as to argue that troop deployment in fact impedes democratic change.

The article of Martin Welz adds substance to the latter finding through a study of Chad’s troop contributions during the reign of President Idriss Déby who came into power in 1990. The central argument is that Déby, who lacked domestic legitimacy and presided over a little-institutionalized state until his death in 2021, used the participation in international interventions for his own purposes, namely to stay in power. Déby made himself an indispensable ally of France (and to a lesser extent of the United States) and helped them to further their interests in the wider Sahel. He benefitted threefold from his alignment with France and his active stance in international interventions. First, he received large-scale funding that he could feed into his patronage network and strengthen the military; second, he could reduce tensions within the military by sending parts of it abroad; and finally and most importantly, he secured the support of major external actors that helped silencing national and international critique. In 2019, the French government even rescued the Chadian president, once rebels advanced toward the capital.

Indeed, the financial benefits for Déby were significant. France alone allocated €12 million per year for structural cooperation. In addition, donations and other forms of aid worth €53 million was available to be provided through the French forces which had a larger base in Chad. Particularly joining the G5 Sahel Joint Force and the Multinational Joint Task Force—two coalitions that seek to fight al-Qaida, Boko Haram, and their affiliates—was beneficial for Déby (and his fellow African presidents). Donors were willing to spend more on these mechanisms than they would have been prepared to offer if they had acted on a purely bilateral basis. Another source of foreign funding was the reimbursements paid by the United Nations for the peacekeepers. The 1,090 Chadian troops deployed in peacekeeping operations in 2014, for example, meant a reimbursement of an estimated US$17.4 million. These funds not only benefitted the military itself, but also Déby’s regime in two respects. On the one hand, Chadian troops became better equipped and trained, which helped the Chadian leader in his fight against domestic rebels and other challengers. On the other hand, these funds could be fed into the patronage network, thus resembling a kind of “rentier peacekeeping.” In the slipstream of military assistance, Déby’s Chad received large amounts of development aid, given its support for the Western agenda against terrorism.

Secondly, Déby’s benefitted from the participation in military operations as this allowed him to reduce tensions within the military and appease some parts of it. Sending troops abroad helped Déby to ensure that the military itself would not turn into a threat for his rule. Such a threat was looming since Déby had provided some positions within the military to his group, the Bideyat. This move mitigated some internal tensions within the group, yet it was costly and led to rivalries with other segments of the security apparatus.

Third and most important, Déby’s international reputation increased—as did the dependence on him. Even though oil revenues had generated funds to improve the military’s capabilities and secure Déby’s regime from within (Chad became a large oil exporter in the 2000s) external threats had been abound early in Déby’s rule. Chad had suffered from insecurity in its neighboring states and from a proxy war that had been partly fought on its soil on the one hand and French politicians had vigorously demanded the implementation of democratic norms in Chad on the other. It was the eventual alignment with France, the United States, and their counter-terrorism agenda that led to a situation in which Déby’s rule became significantly less challenged from abroad. Chad’s active participation in international interventions and Déby’s willingness to assume casualties—particularly in Mali, where his troops fought alongside France—were the main factors that brought that change. The Chadian president could translate the external recognition, visible, for example, through several visits of French presidents, into a stronger domestic position that overshadowed concerns about the legitimacy of his rule. At Déby’s funeral in April 2021 Macron dignified Chad’s late president as a “friend” and “courageous” soldier.

However, the international support for Déby and the dependence on his troops had a downside: it came at the expense of democracy and respect for human rights. The Chadian civil society was frequently frustrated with the unconditional support Déby had received from his international backers. Western governments ignored calls from national and international NGOs to hold Déby’s regime accountable for the human rights abuses and antidemocratic practices the president and his regime committed in Chad. The authoritarian rule was effectively strengthened. Déby was just too important—and it looks like same is true for his son, who succeeded him after his death.

Martin Welz is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He is author of “Omnibalancing and international interventions: How Chad’s president Déby benefitted from troop deployment”, 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.

 

The 2022 Bernard Brodie Prize

Contemporary Security Policy awards the Bernard Brodie Prize annually to the author(s) of an outstanding article published in the journal the previous year. The award is named after Dr. Bernard Brodie (1918-1978), author of The Absolute Weapon (1946), Strategy in the Missile Age (1958), and War and Strategy (1973). Brodie’s ideas remain at the center of security debates to this day. One of the first analysts to cross between official and academic environments, he pioneered the very model of civilian influence that Contemporary Security Policy represents. Contemporary Security Policy is honored to acknowledge the permission of Brodie’s son, Dr. Bruce R. Brodie, to use his father’s name.

The co-winners of the 2022 Bernard Brodie Prize are:

These articles were selected by a jury consisting of six members of the Editorial Board: Tobias Bunde, Myriam Dunn Cavelty, Yee Kuang Heng, Nicole Jenne, Maria Rost Rublee, and Carmen Wunderlich. The jury selected the winners from a shortlist put together by the Editor-in-Chief Hylke Dijkstra. This shortlist also included:

The previous winners of Bernard Brodie Prize are:

  • Jeffrey Berejikian and Zachary Zwald, “Why language matters: Shaping public risk tolerance during deterrence crises”, October 2020;
  • Tracey German, “Harnessing protest potential: Russian strategic culture and the colored revolutions”, October 2020.
  • Jo Jakobsen and Tor G. Jakobsen, “Tripwires and free-riders: Do forward-deployed U.S. troops reduce the willingness of host-country citizens to fight for their country?”, April 2019.
  • David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks, “Violence in context: Mapping the strategies and operational art of irregular warfare”, April 2018;
  • Betcy Jose, “Not completely the new normal: How Human Rights Watch tried to suppress the targeted killing norm”, August 2017;
  • Martin Senn and Jodok Troy, “The transformation of targeted killing and international order”, August 2017;
  • Trine Flockhart, “The coming multi-order world”, April 2016;
  • John Mitton, “Selling Schelling Short: Reputations and American Coercive Diplomacy after Syria”, December 2015;
  • Wyn Bowen and Matthew Moran, “Iran’s Nuclear Program: A Case Study in Hedging”, April 2014;
  • Nick Ritchie, “Valuing and Devaluing Nuclear Weapons”, April 2013;
  • Patrick M. Morgan, “The State of Deterrence in International Politics Today”, April 2012;
  • Sebastian Mayer, “Embedded Politics, Growing Informalization? How Nato and the EU Transform Provision of External Security”, August 2011;
  • Jeffrey Knopf, “The Fourth Wave in Deterrence Research”, April 2010;
  • Diane E. Davis, “Non-State Armed Actors, New Imagined Communities, and Shifting Patterns of Sovereignty and Insecurity in the Modern World”, August 2009.

Changes to the editorial team and board

Contemporary Security Policy is one of the oldest peer reviewed journals in international conflict and security. Since it first appeared in 1980, the journal has established its unique place as a meeting ground for research at the nexus of theory and policy. In the last five years, however, the journal has developed rapidly. The number of submissions has doubled. The journal received its first impact factor and now ranks 29/94 among international relations journals. Articles continue to cover all areas of international security and use a plurality of methods (from discourse analysis to experiments). The journal continues to develop further. All signs for 2022 are positive.

As the journal growths, so do the demands on our editorial team. Not just in workload, but also in terms of an increasingly wide range of expertise. Furthermore, as the journal becomes more central to security studies and indeed the discipline, it is also important that responsibilities are shared. In other words, the journal can no longer rely on a single editor. I am therefore very pleased to announce that three new associate editors will join me in editing Contemporary Security Policy from January 2022. They are all established scholars and have previously worked with the journal. We will work as a team and share workload. We will take collective responsibility for editorial decisions. And we will all, from our own backgrounds and expertise, make the journal stronger.

The new associate editors are:

  • Myriam Dunn Cavelty (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
  • Nicole Jenne (Pontifical Catholic University, Chile)
  • Yf Reykers (Maastricht University, The Netherlands)

Contemporary Security Policy will not change editorial direction. We remain committed to continue to publish the best articles on topics that are contemporary, cover security issues, and are policy-relevant. Articles published in our journal need to be accessible in language and useful to our worldwide audience. We publish articles from all theoretical perspectives and using all sorts of different methods. We will also do our best to keep the publication process as efficient as possible and we will continue to proactively engage with authors. We will have to get used to the new editorial setup in the coming months. So please bear with us and do reach out in case of any questions, worries, or suggestions.

Contemporary Security Policy also has an active Editorial Board, which reflects its aims and scope and its worldwide audience. The membership of Editorial Board is updated on an annual basis to capture emerging research agendas and to give new colleagues the opportunity to contribute to the development of the journal. I have made a number of changes to the Editorial Board.

First of all, Alan Bloomfield has decided to step down from the Editorial Board. He has been a key voice on strategic culture and has repeatedly published with Contemporary Security Policy. I want to thank him for his service. This expertise will be missed.

It is also time to welcome three new colleagues to join the Editorial Board. These are highly qualified scholars, from a variety of countries, who bring along exciting new expertise. All of them share a commitment to high quality publishing in peer-reviewed journals. They are also dedicated in terms of policy impact and outreach.

The new colleagues on the Editorial Board are:

  • Stéfanie von Hlatky (Queen’s University, Canada)
  • Magnus Lundgren (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
  • Rebecca Slayton (Cornell University, USA)

The Editorial Board will continue to be updated in the future.

Hylke Dijkstra
Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Security Policy

The Paradox of the Non-Proliferation Treaty

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is often labelled as a cornerstone of non-proliferation and one of the main factors curbing the spread of nuclear weapons. In a recent article, however, Orion Noda argues that the NPT is a nuclear proliferator; not of nuclear weapons per se, but of their symbolic value. 

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is often labelled as a cornerstone of non-proliferation and one of the main factors curbing the spread of nuclear weapons. Its pillars – non-proliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful uses of nuclear technology – were designed by the nuclear powers to counter a perceived immediate threat at the time (nuclear proliferation), whilst promising to disarm in good time.

I argue, however, that the NPT is a nuclear proliferator; not of nuclear weapons per se, but of their symbolic value. Drawing from different fields, such as Anthropology, Linguistics, and International Relations, I suggest a theoretical model to study nuclear weapons and the NPT focused on symbolism and I reach two major conclusions.

Firstly, despite the shrinking nuclear arsenals, we are no closer to “general and complete disarmament” – one of the goals of the NPT. The treaty focuses exclusively on quantitative forms of nuclear proliferation, that is, how many nuclear devices a given state has. In that sense, the NPT overlooks a series of proliferation forms, such as qualitative and, more importantly, symbolic. Qualitative proliferation is linked to the modernization of nuclear arsenals or delivery vehicles, for instance. What I call symbolic proliferation, on the other hand, relates to the proliferation of the symbolic values of nuclear weapons. These values are often connected to ideas of power, status, prestige, modernity, and civilization. In that sense, nuclear weapons evoke and symbolize these ideas, making them valued items.

Secondly, the NPT not only fails to account for non-quantitative forms of nuclear proliferation, but also acts as a proliferator of these symbolic values of nuclear weapons. The way this works is through two mechanisms: historical and conceptual entrapment. Historical entrapment relates to the fact that the values and idea of nuclear weapons contained in the NPT was that of that specific point in time when the NPT was being negotiated. The NPT was negotiated in the 1960s, during a time when the symbolic perceptions of nuclear weapons were strongly associated with positive features, not only material (such as their unparalleled destructive power), but also subjective (such as status and prestige). In that sense, the idea of nuclear weapons brought into the NPT was that of the 1960s, an idea and a set of values unchanged until today, given the few alterations the treaty suffered.

Conceptual entrapment, on the other hand, alludes to how the NPT funnels most – if not all – discussions on the topic of non-proliferation and disarmament and, as a consequence of the historical entrapment, the NPT proliferates the values of nuclear weapons it carries within. In other words, given that the NPT embodies a specific set of Cold War-era values of nuclear weapons and the centrality of the NPT (the ‘cornerstone’ of the non-proliferation regime), most of the discussions on the topic, which goes through the NPT, are tainted with the NPT’s interpretation, perception, idea, and values of nuclear weapons.

In that sense, the NPT has, so far, failed to fulfill its promise of more than 50 years ago. There are some who argue that we should probably abandon the NPT, whilst some argue that the NPT is a stalwart of non-proliferation. In the middle, there are those who argue that although the NPT has major flaws, we would not be better off without it.

In my new article, I have shown that the NPT, in fact, has not done everything it was supposed to do: whilst the curbing of the spread of nuclear weapons may be counted as a positive NPT influence, disarmament cannot, despite the decreasing numbers. In order for the NPT to survive and function properly, it must broaden its definition of proliferation beyond the quantitative realm and, more importantly, acknowledge and reverse its position of symbolic proliferator by engaging with the debate on the immaterial values (or lack thereof) of nuclear weapons.

Orion Noda is with the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, and the International Relations Institute, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of “A wolf in sheep’s clothing? The NPT and symbolic proliferation”, Contemporary Security Policy, forthcoming, which can be accessed here.

Externalizing EU Crisis Management: The EU, OSCE and Ukraine

After years of progressive enhancement of EU crisis management capacities, the Lisbon Treaty should have turned the EU into a more efficient global crisis manager. Yet Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré finds, in a new article, that the EU has relied on third parties to achieve its crisis management objectives, essentially externalizing its activities to actors over which it has no control.

The past decade offers both well-known and lesser-known examples of such externalization across different crisis management areas. Among other cases, the EU’s recruited and supported civil society organizations to promote human rights and democracy in the Middle East and in Northern Africa after the Arab Uprisings; it enlisted the Libyan coastguard and Turkey to manage migratory flows across the Mediterranean; and it relied on the OECD to improve public governance and support socio-economic development in the Western Balkans’ process of democratic transition. Hence, the question arises: Why and how does the EU outsource its security?

Through the lenses of the orchestration model, my recent article addresses this question by examining the EU relationship with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe during the Ukrainian crisis. Not only the EU had deployed several CSDP missions in the eastern neighbourhood already before the Lisbon Treaty came into force, but the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the ensuing destabilisation of Ukraine were perceived as the most dangerous predicaments in post-Lisbon European security.

For sure, as this crisis unfolded, the EU devised a series of measures aimed at supporting Ukraine politically and economically. At the same time, while the EU sought to compel Russia to solve its conflict with Ukraine trough sanctions, it attempted to soft balance its position in Ukraine by boosting the resilience of the Ukrainian security sector through the civilian CSDP mission ‘EU Advisory Mission (EUAM) Ukraine’. Still, to challenge Russia directly and confront Ukrainian separatists and Russian troops, the EU enlisted a third party over which it had no formal control: the OSCE.

My new article argues that the combination between the capability deficiencies across policy issues pertaining to EU crisis management activities and the OSCE’s capabilities determined the EU enlistment of the OSCE. Following the Russian annexation of Crimea, EU member states favoured an approach that would avoid direct confrontation with Russia, particularly in eastern Ukraine where Russian troops and military equipment had been deployed.

Since the mobilization of EU military and civilian crisis management capabilities largely depends on member states’ unanimous consent and on their willingness’ to coordinate their resources on specific issues, the EU essentially lacked the operational capabilities to confront Russia directly. On the external level, in turn, EU lacked both the competence and the reputation for an acceptable intervention in the conflict. Addressing Ukraine’s destabilisation through NATO was not an option either. Not only Ukraine was not a member of the Atlantic Alliance, but NATO’s expansion was considered by many among the causes of the crisis.

Against this backdrop, OSCE’s regulatory competence over Moscow’s behaviour in Ukraine and its reputation vis-à-vis Russia were crucial in the EU’s decision to enlist this international organization. In fact, the OSCE was the only organisation within the European security architecture that could confront Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine directly. Since both Russia and Ukraine are participating states in this organisation, the OSCE had rights of implementation and enforcement over Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine. Furthermore, the OSCE had a reputation for being an actor committed to ensuring cooperation between East and West.

The article’s findings have relevant implications for EU role as a conflict manager in international politics. Certainly, international organizations experience the absence of competence and/or reputation on a regular basis. Even if the EU had the competence and reputation to challenge Russia directly in the Ukrainian crisis, however, it would have not had the opportunity to mobilize the military and civilian capabilities needed to do this because of member states’ unwillingness to get directly involved in the conflict.

One could argue in this regard that decision-making stalemates and lack of political will to coordinate decentralized resources are typical of consensus based international organizations. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of a large part of the EU’s crisis management capabilities to member states’ contingent strategic preferences inevitably casts a shadow on the Lisbon Treaty’s attempts to boost the pooling of member states’ decentralized resources in the security domain.

The Ukrainian case demonstrates that orchestration has emerged as a crucial governance arrangement for the functioning of EU crisis management post-Lisbon. This governance arrangement can promote solutions to deal with contingent capability deficiencies which may mar different EU crisis management areas. In the case of Ukraine, outsourcing part of EU crisis management activities to the OSCE was not only necessary, but also appropriate given that the EU was perceived as being directly part of the conflict. Nonetheless, the EU’s adoption of orchestration to externalise its foreign policy activities raises serious questions about the EU’s overall capacity to act as a security provider through its crisis management activities.

For sure, the EU has enough ideational and material resources to guide and support third actors in addressing major security threats in its neighbourhood. In the long term, however, enrolling third parties cannot replace the lack of centralised operational capabilities at the EU level to respond to external conflicts and crises. Given the EU’s lack of control over its intermediaries, in fact, orchestration cannot be considered as a panacea for its structural deficiencies. This is especially so in policy sectors where the EU has so far mostly relied on member states’ voluntary coordination of their resources rather than on capacity-building, namely the CSDP’s military and civilian management; and the common foreign and security policy’s sanctioning power. Indeed, at a time when the West’s liberal values are being increasingly contested and hard security concerns have come back into the spotlight, the EU cannot afford to renounce to such crisis management tools.

Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI) and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. She is also an adjunct professor at LUISS and a research associate at Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI). Her twitter account is @mariagiuliaama. She’s the author of “Externalizing EU Crisis Management: EU Orchestration of the OSCE during the Ukrainian crisis”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

The Erosion of the Global Nuclear Order

Starting early in the atomic age, states developed international arrangements intended to reduce the danger of nuclear war. In a recent article, Jeffrey W. Knopf describes the international nuclear order, identifies signs of erosion in that order, and proposes some short-term measures to help arrest these adverse trends.

The global nuclear order developed organically. It was not planned. And with some exceptions, most notably the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), major aspects of the nuclear order were not formally negotiated. Instead, they involve tacit understandings that are shared, to varying degrees, by elites in key countries.

The nuclear order rests upon three major strands: strategic stability, the nuclear taboo, and nonproliferation. The current order does not give similar priority to nuclear disarmament. Although nuclear abolition receives occasional rhetorical support and is listed as a goal in Article VI of the NPT, the governments of nuclear-armed states and their allies do not support pursuing global zero as a near-term objective. This is because these states still see value in the continued possession of nuclear arsenals. Hence, the purpose of the global nuclear order is to minimize the chances, while nuclear arms continue to exist, that they are ever used in ways that would kill people — and specially to ensure there is never a large-scale nuclear war.

Strategic stability, the nuclear taboo and nonproliferation

All three strands contribute to this goal. Strategic stability refers to efforts to minimize incentives for any state to feel pressure to be the first to launch a nuclear attack. Strategic stability can be enhanced by arms control, confidence-building measures, strategic dialogues, and anything else that contributes to restraint in policies and actions related to nuclear weapons. The nuclear taboo involves normative inhibitions against threatening or using nuclear weapons.

There is reason to question whether a genuine taboo exists or the current situation is better described as a tradition of non-use. Either way, however, there is a sense that any state that uses nuclear weapons would be crossing a major threshold. Finally, nonproliferation comprises a variety of measures intended to prevent the spread of nuclear arms to additional states. In the last two decades, nonproliferation has been supplemented by the goal of nuclear security, which aims to ensure that bomb-making materials do not fall into the hands of a non-state, terrorist actor.

The strategic stability and taboo strands of the nuclear order peaked in the early 1990s and have eroded since then. In contrast, the nonproliferation strand continued to get stronger into the early 2010s, but in the last decade positive trends in the nonproliferation regime have also started to unravel.

Erosion and unraveling

Strategic stability has suffered notable erosion. The end of the Cold War enabled remarkable progress in nuclear arms reductions by the United States and Russia. Now, only one nuclear arms control agreement, the New START treaty, remains in effect. And the prospects for a follow-on agreement appear daunting. Traditional approaches to stability also took a blow when the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. All of the nuclear-armed powers are now engaged in nuclear modernization efforts involving new weapon systems that could further undermine stability. More broadly, U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations have both deteriorated, adding to the chances of inadvertent escalation. In addition, India and Pakistan openly joined the nuclear club following nuclear tests in 1998. The two countries have since experienced multiple crises, adding a new source of instability to the global nuclear order.

Both the rhetoric and nuclear postures of nuclear-armed states suggest declining respect for the taboo as well. The United States has never been willing to embrace a no-first-use posture, and in 1993 Russia abandoned a no-first-use posture that had been adopted earlier by the Soviet Union. Successive U.S. Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPRs) have envisioned roles and missions for U.S. nuclear weapons that extend beyond deterring nuclear attacks. These include, in the Trump NPR, hints that the United States would consider nuclear retaliation to deter a large-scale cyber-attack. In 2017, an escalating war of words – and tweets – between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un suggested neither felt any normative inhibition against nuclear saber-rattling. And, in 2018, Russia’s President Putin gave a national address in which he unveiled several proposed new nuclear weapon systems. The speech was accompanied by a video simulation that showed a Russian nuclear warhead on a course to strike what appeared to be President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Until recently, despite occasional setbacks, nonproliferation could be seen as an area of dynamism and innovation. In the 1980s and 1990s, several key countries joined the NPT and renounced nuclear weapons. In 1995, a review conference made the treaty permanent. Just as important, the NPT is now part of a multifaceted nonproliferation regime. Other elements of the regime include several regional nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs), multilateral export control regimes, cooperative threat reduction (CTR) programs developed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a variety of measures meant to strengthen nuclear security.

In the past several years, however, forward momentum has halted. The 2015 NPT Review Conference collapsed amid unprecedented acrimony among states parties. The 2020 conference was postponed until 2022 due to Covid, but none of the frictions that doomed the 2015 conference have been resolved. In addition, the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, and despite the desire of the Biden administration to restore the deal, prospects for rescuing it do not appear good. Hopes for adding new NWFZs are even less promising, as a long-sought zone in the Middle East appears dead in the water.

Some ideas to halt erosion

What can be done? Getting the nuclear weapon states to recommit to the goal of nuclear disarmament would help. As a reflection of frustration over the slow progress on this goal, in 2017 the UN General Assembly adopted a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This “ban treaty” has been opposed by all of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, so it appears unlikely to provide a vehicle that in the short term could generate new progress toward nuclear abolition. Efforts outside of (or perhaps alongside of) the ban treaty to persuade the nuclear weapon states of the importance of reinvigorating movement toward nuclear disarmament would be helpful.

Given that nuclear disarmament remains a long-term endeavor at best, however, we also need short-term steps to shore up the existing nuclear order. One approach would be to focus on the cognitive foundations of nuclear peace. It is important for national leaders and their advisors to have a deep understanding of the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and a belief that nuclear dangers require states to act with caution. Several steps could help reinvigorate an appreciation of nuclear dangers.

First, new works of popular culture could draw attention to ongoing risks. In the Cold War, books and movies like “On the Beach” and “Dr. Strangelove” helped educate the public. Today, there are interesting efforts to utilize social media to alert people to nuclear dangers. So far, however, none have achieved extensive reach. Public awareness could be raised further if there was a breakthrough novel, movie, or TV show like the 1983 TV movie “The Day After.”

Second, it would help to have a policy proposal around which to mobilize people. An effort is already underway to multilateralize the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Russia and the United States recently reaffirmed this statement, and there have been multiple calls for the other nuclear-armed countries to endorse it. A broad campaign to support this goal could provide a vehicle for reminding the world about how catastrophic a nuclear exchange could be.

Third, it is time to reboot the Humanitarian Initiative. This effort, launched at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, sought to educate diplomats about the consequences of nuclear weapons use. The initiative was primarily used to build support for negotiating the ban treaty. Now that the TPNW is in place, a Humanitarian Initiative 2.0 could be used to educate a broader audience of political and military leaders and the world public.

At a time when all the strands of the global nuclear order are getting weaker and the prospects for new treaties or major initiatives are not good, it is vital to halt further erosion of the existing order. Efforts to remind the world of the danger of nuclear war and encourage cautious behavior by states would be one place to start.

Jeffrey W. Knopf is a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). He is the author of “Not by NPT alone: The future of the global nuclear order”, Contemporary Security Policy, forthcoming, which can be accessed here. This post first appeared on the Global Governance forum.