{"id":1163,"date":"2012-09-14T14:00:08","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T04:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=1163"},"modified":"2012-09-17T16:03:57","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T06:03:57","slug":"enhancing-extended-nuclear-deterrence-and-assurance-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/enhancing-extended-nuclear-deterrence-and-assurance-in-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Enhancing extended nuclear deterrence and assurance in the 21st century"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Umbrella\"<\/a>On one esoteric but important issue in the forthcoming Defence White Paper, Australian policymakers should be talking to Washington. That\u2019s the issue of extended nuclear deterrence and assurance. The United States \u2018extends\u2019 a nuclear umbrella to its allies\u2014indeed, to more than thirty countries worldwide, including Australia. Under those arrangements, the United States agrees to run nuclear risks on behalf of its allies so those countries don\u2019t need to develop independent nuclear arsenals. Extended nuclear deterrence and extended nuclear assurance are two sides of the same coin: the arrangements are meant simultaneously to deter adversaries from attacking the vital interests of US allies and to reassure allies that any need they might have for nuclear weapons\u2014in extreme circumstances\u2014has already been addressed.<\/p>\n

The 2009 White Paper contained a confusing set of statements on this issue. Indeed, at one point, it asserted that as long as nuclear weapons existed Australia would be able to rely on the nuclear forces of the United States to deter nuclear attack on Australia. That statement is presumptuous, since the policy is Washington\u2019s and not ours. It\u2019s also potentially untrue, since American\u00a0nuclear weapons might well continue to exist, but in numbers and weapons types ill-suited to the strategic needs of the allies. It\u2019s not just the size of the US arsenal that\u2019s important for extended deterrence\u2014what we might call its \u2018shape\u2019 matters as well. Still, the White Paper was perfectly correct in its core judgment that the US nuclear umbrella has, over the decades, provided a stable and reliable sense of assurance to Australia, and \u2018removed the need forAustralia to consider more significant and expensive defence options.\u2019<\/p>\n

Still, the 2013 White Paper should state directly both our support for the doctrine of extended nuclear deterrence and assurance, and acknowledge the future challenges that the doctrine faces. It should also say something like, \u2018As long as US extended nuclear assurance remains credible, Australia feels under no pressure to be self-reliant in nuclear capacities even allowing for the tempo of change across the broader Indo-Asian-Pacific region.\u2019 That would be both a contribution to regional reassurance, and a statement about the focal point of Australian concern. The value of the doctrine rests heavily upon the credibility of the US nuclear assurance, a factor that the 2009 Defence White Paper ignores completely.<\/p>\n

Since credibility is the critical factor, both Canberra and Washington have an interest in doing what they can to enhance the existing arrangements. If anything, the credibility of the US nuclear umbrella has waned since the end of the Cold War. Nuclear weapons have become more marginalised in US strategic policy. The US strategic mainstream has fractured badly on the whole issue of the strategic utility of nuclear weapons, with the op-eds of the \u2018Four Horsemen\u2019 (Kissinger, Schultz, Nunn and Perry)<\/a> symbolic of that disarray. US political leaders show only flickering interest in the arsenal, except when they are talking of prospective nuclear reductions or disarmament<\/a>. And the theatre- and tactical-range elements of the arsenal have contracted substantially since Cold War days. It\u2019s no surprise then that US strategists talk increasingly about \u2018extended deterrence\u2019 rather than \u2018extended nuclear deterrence\u2019, a subtle rephrasing of both Washington\u2019s own obligations and, they hope, allies\u2019 expectations.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the United States faces a re-ordering challenge in relation to its nuclear umbrella in Asia. The doctrine of extended nuclear deterrence and assurance was really built to support Western European allies against a coercive Soviet Union. Washington and its allies need, jointly and perhaps collectively, to think about the path forward for extended nuclear assurance in Asia\u2014a region very different from Europe during the Cold War. Within Asia, the most pressing demands on US extended nuclear assurance come from Japan and South Korea. Historically, Australia\u2019s own involvement with nuclear assurance has been both more remote and more abstract. But the strategic centre of gravity in Asia is moving south and west\u2014away from its traditional Northeast Asian focus and into areas closer to our own continent.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it would be specious to pretend that we are indifferent as to how the challenges to US extended nuclear assurance arrangements are solved in Northeast Asia. Japan and South Korea are, along with us, the closest US allies in Asia. Frankly, if the existing assurance arrangements break in relation to those countries, Australia\u2019s own continued reliance upon the doctrine would probably be short-lived. Serious questions would then come onto Australia\u2019s own strategic agenda. Those are deep matters: if they aren\u2019t already part of on-going discussions between the United States and Australia, they deserve to be.<\/p>\n

Rod Lyon is a non-residential Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Image courtesy of Flickr user\u00a0\u2665 Unlimited<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On one esoteric but important issue in the forthcoming Defence White Paper, Australian policymakers should be talking to Washington. That\u2019s the issue of extended nuclear deterrence and assurance. The United States \u2018extends\u2019 a nuclear umbrella …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,1425,116,31],"class_list":["post-1163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-defence-white-paper-2013","tag-nuclear-deterrence","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEnhancing extended nuclear deterrence and assurance in the 21st century | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/enhancing-extended-nuclear-deterrence-and-assurance-in-the-21st-century\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Enhancing extended nuclear deterrence and assurance in the 21st century | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On one esoteric but important issue in the forthcoming Defence White Paper, Australian policymakers should be talking to Washington. 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