Multipolar arms race takes ballistic missile threat to new levels
Cold War-era bilateral arms control treaties simply won’t work as more states emerge with deterrent capabilities, complicating calculations
War is just one press of a button away, and the likelihood of that happening – even if accidental – is not insignificant. The advancement of ballistic missile capabilities has opened up new battle spaces. Just as during the Cold War, today’s adversaries can hold each other’s populations hostage under the threat of nuclear war.
As we mark 80 years since the second world war ended, it is becoming easier to fathom our world at war again. However, while it may be true the “long peace” was more an exception than the norm, the current trajectory of returning to a historical norm of perpetual conflict can be reversed.
The logic of war remains the same but the nature of war – and the scale of suffering we can inflict – has radically changed.
The ballistic missile threat is very much alive. Russia recently lifted a self-imposed ban on the deployment of nuclear-capable intermediate-range missiles. Washington is developing missile delivery systems in the Asia-Pacific through the Aukus pact with Australia and Britain. China tested its DF-31AG intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean in September last year. North and South Korea continue to test-launch ballistic missiles, with Seoul firing its first submarine-launched missile in 2021.
These do not bode well for the global strategic environment.
An absence of direct confrontation between the great powers does not mean we are at peace. Since the atomic bomb and the adoption of ballistic missiles as a means of delivering destruction, the nine nuclear-weapon states have relied on instilling fear to avoid confrontation. We call this “deterrence” and we believe it will hold. But we forget that it only takes one mistake or misperception of intentions for deterrence to fail.
During the Cold War, intermediate and short-range missiles destabilised the US-Soviet strategic relationship, easily risking escalation. The Soviet Union feared a “decapitation strike” on Moscow from the West, especially after Nato’s deployment of intermediate-range Pershing II missiles in western Europe.
Coupled with president Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative – also known as the “Star Wars” programme, which touted the ability to intercept any missile threats – the Soviets increasingly realised their nuclear deterrent could be rendered ineffective. Both sides eventually recognised that such a relationship was unsustainable.
In 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a breakthrough after close calls including the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and in 1983 during the Euromissiles Crisis. But in 2018, President Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the US from the treaty, citing Russian noncompliance after its development and deployment of the SSC-8 intermediate-range cruise missile.
Following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the breakdown of US-Russia relations, President Vladimir Putin has also abandoned the treaty. The US is unlikely to ever come to a similar arrangement again with Moscow – or even Beijing.
Today’s multipolar world order creates challenges for bilateral arms control arrangements. Any limitations imposed between the US and Russia would be subject to Washington’s considerations of China’s missile deployments. While this logically supposes the three powers could formulate a trilateral arrangement, it would subsequently be subject to Beijing’s strategic considerations of India’s missile developments.
We cannot continue to solve the problems of a multipolar world with solutions from the bipolar Cold War order. Formidable states are emerging and imposing their deterrent capabilities on the strategic calculations of others. We are on the path to a less predictable world if the dominant logic of state relations remains the “action-reaction” dynamic. The Cold War was an arms race between two dominant states; our multipolar world is already locked in an arms race among a multitude of states with overlapping incompatibilities.
The sooner states acquire better and faster missile capabilities, the less time we will have to respond. Hypersonic missiles, which travel at five times the speed of sound, can decrease decision-making time by a factor of six. In a crisis, we are left with little time to react, pushing us to assume the worst and retaliate before destruction can be brought upon our systems. In such situations, we must maintain lines of communication and avoid creating siloed information spaces.
It may be too hopeful to seek the elimination of such weapon systems, as was achieved by Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, but a moratorium on the development or deployment of advanced ballistic missile systems could lower tensions and serve as a confidence-building measure.
We need time, more than ever, to resolve tensions. The great powers hold not just each other hostage but also the survival of human civilisation – we must remember we are one button away from the unimaginable.