Welcome, everyone to the Woodrow Wilson center. We are congressionally chartered scholars, ship driven and fiercely nonpartisan. And we are also happy to welcome all of you here today. And cspan, which is also filming this for their book talk. So thank you all at wilson. We are proud of our scholarship we use it to power our discussion of the critical challenges facing today. Rob litvack snow book focuses on one of the most immediate challenges triple or instability and Nuclear Competition among United States, russia and china. Best of for all of you and for people who are participating online. I want you to know this book is available as an ebook for free from the and you can find it online on our website. So for this discussion i am very to be sharing the stage with the best of the best. Rob litvack is the Wilson CenterSenior Vice President and director of interNational Security. His Strategic Vision has really shaped the Wilson Center itself in his deep knowledge and critical thinking, has shaped many of us in this room understand Nuclear Issues, nonproliferation, his books on rogue states, u. S. Foreign policy on managing risks and, on Nuclear Crises with north korea and iran have defined debates in washington and beyond. And thats no surprise because rob served on the National Council staff as director for nonproliferation and as a consultant to Los Alamos National laboratory. Now his book goes straight to the core questions are facing and i really appreciate the opportunity to. Get your insight now to help us ask the right questions. Weve asked david sanger to be part of this panel. Hes been asking the right questions throughout his career at the New York Times and he has been its white house and National Security correspondent. Hes also a distinguished fellow here at wilson. His most recent book was the perfect weapon war, sabotage and fear in the cyber age, which reads like a thriller for those of who havent read it yet. And you should get started because his next book will be coming out. Hes working on it now. It is on the return of great power competition. So the synergy between two is really clear. Im going to start with a little bitty and that is that in may of 2022, Henry Kissinger said that we were living in a totally new era cold war dynamics are being reshaped by emergent tri polarity. Can we draw from the lessons weve learned and apply them to Risk Management for the future . And that question open and many others. Im going to turn the floor over, david. Heres how to work. Hes going to lead a discussion with rob for a few minutes and then well open the floor to questions and also questions from our online participants. If you are with us online, please look for the submit a question box and then it will pop here and ill be able to see it and ask that question as part of the discussion. So, david over to you. Great. Well, thank you very much, robin. And thank you, rob, for giving us not the this book bipolar instability but your whole series of books on this. And also its just great to be here at the Wilson Center done working on my my third book at the Wilson Center. Second one with robin down the hall to drop every once in a while and make sure that im typing and if its late its not my right and but big thanks as well to rob who make sure that the Wilson Center not only is on the edge of scholarship, but is right on the news that its not simply going off in directions that are of great academic interest, but also of great practical purpose. And that is true the the case, maybe even so than on your iran and north korea, which were urgent at the time. You wrote them and remain so today with bipolar instability because as suggested, there is bigger single problem i think facing National Security officials in in washington than trying to figure out the changed relationship between russia and china, the nature of cooperation between russia and china, and what it means that were seeing an expansion of the chinese arsenal and expansion that the public estimates of the pentagon suggest will bring them from their minimum deterrent of 300 weapons currently 200 to 300 to about a thousand by the end of this decade, and to 1500 by 2035, which be coincidentally exact, we around the limits that the us and the russians are facing with new start and new starting expires in under 1000 days. With no real prospect. It looks like something being negotiated to replace it. Rob is so the news that my wonderful colleague bill broad published today in the science times part section of the times a great called the terror of threes and in fact its the three body problem that rob is to address here today. So rob, as think about this and think about the fact that it was only ten years ago less, really that barack obama talked about, redesigning us strategy to diminish the role of Nuclear Weapons in American Foreign policy that we find ourselves in this situation where the very real risk heading the other way. So talk us a little bit through the central thesis of bipolar instability, which is to why is it that introducing a third major strategic adversary since china has had Nuclear Weapons now, since 1954, is so complicated. Its not immediately obvious to everyone why it undoes so much that we know about deterrence or that we think know well. Good day to all of you. Thank you, robin, for that kind introduction and. David, for your participation today in your presence at the Wilson Center. You know, as a fellow let me address your question by. I think the obvious starting point let me unpack the title of my publication, tri polar instability. China became a Nuclear Weapons state in 1964, but long an arsenal that was small to that of the United States and then soviet union. As you mentioned, china is now under xi jinpings modernization program, which is comprehensive economic, military a new, assertive political role encompasses a drive toward numerical parity with the united with the United States and russia, probably in the 2030s, as you indicated, that system level change, a shift from bipolarity to try polarity is compounded three destabilizing developments. First, competition is extending into new domains of cyberspace and outer space. Youve written extensively about that, david. Second, there are no guardrails. There are arms control, architecture of the cold war era has dismantled to the point of near so that the Competition Among the major powers is essentially unconstrained now. And third, as know from the headlines there, ongoing crises that a war in ukraine and a potential in taiwan. These developments on the system level change and these drivers of potential escalation in a in a crisis are eroding foundations of strategic stability. During the cold war, the foundation of strategic stability was a stable balance of terror between the United States and the soviet. After the cuban missile crisis. The United States and the soviet union each deployed secure invulnerable systems that created mutual vulnerability and a assured retaliatory capability. Both sides, which was the hallmark of mutual vulnerability, created a and an easy but stable, stable peace. The United States never adjusted to the vulnerability of that era, but it was the foundation. What with the balance of power, with the balance terror did, was to deflect competition and to peripheral areas. The socalled third world vietnam, afghanis and the other crisis points during the cold war in. My central argument is that the development as i mentioned, the system level change, plus the new developments cyber in outer space, the lack of constraints as arms control collapses and ongoing crises are recasting the dangers of the cold war period that the balance of terror is less stable as. The incentives for preemptive in a crisis are being wreaked, created, and the stakes are no longer peripheral. Its not about afghanistan or parts of the of the soviet union or, parts of what we then call the third world. These are vital interests. Ukraine is the key to the future of europe. Taiwan is central in northeast asia and is of declared vital interest to both to both sides. So the balance of terror is less stable and the stakes are now vital. Thats the the elements of tri polar instability and in the title of my work thats great. And that us right to sort the central question so. The argument of the book is that you cant simply export and that understanding of mutual vulnerability and assured destruction which was the key to that the two way contest with soviet union and then of course with its successor state. Because once you add in china and this uneasy relationship that they have with russia, you get ernie moniz said to bill broad was a conceptual problem and i read you the rest of his quote here. I want to do that to sort of correlate with your argument. Weve to change the traditional approach, equalizing weapons or strategic delivery systems, but how to that is still unclear now since this has emerged, ive talked it with a handful of members of the senate and, a few members of the house who deal in strategic we deal in National Security issues. And i think its fair to say its one of the reasons im so glad that you this book that the understand being of the instability thats being inserted is pretty weak right now. So give us fairly concrete sense of why this is such a different deterrence problem and how it is, for example, that we might of some frameworks to address it in. Let me pass it this way that theres theres a numeric dimension to this which you focus on like numbers of strategic warheads. But as i laid out in my initial, you know, comment, there are drivers of escalation. And its in a context where we theres no dialog ongoing with either of these parties with russia. Were in the middle of a war, its not the time to have that kind of conversation with. China and have tipped in my colleague daly who heads our kissinger institute. We dont have common terms of reference even with the chinese. We dont have the shared history with them. Our key dates. 1914, 1962 dont have the same to them. Their concept of deterrence. Robert was telling me if you deconstruct the characters that go into their their word, deterrence includes not only what we think of as deterrence like a threat to prevent an action, but also has a compelling aspect to it which could open the door to coercive diplomacy. So the the framework were not operating from a common conceptual and then once that if is not enough of a hurdle, you have to look at the which is much more complicated than the cold war youre dealing with kind of the numeric dimension of it. What does it mean if china builds up to numeric parity with United States and russia . But its in a context where there these drivers of escalation that i that i mentioned at the at outset and this creates for three types of escalation inadvertent accidental escalation. And we had a number of false alerts during the cold war that almost to nuclear use you could have escalation where side takes an action that the other side doesnt view doesnt view as escalatory but the other side for example, china in an opening of a conflict. David they might go after u. S. Satellites in space or introduce malware. And they not may not think of that. Its its escalatory because. No, no ones been killed. Bluntly. But it would be it would be significantly escalatory. So theres that risk of inadvertent escalation and the third category of escalation is deliberate or instrumental escalation. And i think this is really i think where the debate is most central in terms of the current constellation of factors. The Nobel Prize Winner winner, schelling, tom schelling, talked a competition in risk taking. And if you look at how the Nuclear Balance is shifting in tandem with conventional military balances, most most acutely in northeast, it could leave china to shift its calculus of risk taking. I think it could could do certain things in the taiwan context that had not hitherto done. And russia, and im sure will turn to it, is facing, you know, a similar simultaneous crises, a domestic crisis that played out over the weekend, but also the front in the donbass, which is undergoing a ukrainian counteroffensive, which creates a point for putin on kind of escalation or not. Well, thats what i wanted to turn to next, though, i have to say that your main mention of schelling, who the original sort of theorist in the cold war for this, brought back memories to me of really difficult final exams that i did not really to go revisit. So lets dig a little deeper on russia. As you know before. Note in the book, weve had a lot of things have been unraveling the Nuclear Balance sheets with russia alone and separate out the china problem so weve had the demise a series of treaties that already happening before. President Trump Took Office but it accelerate during that time i mentioned that new start which was extended five years at the very beginning of the Biden Administration has no provision in it for another renewal. So youd have to start negotiating from the ground up. They started those preliminary discussions before war broke out. They havent had any in 16 months. The to use tactical weapons by putin at various points led President Biden to say at a fundraiser in york last october that we were the closest we had been an armageddon moment at any time since the cuban missile crisis, which i think kind of shocked the people standing around James Murdochs living room with a nice glass of white wine in their hands who hadnt really thought that they were coming for an armageddon speech. So even if china not revising its strategy would you argue that what held balance of terror together during cold war as you referred to it would be falling apart anyway . Thats a great question. You know, were in a situation were in in the midst of essentially two cold wars, one with russia and one with china. And these new cold war are playing at a time when these the foundations of strategic stability that emerged from the old cold are being eroded and and are with nothing to supplant it. If theres no dialog. And i think one of the questions you implicit in your question is, is this truly a triangular relationship . And i, in the study, i talk about i dont go for astrophysics like the in the William Broad piece. I go for just plain geometry. And i say that its more about an isosceles triangle than an equilateral triangle, that it was never truly, you know, equal, that you, you know, you just think of it, you know, china economically as, a 20 trillion economy, the United States has a 26 trillion economy. Russias economy. Is 2 trillion the size of italy, no denigration of italy. Its sort of, you know, in this millennium not a major, you know, world power in terms of of arsenals, russia and, the United States have had a large, you know, arsenals during the cold war to the point beyond kind of rational relation to any strategy and has moved from the minimum deterrent that you mentioned to, you know, approach, you know, parity. I think that that in in terms of framing now the question is is this truly tri or . Is it really does the United States really face bipolar programs, a russia problem and a china problem . And i think that the door to that latter optic is a door door. Ive just a mixed metaphor of optics and doors there. But any way that you get my point that russia and china, you know, are not states at this time, 1969, when they almost went to war, they were so that part of the asymmetry its in in this way its not an equal eyeball triangle is because russia and china combined both capabilities and hostile adversarial intent toward the United States and the United States has to deal with them in those terms. But theres no one in moscow or beijing zembla thinking of like, gee, what does what does the three pure problem mean for us . Because the prospect of conflict between russia and china know is remote at this point. What i find fascinating about argument, rob, is that there isnt really agreement yet that hear in the Strategic Community about the fundamental question you raise which is do we have tri polar problem or do we have to bipolar . I noticed that sig hecker, the who, of course, ran Los Alamos National lab and then was at stanford for many years, said in the same piece this morning, i dont see russia and china getting together on nuclear strategies. I see this as two bipolar. On the other hand, weve got a china and russia who have about a relationship with no limits theyve done military exercises together, not nuclear exercises, but military exercises. They both clearly see an advantage in being our antagonist. Could you imagine a situation in which they put together a common nuclear, even if they both reserved all their launch authorities and so forth to themselves . Well, as de gaulle put it, you know, states dont have friends. They have interests. And weve seen in the china, russia, really and previously the soviet relationship, its and waned currently their interests align. I think putin and she pulled a reverse kissinger of sorts in 1969 Kissinger Nixo