Changes in Major Power Relations and Arms Control Regimes

Abstract

Arms control policy is aimed at achieving objectives such as (1) disarmament, (2) stability, and (3) the pursuit of superiority. These objectives can be understood as three aspects of arms control policy that are simultaneously in place, rather than mutually exclusive. Under stability, there was at the same time a technological and political competition between the great powers for superiority within a framework set by the arms control regime. Which of these aspects is emphasized in the negotiation and policy pursuits of arms control and which of these aspects comes into play in reaching an agreement between the parties will depend on (1) the international political environment, particularly the distribution of power, (2) domestic political dynamics, and (3) innovations in weapons technology.

This paper discusses how the multi-polarization of the international political structure due to the rise of China and changes in military strategy due to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, hypersonic gliding and precision warheads, missile defense, and cyber offense will affect the designing of deterrence architecture and the modality of nuclear arms control regime that defines the framework for strategic competition between the major powers.

The nuclear arms control regime encompasses the conflicting objectives of ensuring stability and pursuing superiority. As the United States, Russia, and China have different strategic visions and different prospects for power distribution in the future, which increase uncertainty in the prospect nature and modality of mutual relationships among them, as emerging technologies assign a strategic role to conventional and cyber technologies, and as non-strategic uses of nuclear weapons are incorporated into national nuclear policies, a concept of strategic stability will require extensive work to re-define. Institutionalizing nuclear deterrence at the strategic level based on mutual vulnerability is not enough to ensure stability among states, and the potential for intense security competition to unfold across the borders of nuclear, conventional and sub-conventional domains is increasing. As a result, different nuclear weapons employment policies make it difficult to find a point of equilibrium in the institutional design of an arms control regime that ensures the establishment of stability among the three countries, including the United States, Russia and China. In addition, as a result of the convergence of competition at the global level of the great powers and regional security that includes non-nuclear allies, a new challenge has also arisen: how can arms control bridge the stability at the strategic level between the great powers and security at the regional level?