Amidst evolving geopolitical shifts, the foundation of U.S. nuclear deterrence, forged in the crucible of the Cold War, faces a new set of challenges. The principle of mutually assured destruction (MAD), once the bedrock of deterrence, is now being tested by Russia's aggressive posturing and China's strategic advancements. In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and signals of a willingness to employ tactical nuclear weapons, questions arise about the efficacy of traditional deterrence strategies. Concurrently, China's expanding nuclear arsenal adds complexity to the equation. Do these developments mean America needs to rethink its deterrence strategy? 

In a new paper, “China’s Nuclear Enterprise: Trends, Developments, and Implications for the United States and Its Allies,” FSI Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro focuses on the Chinese perspective of the equation and examines recent trends in Chinese military doctrine and their implications for U.S. deterrence strategy. Mastro’s contribution is part of a new report, Project Atom 2023: A Competitive Strategies Approach for U.S. Nuclear Posture through 2035, produced by the CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues.

A fundamental premise underlying Mastro’s analysis is that China merits distinct scrutiny differently from Russia, and that the two countries should not be considered  “nuclear peers.” Although China is indeed engaging in nuclear force modernization, Mastro contends that the nation is still adhering to its fundamental nuclear policy: minimal retaliation capability and a no-use-first pledge.

While some have been troubled by China’s turn to regional nuclear options like the DF-26, an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads, Mastro asserts that this is because “they are regional weapons lower on the escalation ladder.” Rather than trying to achieve parity with the United States, she contends that Beijing’s objective is to preserve a credible second-strike capability, which is essential to the concept of deterrence.

Instead of prescribing specific alterations to U.S. force posture or nuclear modernization, Mastro suggests that any changes in U.S. defense strategies carefully consider the impact on Chinese nuclear strategy. The key is to preserve China’s minimal retaliation capability and its pledge to refrain from initiating nuclear warfare: “the most important goal for U.S. deterrence policy should be to ensure it does not encourage a change in China’s nuclear policy and in posture.”

Other steps the United States should take, according to Castro, include preventing the “co-mingling” of nuclear and conventional weapons on vessels apart from ballistic missile submarines. This precaution aims to eliminate ambiguity and mitigate the risk of possible conflict escalation. She also believes that there may be “more costs than benefits” in the proliferation of nuclear weapons among Asian allies — South Korea, Japan, and Australia. These threaten the non-proliferation regime and increase the possibility of accidents. The answer, Mastro holds, is not deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons on foreign soil, but rather increased consultations and joint planning with allies. Such collaborative efforts could reassure allies and partners of U.S. intentions even as they have minimal impact on Chinese contingency planning. 
 

This commentary first appeared as part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Interpret:China series. 

Tensions at the Taiwan Strait are at an all-time high. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit marked the highest level of exchange between U.S. and Taiwanese officials since 1997. China used the visit as a pretext to conduct large-scale military exercises encircling the island, coupled with rhetoric about how it could successfully use force to unify if it decided to do so.

The dynamics between China and the United States over Taiwan are eerily like those laid out in Zuo Xiying’s balanced, informative article. Zuo accurately captures the U.S. deterrence strategy toward Russia before its invasion of Ukraine—highlighting key components such as threatening economic sanctions and international isolation, as well as providing training and equipment to Ukraine to enhance its ability to defend itself. But deterrence failed, the reasons (according to Zuo) being that the United States did not do more to reassure Russia of its peaceful intentions and that ultimately costs are difficult to calculate ahead of time. Once war broke out, as Zuo also points out, the United States escalated its involvement by providing military aid to Ukraine, which increased the costs of the war to Russia.

What does all this mean for U.S. deterrence strategy with respect to Taiwan? Zuo recognizes that “for China, the Russia-Ukraine conflict acts as a mirror. . . . China needs to not only study in depth how the United States deters and how it punishes Russia, but also to carefully analyze how Russia perceives the United States’ threats and to derive experience and lessons from therein.” But he leaves the reader wondering what those lessons are. He hints in his discussion on Ukraine that a U.S. strategy to build up Taiwan’s defenses is unlikely to deter China; however, he also indirectly suggests that China may be underestimating the costs of war. Successful deterrence, Zuo notes, “requires not only that the United States itself has powerful forces and strong resolve but that it can make the other side accurately feel the threat and have an accurate calculation of the costs and benefits. But the real world is complicated, and it is difficult to have both conditions present at once.” In other words, he thinks there is an intermediate step needed in a deterrence strategy. The United States has to not only issue a credible threat, but also make the other side accurately assess the costs and benefits of certain actions.

Zuo does not seem optimistic. He implies the United States needs to increase efforts to paint a more specific picture of what it would do if war broke out—but that, even if it did, the message still might not get through. The reader is left with an acute understanding that if there is war over Taiwan, failures in both Beijing and Washington will be to blame.

This commentary originally appeared in Nikkei Asia.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is due to hold its first joint naval exercise as a bloc next month.

This will be an important milestone at a time the group is facing daunting challenges to its interests and its diplomatic centrality in the Asia-Pacific region, including intensifying U.S.-China rivalry; an ongoing crisis in Myanmar that has divided ASEAN and left it looking feeble; the proliferation of alternative forums including AUKUS and the Quad; talk of a NATO office in Japan; and, of course, China's continued assertiveness in the South China Sea.

The upcoming drill, though, could have been a bolder, more assertive statement.

Indonesia, as ASEAN chair, initially proposed holding the exercise within the South China Sea. Unfortunately, due to Cambodian opposition, the exercise has been shifted to an area outside of China's expansive South China Sea claim. The Cambodians are said to have argued that the initial location of the drill, in the North Natuna Sea, would have unnecessarily upset China.

The decision to shift the exercise is a minor blow to ASEAN ambitions to bolster security cooperation but should not deter Indonesia and other member nations from making another run at a collective Southeast Asian naval drill in waters that fall within China's infamous "nine-dash line."

Such a drill would not only make sense from a policy and international law perspective but arguably reinforce one of the original intentions behind the founding of ASEAN in 1967, and address its current need to reaffirm the bloc's centrality.

ASEAN was established as a bulwark against communist expansionism and also to manage conflict and mistrust among neighboring Southeast Asian nations. The intention was to discourage great-power intervention and interference in the region.

The past 10 to 15 years, however, have seen significant intervention in the South China Sea, most notably by China, which continues to assert its expansive claim vigorously despite a ruling by a U.N.-backed tribunal that its nine-dash line claim has no basis in international law.

China's aggressiveness has prompted the U.S. and others to increase naval activity in the region to assert the right of navigation through what they maintain is an international waterway. Many ASEAN nations have complained about or felt uncomfortable with these activities, particularly those of China, but the bloc has struggled to back up its position with tangible action.

That is the beauty of an ASEAN naval exercise in the South China Sea. Properly designed and implemented, it would assert ASEAN centrality on a critical issue and put China on the back foot, without bringing in great power competition.

China would probably protest, but it is hard to imagine Beijing retaliating against a substantial group of Southeast Asian nations -- countries it is actively wooing -- acting together. The U.S. probably would welcome ASEAN's action, which would advance the cause of treating the area as international waters without its own involvement.

To be successful, the exercise would need to include only ASEAN members, as any outside participation would undermine the whole point. As Indonesia originally proposed, it should also be run as a humanitarian relief exercise rather than anything more overtly "military."

Such an exercise would not resolve South China Sea territorial claims nor prevent China from continuing to assert its claims. Nor would it end the bloc's divisions over Myanmar or other matters. It would, however, boost ASEAN's diminished credibility, while pushing back on unjustified Chinese claims in a manner that Beijing would not easily be able to counter or blame on the U.S.

If the initial exercise were carried off successfully, it could lead to regular drills, potentially reducing the perceived need in Washington and other capitals to assert freedom of navigation rights in the South China Sea themselves. In that sense, it could reduce great-power tension and "interference" in the region.

The big question, of course, is how Indonesia and other proponents can overcome the objections of Cambodia, and possibly other member states.

Perhaps further discussions within the bloc could produce a plan that all members could accept. In the more likely case that divisions persist, then Indonesia, as ASEAN chair, could organize a naval exercise open to any bloc member willing to participate.

This presumably would include Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and ideally Thailand, at least.

Such a "minilateral" approach would be unusual but feasible, particularly if no external powers are involved. After all, Thailand recently broke with established ASEAN consensus to host a minilateral meeting on Myanmar that upset some of its fellow member states.

If need be, countries participating in a South China Sea drill could call it an "informal" ASEAN exercise to get around the lack of consensus. If the six mentioned countries all participated, it would still send a strong signal that ASEAN can, formally or informally, still act on critical issues.

ASEAN has a chance to take a significant step that would be in line with its original purpose and that would do much to bolster its standing, and possibly even reduce great power tension in the South China Sea. Indonesia and other like-minded ASEAN members should seize the chance and make it happen, especially since Indonesia is due to pass on the role of bloc chair to Laos, whose government is particularly susceptible to Chinese influence, later this year.

As the AI boom fuels an unprecedented surge in demand for chips and computing power, the global semiconductor supply chain has become critical in everything from smartphones and medical devices to cars and fighter jets. At the heart of this industry stands Taiwan, a leader in chip-making infrastructure, encompassing fabrication to cutting-edge research and development. With the People's Republic of China’s threat to Taiwan’s prosperity and stability becoming more acute, it is time for the United States and Taiwan to deepen their partnership in the semiconductor industry, argue Hoover Institution Research Fellow Kharis Templeman and FSI Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro.

In a chapter that is part of a new report, titled “The Silicon Triangle: The United States, Taiwan, China, and Global Semiconductor Supply,” Templeman and Mastro show what the United States might learn from Taiwan’s successful experience in building a leading global role in the semiconductor supply chain and offer concrete opportunities for deeper collaboration given the two nations’ shared interests in chips.  The report is a product of the Working Group on Semiconductors and the Security of the United States and Taiwan, a joint project of the Hoover Institution and the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations.

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Templeman and Mastro’s chapter, “Deepening US-Taiwan Cooperation through Semiconductors,” outlines the history of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry, accounts for its meteoric rise to prominence, and proposes that the United States and Taiwan should seek to use the semiconductor industry to “promote Taiwan’s prosperity and stability by creating an environment that fosters deeper business-to-business, research, academic, individual, and civil ties with Taiwan and other global partners in the semiconductor arena.”

To do so, the authors argue, the United States should actively promote Taiwan semiconductor firm activities, including manufacturing, design, and joint research and development in the United States; income tax abatement for cross-border workers; two-way semiconductor internship programs and academic exchange; semiconductor supply chain information sharing and resiliency planning; and defense industry co-production in Taiwan.

Deterring Invasion

According to Templeman and Mastro, further investment in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry would strengthen long-term U.S. interests there and represent an opportunity for the two nations to broaden their shared civil and business ties that will help to “deepen U.S. commitments to Taiwan’s democracy—and [deter] efforts to end it.”

The authors consider the PRC’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric of reunification and suggest that “leaders in the United States and Taiwan should be realistic about the real threat that the island faces, and their response to that should be to build the capabilities and the confidence of their people to weather coercion and deter attack.” As such, semiconductors represent a natural opportunity for the two nations to “grow substantive people-to-people, business, and even appropriate government ties at the working level […] we can use this momentum to break through long-standing bureaucratic frictions and improve interoperability in our economic and security relationships.”

The PRC threat to Taiwan’s autonomy will continue to grow as the island is increasingly isolated from the broader international community, the authors write. Reversing this trend, they say, “requires both symbolic and substantive assistance on the part of the United States and other countries.”

Deepening collaboration in the semiconductor industry represents a path for the United States to demonstrate its commitment to Taiwan, independent of the rhetorical debate over strategic clarity or ambiguity. The momentum gained through this collaboration would aid Taiwan’s resilience and incentivize other governments and opinion leaders in the region to deepen their commitments to the island, further enhancing cross-strait deterrence.

The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is delighted to share that Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro has been named an Air Force Individual Reservist of the Year 2022 in recognition of her outstanding scholarship and defense analysis in the Field Grade Officer (FGO) category. Mastro, whose career combines academic research and military service, is also a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve, for which she works as a strategic planner at INDOPACOM.

Awarded by the Air Force Headquarters Readiness and Integration Organization (HQ RIO), the nomination recognizes Mastro’s exemplary performance and contributions to operational imperatives across the Department of Air Force by applying her globally recognized expertise as a China scholar and foreign defense analyst to bolster US national defense. Her analysis and advocacy impacted operational changes, updated national strategic policy relevant to the Indo-Pacific region, and increased strategic and combat readiness at the Wing, Major Command, Combatant Command, Service, and Department of Defense levels.

HQ RIO notes that “Mastro also led the national discussion on the U.S.-China relationship by publishing six peer-reviewed articles and book chapters; 14 commentaries in publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal; recorded 40 radio spots and podcasts; conducted nearly 40 government, academic, and private sector speaking engagements and was quoted in more than 40 news pieces.”

Mastro has received numerous awards for her military service and contributions to U.S. strategy in Asia, including the 2020 and 2018 Meritorious Service Medal, the 2017 Air Force recognition Ribbon, and the 2016 Individual Reservist of the Year Award.

Her current research projects focus on the U.S.-China great power competition, deterrence in the Taiwan Strait, China’s maritime ambitions, and the China-Russia military relationship. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University.

How do civilians make their way through complex, violent environments? How do people form judgments and make decisions about their survival, or other goals? These are some of the questions APARC’s 2022-23 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia Aidan Milliff has sought to answer in his research, which employs different tools to study political violence, ranging from interviews and oral history archives to decision-making experiments.

APARC awards the Shorenstein postdoctoral fellowship annually to support recent PhDs who research contemporary political, economic, or social change in the Asia-Pacific region, or topics in international relations and international political economy in the region. Milliff earned a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was affiliated with the MIT Security Studies Program and Harvard’s Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute. He is a former James C. Gaither Junior Fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

For Milliff, the Shorenstein postdoctoral fellowship afforded the opportunity to advance his research and refine a forthcoming manuscript project. He recently presented his work in a South Asia Initiative seminar entitled “How Indians See China.” Examining some 60 years of data on Indian public attitudes towards China, Milliff’s research shows clear historical trends in Indian opinion towards China. In recent years, Indian views of China had been souring well before the border crisis of 2020, and before government policy began to harden. Using a rich body of new polling data, Milliff examines how the government is constrained by and seeks to shape the public’s opinion towards China. 

We caught up with Aidan to discuss his research and experience at Stanford this academic year. The conversation has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

First off, congratulations on receiving the 2022 Best Paper Award from the American Political Science Association Conflict Processes Section for your job market paper! How did you develop this paper project?

Thank you! This paper is kind of the article-length version of a book manuscript that I have been working on during my time at APARC. The book is trying to tackle a big, amorphous question: how do ordinary people make decisions about their safety and survival when they are threatened by political violence?

The paper focuses a little more narrowly on how targeted civilians behaved in one important historical episode of violence, a short and very deadly pogrom in India in 1984. It is organized around an empirical oddity: Why did we see in 1984 that very similar people who were facing the same threat sometimes made quite different choices about how to behave in order to survive?

I argue that it's because choices about survival, especially during sudden, high-intensity political violence, depend a lot on how people interpret their environments —and reasonable, well-informed people can really disagree about these interpretations.

How has your time at APARC as the Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow aided your research?

Being a fellow at APARC has been amazing in two ways. First, the fellowship is a big gift of time. Having an entire academic year to focus on producing research, especially on moving this book forward, is really beneficial, and I'm so grateful to APARC for giving us postdoctoral fellows time to get big things done.

Second, the community at APARC and Stanford has been outstanding. Coming out of graduate studies, where most people are in an environment defined by a disciplinary identity, it's really exciting to be part of a group that's focused on an area. I've learned a lot from exchanges with sociologists, economists, anthropologists, and policy practitioners who all share an interest in the Asia-Pacific.

What other aspects of your time at APARC have you benefited from?

APARC has been an outstanding home base for participating in the broader Stanford community. Stanford is kind of a dream for a political scientist doing a postdoc because there is such a big community of scholars across various departments, centers, and schools who share an interest in social science problems. It's been great to interact with people all across campus, but you hardly have to leave Encina Hall for this kind of cross-pollination. It's been great to learn from colleagues downstairs at CDDRL and CISAC, and down the hall in the Political Science Department.

Are there any people at APARC that you particularly benefited from working with?

I'm very lucky to be at APARC with a small cluster of other people focused on South Asia. Working with Research Scholar Arzan Tarapore and visiting fellow Nirvikar Singh, both of whom are experts on very different aspects of South Asia, has been great.

What is on the horizon for you? What's next?

This summer, I'll be joining the Florida State University faculty as an assistant professor of political science.

Any advice for students interested in your field?

It's an exciting time to be studying the politics of South Asia, and there are some very important questions that still need answers (or need better answers). Don't be alarmed or deterred if the most urgent and intellectually compelling questions are hard to fit into the disciplinary categories you are familiar with.