Cris Martin:
Good afternoon, and welcome. My name is Cris Martin. And I am the interim Executive director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. We're so glad that you have joined us for the fourth session of our new yearlong series, "Russia: In Search of a New Paradigm, Conversation with Yevgenia Albats." Today, we have the privilege of hosting David Hoffman, contributing editor at "The Washington Post", who is here to discuss, "The Coming Arms Race: Russia, China, America, and Nuclear Weapons." I invite you, our audience, to participate actively in today's discussion, which is being video recorded and will being posted on the Davis Center's YouTube channel.
And now, I'll introduce our participants. Yevgenia Albats is a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, author, and radio host. Since getting her PhD in political science from Harvard University, she has been splitting her career between academia and journalism. She taught political science at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, where she was the first professor fired for her political views. She has been editor-in-chief of the political weekly, "The New Times", since 2007, and the host of "Absolute Albats", which formerly ran on Ekho Moskvy, which was the Russian version of NDR until it was taken off the air five days after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And the series is now available to be watched on YouTube.
Yevgenia has been accused of being a foreign agent working on behalf of Ukraine, and convicted for spreading disinformation about the Russian armed forces for her coverage of the war. She was forced to leave Russia in August, 2022. And since that time, she has taught at NYU. She has served as a media and democracy fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. And she's now a fellow here at the Davis Center. She is the author of four independently researched books including, "The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia, Past Present, and Future".
She will be in conversation with David Hoffman, a Pulitzer Prize winning author of the bestsellers, "The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia", "The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy", and "The Billion Dollar Spy". He has covered new nuclear proliferation and national security through several decades of his career at "The Washington Post". He joined the newspaper in 1982, and covered the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He was later diplomatic correspondent and the newspaper's bureau chief in Jerusalem and Moscow, and then foreign editor and assistant managing editor for foreign news. He's also been a correspondent for "Frontline", the flagship PBS investigative television series.
And before I turn things over to Dr. Albats, a quick plug for the final two events in the series for this semester. They are coming up on Tuesday, November 12th, when Dr. Albats will be with Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for "The New York Times", and Susan Glasser, staff writer for the "New Yorker" about the new U.S. administration and Russia, because you will have a new administration at that point. And on Tuesday, November 19th, Dr. Albats will speak with human rights activists and recent Russian political prisoner, Vladimir Kara-Murza, on "The Real Life Gulag". So we invite you to come back on those dates for a continued conversation. And without further ado, I'll turn it over to Dr. Albats.
Yevgenia Albats:
Cris, thank you very much for this lovely introduction. Let me tell you, you know, I will do my introduction like Russian style. It means I will talk a little bit about the guest and a lot about me, myself, because today is a great day. That's Russian style. So David and I, we know each other... It's hard even to pronounce that, almost 30 years. Some of you were not born when we were already met in Moscow, where David Hoffman was the famous bureau chief of "The Washington Post". His book, "The Oligarchs", did a great splash in Russia. It was still a totalitarian time in Russia. You know, it was still, you know, country with some freedoms. And Alexei Navalny, well, he was sitting already in jail. You know, in fact in a couple of months before he was killed on February 16th, 2024, he wrote in one of his posts that, you know, he smuggled out of his prison, that he advised everyone to read David Hoffman's book, "The Oligarchs". I know exactly... You know, I have a Hell of a lot of books in my apartment in Moscow. And I know exactly the shelf where I have all his books. And, of course, "The Billion Dollar Spy", it's amazing book because I don't just read it. But I walked the streets that he mentioned in his book because I could picture where all these events there where it happened. It's a thrill, it's amazing. If you haven't read it yet, please do. You would love it. It's the level of lacquerware, only it's real. Lacquerware, you've know 'cause everybody... You know, the spy master and the great writer. So anyway, you know, but Hoffman's book is real. It's about real events that happened.
So I'm very, very happy that David agreed to come and to give this talk. I also hope that he's going to say that, you know, that all of us, we are not going to perish in the nuclear waste, you know, in a couple of days because... First of all, today my grandson Lincoln Alexy, turned five-months-old. You know, and that's, of course, you know, a great event in my life, and the life of my dog. Secondary, Alexey Polyarinov's book, "Pattern", today came out in 26 languages in more than 20 countries, and also came out here in the United States. And you can order and whatever language you read and speak, you can order this, his book. And finally, today, the European Court of Human Rights, it's a very special body in Europe, made a decision with respect to my "New Times". You know, in 2018, the magazine of which, you know, I am editing-in-chief and CEO, was fined the biggest fine ever in the history of Russian media, 22 million rubles, 22,500,000 rubles. It was at that time approximately $400,000. So we were fined for nothing, of course, and as it's customary in 2000, in Putin's Russia. So we, of course, you know, we went through all the courts inside Russia, including the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. And that's allowed us to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
And today, the decision was made. We were awarded 280... 67, plus 1,000 euros. Of course, we're not going to receive this money because Russian Federation no longer recognizes the European Court of Just... But it doesn't matter. You know, it's a moral victory because the European Court of Justice wrote it in its decision that this kind of fines... Of course, it... We went bankrupt after that. But we . So it amounted to a form of censorship intended to discourage criticism and undermine the organization's contribution to public debate. That is what's said in this decision. I am really happy because it... Regardless, sooner or later, you know, Putin will be gone. And we'll be building a new, beautiful democratic Russian state. And then, of course, you know, I'm going to collect this money. Probably from another world, but... You know, all my kids will . Anyway, so for on this lovely note, you know, we don't have good news too often.
So I'm going to give a floor to David Hoffman. You know, he's twice Pulitzer Pri... He got two Pulitzer Prize. it's amazing in the history of journalism. And he's going to to collect his second Pulitzer Prize tomorrow in New York, as he said. And so, I'm going to give... And then, after his presentation, I'm going to come ask him couple of questions. And please, be ready to ask... You have one in a lifetime possibility to ask question directly to one of the best journalists in the United States of America. Yes, David.
David Hoffman:
This is kind of-
Yevgenia Albats:
Russian style, I told you.
David Hoffman:
But it's you humble me. I'm really happy to be here. I want to thank the Davis Center, first of all, because this is sort of the core of the scholarship. When I was preparing to go to Moscow a couple decades ago, you know, the real giants of the Davis Center were the people whose books we read, and studied, and met with, and listened to. And to be able to come back here and even have a little bit of your time is humbling. And then to do it in the shadow of Yevgenia Albats is... Especially humbling.
But I will tell you that in the new Russia that we loved and experienced, it was brief. It was the longest period of freedom I think that Russians have had in 1,000 years of their history. And it wasn't very long. Yevgenia did something that was truly extraordinary. And that was to create honest journalists. And when I think about it, between Pogey and "New Times", and a few other papers and journalists, this was one of the real moments that, of something you could actually believe in. It's something of that period I think that I'll never forget how hard it was. One time, several Russian journalists grabbed me, young journalists, and they said, "David, David, just tell us one thing. How do we learn how to do this?" And I said, "Well, you know, I could get you the textbook or whatever." And they said, "Well, we've been sitting in the bar waiting for all the Western journalists to come in so we can go up and ask questions." How do you do... How do you ask questions? How do you do interviews?
There was no map. It was an extraordinary thing that you built. I hope someday we go back to it because I'm very, very, very nostalgic and sad about what's happened to Russia. And I don't know the road out. And I don't know if we'll ever see it again. I'm not a scholar of nuclear weapons. I'm a journalist. And I'm here today because I have been thinking about something that's very worrisome. I wrote a book about nuclear weapons that I wrote 15 years ago.
And for a long time, I felt that we were forgetting some of the things that I wrote about, and that we become complacent. And then some things began to happen that started to alarm me. And I'm here really to tell you that I want to present this to you as a synthesis. It's not shocking. The evidence I have here is not secret. But if you take it all together, I hope you'll see that it's time for us to wake up. It's time for us to get over the vacation that we've had since the end of the Cold War. There is a big problem looming. I'm going to describe the problem. I kick myself for not having more solutions. And I have a couple of little baby steps. And then we'll do the... Maybe in your questions, we can flush that out.
The first point I want to make is that nuclear weapons are political weapons. They're instruments of threat and of coercion. And they require political will to restrain. Reagan and Gorbachev, for their own reasons, they summoned up the political will to get rid of these weapons. It was really, now that we look back at it, a once in a lifetime kind of event, I think now we're at a time of growing danger, a time when political will is absent. And that's why I'm alarmed. Bernard Brodie, who was a strategist and analyst for the Navy, wrote and edited a book in 1946, right? Really, the first year of the nuclear age, in which he pointed out the real profound difference that nuclear weapons would make in warfare. Besides the destruction, he wrote, nuclear weapons, "Will concentrate the violence in terms of time." A world accustomed to wars taking years could see a war in only a few days. He was right about this in 1946. And he was even more right about it in the decade that followed when Soviet Union launched the first ICBM after Sputnik. And the missile age compressed that time even more.
So in addition to the huge devastation and danger that the atomic bomb brought, also came this really brand new threat that it could happen so fast that we wouldn't be able to do anything or respond to it. You know, people are surprised. But today, the nuclear weapons of Russia and the United States are still on launch-ready alert. Sometimes it's called hair-trigger alert. I know the Pentagon doesn't like that word. And maybe it's a little colloquial. But this idea that they're ready to launch within minutes has been true in the whole period after the Cold War. We don't think about it. We don't realize it. But this is not some mistake. The weapons were built this way. If you remember, the Cold War peace, such as it was, was kept by this idea of the cocked pistols. If they were cocked, if both sides were deterred, then we... Neither side would use them. The U.S. president can make a decision. And the launch and missiles, land-based missiles, will be launched within eight minutes of his decision. And submarine-based ICBMs can be launched within 12 minutes of his decision. And if a U.S. president is told that weapons are incoming, he may have only minutes to decide what to do to retaliate, to theoretically press the button. Although, it's not a button.
But the fate of the Earth is exactly as Brodie said. It's gonna be decided in this very compressed timeline. Part of that are early warning system, which we've all built, to tell whether or not we're under attack, radars and satellites that keep watch. They're better today than they once were. But they're not foolproof. And I oftentimes lately have asked myself, is there any part of our lives, any part of our world of technology that's free from error? Do you know any part of the world that's completely free, where there are never any mistakes? Well, the same is true for nuclear weapons. They do happen. We don't oftentimes hear about it. But we cannot grow complacent about the possibility of a mistake, a misperception and a misunderstanding leading to a nuclear explosion. See?
So between 1960, when we first put up the early warning systems, and 1976, that 16 years, there were seven false alarms in the U.S. early warning system. That's about one every two years. And then in a matter of months, in late 1979 and 1980, there were five in a row. And I wanna talk to you just a little bit about this to get a better understanding of a problem that still exists today. The first one, November 9th, 1979, duty officers saw on their screens that the Soviet Union had launched a missile attack. The procedure was to have a conference. The threat conference was held. Airplanes, pilots raced to their cockpits. The president's doomsday plane was immediately airborne. The threat assessment was only called off after six minutes. And it was later determined that the false alarm was caused by a realistic exercise tape that was wrongly put into the early warning system.
We learned recently, declassified for the first time only this year, that in March of 1980, couple months after the first one, the early warning systems picked up Soviet missiles were headed for Alaska, for Canada, AND the tip of Oregon. Again, the doomsday plane rolling down the runway. It was another false alarm. And then in May, the early warning systems, May 28th, showed 2,020 missiles were being launched at the United States. This was only a very brief false alarm. It's also one that we just learned about. On June 3rd, 1980, the early warning systems reported two Soviet submarine-based missiles were launched. And the count quickly jumped to 200. Six minutes after the first alarm, the systems reported to another 2,020 missiles were being launched at the United States. And then 12 minutes later, another 200 submarine-based missiles. This all happened June 3rd, 1980 at 2:26 AM.
When the bomber crews started their engines and call was placed to the president's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski... I later interviewed Brzezinski about this moment. And he told me, he said, the military aide told me, flat out, we were under nuclear attack. The next step for Brzezinski would've been to call President Carter in the middle of the night. After 32 minutes, this false alarm was finally realized to be false. There were no missiles. And Brzezinski actually did not make that call. But he was shaken, deeply shaken. You know, he told me, "My concern was how am I going to convince the president to retaliate, that we were under attack?" And I put the full quote up here. "How do I convince the president in the middle of the night when I'm calling him that we're under attack, that I've already activated the strategic air command. I'm urging him now to move for option X. How do I convince him? Suppose he says to me, 'Zbig, you're having nightmares. Zbig, are you crazy?'" And he asked, "How do you do that with a president, an alert one with naval experience?" Speaking of Carter.
But when I had this with him, it was in the Reagan period. And the implication of course was, what if the president has a hearing aid? What if he can't hear you? Three days after that one, in June 3rd, it happened again. This time 2,000 incoming missiles were on the display. Again, bomber crew scrambled. Engines were started. And that alert went on for 17 minutes. All of these 1980 alerts were later discovered, have been caused by the failure of a single computer chip. It was supposed to keep a stream of zeros going. And it failed and began to intermittently introduce a digit two. So it looked like there were 200 missiles, 2,000 missiles, 2,020 missiles. The chip had just failed. The next day, June 7th, Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, wrote to Carter, "I consider the situation to be very serious." There were also similar false alarms on the Soviet side. I wrote in my book, "The Dead Hand", about this one from 1983. I won't go through the details of it again. But the point being that these were not simply an American problem. It was sometimes much more concerning on the Soviet side because their early warning systems were not quite as robust.
In the case of this 1983 false alarm, this fella, Stanislav Petrov, had the presence of mind to realize that he was facing a false alarm, even though the screen in front of him was shouting, "Launch, launch!" And he did it by logic because the thing showed him five missiles were coming from the United States. And he thought if the Soviet... If the Soviet Union were to be under attack, it wouldn't be just five. And he called his boss and said, "Ignore it. It's a false alarm." But as Stanislav Petrov told me later, it was a completely guts call, a complete instinct call. He didn't have any other way to analyze the situation than just what he felt in his gut.
And if you think that I'm talking about old history or stuff that happened a long time ago, mistakes continue to happen today. In March of 2022, India accidentally launched a missile at Pakistan. Fortunately, there was no nuclear warhead on board. The missile was being maintained. And it took off and crashed in Pakistan. And just consider this, what if we are in an age, which I'm sure will be in, in which artificial intelligence begins to be used in early warning systems and decision-making about nuclear weapons? How would artificial intelligence have reacted to the false alarm of June 3rd, 1980, when all those twos were being introduced? Would it have discovered the mistake? Or would it have said, "We're under attack?" Would it have escalated? And put yourself in the shoes of the duty officer. How would a human react if artificial intelligence said, "We're under attack?" Would you believe it? Would you not believe it? Would you put the fate of the Earth in the hands of ChatGPT? Danger was ever present when there were two competitors, the United States and the Soviet Union. And now, we're going to have a bigger problem.
But I love this particular quote from the Harvard Nuclear Study Group in 1983, the study that was produced here about nuclear war. This particular quotation, which I put on the screen, about how the United States and Soviet Union could not see each other clearly, to me, is a classic synthesis of the problem, that this United States could not see the Soviet leaders' intentions clearly because they were so secretive. And the Soviet leaders could never really understand the United States because we were so open. And they were flooded with too much information. And this quote, to me, captures part of the hazard of the nuclear, Cold War period that is now confronting us. And that is this. Mistakes, misperception, misunderstanding are not problems that we solved or are going away. And we're at the foothills of a new arms race that will have three competitors. I think this is going to multiply the possibilities for mistake and misperception. I think, also, we find out that two of these competitors are adversarial. It's not going to be easy to just wish away or forget about these kinds of problems. And this new arms race is going to have all the risks of the one we had before, and then some. It will demand a lot more effort.
I like to think of nuclear weapons as hardware and as software. I don't need to tell you the enormous destructive power the hardware can have. This terrific quotation from a textbook in the 1980s captures it all. That, "Nuclear fire is more powerful by a factor of 10 to a 100 million than chemical fire," meaning conventional explosives, like TNT. But I'm not here today to talk about that kind of problem. Hardware is a big complex thing that we could deal with. But I'm here to talk about the people, the human beings that make the decision that govern the hardware. And that software is where we have our new serious problems. I want to turn to the three competitors, and just walk you through a little bit of why this seems to be converging into a new arms race.
So let's start with President Putin and Russia, because this is the Russian Studies Center. And I think President Vladimir Putin of Russia has repeatedly made threats and allusions that you've heard about using nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. He's talked about putting nuclear forces on special alert, talked about the aggressive statements by NATO countries, and announced that Russia was deploying nuclear weapons to Belarus, which it's already done. Russia has unratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and announced revisions in its nuclear doctrine. But through all of this talk, people ask and I ask, would Russia and would President Putin actually use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict? And I don't think so. I don't think so deliberately. The blast heat and radiation that are the byproducts of a nuclear bomb would not be easily contained to battlefield of Ukraine. The radiation could easily spread beyond Ukraine and endanger lives in Russia and elsewhere. Also, Putin, a very personalized, and very strong and powerful leader in the way he's carried this terrible onslaught against Ukraine, but I don't think that he could simply launch nuclear weapons on his say so. There are other people in the defense leadership involved in the process. And so far, I don't see any signs that they have put the brakes on Putin.
But I wonder if they were faced with this order, would they carry it out if they... Especially, if they're aware of the consequence. I think it is very clear there are no military gains from a nuclear attack that indiscriminately burns up everything in its path and leaves the lands uninhabitable. I know that there are reports that Russia has developed a low-yield nuclear weapon that some people think, well, if they just used that little nuke, it wouldn't trigger a mass retaliation. And maybe that would stop everything. But I think this is a pipe dream. It's not that simple. The only purpose of using a low-yield nuclear warhead would be to demonstrate resolve to escalate. And I don't think that there's any way anyone can promise that there wouldn't be escalation to major city-busting nuclear weapons after that. And the idea that somehow a little nuke can stop the bigger nukes, I just think it is fool-hearted.
What's really happening here is that Mr. Putin... Remember, I said nuclear weapons are political. He's using loose talk, threats. Yes, blackmail, intimidation to discourage the United States from supporting Ukraine. And political scientist, Nina Tannenwald, has shown us that beyond deterrence, beyond the cocked pistols of the Cold War, there is another factor, which she defines as the nuclear taboo. Nuclear taboo was the simple fact that the potential consequences of a nuclear attack were so tremendous, so horrible, that even though superpowers continued to build their arsenals, they didn't engage in reckless and destabilizing threats about it, at least not since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. And by repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons, I think Mr. Putin has broken the nuclear taboo. He's figuratively, at least, loosening the bonds that existed before. And I think this is not just words. I do not think we should just write it off and saying it's just loose talk. Words have consequences. They can sow confusion. They can lead to mistakes and misperceptions.
And if you doubt this, just look what happened this summer. From the other way, Ukraine used some drones to attack Russia's early warning radars. The radars were sort of at the edge of the Ukraine conflict. And I thought, what a horrible mistake, because Putin might have concluded that this was an attack that was more than just a little drone attack. Maybe he was... Ukraine was trying to blind him. Maybe the United States was going to launch, or somebody, NATO would launch a missile. And they wanted to blind his radars. It was a terrible mistake that could have led to a lot of misunderstanding. Fortunately, it didn't.
But again, I think that we have to wake up to these kinds of possibilities of errors. And I think the United States urged Ukraine not to do that again. And there have been other ways in which President Putin has loosened these bonds. I won't go into the details. But you know, the New Start Treaty, which is the last remaining major arms control treaty, is going to expire in February of 2026. And the Kremlin has said, "We don't want to have a new one." I don't see Russia right now engaging in a massive new military buildup of strategic nuclear forces. They're sort... They're stable. They have a modernization cycle like we do that's ongoing. But they are returning to building a new missile that can carry multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, or MERVs. which means one missile can carry maybe 10 or more warheads that could attack 10 different cities.
This merving idea was something that we actually tried to get rid of in the Cold War negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev. And now, it's coming back. And also, Russia said that it's going to build a new cruise missile that will have an intermediate range. In other words, it will be a missile that was outlawed by the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987. We thought we had gotten rid of the Euro missiles. That treaty was one of the great accomplishments of the 1980s. Both sides went to zero. And now, as soon as Putin announced that, NATO and the United States are announcing we're going to build new intermediate range missiles also. We have a new Euro missile crisis on the horizon. Russia's tactical, or battlefield, nuclear weapons are another worry. Up until now, they have been kept in central storages. They are not deployed, but... And I do think that we are watching this by satellites very carefully. But the key is, does Russia make any move to take these warheads out of storage?
That would be alarming if we saw a truck, you know, carrying warheads and beginning to mate them up with delivery vehicles, like airplanes or land-based missiles. The Kremlin knows this is a flashpoint. In a bid to pressure the West, Putin staged a training exercise in June with tactical nuclear weapons that simulated this loading process. But it was very telling that Russia did not use actual warheads. It used fake dummies that were painted red. So up to this point, I think Russia's threats are political. But we have to remain vigilant about signs that they become something more than that. You know, I think Putin has made the threat so often that he is actually beginning to devalue his own political weapon. And people are sometimes stopped to take them seriously. I know the argument that Putin might use nuclear weapons if backed into a corner. But given the consequences for Russia, I don't think that it's likely that he would do it deliberately. It would fly in the face of rationality, considering all the things that could happen. And can everybody in Russia's military chain of command also lose the ability to be rational? I don't think so.
The new arms race will involve much more than nuclear weapons. Russia is also preparing for asymmetric competition. I'll just mention briefly the anti-satellite weapon that we continue to read about and may be deployed next year that could set off a nuclear explosion in space and wipe out global satellite communications for everybody. An underwater nuclear drone called Poseidon that could enter a harbor and be used to blackmail a whole city. And you know, and when I wrote "The Dead Hand" all those years ago, Russia and the United States were cooperating at reducing these nuclear risks. There was a program called Cooperative Threat Reduction. And actually, I wrote that book during the period of the peak of that cooperation. But look where we are now. Those days are completely gone.
It's quite possible that Russia is bringing those soldiers and ammunition from North Korea and will pay back North Korea with nuclear know-how and proliferation, reversing completely the efforts of the 1990s. China, this photograph of Xi Jinping with a group of People's Liberation Army rocket forces was just taken last week and just was on Chinese television the day before yesterday.
In contrast to Russia, China is engaging in the new arms race very directly. It is expanding its strategic nuclear arsenal. For many years, China had a philosophy of minimum deterrence. Maybe they had 200 or 220 nuclear warheads. The nuclear warheads in those days were not mated with missiles. They were kept separately, which was an important thing that showed China was not interested in a first strike. They were not on hair-trigger alert. But a lot has changed under the guy in this picture, Xi Jinping. You know, when satellite imagery recently revealed there are three new Chinese missiles silo fields that are being built, all together, there are about 300 silos in these three different fields. Prior to Xi Jinping coming to power in 2010, Russia had about 28 intercontinental ballistic missiles. I mean, China, I'm sorry, had about 28. Now, they've built silos for 300, a tenfold increase. We don't know if they're going to fill all those. But the idea that China is trying to make this tenfold leap in strategic nuclear missiles, it is very, very worrisome. These are long-range, intercontinental ballistic missiles. I'm not even talking about the medium-range ones, which are in this particular photograph.
Audience Member:
Do they have MERV?
David Hoffman:
Yes, they're working on MERV technology. China seems to be planning to try to match the United States and Russia nuclear arsenals, to get to about 1,500 warheads. The Pentagon estimates they'll get to about 1,000 in the next five years. For the first time in 44 years, China conducted an ICBM test into the Pacific. And China is moving part of its nuclear forces to higher alert, to a launch-ready alert. China's building a triad, a land, sea, air triad to mimic the United States and Russia. So in all these ways, China is also accelerating, and loosening the bonds and accelerating the arms race. And I think it's very worrisome that China refuses to enter into negotiations. The Chinese basically say, "Wait till we get to be peers, completely peers with Russia and the United States. And then we'll talk about that."
So this is the second loosening of the bonds. I don't think China is doing this because they're interested in nuclear war with America. Actually, our economies, as you know, are very tightly bound. But I do think that China has two goals. One is simply to enhance its great power status and its ability to play a big role in the world that it wants to play. It's part of a larger political calculation. And the second one, I think China would like to have the capability to check, or checkmate the United States in the event of a conflict, especially over Taiwan. And they're getting much closer than they were to be able to do that. So the third competitor is of the United States, of course. And I think what's happening here is we're being dragged into this new nuclear arms race. We're not blameless. We've made mistakes, one of which is recently launching development of a new submarine-launched cruise missile, a dangerous weapon that flies under radars. And if carrying a nuclear warhead, could also strike without a lot of warning and be very threatening. But the thrust of the new arms race is coming from our adversaries.
There is perhaps nothing the United States could have done that would've changed this trajectory of Russia and China. Both Putin and Xi Jinping are assertive. And we've seen intensely personal styles of leadership. The invasion of Ukraine took up a lot of bandwidth by President Biden. I personally think that was the right choice to devote himself to it. And maybe he couldn't have done anything differently with Russia and China. But now, we face some really difficult and stark decisions. The three-Way competition has already begun. The administration has been telling us repeatedly, I don't know if anybody has been listening, that we're going to have to engage in this arms race. A defense official said recently that we now find ourselves in nothing short of a new nuclear age. The current U.S. force posture and monetization plans may well be insufficient. The emerging security environment is unprecedented. This official said, "We do not need to numerically pace our competitors warhead for warhead, or outnumbered their combined total forces to deter them. But we may reach a point where a change in size or posture of our current deployed forces is necessary." I heard this and sort of fell out of my chair because I don't think the American people already, or know that our government is now preparing to engage in a nuclear arms race with Russia and China. And that's what they're telling us.
So what are the dangers here? As I said, miscalculation and mistakes. A three-way race will be infinitely more difficult to negotiate than was the Cold War between two sides. I think a three-way race with all the different kinds of forces and threats and possibilities, it's a little bit like a diplomatic Rubik's cube. It's not going to be easy to use diplomacy to solve it. You know, just to think for one minute, if we wanted to have an extension of the New Start Treaty, a new strategic arms treaty to restrain the most dangerous weapons, would it be with just Russia? Or should it be with Russia and China? Would we wanna negotiate with Putin, a war criminal? Would the Senate even consider a treaty with Russia, that has violated so many previous treaties? Just imagine the kinds of questions given where we are today. I think under the current leadership of Russia and China, it's almost impossible to imagine arms control going back to negotiated, verifiable, ratified treaties. But actually, those treaties can be valuable, legally-binding, and verifiable ways to restrain the arms race. But there's... Prospects for them are extremely dim.
The United States will find that a new arms race could be very expensive. We're already modernizing our land-based missiles, 80% over cost. We're building new submarines, hugely expensive, where in fact, we have to probably scale down the number of submarines because we can't afford it and all the things that go with it. Defense spending today in the United States exceeds half of all the discretionary federal spending in the budget. It's crowding out the rest of our government. We see things like the Secret Service, the National Archives, the Internal Revenue Service, all these, the Small Business Administration, they're all running out of money. And we have this enormous defense need that I predict is only going to grow. So what it do about it? And I'll close because I don't think that I should just tell you the world's going to end and not at least try and put some ideas forward.
First of all, we have to break this complacency. I think the American people just have to hear that this looming arms race is coming. And we have to have a debate about what to do about it. I don't think it's a debate we can have on TikTok. A couple of things we can and should do, risk reduction. We have some very weak agreements with Russia and China. We need robust agreements. In case of an emergency, we have to be able to have clear channels to both places to make sure there is not a nuclear weapon fired by the mistake or, for example, one on what looks like a conventional weapon in the Ukraine conflict. There are all kinds of ways that even today you could imagine errors. We need clear communications and risk reduction. It sounds so easy. But actually, it turns out to be very difficult. Over and over again, I wrote articles for "The Washington Post" about efforts to create a Russia-U.S. risk reduction centers. And time and again, those plans fell apart because of squabbles between the two sides. And it's not only just a hotline. It's the larger system of preventing mistakes.
Secondly, we have allies. And this was what differentiates us from Russia and China. We have good allies. We need to have them help us defend our values against these dictatorships. And also, we want to make sure that our friends and allies stay under our nuclear umbrella, and don't go off in an arms race of their own. You already hear kind of a yearning, South Korea, Japan, about maybe where they need their own nuclear weapons. I've even heard the preposterous idea Poland feels like it needs a nuclear weapon. And that would be very, I think, dangerous and something we should watch out for. We could conceivably with good diplomacy, begin to think about what arms control might look like in the future. All is not completely lost, at least if we try. Remember that these treaties can be made verifiable, and bilateral or multilateral. So we can check what the other side is doing.
And I would say we need to show some restraint. I am not suggesting that just because we're having an arms race, that we need to rush out there and build a warhead for every one that Russia and China is building. And we certainly don't need to build some of the bizarre weapons that Putin has put on the table, like this nuclear powered cruise missile that will fly 100 times around the world without being refueled. I mean, some things we're not going to do. Ultimately, though it comes back to political will. Do we have to get so exhausted from the arms race that we find the political will? How long will that take? Because that's ultimately the way to restrain political weapons. Those are my ideas. I'd love to see us get back to that Reagan-Gorbachev magic moment. It probably, it's like the journalism in the new Russia, something we witnessed once. And I don't know if we'll ever see it again. And with that, I take your questions.
Yevgenia Albats:
Wow, that was a brilliant presentation. But I'm frightened to death. Basically, I am recalling this famous movie, "Russians Are Coming". And I'm looking, you know... Where is the bunk nearby, you know? First of all, before I proceed any further, I see couple of Ukrainians here, and of course, Professor Seerhii Plokhii, who is, as you're well aware, director of the Center of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. And I have to say before I ask any other questions, I'm a Russian citizen. And I feel ashamed, sorry for what my country is doing to Ukraine. You know, this week and the previous week, Putin keeps bombing Ukrainian cities, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, and other cities. He's turning Ukraine's in no man land. And I feel awful each time I read about that. I would love to go to Ukraine to cover this on the ground. But unfortunately, I hardly... I unlikely can get a visa to Ukraine. Now, as I started with Ukraine, David, I would like to ask you direct question.
So there are 2 1/2 years of Russian full-scale aggression against Ukraine. We see that he's destroying Ukrainian's infrastructure, nation's wealth, its land. He's turning one of the best land in Europe into mine field. Each time, what we hear here in the United States is, yes, we're going to give Ukrainians ATACMS. But we're not going to give them the ones that they need. We're going the ones you know with smaller range because, otherwise, we can cross a red line. A red line, Russian nuclear threats that Putin time and again says that, yes, we're going to give them F-16. But no, no, we're not going to do it in a rush because we really don't want to inspire Putin to use nukes. We are going to give them that, and that, and that. So anyway, we see that President of the United States, you know, time and again, you know, he constraints both your Pentagon and other agencies in terms of helping Ukraine precisely because there is this nuclear blackmail. I can tell you one thing.
If I know anything about dictators, and I studied them my entire life, you cannot blink when you deal with the dictators. For Putin, the behavior of the U.S. administration is a behavior of weak people. People who are getting, you know, frightened to death more than I am after your presentation, just because he keeps blackmailing them. And for him, it's a clear cut sign. If you are so weak that you have to just proceed, keep pushing you, putting you on the knees, you have to show... He's trying to show that he's a mature guy, you know, who is capable to fuck, you know, the entire world with his threats. What are you doing? Explain to me. You know, I mean, United States of America, why are you subduing to this dictator who is one of the worst people on the face of this world? I cannot imagine that he's going to put his... You know, he was so busy stealing everything, whatever existed in in Russia, turning its personal wealth that he's going to put it, you know, to turn it into the nuclear waste. So explain to me, what are you doing?
David Hoffman:
You're making it very personal for me. It's a hard question you're getting because I've debated this myself a lot. And I wish I had sort of a clear cut answer that would ease all of your anxiety. But a couple of thoughts. One is Putin himself has debased his own currency with these threats. I don't think that... Every time he makes them now, because he also showed weakness, right? He hasn't done anything. And he's also stopped short of it. So I think now, they're taken less seriously. I also think that in some ways the Ukraine war has shown the wisdom of asymmetry. And over and over again, I am quite pleasantly surprised at the innovative spirit of Ukraine. And when they couldn't get those missiles, suddenly, we noticed all the Russian oil refineries were blowing up in the middle of the night. And their ammo depots were blowing up, and by long-range drones that fly 500, 600 kilometers. So there are innovative answers that don't simply require the United States to begin to drop U.S.-made missiles in the middle of Russia.
I also share that sense that Ukraine feels that they are on the back foot now 2 1/2 years. You know, when is it going to end? And if we have these long-range conventional weapons, why can't they blow up Russia's apartment buildings, like he's doing to them? And it's, to me, a very, very difficult question. But I hope that Ukraine is able to sustain its democracy and its hopes to be a European, prosperous member of Europe without taking us deeper into a world war. And I think that some people have thrown around this idea of a World War III rather recklessly. But I am sure that President Biden has also given some thought to care because of some of the issues I described in my talk, the possibility of misperception or accident. And if you put a nuclear warhead on an Iskander missile, it looks to Ukraine if it's incoming, exactly like a conventional warhead. There's no big radiation sign on the outside of a nuclear warhead. If you are hit with this warhead and it explodes, it's too late. There's nothing you can do to stop it.
So the possibility for confusion with these weapons, and with some of these new medium-range weapons that are being talked about, the possibility that the, secretly and quietly the preventional and nuclear forces will be mingled or that we won't know, that is a serious concern of people that want to avoid a big wider war between NATO and Russia. And I hear the anxiety and believe that Ukraine has been absolutely stoic and determined. But you just can't wish for everything all at once. I think there were dangers there.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay, you know, I think there will be more questions regarding this issue. You know, another question that I would like to ask you. To which extent, United States just, you know... I was reading this latest Bob Woodard's book, "War". And I learned from this book that apparently, United States knew about upcoming Russian invasion into Ukraine five months prior to the invasion on February 24th, 2000... February 24th, 2022. To which, so it suggests that you have a very good intelligence. That you probably have, or had, a good human intelligence. And you have definitely have a very good satellite intelligence, and so it goes. To which extent, United States are capable to control the movement of nuclear heads in Russia and in China?
David Hoffman:
Well, of course, we don't control them at all, but we can watch them. And I think that in the case of tactical nuclear warheads, which are in central storages where we know where they are, we're watching very closely. I really believe it'll be alarming if trucks show up and begin to move things. And we'll have satellites that will watch them 24 hours a day. But a part of what I was showing you about the Cold War is that danger is fueled by secrecy. And these kinds of conflicts don't just happen in some kind of big public chess board where somebody moves one piece and then another. A lot of it happens in dark at night. And what we know about China is, actually, makes me worried that these missile silo fields I mentioned to you were discovered by non-governmental organizations using commercial satellite imagery. Suddenly, they found 150 dots on a desert plateau. And they started to look closely. And they discovered that China was doing this. And our government didn't tell us that. So there are methods. And there are ways in this sort of world we live in, in which we can... We can... One of the things that we might have once been really secret. But I also think that this is not in our control. And we have to just be vigilant.
Yevgenia Albats:
And, you know, last question before I will give floor to the audience, the question from the audience. North Korea, you know, I remember and you probably remember in these KGB secret files, there was a letter of the then head of the KGB, Kryuchkov, to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. And the question was whether to help North Korea with the nuclear reactor or not to help them.
And the conclusion was, Kryuchkov wrote that, you know, North Korea is so unpredictable that we better off staying away. Now, we just learned that North Korea is going to provide from 10 to 12,000 troops to help Russians to fight in Ukraine. We do understand, or at least, I assume that we do understand. Maybe I'm wrong. And correct me if I'm wrong, that any move on part of Mr. Kim of North Korea, any move is consulted, and get permitted, and go get permission from the side of China. China is very closely... No, you don't think so? Okay, that's what I read. Anyway, to which extent your concerned that Putin, given that he's... Oh, I'm trying not to swear. It is so hard, you know. But you know, given what we know about him, that he may make a trick, that he may give couple of warheads to North Korea, and sort of prompt them to use so-called tactical nuclear weapons. And then, it wouldn't won't be Russia. It will be North Koreans. And we know that they have their own ballistic missiles, most likely-
David Hoffman:
But to use them where, against who?
Yevgenia Albats:
Ukraine, or against, you know... Anyway, to which extent there is a danger that North Korea can be used in Putin's game?
David Hoffman:
You know, North Korea says that they've sent 1,200 special forces. And they're gonna send 10,000. Those 1,200 guys, I hope they read the data that shows that on some days, Russia's casualties exceed 1,500. It's one day's, yeah. Secondly, I don't think there's any chance that North Korea would actually send a nuclear weapon to that battlefield without Putin knowing about it. And even if he did it, that's not to me the big issue. We know that they are sending a lot of ammunition. And their shells are crappy. And they're terrible. But what really worries me, I think, is that fissile material, the uranium or plutonium needed for nuclear weapons, is the sort of very narrow neck of the funnel in nuclear weapons. And getting fissile material is what allows you to expand your arsenal. And we have been watching North Korea struggle with fissile material, making its own, for 30 years on and off, you know, creating their own uranium, and then plutonium, and then back to uranium. But Russia has in giant warehouse, that we built for them, at a cost of $300 million in Siberia, a huge amount of fissile material. Literally, tons of it.
And I think the danger is that Russia's going to just become a new proliferating partner. It's going to pay for those soldiers and that ammunition by giving Kim Jong-un enough fissile material to build 100 warheads. He's got maybe 50 now. That's not inconsequential compared to where he was a few years ago. But that, or maybe technology for improving medium and long-range missiles. So South Korea could find itself in a decade facing a much, much more serious threat from the north than they are today just based on what Russia can deliver. That's the danger.
Yevgenia Albats
Thank you. Okay, so your question please. Yes, please. Would you please to introduce yourself? You know, it's much easier to do when you know who you are talking to, uh-huh.
Audience Member:
My question is, well, we know that in the U.S., let's say, the planning of the nuclear weapons continues business as usual. We know that it is that Russia and China at the moment are very dependent on the direction of Putin executing. Whether Putin will die one day, we know that potentially Russia will be broken down in republics because of apparently, there isn't at the moment one single person that can keep Russia united as it was with Putin. Same with China, Xi Jinping will die one day. We don't know will be the successor and how the policy would change. Do you see this more as an advantage for U.S. and the Western world, or a disadvantage because we don't know the level of the next person, if the next person will be a person that will pushed the button easily or not?
David Hoffman:
You know, in intelligence, you oftentimes ask the question about capabilities and intentions. The capabilities are being built now. The intentions of the future, I can't possibly know. I would point out that I think we didn't understand that when Putin was chosen, and later when Xi Jinping was chosen, that we were at such a turning point. Because in both cases, they changed the direction. China was not nearly as hell-bent on building a nuclear arsenal under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. And frankly, Boris Yeltsin didn't have much interest in nuclear weapons. So this pivot happened actually unexpectedly, and was not really a function of those countries' internal decision making. Putin was handpicked by Yeltsin, period. And Xi Jinping it's different, China is different. But still, he's created a very personalized kind of dictatorship. And I don't know what will be next. But if the next person is handed the levers that were created in this period, it'll still be a danger.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Okay. So my question is about the sort of the who are the... Oh, Dmitry Gorenburg from Harvard and other places, right? And so, there's a discussion in public in Russia about use of nuclear weapons, both in the media with, you know, Solovyov and this sort of thing, and Medvedev tweeting or whatever. But also among intellectuals with, like Sergei Karaganov is launching it, and then... What do you think about the impact of that discussion on the... Putin and the political elite on the one hand, but also on the public, on the other hand, how does that affect the nuclear taboo, for example?
David Hoffman:
Dmitry, I think that the three gentlemen you named, Solovyov, Medvedev, and Karaganov are clowns. I think the things they've said are ridiculous, and just absolutely... Even beyond the taboo, it's just way over the top to not be taken seriously. Every government, ours and Russia, has different layers of nuclear weapons policy. One level is the employment policy, which is what you're actually gonna do. In the United States, it's secret. I think it's basically secret in Russia. There's acquisition policy, which is the weapons that you're gonna buy. That's sort of becomes public after a while, but it's still pretty secret. And then there's the declaratory policy, what you say you're gonna do. And we engage in that. And I think then there's the propaganda level and that's... Those guys you mentioned are really engaging in wild errand eye, and propaganda, and showmanship. And I don't think it has anything to do with the employment policy. And I don't think Putin sits around and worries about what the public thinks. I think ultimately if he has to make these decisions, he's gonna make it in secret with a very close, small group and not give a sh... Care at all about what his public thinks because he hasn't about in this whole horrible war cared much. The one restraint I notice in war policy is that Putin is afraid to dial up another mobilization. I think it's kind of an interesting restraint on him. That's a public restraint, right? But I don't necessarily see that he is coming up with decisions about war, or military affairs, or nuclear weapons based on what Russians think. And what do they think? I'm also a little skeptical that we really know. And I feel in my bones, just from my time there, that they probably see Solovyov, Medvedev, and Karaganov as clowns.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
So I guess, just to follow up. But there's a perspective that it sounds like you would dismiss that these clowns, and I don't disagree with you, are actually doing this all on, let's say, the orders of Putin, or somebody in the leadership, in order to influence public perceptions and public willingness to accept, you know, nuclear, if not use, then at least blackmail of-
David Hoffman:
But Dmitry, in Russia, does nuclear use or black... Does it depend on public opinion? No, I don't think so.
Yevgenia Albats:
No. There is no public opinion anymore, just none. Everybody who had public opinion are either in exile, or they keep them all shut because you can get in jail just for saying the word Ukraine.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
If there's no public opinion, why have they not done another mobilization?
Yevgenia Albats:
It's a little bit different because it's not about public opinion. It's about about Putin's reliance. You know, he needs support from the lower class. But it's not about public opinion because he remembers, you know, some problems that Yelsin had during the Chechen War, and Gorbachev and and his predecessors had during the Afghan War. So, but it's not about public opinion, as there was none in the Soviet Union. There is none in the contemporary Russia. Cris, please.
Cris Martin:
Cris Martin, Davis Center. And you talked about the nuclear issue being political, primarily. It's also obviously related to the defense industry. But I'm curious about the science element. And clearly, not a science expert here. But I'm particularly curious if the three countries are now engaging in this arms race are on an even playing field when it comes to science or scientific discovery that's required to be manufacturing and developing new weapons. Particularly, because the U.S., being a democracy, has a private sphere and a public sphere. Whereas Russia and China have much more state control over both education and industry that might be relied on to create the weapons.
David Hoffman:
It's a complex question. I don't know that I can fully answer it. But I would say they're not on an equal level yet. Different... All sides have realized, and Russia and China especially, I feel, have come to exploit the idea of asymmetry. Realized that their advantage can be with asymmetrical progress. China launched this fractional orbital bomb weapon they, you know, flew halfway around the globe as a orbiting thing. And then they launched a hypersonic glider, I mean, a little bit of a Rube Goldberg thing. But a sign of a des of a desire for a asymmetric weapon. Russia has several of them that I mentioned, including using a nuclear weapon in space, and this crazy cruise missile, and so on. So in those areas, there's not a lot of United States development. But we are, for example, alarmed and trying to catch up with the idea of hypersonic glide vehicles, which could fly under radars and be dangerous. And we have the most sophisticated targeting and, you know, sensory progress in using weapons. We can... Our accuracy is extremely high.
I don't think Russia is as bad, but it's sort of static. They are where they are. I don't think they're going to become a scientific superpower. They got something else. China, it's really interesting. Again, I think there are things that they're doing that with the ICBMs that are quite sophisticated. And then we see that the one of their nuclear attack submarines just under construction, sank in the harbor. You know, when I read about the sub sinking, I thought that the thing you have to understand in arms racing is that there are setbacks. You know, missiles explode and subs sink. It doesn't mean it's all over. But China seems to have enormous resources to try. And I think there's a lot of the China effort that we don't see that is masked under either civilian or maybe in institutes that we don't see. I don't feel like whether it is nuclear or some of the other asymmetrical things that we fully understand it. And I would worry actually more about China's success in science than I would about Russia, which seems to be stagnant. You know, Putin's dictatorship has really frightened a lot of the science establishment in Russia. So it's not level. It is volatile. And it's uneven.
Sally Bechance:
My name is Sally Bechance, I'm focused basically on three actors on the declared stage. And it was a brilliant overview. So I was just wondering, are there other actors on that stage that Putin actually help being stronger, are sort of nuclear restriction policy? And I'm particularly thinking about India, as nukes as well. It's not seen by Putin as part of the Western fold. So maybe you could elaborate a little bit about other actors, if they are any, that would seem important.
David Hoffman:
It's a very good question. I deliberately just didn't have, wanna keep you here until midnight. The whole other actors thing is just, it's another presentation for another day. But I do feel that, for example, in Europe, right? We have this horrible war going on. And I think that we have to hope that our allies in Europe come to their senses and realize also this new European missile arms race is gonna confront them. And they haven't even really begun. They're just barely beginning to think about this as a threat. I think the whole Asian equation of Japan and South Korea wanting, you know, not formally yet. But sort of just feeling uncomfortable under our nuclear umbrella, we need to reassure them. So there are lots of sort of breakout points in this thing. I'm not confident about India, at least not under the BJP leadership, that they're gonna be interested in this. I know the United States has repeatedly asked Modi when he comes, you know, to be part of some kind of Indo-Pacific community about these things. But I don't hear the answer back that gives me any confidence. And India has its own very independent ideas about it. It's deterrent. So the world's fractured. It's a really stressful time with two wars. We haven't even talked about the Middle East. And so, I think you're raising something big. I just decided to narrow it down.
Audience Member:
Thank you, Professor Hoffman and Dr. Albats.
David Hoffman:
Not professor, sorry. No, just a journalist.
Audience Member:
... I drove three hours to be here. My question is, although U.S. and China agree to disagree in majority of security issues, however, both United States and China agree that in the Korean Peninsula, there should be no new nuclear weapons. How do you believe that China comes like a decisive role in the denuclearization in Korean Peninsula? And do you believe that both China, U.S., and Russia are forming a new strategic triangle in the 21st century?
David Hoffman:
On the latter part, I don't see any sign of any kind of new 21st century triangle, no. On the question of a denuclearized Korean peninsula, I mean, which was once in American policy that might have had made some sense. So look at it now, it's in shambles. North Korea is now a nuclear weapons power. And frankly, we've had two presidential administrations that have done very little about it. And it's gone its own way. I think the interesting dynamic is this. China, I think, believed that it sort of had nuclear, North Korea under its wing for a while. And just lately, Mr. Kim has gone his own way with Russia. And I don't see yet any signs that, that he's listening much to China. And with all this deal making with Russia, I'm sure it's made China uneasy. How they're gonna respond to that, what kind of relationship they have with him, I don't know. But they've lost a little bit of their purchase on their neighbor.
Mikhail Troitskiy:
Okay, thank you very much. I'm here visiting scholar here at Davis Center. Russian condemning the war. So my question builds upon some of this illuminating discussion about the role of Russia's sort of nuclear umbrella in its pursuit of territorial conquest in Ukraine. So... Well, you suggested, and I think that's in the consensus that public threats that Russia has been, Russian agents have been, you know, doing the public domain have all been clownish. And the U.S. government has said it doesn't see any particular change in the posture, or in Russian nuclear posture to be concerned with. And here, and you also said you don't think Russia would ever dare to detonate nuclear weapon in Iran, Ukraine, you know, just with, with respect to this conflict. And yet, there are reports of tangible change of U.S. policy that have been undertaken because of some presumed threat of Russia actually going nuclear, right? So the administration says no change in the posture. So the guys who come out with, you know, foreign statements are clowns, that's for sure. And I agree with that. But then we have reports like one from David Zenger, I think from last March just saying that in the fall of 2022, the danger was real. So here's the question. How do you think... And it's driven by my academic interest, first and foremost. So how do you think the Russian government relatively can communicated its resolved to actually use nuclear weapons? So how does it... What does it take the Russian government to be listened to given that, you know, again, those are clowns. And officially, there's no change in posture. And yet, something happens. So how do they do it?
David Hoffman:
You touched on a lot of things. I will try to answer them all. First of all, on the issue of, was there a change in U.S. policy? There was a change in U.S. employment policy. It's secret. It's been reported that it was slightly altered, mostly vis-a-vis China because of China's growing, because of the missile fields, and so on. I don't know exactly how it was changed. I also think that the question of the early estimations of the danger may well be true. It's quite possible if you're an intelligence analyst at the outbreak of a war, that you were worried about these things. They were. I don't think there's any shame or any harm in acknowledging that there were some, especially in the very early threats that Putin made, much more fear than there might be today. Then the question of the actual, what would we see that would mean something? I think I mentioned in my talk, the most serious move would be opening the warehouse doors on those technical storage centers and moving those weapons out of tactical storage.
I don't think the war in Ukraine is a war that's going to ever require strategic weapons, right? Those are intercontinental ballistic missiles. But on a more smaller range, we should be alarmed and watching. And I will bet you a bottom dollar that we have satellites parked directly overhead every one of those storage facilities. And we're watching them intensely. And lastly, what if Putin really did use nuclear weapons? I would present you, again, with the two points I made earlier. What in the Hell would he do with a piece of Ukraine that was a smoking radioactive ruin? Who wants to win a war and destroy the land that you, that you're gonna win? It's ridiculous. And secondly, I think the use of any nuclear battlefield weapon, especially in Ukraine, any, just once will produce a, a catastrophic response by the West. I mean, there will be a conventional attack on Russia. And I think that's a deterrent. I think it's been communicated to Putin. We will not stand by. If you do this, then you can expect all Hell to break loose. And I think it actually is... It's good that he knows that.
Audience Member:
Thank you. And I think that my question may be simple and difficult at the same time. Based on your opinions, how countries can stop this arms race? Can possibly not be the provacator of Russia and China to increase their nuclear weapons?
I mean, the first question is, based on your opinion, what is the possible solution to how the countries can solve this arms race? What is their solution, what they should do?
David Hoffman:
Well, they should immediately try to negotiate risk reduction, so they don't surprise each other. Then build confidence, create confidence by measures in which both sides agree to verify or check things. You can't do arms control big, fast. In the Cold War, we learned to restrain nuclear weapons. Took years, dozens of years. But we did learn that if you sign a legally-binding treaty with verification where both sides go to each other's countries and check, it really can work. And actually, verified treaties were rarely violated for a long time. So I think it's a step ladder. You just need to work step by step. First, risk reduction and confidence building, and then make an effort to try and negotiate reductions. And ultimately, the United States is gonna face the choice. Do we wanna race also? I didn't answer that question tonight. It's a big question. It's a big expensive problem for us. But you heard those defense officials. They're telling us maybe we need to be in this race too. And that's a really big decision.
Yevgenia Albats:
Mark Kramer, please. I'm afraid to miss Mark Kramer, yes.
Mark Kramer:
Just to reinforce what you said, David, is during the Cold War, there were several instances in which leaders considered the use of tactical nuclear weapons. And there were studies done at the time. And they concluded that there would be no military advantage by using . That was, in particularly, illuminating is a study done by the JASONs in 1965 when compared to Vietnam. And they laid out considerations there. They're still relevant today. And so, they reinforced what you said to the extent that Putin would consider. I'm sure, he would want at least to achieve some advantage if he were to do so. And as I look on, I see, you know, that there is all of the times in which they've been considered in the past, during the Korean War, during the Vietnam War, and so forth. The consistent conclusion was... It was none, even though during the Korean War, in particular, the United States had a defacto monopoly. The Soviet Union had fired their nuclear weapons, but would not have been able to attack the United States.
So the... So I agree with you. I mean, I think the dynamic of the situation is such that the prospect of nuclear use is very low. But the question I wanted to ask you is, why would the United States necessarily avoid the nuclear competition with Russia and China? That is, U.S. advantages, as you noted in accuracy of missiles, particularly in quieting of submarines and overall integration of intelligence that would be extremely important in a nuclear war. If I were looking at this from the perspective of a military planner, I would actually see something to be gained from it, provided that the... It led to a genuine mobilization of funding in the United States, which I'm not confident about. But if it were to come to a major competition, and I could see the United States would actually benefit
David Hoffman:
- Mark, I guess, I don't see, looking at the Cold War history, much that we would benefit by doing it again. I worry that... I know there are people, military planners, who would love to tackle this. But I think as a society, we have to decide, do we wanna live in a world where gradually these ability to blow it up like this gets greater and greater all the time, where more and more missiles are on launch-ready alert, where the possibility of miscalculation is exponentially larger? It seems to me that we've been through that. We lived through it. It costs an enormous amount. The Soviet Union collapsed. Why do we want... Why do we benefit by doing it again, other than the sandbox effect? Yeah, sure, we could play in it and learn a lot of things. But as a society, is this really what we want to happen next? Is this the natural follow on to what happened in 1991? After all that effort, we basically start over again trying to kill each other? I don't see the big societal benefit as compared to the military one.
Audience Member:
I have a two part question. I know Ukraine has recently indicated that they wanna seek out nuclear weapons again. Is it rhetoric or is it actual intention? I see... The first part of the question is, is Russia's attack in Ukraine a demonstration of failure, not deliberation, the fact that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and in exchange for not being invaded, and then they were invaded? And two, with all the various countries around the world, I know you mentioned you that are seeking to get a nuclear weapon now, what are the chances, in your assessment, of multiple proliferations across the world, just having multiple nation happening, having products?
David Hoffman:
It's a good question. The answer to the first part is, yes. In 1994, Ukraine signed away its nuclear weapons. We encouraged that. There was an important memorandum signed. I've done some research on this subject. It's actually a quite interesting period. We persuaded Ukraine that you don't need all these nuclear weapons because Russia's gonna sign this thing that respects your national borders. And besides, there was a debate at the time whether Ukraine, which inherited them from the Soviet Union, whether they actually could have used them. There is, even today, a debate about whether they could have re-engineered the command and control software. I have my doubts, but they had them. And they gave them up. And Russia completely tore up that memorandum, like so many other things. So the answer to part one is absolutely. Ukraine has a case here. They were screwed.
On the second part, there are now nine nuclear weapons powers. We've kept it that way for quite a while. But yes, the thing I'm worried about..., I didn't get to proliferation. But if China, and Russia, and the United States are in an arms race, then the signal's gonna be to everybody to be in an arms race. You know, this was the whole idea of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, right? The major powers would reduce their nuclear warheads. And everybody else doesn't have to go there. And instead, we're going the opposite direction. So it's gonna be at least a psychological tonic for wannabees. And again, I do not think that Poland should have nuclear weapons. But you hear talk about it. And I do not think that South Korea is gonna be, or Taiwan, are gonna be better off with nuclear weapons. But you hear talk about it. And that is the kind of world we're gonna be heading into.
Audience Member:
So I have a question. So as we see that the nuclear race, arm race is again inevitable between China, Russia, and USA. So how would you measure impact of the nuclear weapon race on nuclear energy policies?
David Hoffman:
It's a tough question to answer. Because I think in some ways, they're diverging. I think alarm over nuclear weapons is again growing. Maybe after being on vacation for 30 years, people are waking up a little bit. There's a bestselling book now by Annie Jacobson, a very good book about the possibility of nuclear war. It's on the bestseller list. People are worried about nuclear weapons. But nuclear energy is having kind of a renaissance. And it's because of climate change, right? Because it's the idea that it could be a clean answer to filling the energy transition. Where renewables will not be able to completely fill the gap, nuclear will. And I think there's been a fair amount of work on the question of civilian nuclear reactors to make them safer. They're not perfect. But some of the problems that be deviled Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl, namely the need to circulate water to cool the reactors and to drive that with electricity, some of those kinds of problems people are working on to create reactors that won't melt down in those kinds of circumstances.
And you know, I've changed my views about this a little bit too. The climate change problem is so severe that if we can safely fill the gap with nuclear energy, that is safer. If we've learned the lessons of those other accidents, I think we... I'm a little bit more sympathetic to nuclear energy now than I once was. And I covered those accidents. And I've written some about it. And Serhii's book about Chernobyl was worth reading also. Chernobyl is such a incredible moment. But hopefully, we've learned those lessons and we can fix that. And there's a problem of the waste I didn't address. Yes, and maybe we can bury it far away for some... You know, nobody will ever be bothered by it. I agree it's a problem. But when you consider the dangers of climate change and how, what it means to us, we gotta find a solution sooner
Martin:
Hi, my name is Martin. I'm a retired army engineer officer. And had I arrived in Europe a few years earlier, I might have led a nuclear demolition platoon, for example. But the practical weapons and such were negotiated away. Do you see a downside to what I would consider almost 100% focus on what Putin may or may not do? And maybe there's an assumption in that that he is in total control. Yet, early in your comments, you considered the possibility that he may not be the sole decision maker. But with that focus on his decision making and his psychology, we may lose sight of some scenarios where a weapon might be used, or even a round, a nuclear round, could presumably land somewhere in Ukraine, not detonate. But now, you generate all these questions around, why didn't this round detonate? Was it a psychological operation by Putin? Was it a rogue actor? Did all these different machinations... And the public though, has been almost conditioned to think any nuclear weapon will be a result of a deliberate decision by Putin. And so, the question is, should we think of other scenarios, so that we don't have an attribution problem in the event, in some sort of nuclear event?
David Hoffman:
We should. And it's just something I didn't wanna... It's complex. I didn't want to get into it 'cause it's... I just was trying to keep it straightforward. But this problem of attribution is the question of, in a crisis, how do you know who did it, right? And this, I did try and raise this before. I do think it's a serious problem when we get to... If we get a medium-range missile crisis, both Russia and NATO are now talking about bringing out... What if those nuclear warheads are brought out of the warehouses and put on medium-range missiles that we now see being fired at Ukraine? And again, how are we gonna know? And frankly, we also have an issue. Putin has the same problem, right? If he sees a long-range missile coming, you know, how is he gonna know if it's nuclear or not? And what if he thinks that it is and it's wrong? The chances for a mistake, and misperception, and miscalculation in this business are great. And I think we've just been on vacation for too long.
Martin:
May I ask you just very quickly? During the Cold War, there were back door channels. Even at the height, this... The Cold War, there were all kind of people who communicated, you know, between Soviet Union and the United States. To the best of your knowledge, are there any of these back channels existed now between Putin Kremlin and the White House, or it's all, you know... You know, we living in this black holes, one black hole in Russia, another one here.
David Hoffman:
You know, thinking about some of the Cold War, some of the people who were back channels were quite distinguished. And we had senior statesmen who performed that function, including some who thought they were being useful and they weren't. But they were there. I mean, I'm thinking particularly of Nixon. But I... Answer your question, cannot think in the last 2 1/2 years of a single example in which there was really a qualified and serious back channel to Putin.
I think that maybe the closest that they come, it's not really a back channel, is Bill Burns, who has repeatedly spoken to Putin to his face, a former ambassador, you know, the head of the CIA, delivering a message. If you do this, here are the consequences. And Burns probably has spoken truth to Putin more often than anybody else. And yet, here we are in the middle of 2 1/2 years of misery. I don't see Putin listening to anybody.
Martin:
Okay, second question. Maybe it's just silly, but still. I just read about, you know, this invisible submarines who can come close to the United States shore and blackmail, New York or... Unmanned or manned submarine, which are pretty much invisible from what I read. To which it extent, you are concerned about these technologies?. Yes, of course, that you know that Putin was promoting and saying that they're already, you know, been produced by Russians.
David Hoffman:
This has been a concern in the United States government for at least five or six years. It's been a very top level concern. They don't like to talk about it because we don't know a lot about it. You don't want to really advertise the possibilities for blackmail. Just like when you talk about terrorism, you want to be careful. But it goes to something I was trying to raise in my whole talk tonight, which is if you don't know that there's a danger coming, what are the chances that you're going to mistake? What are the chances that you're going to make, that you're going to misperceive what's really going on? And can you imagine the difficulty if Putin announced, "I have put a nuclear bomb in New York Harbor. Now, I would like you to stop aiding Ukraine."
Yevgenia Albats:
He knows that you are weak, that you are ready to blink. I'm sorry, not you personally, David. Don't take it personal. When I say you, I mean the United States. I mean the United States prepare national security card.
David Hoffman:
But Yevgenia, he's been deterred from using nuclear weapons so far, right? So maybe he... We haven't blinked. Maybe actually he heard the message. You know, he has not done it. He has not moved them out of the warehouse. He's having a drill with some wooden ones that are painted red. So you tell me, who's deterred and who's not?
Yevgenia Albats:
I think he was very successful in his... But mainly, but I'm not going to proceed. I'm sorry, Tom. He wanted to...
Tom:
I think it is a subordinate question. But it has to do with, with our allies. If you could talk a little bit more about what you... What your... What their role will be. I mean, two of them have nuclear weapons of their own, France and Britain. What would be their role in this scenario? I think, if I understand it, what you're recommending is that we make sure that extended deterrent protects them, so that others won't go in that nuclear . Is that right? Is that what-
David Hoffman:
Absolutely. But that's not all. But I also would like to see France and Germany step up to this idea of...
Tom:
Germany?
David Hoffman:
No, excuse me, France and Britain, step up to the idea of helping us create risk reduction and create arms control that is bilateral, is multilateral and verifiable. And you know, Britain especially has a long history of helping us with arms control. And they could be an active and respected advocate.
Tom:
Pakistan.
David Hoffman:
Pakistan is hard for me to answer. It's such a chaotic situation. I just, I don't feel I ever understand it. But there, it's a nuclear power. It's a nuclear weapon state. What about Iran? I mean, Iran has not been sitting still. I don't believe they're weeks away. But I think it's safe to say Iran could easily be a nuclear weapon state within a year. And what if Russia decides to pay for the drones by sending some fissile material to there? And would we know that? I don't even think we would know it, or be able to track it.
Sean:
Sean . I missed the first part of the talk. So I hope if you had answered this already, sorry for asking. But I think a lot of the questions you've been doing so far are around . So in your view, what really, you know, if we don't feel that, you know, the red lines, so called lines from the West are, you know, from the public perspective, you can go either way in terms of how critical of deterrence they are in terms of like actually attributing what is really driving the terms right now. Would you say on balance, it's more the public position of China in holding back any potential Russian use at this time? Or are the conventional retribution from the West that you described as being real? But I mean, some people feel, you know, there's a degree of like, how real is it because of the of like the West in terms of, you know, engaging with Russia in that way, which is causing this blackmail in the first place? Is, you know... Is China really the credible deterrent at present in the short-term, short to medium-term?
David Hoffman
I think your question has to be cut up into pieces, okay? At the strategic level, I think American strategic nuclear deterrence is working as it has and is in fine shape. And we're modernizing It's expenses, but we're doing it. On the question of tactical nuclear weapons, the smaller ones, I think Putin is not being deterred by our strategic... He is being... He is just being deterred by the threat of a conventional response. And also, by the fact that I'm sure he knows that it's completely, utterly counterproductive. You know, even if he envisions an expanded Russia to the Soviet borders, I mean, does he want to own a a completely no-go zone of Ukraine that he has incinerated? I don't think so.
So on those levels, I don't yet understand China's impact on deterrents. I really don't. It's new. You know, it's only been a year or two since we've seen the missile fields. China could be playing a game with those fields too. You know, what if it only puts missiles in half of those holes? Or a third of them, but we don't know which ones? We don't know whether China will be actually a rival with us or with Russia. What will the relationship between China and Russia be? Will it be complete allies, as they talk about? I'm not so sure. It might be.
They might become tensions there too. Russia has nuclear weapons. But it has an economy smaller than California. China is, wants to develop the same size nuclear weapons and it has an economy that's the second, third largest in the world. It's a much bigger thing. And we have no idea what impact that new nuclear presence is going to have on deterrence. I just can't answer it, except that it's going to complicate the cocked pistols symmetry. It's knocking it into a hat. And I don't see that anybody's figured out what follows.
Yevgenia Albats:
Did I get you right, that you suspect that there can be the villages in China with respect to their missile fields? The way it was with Soviets.
David Hoffman:
My goodness, in China, there could be...
Yevgenia Albats:
But can you... I mean, in the Soviet...
David Hoffman:
Imagine if you were a, if you are Xi Jinping, right? And there are now 300 missile silos at three separate fields in China. And your Chief of Staff of your military comes and says, we need 300 missiles. And if you're Xi Jinping, you can say, "No, you get 100. And you can move them around and put caps on each of those silos." Nobody will ever know.
Yevgenia Albats:
You know, that's the way Soviets did. So that's created a lot of capabilities.
David Hoffman:
We are at a stage where we do not know the answer to that question yet. But we know that they have built the holes to create a tenfold increase. They had 28 in 2010. And now, we see 300 holes. Remember, I said capabilities and intentions. This goes to capabilities.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay. Okay, we have probably enough... Okay, time for one more question. Yes, please.
Martin:
What are your thoughts on linkage with respect to nuclear weapons? With the idea being do you link nuclear negotiations to conventional expectations, say Iran's actions in the Middle East, and you link it to nuclear weapons through the JCPOA? Or do you negotiate an agreement, like the JCPOA, irrespective of whatever is going on in conventional conflict? So the idea of linkage.
David Hoffman:
So I will bring to you personally my Rubik's cube because that's really what it is. The next thing we confront is decisions about how to negotiate, or restrain, or somehow make a little safer the world that involves so many different calculations that it's almost unimaginable to me. So I think the answer is, actually, to get it done, try and start simpler and don't try to make it too complex by leaking into anything to else. But just try and, for example, if we're going to have an intermediate-range missile race in Europe and in Asia, which is now possible, maybe we should just go to the Chinese and say, "Look, let's make a deal just on intermediate-range missiles. We won't put any more in Asia if you don't build any more and aim them at Taiwan." Or ultimately, we had zero, zero in Europe under Reagan and Gorbachev. It was a very success... Ultimately, it took years. But it ultimately succeeded in getting rid of an entire class, not linked to anything else. Ultimately, START and the Strategic Arms Treaty was born when we delinked it from the Strategic Defense Initiative and said let's set that aside. Let's just negotiate this. I think we're at that stage now. We cannot afford making our Rubik's cube bigger.
Yevgenia Albats:
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. His great presentation and his willingness to answer question and your thoughts of me, thank you.
David Hoffman
I have tolerated you for 30 years-
Yevgenia Albats:
- Yes, I know, you know. Anyway, thank you very much for coming. So as we said, you know, next event is on November 12th. Hopefully, hopefully, nothing happens bad in Washington D.C., and Peter Baker and Susan Glass will make it all the way to this far away place in Cambridge. And you know, so... And November 19th, Vladimir Kara-Murza. And hopefully, we will have the new series of events next semester as well. Thank you very much for coming.
David Hoffman:
Yeah, thank you.