Europe and the Indo-Pacific are growing closer—rightly and necessarily so.
Russia’s war against Ukraine, now in its fifth year, demonstrated very early on that nuclear threats have once more become a reality in Europe. Meanwhile, in the Indo-Pacific, China’s nuclear build-up is proceeding at a pace that Western intelligence agencies and security analysts had deemed unlikely only a few years back. Furthermore, in both regions, an increasing number of voices are speaking out in favor of acquiring nuclear weapons—from Warsaw to Seoul.
Hence, arms control and risk reduction are anything but relics from the Cold War. Both mechanisms are more urgently needed than ever. Yet, it is distressingly evident how little can be achieved in this regard right now.
Neither Russia, China nor North Korea are showing any willingness to (re-)engage in arms control talks or risk reduction measures: Moscow had suspended key agreements such as NEW START (which limited the number of strategic nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia) or abandoned them, such as the INF Treaty (which banned short and inter-mediate range missiles); Beijing, meanwhile, continues to reject any suggestions of having a dialogue over its arsenal; and Pyongyang shows no interest in limiting, never mind dismantling, a program it views as existential for the regime’s survival.
Consequently, strengthening deterrence postures across Europe and the Indo-Pacific must be the priority for the time being. Arms control and risk reduction should not fall by the wayside, however. After all, deterrence and arms control are two sides of the same coin, and always have been. Deterrence manages risk by raising the cost of aggression, arms control aims at rendering miscalculations less likely by ways of building trust and furthering transparency. Ideally, both need to be pursued in parallel, even if for now, deterrence must be prioritized.
A Perilous Simultaneity
What makes the current situation particularly worrisome is the simultaneity of different but connected developments.
In the Indo-Pacific, the United States is now supporting South Korea in its endeavor to carry out civilian uranium enrichment and reprocessing, in addition to building submarines powered by highly enriched uranium. While, formally speaking, these are civilian capabilities, they put in place the nuclear know-how necessary to markedly reduce the time span required to build an atomic bomb.
At the same time, Japan has been in possession of its own enrichment and reprocessing facilities without expressing serious aspirations toward “going nuclear”—not yet at least.
In Europe, meanwhile, Poland’s debate about the country’s desire to plug into NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement is growing. At the beginning of this year, France offered European partners the opportunity to participate, in some shape or form, in its national nuclear deterrent; Germany, inter alia, has accepted. There also have been media reports suggesting that Berlin has offered to help finance the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent.
These developments should not be considered in isolation. Rather, they ought to be viewed as symptoms of a deeper problem: crumbling confidence in the trustworthiness of US security guarantees, reinforced by Chinese and Russian (nuclear) miliary ramp-ups that are lacking transparency. Against such a backdrop, the temptation to hedge is clearly growing. This, in turn, is amplifying the risk of miscalculations, misunderstandings, and unintended escalation—both in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
China: Decisive, and Most Difficult
Unlike the US and Russia, China has never seriously engaged in arms control and is not interested in trilateral talks, due to the asymmetry of nuclear arsenals, when viewed from Beijing (China has approximately 620 nuclear warheads, while the US has 3,700 and Russia 4,400). However, in light of China’s rapid nuclear build-up, that argument becomes ever more unsound, increasing the need to involve China in some form.
At the same time, it is inconceivable that a comprehensive, treaty-based arms control architecture that includes China will be set up in the near-term future. Thus, it is all the more important to come up with feasible steps instead. For a start, Europeans in tandem with their Indo-Pacific partners should aim to exert pressure on China to at least participate in low-threshold confidence measures. Such activities could include the setting-up of functioning military hotlines, giving advance notifications of missile tests or exercises, and potentially establishing a regular working-level dialogue, starting bilaterally between the US and China.
Europe’s Contribution
This is where the Europeans could come in—with a resource that remains largely unused in the Indo-Pacific thus far: decades worth of hands-on experience in verification and confidence-building measures. For instance, Germany’s Bundeswehr Verification Center (ZVBW) has a long-standing and acknowledged history of building up expertise in monitoring troop movements, conducting inspections, and managing data exchange across the Euro-Atlantic space.
True, the ZVBW does not lend itself for operational tasks in the Indo-Pacific, given the lack of a treaty-based foundation (such as the Vienna Document) that such operations would need as a prerequisite. Yet, the added value lies in the transfer of knowledge and in raising awareness of the value of arms control and confidence-building measures. Questions and issues that should be considered in this context include building trust between mutually suspicious armed forces as well as the negotiation of verification mechanisms without turning them into a gateway for espionage.
In the longer run, a training cooperation that encompasses joint exercises, exchange programs, and simulations with armed forces and diplomats from countries in the Indo-Pacific, including the IP4 (NATO’s four partners in the Indo-Pacific, i.e., Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea) and other interested southeastern Asian states is conceivable. Such collaboration would aim at building the institutional capacity necessary for treaty-based agreements that could be concluded one day. Engaging in such activities will take time, which is precisely why cooperation should begin now.
Furthermore, Europeans together with their liked-minded Indo-Pacific partners should coordinate diplomatically to counter criticism directed at nuclear sharing as being in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime. They should jointly make the point that nuclear sharing is indeed a tool that is supporting non-proliferation.
An Urgent Task
One might justifiably reason that the Europeans already have enough on their plate, with a threatening Russia lurking at their doorstep. This view, however, papers over the fact of just how closely intertwined the security spaces in both regions have grown: North Korean troops are fighting against Ukraine, China is enabling Russia’s war (economically, if not technologically). In turn, Russia is supporting North Korea’s missile and nuclear program.
Against this backdrop, institutionalized risk reduction is gaining relevance as one way of containing potential escalating spirals. In lieu of treaty-based arrangements, establishing communication channels and organizing the transfer of know-how should be priorities. They will come in handy should an incident in the South China Sea or across the Taiwan Strait threaten to escalate one day.
The good news is that the Europeans don’t have to start from scratch. The question that needs answering now is whether they and their Indo-Pacific partners can come up with the political will that is necessary to put principles into practice.
Aylin Matlé is senior research fellow at the Center for Security and Defense at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).
