What We Talk About When We Talk About US-Russia Strategic Stability

ABSTRACT

Bilateral strategic stability between the United States and Russia is not a new concept, but it is one that is both evolving and contested. It faces two interrelated challenges that make its operationalization difficult today. First, as Michael Gerson has observed, it has “no single, universally accepted definition”, and there is little agreement on “which factors contribute to and detract from it”. Second, efforts to negotiate US-Russia bilateral arms control and risk reduction measures designed to advance strategic stability can become stymied as a result because negotiators lack a common goal. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine represents an inflection point for strategic stability on several levels. Against the backdrop of the impending expiration of New START and the arrival of what Andrew Futter and Benjamin Zala call a third nuclear age, policymakers in Washington and Moscow should seek to reach a shared understanding of what strategic stability is and does as a means to its operationalization. Recognizing the challenges to doing so, particularly in the current environment, this article outlines two-phased approach to strategic stability dialogue that is informed by a philosophy of Pragmatism and translated into policy through mechanisms like backcasting and threatcasting. Its objective is to aid both sides in disambiguating their conceptualization of strategic stability while prioritizing approaches that can strengthen its most desirable outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Strategic Stability
• Nuclear weapons
• Arms control
• United States
• Russia

Introduction

Bilateral US-Russia strategic stability today is what semiologists call an empty, or floating, signifier. It lacks a specific referent, allowing various meanings to be ascribed to it by different speakers (Lévi-Strauss 1987, 63–64). Because “few people would advocate instability in matters that involve nuclear weapons”, analyst Pavel Podvig has written, the concept of strategic stability enjoys support from diverse actors with otherwise very different perceived threats and priorities. Yet as Podvig also concludes, “the key elements of the concept [of strategic stability] are so poorly defined that it has no useful meaning and virtually no practical value” (Podvig 2012).

Part of the reason why bilateral strategic stability remains so ill-defined is that there is little agreement among key stakeholders on what its focus and scope should be. Indeed, as James Acton observes, citing Edward Warner, different actors conceive of strategic stability in different ways along a continuum from narrow to broad: “Most narrowly”, Acton writes, “strategic stability describes the absence of incentives to use nuclear weapons first (crisis stability) and the absence of incentives to build up a nuclear force (arms race stability)”. On the other end of the spectrum, meanwhile, the term is used much more broadly to denote “regional or global security environment in which states enjoy peaceful and harmonious relations” (Acton 2013, 117–118.)

Both across and within the US and Russian strategic communities, practitioners fall at different points along this continuum. In the United States, for example, former defense official Elbridge Colby has argued that “strategic stability should be understood to mean a situation in which no party has an incentive to use nuclear weapons save for vindication of its vital interests in extreme circumstances” [italics in original] (Colby 2013, 55). This limited definition contrasts sharply, however, with the much broader conception articulated by the US’s International Security Advisory Board. In a report from April 2016, this body described “the objective of multi-national strategic stability” as being to “reduce the chance that tensions lead to nuclear war, whether by deliberate decision or unintended escalation” (International Security Advisory Board 2016).

Similar divergences of view are evident within the Russian expert community, as well. While Academician Alexei Arbatov, at one end of the spectrum, defines strategic stability as a “strategic relationship that removes the incentive to launch a first nuclear strike” (Russia Matters 2021), Andrey Pavlov and Anastasia Malygina point to others who think that “the traditional understanding [of this term] is outdated and has lost its meaning” (Pavlov and Malygina 2020, 20). This latter view is reflected in Dmitri Trenin’s observation that “the geopolitical, technological, and psychological landscape that helped prevent war between the world’s nuclear powers has significantly changed” since the end of the Cold War, meaning that the “concept of and conditions for strategic stability have fundamentally changed as well” (Trenin 2019). It is also apparent in Pavel Zolotarev’s argument that

the existing approach to strategic stability based on sustaining the state of mutually assured destruction has already become an impediment to the bilateral nuclear weapons reduction regime and is completely unfit for the transition to a multilateral framework of nuclear arms negotiations (Zolotarev 2017).

In spite of these divergent views, however, policymakers in both the United States and Russia continue to describe strategic stability as what Mikhail Troitsky calls “a key shared objective that could form the basis for constructive dialogue” (Troitskiy 2021). On this basis, it is worth considering how the two sides could arrive at a clearer understanding of what strategic stability is and does as a first step toward curbing those technologies and behaviors both agree are destabilizing. With this goal in mind, this article outlines an approach to bilateral strategic stability dialogue that uses ideas associated with Pragmatism to explore what strategic stability and instability look like in real-world terms. It then highlights tools that practitioners in Washington and Moscow could use to identify measures that would limit the most likely pathways to instability based on this shared understanding.

The objective of the proposed approach is not to arrive at a new conception of US-Russian arms control altogether. On the contrary, the kinds of cooperation that would likely result from its implementation – legally binding, verifiable reductions of certain capabilities, transparency and confidence building measures, and mechanisms for reducing nuclear risk – have all been tried before and remain relevant today. Instead, its goal is to provide a basis for cooperation that is more responsive to what the two sides in fact perceive as destabilizing at a time when the future of arms control is uncertain and new security challenges abound. The hope in doing so is that the results will be more durable politically and more resilient to future crises in the relationship between Washington and Moscow.

With this as its backdrop, this article begins with an overview of recent US-Russia joint statements on strategic stability and why they provide a poor foundation for policy in an increasingly complex international environment. Then, it describes in detail the alternative approach to strategic stability dialogue summarized above and outlines how it can create space for limits on certain technologies and actions that traditional models cannot. In so doing, it addresses potential critiques of this approach, particularly in light of the current rupture in US-Russia relations. It concludes with an argument for why it is nevertheless worthy of consideration today, particularly at a time when multi-domain and multi-player challenges require new ways of thinking about this issue.

US-Russia Strategic Stability: A Recent History

Since the end of the Cold War, nearly every US and Russian leader has issued a joint statement that addresses the topic of strategic stability. In most cases, these statements are used to set the agenda for bilateral cooperation on nuclear and other security issues and to outline the broad objectives that negotiators will seek to achieve. In 1990, for instance, George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announced that they would pursue “new talks on strategic offensive arms, and on the relationship between strategic offensive and defensive arms” to

reduce further the risk of outbreak of war, particularly nuclear war, and to ensure strategic stability, transparency and predictability through further stabilizing reductions in the strategic arsenals of both countries (Office of the Press Secretary 1990).

A decade later, Vladimir Putin and Bill Clinton unveiled a much broader “Strategic Stability Cooperation Initiative” and implementation plan designed to “strengthening trust between the two sides” and advance the “further development of agreed measures to enhance strategic stability and to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, missiles and missile technologies worldwide” (Clinton and Putin 2000).

Shortly thereafter, in May 2002, George W. Bush and Putin delivered a joint declaration on their new “strategic” relationship, where they committed to advance “stability, security, and economic integration” through dialogue and cooperation on issues ranging from combatting terrorism to resolving regional conflicts to fighting organized crime (Bush and Putin 2002). In April 2009, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev similarly “resolved to work together to strengthen strategic stability, international security, and jointly meet contemporary global challenges” by pursuing arms control and engaging in cooperative activities relating to the global economic crisis, nonproliferation, terrorism, and regional challenges (Medvedev and Obama 2009). Most recently in June 2021, Joseph Biden and Putin articulated their “shared goals of ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere” and “reducing the risk of armed conflict and the threat of nuclear war” (Biden and Putin 2021). They also reaffirmed the Reagan-Gorbachev maxim that a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and launched an integrated strategic stability dialogue to “lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures” (Biden and Putin 2021).

What all of these statements have in common is their emphasis on the continued importance of strategic stability to US-Russia relations and bilateral arms control in the post-Cold War era. Where they diverge, however, is in their characterization of what strategic stability is and how to strengthen it. In line with the continuum of views Acton outlines, some focus narrowly on crisis stability or limits on strategic arms while others point to the importance of countering proliferation, fighting terrorism, and driving economic integration, among other issues. These objectives are then supported with concepts that are themselves subject to interpretation – such as predictability, security, transparency, and even stability itself – which provide a weak scaffolding upon which to build policy.

One particular deficiency of these joint statements is that they are of little use in determining whether a specific technology or behavior is “stabilizing” or “destabilizing”. Indeed, because they do not establish concretely what either stability or instability looks like in the bilateral context, it is difficult to say what factors may contribute to or detract from either. Consequently, the same technology or behavior can be considered either stabilizing or destabilizing depending on individual perspective. A good example in this regard is the US W76–2 low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, which either deters or encourages Russian and Chinese nuclear use depending on whom one asks.¹

Although these shortcomings have not prevented the United State and Russian Federation from concluding arms control agreements in the last 30 years, the emergence of new dual-use technologies with both military and non-military applications promises to make this process more challenging.² The same can be said of the “strategic non-nuclear weaponry and enabling technologies” that Andrew Futter and Benjamin Zala predict will define the coming third Nuclear Age (Futter and Zala 2021, 275). Indeed, as Futter and Zala anticipate, these developments will precipitate “a transition to a new and deeply challenging period in the management of strategic stability and global order involving both nuclear and non-nuclear dangers” (Futter and Zala 2021, 259). This evolving environment creates new imperatives for Russian and American policymakers try to reach a clearer shared understanding of what strategic stability is that takes these multi-domain threats into account.

Another challenge with which policymakers must contend in this regard is the multi-player nature of the current threat landscape. In contrast with the past, the United States and Russia can no longer afford to ignore the other nuclear powers – especially China – in understanding strategic stability or identifying ways to strengthen it. This shift has not escaped US Strategic Command, which – facing “two peer nuclear-capable opponents at the same time, who have to be deterred differently”—has already begun “rewriting deterrence theory” in response (Copp 2022). These developments support Robert Legvold and Christopher Chyba’s observation that “the world has entered a new nuclear era whose characteristics and challenges differ markedly from those of the Cold War” (Legvold and Chyba 2020, 6).

Talking About Strategic Stability

The collapse of the most recent iteration of the US-Russia strategic stability dialogue in early 2022, while unfortunate, creates space for new approaches that can more effectively address the challenges outlined above. At the same time, however, it also shows why these efforts are needed in light of the differences it revealed between the US and Russian conceptions of strategic stability. Indeed, although Biden and Putin emphasized the importance of “ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere” in their June 2021 statement, individual remarks by both US and Russian officials during this same period pointed to sharp divisions in their interpretation of this goal. As Biden himself explained, his priority was on controlling “new and dangerous and sophisticated weapons … that reduce the times of response, that raise the prospects of accidental war” (Biden 2021), whereas Moscow hoped to conduct “a joint review of each other’s security concerns” and identify approaches “to address these concerns … including through arms control solutions” (Ryabkov 2021).

Although these differences did not prevent the two sides from establishing interagency working groups on “Principles and Objectives for Future Arms Control” and “Capabilities and Actions with Strategic Effects”, they did make it difficult for them to find common ground (US Department of State 2021). As head of the Russian delegation Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov indicated following the first meeting of the working groups, “it is no surprise that the dialogue proves that the two sides have many discords, disagreements, and contradictory views on things and only a few points of convergence” (Bugos 2021). Among the most contentious issues under discussion related to the scope of a future follow-on treaty to New START. Whereas the United States sought an agreement that would “capture new kinds of intercontinental-range nuclear delivery systems”; “address all nuclear warheads” including non-strategic; and “retain New START limits on Russian strategic delivery systems” (Jenkins 2021), Russia hoped for a “package of interrelated arrangements” to include limits on both missile defense and strategic offensive arms (Ryabkov 2021).

Further exemplifying and exacerbating the distance between the two sides was a proposal issued by Russia in early December 2021 that the working group on strategic effects address “security guarantees for Russia through the non-advancement of NATO to the east” (TASS 2021). Shortly thereafter, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affair released the texts of two draft treaties it had forwarded to the Biden administration, which would have obligated the United States and NATO not to admit new members while preventing NATO from deploying forces outside the 1997 area of deployment (Alberque 2022). The United States and NATO issued their own counterproposals in response, which did signal their readiness to discuss a number of transparency and confidence-building measures including those designed to “confirm the absence of Tomahawk cruise missiles at Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland” in exchange for “reciprocal transparency measures on two ground-launched missile bases of U.S. choosing in Russia” (Arms Control Today 2022). Nevertheless, neither the United States nor NATO was prepared to bow to Russia’s demands regarding the expansion of the Alliance into Eastern Europe, which policymakers in both Washington and Brussels characterized as non-starters (CNBC 2021).

The third and final meeting of the Strategic Stability Dialogue – an extraordinary session on January 10^th 2022—was convened against the backdrop of Russia’s military buildup along its border with Ukraine. When Russia launched its unprovoked invasion on February 24th, the dialogue process was immediately suspended (Price 2022). As State Department spokesperson Ned Price explained at the time, the purpose of the suspension was to “change on an urgent basis Moscow’s behavior” (Business Standard 2022; Price 2022). To date, there has been no indication of when or if dialogue might resume.

A New Approach to Defining and Operationalizing US-Russia Strategic Stability

It is impossible to say whether the strategic stability dialogue process described above would ultimately have “lay[ed] the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures” had Russia not launched its invasion of Ukraine (Biden and Putin 2021). What is certain, however, is that efforts to do so will be significantly more difficult now than they were prior to 24 February 2022. Against this backdrop, it is timely to consider how a subsequent iteration of the strategic stability dialogue could be restructured to form a more effective basis for arms control moving forward. Although it remains unclear whether such dialogue might be possible or what the state of US-Russia relations will be at that time, the challenges posed by the new nuclear era create imperatives to try.

Were the strategic stability dialogue to resume, a priority task on its agenda should be reaching a more concrete and shared understanding of what strategic stability is and does. While the historical record does show that it is not essential for US and Russian perspectives on this issue to be identical in order for arms control to proceed, the need for greater clarity on both sides is underscored by the contradictory way in which Russia’s war against Ukraine can be seen as evidence for or against the existence of stability. Indeed, for those who define the concept narrowly, the fact that nuclear weapons have not been used in the conflict thus far may suggest that strategic stability remains relatively robust. For those who espouse a broader view of this concept, meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting crisis in US-Russia relations indicates precisely the opposite. To Benjamin Jensen (2022) who makes a related observation about the perceived success or failure of bilateral deterrence, “the war in Ukraine demonstrates the need for the concept of integrated deterrence to move beyond platitudes about technology and partners”. To those concerned with the operationalization of strategic stability, meanwhile, these circumstances point to the need for a clearer understanding of this concept if it is to serve as a basis for meaningful policy in the future.

Phase 1: Pragmatic Dialogue

How could the United States and Russia reach such an understanding given the many different interpretations of strategic stability that abound in Washington and Moscow? A valuable first step would be for the two sides to engage in a dialogue process focused on describing strategic stability using real world referents rather than concepts that lack an agreed definition. With this in mind, instead of resuming talks within the two working groups on “Principles and Objectives for Future Arms Control” and “Capabilities and Actions with Strategic Effects”, Russian and American policymakers could usefully form two new working groups to discuss the following questions:

1. What would the international security landscape look like if strategic stability were achieved?; and

2. What would the international security landscape look like if strategic stability were absent?

The process of answering these questions would help policymakers on both sides to disambiguate the concept of strategic stability by focusing their discussion on its observable impacts and effects. The results would offer a clearer understanding of what they mean by strategic stability and where their views overlap that better lends itself to operationalization. For example, if Russian and American policymakers both identified cyberattacks on command, control, and communication systems as an indication of a strategically unstable international environment, this insight would provide a firmer basis for future arms control efforts than an agreement on the importance of “predictability in the strategic sphere” (Biden and Putin 2021). Furthermore, as this example suggests, refocusing the dialogue in this way would allow for a discussion of the multi-domain and multi-player challenges identified previously, which should inform the US-Russia arms control agenda moving forward.

In seeking to define strategic stability as a function of its effects, it would be useful for both the participants in this dialogue process to consider complex hypothetical developments and what they might indicate about the state of stability or instability. With respect to bilateral relations, these could include, for instance:

• US-Russia disengagement in areas like nonproliferation – including at times when no non-nuclear weapon States are actively pursuing nuclear weapons;

• US or Russian violations of arms control agreements – even if these violations do not afford either side any significant military advantages;

• The use of nuclear threats – short of nuclear use – for either compellence or immediate deterrence purposes;

• The emergence of a world without legally binding bilateral US-Russia arms control treaties – whether or not the two sides are engaged in arms racing; or

• The initiation or suspension of dialogue on strategic stability itself,

among many others. The utility of this approach is supported by James Johnson’s persuasive analysis of what he calls “future counterfactuals” in “shaping and informing policy choices” (Johnson 2022, 22). As he writes, “Counterfactuals that foster creative thinking and encourage open minds – those that challenge the ‘official future’”—can “force policymakers to consider uncomfortable discontinuities (or ‘plausible’ or ‘realistic’ futures) that may run contrary to the political and social Zeitgeist or prevailing theoretical canon” (Johnson 2022, 10).

The value of discussing strategic stability in this manner is further reinforced by the literature on Pragmatism, a term that is used colloquially to mean “realistic” but which has a specific meaning in philosophy (Ansell and Boin 2019, 1083). Indeed, James Kloppenberg describes the goal of the founders of Pragmatism, including William James and John Dewey, as being “to reorient philosophy away from interminable and fruitless debates by insisting that ideas should be tested in practice” (Kloppenberg 1996, 101). While, for James (1907, 45) this meant, “interpret[ing] each notion by tracing its respective practical consequence”, for another Pragmatist – Charles Peirce – this philosophy could be distilled into a single maxim:

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object (Peirce 1934, 402).

Peirce’s maxim was rooted in his contention that “The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol” (Peirce 1999, 346). Put differently by Kloppenberg, Peirce and other early Pragmatists sought to determine whether any given notion was “consistent with the evidence we have of others’ lived experience, and will it make a difference in our lives?” (Kloppenberg 1996, 136). In so doing, they followed several key principles including that of “fallibilism”, which Festenstein (2021, 3) describes as “the idea that all opinions are in principle open to criticism and revision”. Correspondingly, the implementation of a Pragmatic approach to any issue – including strategic stability – entails not only the disambiguation of concepts by focusing on their practical effects but also a readiness to refine previously held beliefs on the basis of the results.

While little has been written about the means by which Pragmatism can be incorporated into foreign policymaking, let alone strategic stability dialogue, its relevance to the field of International Relations is well established. Indeed, Dewey is often credited today with founding the field of contemporary political science, although this characterization should be treated critically given the manner in which his contributions were dismissed by his contemporaries (Farr 1999, 520–541). Still, a later resurgence of interest in Pragmatism for bridging the divide between theory and practice led to the emergence of a pragmatic turn in IR beginning in the first decade of the 2000s (Cochran 2012). The resulting body of work reinforces James Bohman’s observation that Pragmatism’s emphasis on real world implications makes it the natural ally of social science “whose main practical contribution … is to supply methods for identifying and solving problems” (Bohman 2002, 499).

Among the few contemporary scholars who have attempted to use Pragmatism as a tool for policy development and implementation is Ian Sanderson. Drawing upon Dewey’s assertion that “philosophy must become ‘an outlook upon future possibilities with reference to attaining the better and averting the worse’” (Sanderson 2009, 709), he has articulated an approach to “intelligent” policymaking that prioritizes “experimentation and learning” (Sanderson 2009, 713). The utility of Pragmatism in this regard is further reinforced by the work of Chris Ansell and Arjen Boin, who find that is well suited to addressing dynamic and “unruly problems” such as strategic crises (Ansell and Boin 2019, 1080). As they argue, Pragmatism can help to improve outcomes in this area through its emphasis on adaptation to complexity, avoiding of “self-imposed dichotomies”, a willingness to experiment, and “exploiting available resources” (Ansell and Boin 2019, 1088–1089).

Despite these benefits, however, Pragmatism has yet to be used explicitly as a tool to strengthen strategic stability. Nevertheless, examples from the canon show how it could point toward arms control measures that might be otherwise be overlooked. In this regard, it is useful to compare Thomas Schelling’s initial exploration of the idea of strategic stability, which appears in his 1958 study, “The Reciprocal Fear of Surprise Attack” with his later description of the “balance of deterrence”, which he developed with Morton Halperin in 1961. In part because the latter focuses on the practical effects of mutual deterrence in real world, observable terms, rather than concepts with no fixed definition, it opens the door to more potential areas for joint work than the former.

While Schelling does not use the term strategic stability in his 1958 study, he does explore how rational actors could be driven to strike first by a fear of being stricken (Wilson 2021, 171–172). In so doing, he describes stability as a situation in which there is “no ‘fundamental’ basis for an attack by either side” because “the gains from even successful surprise are less desired than no war at all” (Schelling 1958, 1). Consequently, he argues, stability would be strengthened if the two sides could agree “to design forces that have no surprise-attack potential, but instead improve vulnerability to surprise attack” (Schelling 1958, 1). Doing so, however, would require them to define concepts like “surprise attack potential” and vulnerability; to share an understanding of what constitutes a gain relative to a loss; and to agree on which military capabilities should be eliminated or controlled on this basis.³

Three years after Schelling’s initial study, in contrast, he and Halperin offered a more descriptive definition of strategic stability that points to additional areas for cooperation with fewer prerequisites. This time using the term “balance of deterrence”, they outlined a scenario in which

political events, internal or external to the countries involved, technological change, accidents, false alarms, misunderstandings, crises, limited wars, or changes in the intelligence available to both sides, are unlikely to disturb the incentives sufficiently to make mutual deterrence fail (Schelling and Halperin 1961, 50).

Unlike with Schelling’s conceptual definition from 1958, this version uses practical effects to define stability, suggesting a much wider range of policy measures that could strengthen it, such as transparency and confidence building measures, means of crisis communication, and mutual restraint. It is not difficult to imagine how this line of thinking informed Schelling and Halperin’s definition of arms control as

… all the forms of military cooperation between potential enemies in the interest of reducing the likelihood of war, its scope and violence if it occurs, and the political and economic costs of being prepared for it (Schelling and Halperin 1961, 2).

Outside of the deterrence and arms control literature, the historical record also offers numerous examples in which progress at the negotiating table was made possible by approaches that borrow elements of Pragmatism. A useful case study in this regard is the negotiation of the 1992 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) and the challenges NATO and the Warsaw Pact faced in delineating the scope of military aircraft it would cover. As Richard Falkenrath has described, one particularly thorny issue had to do with defining which helicopters would count against the treaty ceiling given the wide range of military operations where rotary wing aircraft might be used (Falkenrath 1995, 91). Correspondingly, initial attempts to negotiate ceilings on so-called combat helicopters were unsuccessful because this terminology subsumed helicopters that neither side wanted to limit, such as those for transplanting supplies and medical evacuees (Garrett 1991, 59).

Yet, as James Garrett has written, determining how to overcome this issue was no easy feat because “it is difficult to define unambiguously a class of helicopters within a broader category” (Garrett 1991, 59). Ultimately, the two sides identified a way forward through the adoption of a descriptive term – “attack helicopters”—which had not been used by either the USSR or NATO previously. Attack helicopters, which were further distinguished from “combat support helicopters”, included “all armed helicopters that employ anti-armor or air-to-air guided weapons through an integrated fire control and aiming system” (Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1991). By both identifying, following Peirce (1934, 402) the “practical bearings” of the helicopters in question and refining their initial terminology on this basis – exemplifying fallibilism (Festenstein 2021, 3) – the two sides were ultimately able to reach an agreement on this issue.

As this historical example shows, describing the practical effects of ambiguous concepts can lead to arms control progress. Indeed, this is, on some level, the rationale behind the P5 Glossary of Key Nuclear Terms, a project that the NPT nuclear weapon States initiated in 2009 (Hoell and Persbo 2020, 13). While the glossary has been dismissed by many in the international community as having minimal utility for arms control, P5 officials have explained that it

came out of the experience of bilateral treaty negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is about narrowing the gap between different interpretations of the same term. This is the nuts and bolts technical work to make disarmament work (Hoell and Persbo 2020, 13).

It is interesting to note, however, that neither the 2015 version nor its 2022 update include an entry for strategic stability.

Phase 2: Translating Pragmatism into Policy-Relevant Action

As the analysis above demonstrates, a Pragmatic definition of strategic stability would be more useful than the conceptual definitions on which most US and Russian policymakers rely because it would lend itself better to identifying policy measures that will enhance it. But how can the two sides then determine what these measures should be? The second phase of proposed dialogue process would entail working backwards from the clearer understanding of strategic stability derived in Phase 1 to explore ways to limit those factors that are destabilizing and enhance those that are not. In this regard, it echoes Futter and Zala’s recommendation to outline the most likely and dangerous “pathways to nuclear use” and use these to identify policies that would “minimize the associated risks rather than focusing on specific technologies” (Futter and Zala 2021, 276).

This approach builds upon those that have been used effectively to identify and implement concrete policy measures in other areas such as sustainability. One of these – backcasting—is what Simon Bibri (2018, 10) describes as “a strategic problem-solving framework, in the quest for the answers to how to reach specified outcomes in the future”. Especially relevant in this regard is Natalie Vanatta and Brian David Johnson’s description of how backcasting can be integrated into a larger process called threatcasting, which seeks to “more accurately envision military futures and enable clear and measurable actions” (Vanatta and David Johnson 2019, 80). Threatcasting is an especially promising tool for translating shared understandings of strategic stability into action because it provides a “way to model the evolving battlespace to develop future strategies and solutions in support of multi-domain operations” (Vanatta and David Johnson 2019, 87).

Vanatta and Johnson’s threatcasting approach comprises the following sequential steps, which could usefully be incorporated into the dialogue process proposed here: The first is “research synthesis”, where both sides learn from subject matter experts about future challenges; the second is “futurecasting”, which “yields a more effects-based model that ultimately explores the threat in greater depth”; and the third is “time phased, alternative-action definition”, where participants “work backwards in time from their one established future and to identify what could be done to disrupt, mitigate, and/or recover from their defined threat” (Vanatta and David Johnson 2019, 84). When pursued in order, Vanatta and Johnson argue, these three steps yield a “’whole of society’ approach that provides clear and measurable actions to take”. They find that this process also encourages “collaboration and innovation” between different stakeholders – a necessity for adversaries to arrive at cooperative diplomatic approaches to complex security challenges (Vanatta and David Johnson 2019, 85).

Alongside activities like “War gaming, simulations, and red teaming”, which Futter and Zala (2021, 276) recommend, Phase 2 of the proposed dialogue could usefully incorporate the threatcasting approach above as a means to move from a pragmatic description of strategic stability’s effects to policies that can bring them about. An example of an area in which this combined approach could prove useful relates to lower-level conventional conflicts between the United States and Russia, either direct or indirect, and what they say about the state of bilateral strategic stability. While proponents of rational deterrence theory argue that strategic stability encourages adversaries to avoid initiating conflicts that could escalate, others contend that stability on a strategic level can make lower level conflict more likely (Snyder 1965, 185–201). The latter argument – which has been formalized as the stability-instability paradox⁴—has been brought to the fore as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; indeed, as Caitlin Talmadge wrote shortly after the war broke out, Putin’s nuclear threats were likely “intended as a shield to keep the West out of Russia’s conventional operations” in hopes that the “danger of nuclear war may keep nuclear powers from fighting an all-out war because they fear it would escalate” (Talmadge 2022).

If US and Russian policymakers determine in Phase 1 that lower-level conflicts are either an undesirable indication of strategic stability or a sign of its absence, working backward from this conclusion may highlight the importance of conventional arms control as one area of mutual interest for discussion and negotiation. Without prejudging the outcome of these discussions, efforts in this regard could usefully focus on measures designed to reduce the risk of conventional escalation or surprise attack. These could include Alexander Graef’s recommendation “that existing obligations related to notifying and observing military equipment be extended to include … long-range strike capabilities, naval forces (with long range strike capabilities), transport and logistic capacities, and A2/AD capabilities”. They could also include his suggestion for “banning (training and snap) exercises or limiting their size” which could help to avoid misperceptions and misinterpretations that could precipitate conventional escalation (Graef 2021, 238).

Challenges to Implementation

Although there is much to recommend the two-phased approach outlined here, there are also a number of critiques that could be leveled against it, both in terms of its impact and its execution. One is that a focus on the practical effects of strategic stability by no means guarantees that the United States and Russia will agree upon what these are. Indeed, just as is the case with longstanding disagreements over the scope of strategic stability, the two sides could similarly identify different indications that it exists – raising the prospect that this approach would not advance its operationalization beyond what has been achieved already. On the contrary, this approach could even reveal new areas of disagreement that could further inhibit the implementation of bilateral arms control and risk reduction measures as a result.

While this may be the case, it is important to emphasize that the objective of this approach, and of Pragmatism more generally, is not to resolve all areas of disagreement among two parties in a debate. Rather, it is to clarify areas of misunderstanding, disagreement between them and, in this case, agreement by identifying real-world manifestations of ambiguous and amorphous concepts. As Monica Prasad describes in her assessment of Pragmatism as a tool for problem-solving in sociology, its utility is that it helps to turn “normative questions into analytical questions” (Prasad 2021, 11). Arriving at a shared consensus about how to answer them is therefore not a requirement for this approach to helpfully inform policy implementation.

A second critique of this approach is that it will not necessarily assist the two sides in identifying new tools for strengthening strategic stability that have not been proposed or explored previously. Indeed, to extend a hypothetical considered earlier, if policymakers find that a breakdown in US-Russia engagement in shared interest areas like nonproliferation is an indication of the absence of strategic stability, a policy remedy could entail efforts to revive cooperation in this domain. Possible means by which to do so have been written about extensively, including by this author (Potter and Bidgood 2018). With this in mind, it could be argued that this approach does little to move the implementation of strategic stability beyond what has been tried before.

Although this may also be true, a benefit to introducing Pragmatism into US-Russia dialogue on this issue is that would help policymakers determine which policy solutions to prioritize in their efforts to strengthen it through approaches like backcasting and threatcasting. Indeed, by defining strategic stability in terms of its practical effects in Phase 1, the two sides will emerge with a clearer idea of those tools which should be applied first in order to do so – and the areas where sufficient agreement exists for progress in the current context. In addition, this approach could further point to the utility of some mechanisms for strengthening strategic stability that have not been considered recently. Examples might include the implementation of parallel unilateral arms control and risk reduction measures, which helped advance arms control during the period of deep US-Soviet mistrust which followed the Cuban Missile Crisis and which could similarly prove useful today when legally binding agreements will be difficult to legitimate (Tannenwald 2020, 205–211; Bidgood 2021, 1–19).

A third critique of this approach is that it may be challenging to implement in a policymaking setting because its very premise requires that participants be open to, and capable of, revising their positions in real time. This is because, as described earlier, the execution of a Pragmatic approach should be conducted in line with the principle of fallibilism, meaning that the interaction between observable phenomena and concepts should lead to a reconsideration of those concepts in response. In contrast, diplomatic negotiators are tasked with representing and promoting the positions of their government and may have little latitude to be flexible in real time because they must communicate with backstoppers in their capitals. Indeed, as Paul Meerts writes, the “almost emotional dimension of the empowered negotiator of a country is often an obstacle in searching for and finding the most rational and effective solution for differences” (Meerts 2015, 63–64).

One way to mitigate this challenge would be for both the United States and Russia to undertake a separate, but parallel, Pragmatic examination of their views on strategic stability prior to engaging in discussions with one another. This approach would enable the two sides to form coherent initial views on the signs of strategic stability and its policy implications that could subsequently be refined through bilateral dialogue. Another approach, which could be pursued simultaneously, would be to convene the kind of strategic stability dialogue process described here at an unofficial Track 1.5 level. The benefits to doing so are twofold: First, as Staats, Walsh, and Tucci (2019) describe, this format would “provide a platform for government officials to discuss sensitive issues in their personal capacity” while enabling them to “solicit feedback on ‘trial balloon’ policy ideas and alternate approaches, so that they can be refined and improved before they feed into the official policy process”. Second, engaging nongovernmental actors including, especially, scholars into this dialogue could facilitate the integration of an inherently academic approach into the process of policy identification and negotiation.

A fourth critique of this approach is that, because arms control is driven or constrained by a host of factors besides security considerations, a clearer understanding of strategic stability may not on its own influence arms control outcomes significantly. This view is reinforced by scholarship which shows that many internal and external factors determine if cooperation in this sensitive area occurs, the form it takes, and whether or not it is legitimated. One example in this regard is Robert Putnam’s writing on the two-level game, which speaks to the influence of domestic politics on negotiations between states (Putnam 1988, 427–480). Another is Lesley Kucharski, et al’.s analysis of the successful negotiation of the US-Soviet draft radiological convention in the 1970s, which shows indirectly that arms control is often more possible when both sides have already determined that a technology is not useful to them from a military perspective (Kucharski, Bidgood, and Warnke 2018, 187–216).

While it is certainly true that these and other factors influence the success or failure of arms control, the documentary record also shows that some of the most significant nuclear agreements in history were motivated by perceived threats. For instance, US president Ronald Reagan – on whose watch negotiations on both the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties began – spoke frequently about what he saw as the dangers that ballistic missiles posed to humanity. As he said in 1982, for instance, the primary reason why he sought to reduce or eliminate these delivery systems was because they were “the most destabilizing” and “the most frightening”, given that “once that button is pushed, there is no defense; there is no recall. And it’s a matter of minutes, and the missiles reach the other country” (Reagan 1982). As this example suggests, a clearer understanding of what capabilities and behaviors the two sides consider to be destabilizing today would likewise be helpful in driving arms control forward.

The fifth, and perhaps most significant, critique of this approach, however, relates to its feasibility in an environment marked by deep mistrust and enemy images. Indeed, in order for Pragmatism to advance dialogue on strategic stability beyond what has proven possible previously, both the United States and Russia must be interested and prepared to engage genuinely to better understanding one another’s perspectives. It is difficult to say if or when this condition will be met in the near-to-midterm. On the contrary, in an environment in which emotions like anger and mutual acrimony abound, it is easy to imagine how a discussion of the absence of stability in particular could devolve into an argument over who is responsible for this state of affairs.

While certainly true, this is not a deficiency of the approach outlined here, but rather of the current security environment as a whole. Indeed, if negotiations between the United States and Russia on any topic are to succeed, they will require both sides to exhibit some degree of empathy and willingness to compromise to advance perceived mutual interests. The historical record shows that neither will follow automatically from the end of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Instead, it suggests instead that there could be a period of time in which the state of relations, paradoxically, grows worse – to the detriment of arms control, risk reduction, and other aspects of nuclear diplomacy (Sokov 2022; Larson 1997, 107–154).

Conclusions

This article has described a two-phased approach to disambiguating the concept of bilateral US-Russia strategic stability that is informed by a philosophy of Pragmatism and operationalized through interrelated processes including war gaming, backcasting, and threatcasting. It has argued that this approach is necessary because of the deficiencies of existing definitions of strategic stability, which are underspecified, highly divergent, and of little use in determining whether various technologies and behaviors are stabilizing or destabilizing. It has explained why it is necessary to address these deficiencies in the interest of advancing US-Russia arms control. It has underscored the imperative to explore such alternative approaches today in light of the onset of a new nuclear era and the multi-domain, multi-player challenges that will characterize it.

Although there remain many unknowns relating to the trajectory of Russia’s war against Ukraine, its duration, and the state of US-Russia relations in its aftermath, exploring alternate approaches to the operationalization of strategic stability like this one is timely. Indeed, there are risks to leaving dialogue on this issue and, consequently, the follow-on negotiations that should flow from it, paused for too long. A lengthy break will allow domestic political opposition to US-Russia engagement to calcify even further in both the United States and Russia, introducing barriers to resuming dialogue even when the international environment is more conducive. These views are likely to become more entrenched, not less, as time wears on.

Another, more pressing concern associated with leaving the strategic stability dialogue on hold pertains to the future of US-Russia nuclear arms control more broadly. Indeed, although Presidents Biden and Putin agreed in 2021 to extend New START for five years, many observers have called for negotiations on a follow-on treaty to begin early, recognizing the challenges the two sides will face in reaching and legitimating it. Russia’s February 2023 decision to “suspend participation” in New START makes this task even more urgent. Indeed, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has already indicated that he considers it “quite a possible scenario” that the treaty will expire in 2026 without a replacement (Faulconbridge 2023).

If the two sides are to forestall this outcome, they will need to act quickly to resume their strategic stability dialogue once the opportunity arises. As Pifer (2022) has observed, the suspension of the last round of strategic stability talks means that “the sides would have little time to conclude a treaty, let alone for the Senate to discuss ratification, before the U.S. political season cranks up in 2024”. To this end, proposals such as the one described here are worth developing now in the interest of being prepared with a menu of options that could be implemented if and when the moment arrives. While it is impossible to predict when this might occur, or what the state of US-Russia relations will be at that time, this modest approach, if applied, could help reestablish some fundamental principles in an area that both sides – at least rhetorically – continue to describe as a priority.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance under the Trump administration has argued that the W76–2 low yield warhead “lowers the risk of nuclear war by reinforcing extended deterrence and assurance” (Office of Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security 2020, 4). As Perkovich (2020) points out, however, and as the State Department paper also acknowledges, critics of this argument believe that Russia would not be able to distinguish an incoming low yield nuclear weapon from a high yield weapon and, assuming the worst case, would likely respond massively.

² Numerous examples are identified in a 2019 issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies which focuses on emerging technologies and strategic stability. These include additive manufacturing, lethal autonomous weapons, hypersonic glide vehicles, and developments associated with the Information Revolution (Sechser, Narang, and Talmage 2019).

³ The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and SALT Interim Offensive Accord appear to have met this high bar.

⁴ The notion of a stability-instability paradox remains contested among both scholars and practitioners. Mark Bell and Nicholas Miller found in 2015 for instance, that “symmetric nuclear dyads are not less likely to fight wars, nor significantly more likely to engage in low-level conflicts than nonnuclear dyads” (Bell and Miller 2015, 86).