It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.
COVID 19 and Labor Demand, Migration, and Military Force Structure Implications in East Asia
Brian Nichiporuk
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project
Brian Nichiporuk is a senior political scientist at The RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. He has worked on research projects for the U.S. Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense during his RAND career. His current research focuses on the following areas: Russian military capabilities and vulnerabilities, the effects of demographic trends in the Middle East and East Asia upon regional security, and the assessment of anti-access threats to the U.S. military around the world. Dr. Nichiporuk has authored or co-authored many RAND reports, including “The Security Dynamics of Demographic Factors” (2000) (sole author) and “Trends in Russia’s Armed Forces: An Overview of Budgets and Capabilities” (2019) (co-author). He has worked in the Pentagon as an IPA Fellow in the Programs and Evaluation Directorate of Headquarters U.S. Air Force. Brian has a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
The Covid 19 pandemic has thus far not had the same direct health impact in East Asia as it has had in Europe and the US as death and infection rates have been lower in the major East Asian states. Nevertheless, the pandemic has the potential to have major second order effects in East Asia, especially if it continues for a long time.
One of the defining features of the large East Asian states today is their demography. All of them (China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea) have aging populations, low fertility rates, and low, or even negative, population growth. All of these states currently allow only low levels of immigration, which do not substantially increase their working age populations. East Asia’s demographic characteristics will have an impact upon the nature of any long-term regional implications of the Covid 19 crisis.
This paper takes a high level look at the potential long-term implications of the Covid 19 crisis in East Asia by using the demographic lens to examine three areas: impacts on labor markets, possible mass migration scenarios, and the effect on regional militaries. In the area of labor markets, the paper argues that Covid will compel most East Asian states to find new ways of utilizing their older workers and to increase the flexibility of their labor markets. In the area of mass migration, the paper examines possible scenarios having to do with North Korean state collapse and urban-rural migration trends in China. Finally, in the military sphere, the paper argues that the Covid crisis could significantly affect nuclear weapons security protocols in the region, the manpower and personnel policies of certain militaries, and the frequency, scope, and size of major exercises.
Keywords
East Asian demography, Population aging in East Asia, East Asian security, East Asian militaries, Japan, China, South Korea, North Korea, East Asian labor markets, international migration, Chinese internal migration, Covid 19, Covid 19 in East Asia, Covid 19 and international security, nuclear weapons security, pandemics and international security, military personnel policies, military exercises, Covid 19 and defense budgets, Chinese nuclear forces, North Korean nuclear forces, North Korean state collapse scenarios, East Asian fertility rates, Unemployment rates in East Asia
Full text (PDF) is here.
It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.
An Alternative to Nuclear Deadlock and Stalled Diplomacy – Proposals, Pathways, and Prospects for the Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone
Michael Hamel-Green
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project
Michael Hamel-Green is Emeritus Professor in Social Inquiry in the College of Arts, Victoria University Melbourne, Australia. He was previously the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development at Victoria University; and taught in in international security, conflict resolution, and community development subjects.
The current nuclear deadlock with North Korea remains unresolved as the initially promising 2018-2019 three-way diplomacy between the DPRK, US and ROK stalls. More widely in Northeast Asia, nuclear confrontation between China and the US is mounting, with increased deployment of nuclear-weapon-capable forces in and around the region, including land and sea-based missiles, missile defence systems, and deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons on mobile platforms. The paper proposes that an alternative to continuing nuclear escalation, and the increasing threat of a nuclear catastrophe, does exist in the shape of a phased establishment of a regional Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ) negotiated in tandem with a regional comprehensive security agreement. The comprehensive security agreement would involve a final peace settlement of the Korean War, establishment of a regional security forum, economic and energy assistance to the DPRK, and legally binding security guarantees for the NWFZ from the US, China, and Russia. The paper discusses the precedents of successful NWFZ establishment in other regions, and the history of past proposals for such a zone in Northeast Asia. It examines the special NWFZ features that would be required in this region, including the need for rigorous verification of the dismantlement of existing nuclear weapons and facilities in the DPRK, a Korean War peace settlement, a flexible NWFZ entry into force mechanism that gives time for DPRK to assess the security guarantee benefits of the NWFZ zone, and provisions for preventing forward deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons within the region. The paper concludes by presenting NEANWFZ proposals emerging from a recent Northeast Asian workshop of regional experts, and identifying potential pathways, advocates, and prospects for its successful negotiation in the current global context.
Keywords
Nuclear weapons free zones, treaties, allies, prohibition, disarmament, arms control, Northeast Asia, DPRK, Korea, China, Russia, United States, diplomacy
Full text (PDF) is here.
It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.
Extended Deterrence and Extended Nuclear Deterrence in a Pandemic World
Allan Behm
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project
Allan Behm is Head, International and Security Affairs Program, The Australia Institute, Canberra, Australia. Allan spent 30 years in the Australian Public Service, as a member of the Australian diplomatic service, the Prime Minister’s Department, the Department of Defence and the Attorney General’s Department. He specialised in international relations, defence strategy, counter-terrorism and law enforcement policy, and more recently, climate change.
‘Extended deterrence’ and ‘extended nuclear deterrence’, as US security guarantees provided to allies, are artefacts of over six decades of US-led policy and planning. No other Nuclear Weapon State offers such guarantees. In the early post-WW2 years, extended deterrence used the overwhelming conventional military power of the US to deter armed aggression (particularly from the USSR) against its allies. The development of atomic weapons by the USSR and China, and the potential threat that such weapons might have posed for allies, expanded the scope of “extended deterrence” to include deterrence of possible nuclear weapon threats.
Deterrence relies on an aggressor’s uncertainty whether the third party providing the deterrent will provide the overwhelming military power to defeat aggression, and whether the cost of defeat will outweigh the benefit of victory. In other words, is deterrence a bluff or a guarantee?
In recent decades, the credibility of extended deterrence, including extended nuclear deterrence, has continued to decline. The fragility of the deterrence doctrine was already evident before the appearance of the coronavirus. But President Trump’s mercurial approach to the coronavirus pandemic and international agreements has encouraged the allies of the US to look at their national security through the lens of his approach to the coronavirus. If the US cannot effectively protect itself against the coronavirus, how can it protect its allies?
Deterrence is a faith-based system. There is no evidence that it works. The logic of deterrence ultimately depends on its failure: the conduct of warfare on a massive scale.
Keywords
Nuclear weapons, extended deterrence, nuclear umbrella, credibility, trust, leadership, alliances
Full text (PDF) is here.
It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.
Pandemics
C G Nicholas Mascie-Taylor and K Moji
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project
Nick Mascie-Taylor is Professor of Human Population Biology and Health and Director of Research in Global Health at the University of Cambridge, UK and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He has served as President or Vice-President of the European Anthropological Association for nearly 20 years and is an Overseas Fellow of the Hungarian National Academy of Science. Nick has been running, monitoring and evaluating nutrition and health related surveys both from a research perspective and to formulate government policy in South Asia and Africa for over 40 years. He has considerable experience in analysing data and has been running basic and advanced data handling training programmes for Department for International Development (DFID), The British Council, Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and The World Bank in 16 countries. Nick has worked in Bangladesh for over 30 years most recently on developing a cohort to study non-communicable disease. With the onset of covid-19 the cohort (n=75,000) has been repositioned to collect longitudinal data via telephone calls on covid-19 symptoms and the social and economic impacts.
Kazuhiko Moji is Professor of Human Ecology and the Dean of Nagasaki University School of Global Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Director of Department of Global Health at Graduate School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health. He had been the project leader of the Ecohealth Project “Environmental Change and Infectious Disease in Tropical Asia” between 2008 and 2013 at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto, Japan. He received his MA (1978) and Ph.D. (1987) in Health Sciences at the University of Tokyo. He was the President of the Japanese Society of Tropical Medicine between 2011 and 2014.
A pandemic is defined as an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people. Pandemics have occurred throughout human history and appear to be increasing because of rising emergence of viral diseases from animals (zoonoses). The risk of a pandemic arises from the combined effects of the Spark Risk (e.g. bushmeat hunting) and the Spread Risk (e.g. mode of transmission and population susceptibility). Pandemics have health, economic, gender, social and political impacts. Building pandemic preparedness is complex and requires considerable coordination. In the context of covid-19 modelling of transmission has been central to many government’s response including introduction of lockdown and physical distancing. Developing vaccines for novel pathogens is not simple or straightforward and community mitigation measures are essential. There are a number of lessons which have been learnt from the covid-19 pandemic including acting quickly, extensive testing, digital surveillance, public trust in government and leaders and cooperation between nations.
Keywords
Pandemic, zoonoses, pandemic consequences, community mitigation, vaccine development, lessons learnt from covid-19
Full text (PDF) is here.
It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.
Nagasaki’s Voice: 75 years’ Experience
Masao Tomonaga
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project
Dr. Masao Tomonaga is also hibakusha exposed at 2.5 kilometer. After graduation from Nagasaki University Medical School in 1968 he became a physician and hematologist specializing leukemia treatment. He also continued research on how radiation exposure induces maligancy. After retirement he was appointed the Director of Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital. Since 2012 he works for elderly hibakusha at Megumino-Oka Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivor Nursery Home as Director of Clinics.
He was also appointed in 2018 President of Nagasaki Prefecture Hibakusha Association with 2000 members. He is Vice-President of IPPNW (Nobel Peace Prize in 1985) for North Asia Region and Representative for Nagasaki Global Citizens Assembly for Nuclear Abolition (ICAN member) and Director for “Nyokonokai” dedicated for Dr. Takashi Nagai, hibakusha radiologist and author of “The Bell of Nagasaki”.
The nuclear weapon age has opened in 1945. We Nagasaki hibakusha experienced 73,000 early deaths as the first victim of human being. We saw the Cold War evoked in 1947. Another 74,000 hibakusha survived and experienced a long period of Cold War until 1992. Around 1955 hibakusha experienced a start of anti-nuclear movement. Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 struck us and whole Japanese. We experienced for the first time a real fear for nuclear war. We also experienced first recognition that human being now had ultimate weapons in human history that is capable of destroying whole humanity.
There developed some good signs such as PTBT Treaty in 1965 and NPT Treaty was enforced in 1970. Further, INF Treaty signed in 1987 between US and Soviet Union succeeded in markedly reducing nuclear warheads in 1990ies. However, we also experienced firmly established nuclear deterrence strategy on the basis of MAD theory by maintaining balanced nuclear powers in order to avoid nuclear attacks. We experienced the end of Cold War without hot war in 1989, but we experienced a strong framework of nuclear deterrence policy has been maintained until now.
NPT regime gradually changed to be inactive around 2010, resulting in shrinkage of nuclear disarmament. Hiabkusha and NGOs such as ICAN aroused for adopting TPNW by a strong solidarity and succeeded in establishing the Treaty in 2017, which is now close to be in force as international law.
Even now in 2020 hibakusha continue to suffer atomic bomb radiation- induced cancers and leukemia. This life-long health consequence prove genuine inhumane nature of nuclear weapons. We must challenge a new stage of nuclear abolition under dangerous divide between NPT supporters and TPNW promoters. To overcome this divide we require power of civil society, especially of citizens of nuclear weapon states to make their governments to abandon nuclear policy. They must listen to Nagasaki’s voice gained from many serious experiences.
Complementary amalgamation of NPT and TPNW into one treaty is key for future nuclear-free world. Coming each review conference of NPT and TPNW should be set as best theaters for confidence-building, dialogue, and scientific collaboration as shown in ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the climate change to overcome the divide. To avoid human extinction by nuclear war, intended or by accident, we will experience next 25 years as a crucial stage. We hibakusha with the most important experiences would disappear by 100 Anniversary of the atomic bombings; to see nuclear-free world or not, is the ultimate question in 21st Century for Homo sapiens.
Keywords
Nuclear Age, Hibakusha, Cold War, NPT, TPNW, Civil Society, Confidence-
building, Nuclear-free World
Full text (PDF) is here.
It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.
The U.S. Election and Nuclear Order in the Post-Pandemic World
Leon V. Sigal
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project
Leon V. Sigal is director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project in New York and has participated in Track II talks with North Korea for two decades. He was a member of the editorial board of The New York Times from 1989 to 1995. He served in the Bureau of PoliticoMilitary Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, in 1979 as International Affairs Fellow and in 1980 as Special Assistant to the Director. He was a Rockefeller Younger Scholar in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in 1972-1974 and a guest scholar there in 1981-1984. From 1974 to 1989 he was a professor of government at Wesleyan University. He was an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs from 1985 to 1989 and from 1996 to 2000 and a visiting lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School in 1988, 2000, and 2018. Sigal is the author of Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking, Alliance Security: NATO and the No-First-Use Question (with John Steinbruner), Nuclear Forces in Europe: Enduring Dilemmas, Present Prospects, Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea, Hang Separately: Cooperative Security Between the United States and Russia, 1985-1994, and Negotiating Minefields: The Landmines Ban in American Politics. He edited The Changing Dynamics of U.S. Defense Spending.
U.S. power and prestige may have diminished in recent years, but the United States still plays a pivotal role in international institutions, alliances, and mass media, so who becomes its president and which party controls Congress matter a lot for the global nuclear order. However unlikely it is that Donald Trump’s expressed desire to contest the election’s outcome could succeed, whether the nation can avert a violent backlash among disappointed partisans is less clear.
Nuclear weapons are often thought to be the esoteric domain of experts. Yet one need only recall that although mass activism does not guarantee policy change, three of the most significant developments in recent decades – the ban on above-ground nuclear tests, the INF Treaty, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall – would not have happened without mass protests in many countries. And citizen involvement, organized by NGOs, can even facilitate monitoring of arms agreements and nuclear developments in some countries.
The public’s understandable preoccupation with COVID-19, economic distress, racial animus, and climate change leave scant scope for paying heed to nuclear risks, which makes mobilization of a mass anti-nuclear movement unlikely. Absent popular action, however, positive change to the global nuclear order will continue to be marginal and fitful. This makes the international milieu critical for the nuclear future – a milieu that a president can influence but not determine.
President Trump’s reelection is likely to have a pernicious effect on that milieu, hindering international cooperation to limit nuclear weapons and accelerating a qualitative arms race that could endanger crisis stability. Yet two of Trump’s more positive impulses are likely to continue. He is unlikely to increase the risk of an intense crisis leading to nuclear war because he wants to avoid U.S. involvement in any wars, not start new ones. He will also try to sustain negotiations with North Korea to curb nuclear developments there, though whether he is prepared to satisfy Pyongyang’s stiffer demands remains in doubt.
His opponent, Joseph Biden, will face those same demands. Personnel is policy, and the Biden administration will likely be staffed with officials who served under President Obama. That means a return to shoring up alliances and international cooperation. It also means continuity with Obama’s nuclear policies. Whether he will curtail Obama’s modernization plans is not clear, but in contrast to Trump, he will try his best to restore the JCPOA, which could head off nuclear weapons development not only in Iran but also in Saudi Arabia. He will also strive to save START, seek technical talks with China, and not abandon the Open Skies accord.
Keywords
Biden, Trump, crisis stability, international milieu, JCPOA, New START, nuclear arms race,
Open Skies
Full text (PDF) is here.
It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.
The Impact of a Regional Nuclear Conflict between India and Pakistan: Two Views
G. D. Hess
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project
G. D. Hess was born in the United States where he studied atmospheric science. He came to Australia in 1970 and has worked in the area of Boundary-Layer Meteorology, which covers the physical, chemical and biological processes occurring in the lowest few kilometres of the Earth’s atmosphere. He retired from the Bureau of Meteorology 15 years ago. He is a former University Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
The severity of climatic effects of a regional nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, involving the use of a hundred Hiroshima-scale nuclear weapons, is contested between two groups; Mills, et al. (2014) conclude that a global Nuclear Winter would occur; Reisner, et al., (2018) conclude that No Nuclear Winter would occur. This paper discusses the different assumptions that lead to the two different conclusions. Specifically, it highlights the use of different fuel loading and different input methods for the amount and initial location of black carbon (BC) into the climate models, and discusses some underlying reasons for these different choices, including the question of what kind of fire will occur in the aftermath of a nuclear weapon being dropped on a densely populated city. The paper also briefly discusses some physical phenomena that have not been considered by either group and lays out some questions for research before any definitive conclusion about the climatic effects of a limited nuclear war can be reached.
Keywords
Nuclear Winter, model uncertainty, soot-generation, firestorm
Full text (PDF) is here.
REC-PP-10
Nuclear Weapons in the Taiwan Strait (July 2020)
Gregory Kulacki
During the Taiwan Strait Crisis, which began in the fall of 1954 and ended in the fall of 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower prepared to attack the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with nuclear weapons to protect the government of Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. US officials involved in the crisis believed credible US threats to use nuclear weapons deterred escalation, and those beliefs played a formative role in the evolution of US nuclear weapons policies that call for the first use of tactical nuclear weapons in a military crisis when victory using conventional weapons is not assured. This examination of the crisis, which includes consideration of documentation from PRC and Soviet archives, calls that belief into question.
★ Full text of REC-PP-10 (PDF) is here.
★ List of RECNA Policy Papers is here.
Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament publishes a special collection of interviews with Frank von Hippel, a renowned physicist who has devoted his life to the quest for a world without nuclear weapons.
For 50 years, Dr. von Hippel has been working as a citizen-scientist to reduce the grave dangers to humankind from nuclear-weapon and nuclear-energy programs around the world. In this special collection of edited, illustrated and footnoted interviews, von Hippel describes in vivid personal detail the many policy battles he has taken on, the state of nuclear dangers today, and his hopes for a path forward.
For the collection, see here.
Vol.3, Issue 1 of Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament (J-PAND) is now available online. There are 17 open access articles.
For the issue, see here.
In the issue, RECNA director Fumihiko Yoshida published an article on a workshop jointly held by Sejong Institute (ROK) and RECNA in June 2019. The article is a summary of policy proposal released as an outcome document of the workshop.
Yoshida, Fumihiko. 2020. “From Peace on Korean Peninsula to North East Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone.” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 3(1): 123-128. [Full Article]
