We're honored to have her with us here today. Please join me welcoming to the podium Laicie Heeley.

Transcription

1 HALL: I would like to introduce the Moderator for our first panel at this point, "The Growing Danger of Nuclear War -- Potential Flashpoints: How A War Might Start." Our Moderator is Laicie Heeley. Laicie Heeley is a Fellow at Stimson Center working on budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense. Her areas of expertise include U.S. budget process, defense strategy and nuclear weapons proliferation. Prior to joining Stimson, Ms. Heeley was Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation where her research focused on nuclear proliferation in emerging states such as Iran and North Korea, as well as budgeting and strategy at the Department of Defense. We're honored to have her with us here today. Please join me welcoming to the podium Laicie Heeley. HEELEY: And at this time, I'll also ask my panel to just go ahead and make your way up -- hi, and this is for you. Thank you so much Hank for having me. Thank you all for being here. I'm very excited about this panel in particular; a very, very distinguished expert group that we have. I'll let them make their way. And I'll just point out that most Americans, I think many in the room are probably aware when asked about the greatest national security threats today are likely to say terrorism, probably ISIS specifically, maybe Russian hacking, maybe depending on their political party today, an erratic and unpredictable President. Nuclear weapons however conjure up in images of mushroom clouds and very serious men in dark back rooms making decisions with red buttons that they can never possibly hope to influence. However, of very importance the issue is -- is really so big and to most people so old and far removed from their day-to-day lives that they just shut it down. But the nuclear threat is still the most consequential we face today. And that's really what we're here to talk about. From confrontation between India and Pakistan to the growing body of evidence that North Korea has increased bomb production capacity to the possibility of a nuclear accident, to say nothing of Russia and China the threat today is very real. And a substantial recent investment in nuclear weapons may actually have increased this threat rather than decreased it. More highly qualified experts are here to join me today. I will not read all of their bios as you do have them in your -- in your very extensive pockets. However, Dr. Zia Mian will cover South Asia. Our order of events today will be as follows: Dr. Mian will cover South Asia. He's a Physicist and Co-Director at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security, where he also leads the project on Peace and Security in South Asia. Josh Pollack is the Editor of The Nonproliferation Review and a Senior Research -- Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He will discuss North -- Korea and Northeast Asia and would -- what the risks of war and nuclear war involving both North and South Korea are. Dr. Shen Dingli well is a Professor and Associate Dean at Fudan University's Institute of International Studies and will cover U.S., China.

2 And Dr. Bruce Blair is the Co-Founder of Global Zero, the international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide and will cover two topics for us today; U.S., Russia and the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Following their presentations we'll have a short break and then we'll come back for question and answers. So, just so that you all know the order of events I will go ahead and turn it over to Mian who will be first and I believe you have a presentation here so I may need some help to find it. I'll be next. There you are. MIAN: Thank you Laicie. Thank you everyone. Before I begin my presentation about the growing danger of nuclear war in South Asia, which is what I was asked to speak about, I have an obligation that -- to express my disagreement and dismay at the comments by Representative Johnson. It's a sad but important testament to the state of the nuclear debate among U.S. policymakers that a person who feels it's okay and worth coming to speak on the topic of the need for a fundamental change in U.S. nuclear weapons policy basically reiterates one of the worst decisions that the United States nuclear policymaking process has generated in 50 years. And the reason I say 50 years is that the last time we had this kind of nonsense was under Reagan, right? This massive commitment over decades to build a new generation of nuclear weapons and the new -- new capabilities those weapons can provide. And this casts a shadow across the whole world and for generations to come. This plan for modernization is going to take decades to put in place and the new weapon systems that will be created will last many decades beyond that. We are talking about potentially an entire another nuclear century as a consequence of this decision and the fact that you see people of good heart- and good conscience like Representative Johnson feel that they have to have, that this is the balance. "Oh, it would be nice to have a nuclear weapon-free world but we have to have this modernization of the nuclear arsenal at the same time." You know, it shows how far we yet have to go. And where the U.S. goes others will follow. So, with that comment, let me talk about the growing danger of nuclear war in South Asia. And part of what motivates myself and, you know, others here and, you know, I'm looking forward especially to the comments by Josh Pollack and Dingli Shen is that U.S. policy is actually the center of all the places where nuclear war may actually break out. And that in itself is a significant observation. So, in the case of South Asia, I want you to take a minute to look at this picture. This was taken by an astronaut on a space station. And the orange line that you see crawling up the picture is the border between India and Pakistan. This is India. This is Pakistan. This is the City of Karachi which is home to 20 million people. One out of 10 of all Pakistanis live there, right? And the reason that this is all orange is because the whole border is fenced and lit up, and it's the only border they say that you can actually see from space. And all the lights that you see on the Pakistani side those are the

3 cities and towns and industrial areas along the Indus Valley. The vast majority of Pakistan's population live there. That tells you how close Pakistanis are to the border with India and that this is a border where there already have been four wars. No other pair of nuclear weapon states have this multiple set of problems of geography and history and conflict. And I'll take a few minutes to say why many of these things are getting worse. So, Hans Christiansen generated this figure a little while ago and this was his best estimate shared by many in the community about Pakistan's nuclear structure. And if you look, so this is the same border and you see all the little missiles lined up along that border pointing towards India. And if you think about this simple question about how far it would be from these missiles and these bases to cross the border, we are talking about literally minutes -- less than five minutes for a missile from a Pakistani side to reach the capital of India or vice versa. And so the idea that you have any time to deal with a crisis where the threatening use of nuclear weapons is seen to be real is a fantasy. There will be no warning. And there will be no time to respond, and everybody will panic at the first signs of what they fear may happen. So the path to nuclear war, you know, is well trodden in some regards in South Asia and, you know, they are quite transparent. So, as I mentioned, Pakistan and India have had wars in 1947, 1965, 1971 and The first one was actually within months of independence of the two countries. And as many of you know, this was the first war over Kashmir and it left the situation unresolved with Pakistan taking some territory, the Indians having some territory in Kashmir was an attempt to resolve that and then finish business it didn't change very much there was another war. 1999, there was a fourth war. And each one of those wars has left behind a generation of military officers, especially in Pakistan, itching to get even for the last one. So, to just give you a sense of how biography and time play a role in this, in the 1971 war there were 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war, soldiers who were taken captive by the Indian forces. Among them were people who then after the war and after they were freed became senior generals in the Pakistan Army. Included in them was General Khalid Kidwai, who is the general in charge of Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program from 2000 until 2014, right? You can imagine what the experience of having been a prisoner of war in India in 1971 as a young officer was? A sense of defeat, of humiliation, of captivity and there's an entire generation of military officers who carry that grudge. When you talk to them the determination to get even one day is overpowering. Now, because Pakistan has failed to prevail in all of these past wars and India has overwhelming conventional superiority in terms of the size of its army tanks and other conventional capabilities, Pakistan has resorted to the threat of use of tactical nuclear weapons to compensate for Indian conventional superiority, and Pakistan is perfectly transparent and explicit that if Indian forces cross the border into Pakistan or look like they are about to do so Pakistan will use nuclear weapons on the battlefield to change the course of battle.

4 India has seen this and has responded by beginning vast military exercises with tens of thousands of soldiers, tanks, artillery what you would look for if you were going to invade Pakistan. And in these exercises, they include the possible use of Pakistan's tactical weapons on their forces and they rehearsed how would they deal with it and keep fighting, right? So already they have crossed the threshold that okay, you are going to do this while we are going to figure out how to overcome this and keep going. And the most recent exercise of a large scale in India that included this simulation was in And the Indian nuclear doctrine that has been officially articulated by the Indian government says that India will use its nuclear weapons to retaliate against a nuclear attack on Indian Territory or on Indian forces anywhere. This was interpreted by many to mean that Pakistan may even use nuclear weapons on Indian forces after those forces have crossed into Pakistan. And Pakistan is feeling that it's losing the tide of battle and this retaliation will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage. I actually debated a former head of Indian nuclear forces in Washington, D.C., not so long ago. And I asked him "So, what does massive damage and unacceptable damage mean to you? So, Pakistan uses nuclear weapons on your tanks you said massive retaliation. Will you bomb Pakistan cities with nuclear weapons?" He said, "Yes." I said "Let me be clear. They use nuclear weapons on tanks and soldiers. You will kill civilians in Karachi, 20 million people, Lahore, Pakistan's second city, Islamabad, Pakistan's capital?" Without blinking, he said, "Yes, that this is what deterrence requires. That if we say this then hopefully they will not do this." And there is the possibility that India may seek to preempt Pakistan's first use of nuclear weapons to prevent this possibility coming. The Pakistani response to the Indian threat of massive damage is that this, and I quote, this is from General Kidwai. He was in charge of Pakistan's nuclear complex. He said "This is bluster and it would be a blunder." In other words, "We don't take your threat seriously. We are going to do what we're going to do and we will retaliate if we have to." So, both sides have put in place exactly the pattern of escalation and posturing that we are familiar with from nuclear history. That means that once things start to go wrong everybody thinks that they are trapped by their previous commitments and then it all goes wrong really badly really quickly. And it's not just words. There are capacities to do this are actually in place now. Pakistan has been testing short-range battlefield nuclear weapons. It also has tested in January of this year a submarine-launched cruise missile and it tested for the first time a missile that is capable of carrying multiple warheads, right? Not all of these are ready to enter into service right now but Pakistan has previous systems that have already been developed but these are systems that are definitely on the way into service right now, especially the cruise -- submarine-launched cruise missile.

5 And Pakistan's longest range missile is going to be almost 3,000 kilometers in range and when I tried to work out why Pakistan would need a missile that has that range this is the answer I think. And that is that this is the flight path for a missile flying from ISB which is Islamabad to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which is an Indian Territory way out there in the middle of the ocean where India has said it plans to put a strategic base. We think that this may be a base for Indian nuclear submarines in the future. And Pakistan says "You're going to put nuclear forces all the way as far from Pakistan as you can possibly get, we will build a missile that will reach you. You will not be safe anywhere." And so, this is the kind of scale of the planning and capabilities that are being built. And the reason for India putting these kind of capabilities out there is that India has a nuclear submarine which is both nuclear powered and is to be nuclear armed with 12 submarine launched ballistic missiles. One reason Pakistan is building submarines that will be able to launch nuclear armed cruise missiles so they can have nuclear weapons at sea. And it's also been testing 5,000 kilometer range ballistic missiles. The final experimental test of their Agni-V missile was in December And we presume it is now on the verge of being able to enter service. So, lots of capabilities have actually been developed to fight a nuclear war on a very large scale, and the estimates are that they have more than 100 nuclear weapons each and the material to make more being produced actively as well as some in stockpiles. So, the immediate flashpoint for war -- there are two. The first is this dispute over Kashmir. And in recent years we have seen Pakistan go back to its policy of supporting militant nationalists and Islamists to carry out attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir. Previously, there were attacks on Indian cities elsewhere including the very large attack on the City of Mumbai in But in September 2016, militants crossed over from Pakistan, attacked an Indian Army base, killed 18 soldiers. And India carried out reprisal attacks across the border into Pakistan against what India said were the launch pads for these militant attacks. And this created the beginnings of a new crisis dynamic where India publicly acknowledged reprise, military reprisals that it was carrying out these. There have been attacks across the border by India before in reprisal against Pakistani attacks but they were kept quiet. And so the question is, what happens when that happens and Pakistan then has to respond in its own way to such a -- an attack cycle? And the Kashmiri militants are itching for war, a big war that they think will resolve this issue once and for all. So, one of the most bloodthirsty of all of them, Sayeed Salahudeen, the head of the Kashmiri Militant Group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which has been around for a very long time said, and I quote and these are his words that "If Pakistan provides support there is a great chance of a nuclear war." Right? That they think that by pushing this crisis forward and accelerating the tensions that eventually the two countries will be forced into some kind of settlement over this. The last flashpoint is one that has become increasingly evident to many of us. And that is this crisis over water between India and Pakistan. So, in

6 1960, India and Pakistan signed the Indus Waters Treaty, which regulates the sharing of water between Pakistan and India because the headwaters of the Indus River come from the Himalayas. Some of them come through the Indian part of Kashmir, some through the Pakistani part of Kashmir. And so that the treaty allocates the waters appropriately between the two countries as they agreed to. And India can have dams and use the water on the rivers that pass through Indian Kashmir until those rivers cross into Pakistani territory. And the amount of water they can use is agreed on in the treaty. But since about , India has begun a process of building a large number of dams on those rivers in Kashmir that flow from the Indian-held part of Kashmir into Pakistan. And this map actually shows some of these dams. So, these are all the spots in Indian-held Kashmir on the rivers where the Indians are building dams or planning to build dams. And there are dozens and dozens of dams that are under construction and in the planning. And one of the things that we've already seen just in the last few years is that when you build a big dam then you start to fill the reservoir. That means that you block the flow downstream until you flow the -- fill the reservoir. And the first big dam that India built where they stopped the water to fill the reservoir it actually created a massive crisis in parts of Pakistan because the water stopped coming. And the Pakistanis are petrified that with these dams India will be able to control the flow of water to Pakistan, which is fundamentally an agricultural economy and needs water for agriculture industry and rapidly growing population. And so in September 2016, after this Indian Army base was attacked by these militants that came over from Pakistan with Pakistani support, the Prime Minister of India made a blood-chilling statement. He said "Blood and water cannot flow together. You send terrorists? We will shut off the water. Blood and water cannot flow together." This was interpreted in Pakistan as a direct threat. And the Pakistani response was that "If you violate the Indus Waters Treaty, if you stop the flow of water, we will treat this as an act of war," right? And this problem is going to recur and it's going to get worse as climate change begins to melt the glaciers in the high Himalayas and the flow of water becomes less predictable and eventually over time scarce. And there will be increased water competition at the same time as there is increased demand for water. We could have stopped all of this. We could have stopped all of this. After the nuclear test in 1998 there was a unanimous resolution of the United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1172 that said that Pakistan and India must stop their nuclear weapons development, stop testing nuclear weapons, produce no more material that can be used to make nuclear weapons. And then 9/11 happened. And the Chinese happened. And the United States decided that it was more important to have Pakistan's support in Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban than to worry about their nuclear weapons. And it was more important to recruit India as an ally against China so never mind India's nuclear weapons program.

7 So for almost 20 years, the U.S. has had other priorities than worrying about the growth of nuclear weapons capabilities and the drift towards war and the crises in South Asia because of Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, the Jihadists and the rise of China. So, as a consequence we now have the much more catastrophic possibility of nuclear war in South Asia than we otherwise would have had. Thank you. POLLACK: Well, that was discouraging. HEELEY: It's a very sunny topic we have today. POLLACK: Yes. HEELEY: Start out your morning. Hopefully you'd had lots of coffee. MIAN:... Russia is going to tell us -- to solve this North Korean thing without firing a shot... HEELEY: Yeah... POLLACK:... that button there... HEELEY: That one? POLLACK: Yes. HEELEY: You should do that. Yes, thank you. POLLACK: Yes, that's fine. Wow, well, this is almost cheerful by comparison. And I don't say that in any sort of mocking way that -- that is chilling presentation and -- and rightly so. One of the first, I think the first image that -- that Dr. Mian... (UNKNOWN): (OFF-MIKE). POLLACK: No, I can't speak up but I can -- I can put the mic closer to my mouth. Yes, I have -- I admit I have difficulty raising my voice. One of the first images that Dr. Mian showed us was -- was the border and or the line of control between India and Pakistan and the proximity of the city of Karachi with 20 million people. The equivalent of that in Korea is the Greater Seoul metropolitan area with -- with about 25 million people or half the country's population, within, oh, I don't know, 30 kilometers or so of the demilitarized zone the -- or the military demarcation line to use the exact name for the de facto border between North and South Korea. While South Korea is not nuclear armed and doesn't have American nuclear weapons in it any longer, hasn't since 1992, some of the dynamics are similar. And that's what I want to talk about today. Dr. Mian laid out this -- this process of step by step but rather rapid escalation in South Asia. And I think there -- there is a poorly understood critically changing dynamic in -- in Korea that now involves three actors not two.

8 One is North Korea, the other is the United States and both have nuclear weapons. We should not kid ourselves about that and -- and pretend that the North Koreans have merely tested five devices and probably couldn't put them on a missile and, you know, no one knows for sure. But I think the presumption should be once you've done three, four or five tests it can be safely assumed that you can put a warhead on a missile. To the best of my knowledge, every other country that has conducted a decade-long campaign of nuclear tests has had that ability. If -- if I'm wrong about that I -- I would be delighted to be corrected. But -- but I just don't think that's a safe bet. And then of course the third actor is -- is South Korea. And while South Korea, as I mentioned, does not have nuclear weapons, and -- and I don't think has any plans for that they are quickly pushing ahead with advanced conventional capabilities. So, as I see it, this is now a triangular dynamic, one that is -- is it's difficult to stay ahead of -- of its evolution. It's moving quite rapidly. I - - I don't even know how to -- to trace the -- the exact processes for -- for escalation. I -- I would just say that the basic factors are -- are the ones you see on this slide. First of all, the United States is committed to the defense of South Korea. And its military presence in South Korea, in Japan and further afield in Guam and Hawaii and the American mainland as well as at sea and in -- in the Pacific is a guarantee that North Korea is not in a position to law -- to -- to launch a -- a large or full scale war in South Korea is not going to happen, again. And -- and if it -- if it does, you know, Seoul will be captured. South Korea will be overrun. Probably the South Koreans could -- could do as much on their own today. The -- The North Korean Army is -- is not considered a highly mobile or logistically prepared force for -- for extensive maneuvers. But the basic point is America is -- is ready to fight in Korea. The unofficial slogan of U.S. Forces Korea is "Be ready to fight tonight," meaning fight without warning, fight without reinforcement. So, they -- they are perpetually on -- on high alert. Nevertheless, the North Koreans have shown themselves willing, especially since 2010 to attack the South Koreans on a small-scale basis. There have been a series of skirmishes at sea over the years but what changed in -- in 2010 is a return to a pattern that we hadn't really seen since the 1960s in Korea, which -- which is the small-scale use of force in -- in a planned and deliberate fashion against, you know -- you know, ambushes that that sort of thing against a -- a South Korean ship that was sunk without warning, against a populated island -- a fishing village basically with a -- with a South Korean Marine Corps base next to it. The South Korean Marines were -- were doing an artillery drill and North Koreans attacked them and -- and killed both -- both civilians and -- and military. In 2010, there was the incident with ambush with landmines in -- in the summer of And there have been a variety of forms of electronic warfare; GPS jamming against commercial flights going into Incheon Airport in Seoul, a variety of cyber-attacks in South Korean banks and -- and other businesses.

9 So, North Korea is -- is continually willing to harass the South Koreans including in -- in what we now call kinetic ways, and in other words with -- with violence, with deadly violence and deadly force. It is not difficult to imagine one of these incidents escalating -- in the case of the shelling of Yeonpyeongdo, which I mentioned just now, the South Koreans did fire back promptly. It's called counter-battery fire. If you -- if you attack an artillery base, it will shoot back -- that that certainly is with the South Korean practice. Now, the North Koreans didn't respond to that. But the South Koreans since then have promised to expand the scale of -- of their responses to any future incidents. So, we have, in principle the -- the ground laid for -- for escalating conflicts starting from low level harassment if -- if one side or the other miscalculates. So, at some point, in this process of escalation you have to ask what if the United States starts reinforcing the Peninsula or what if the United States gets involved in fight? Well the North Koreans, and this is what most of the speech is about, have become increasingly blunt about how they plan to contend with the threat of -- of American invasion. They judge the American war plans to involve overrunning North Korea and doing away with it once and for all. And I -- I think they're - - they're basically correct about that if my understanding of -- of what I have read about those plans in the media is correct. That in the event of war the -- the idea is -- is to make sure it can't happen again and there's only one way to do that -- is to end the regime. So, the -- the North Koreans have made it increasingly clear that they will not allow that to happen and that they will destroy the bases, the airports and airfields that the United States would -- would use out of South Korea and Japan to -- to bomb targets in North Korea and to prepare to receive prudent support for the -- the ground war. So, they -- they would employ nuclear weapons using short- and mediumrange missiles that -- that is how they talk about it. That is what they exercise. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend going to the Nuclear Threat Initiative Web site, nti.org and having a look at the exceptionally interesting report that some of my colleagues at Monterey prepared concerning the pattern of North Korean missile testing. And it is -- it is starkly apparent what the pattern is. There -- there has been a dramatic rise in missile tests in the last few years and all of them are theater missiles as we call them, not -- not ICBMs. Those have never been flight tested. The United States argues that when North Korea conducts space launches it is developing the underlying technology for an ICBM. I think that is correct. But when you look at their missile exercises they are all theater missiles, mostly short-range and medium-range. So, that's bad enough -- that, that is the traditional approach but now comes the complicating factor, which is the South Koreans are not contend to rely on American guarantees of protection. They would like a more independent defense posture in the process of negotiating greater autonomy and authority in -- in the alliance with the United States.

10 At the same time, the South Koreans have developed their own extensive missile arsenal and conducted flight tests and discussed what their plans are. How they would plan to independently deter North Korean aggression. Basically, they say that they would use missiles against North Korea's leaders to -- to deter them from -- from using nuclear weapons against South Korea's population but also to preempt them to -- to kill them before they can relay the orders to field -- to missile units in the field. So, we can try to factor that into the -- the escalation risks. Now, I said that most of the presentation and it will be about North Korean war plans as they have explained them to us. I think this -- this goes back to the crisis of 1994 when a North Korean military representative at Pyongyang warned his American counterparts, "We're not going to attack South Korea but if you are going to attack us then we will. So, we're not -- this is not going to be like the Persian Gulf War. You're not going to have the opportunity to build up your forces around us. We'll hit you." And -- and similar warnings would occur often in the North Korean media in a very public way in -- in years after when things got tense they would remind us, you know, we have this plan. Now, this is before they acknowledged having any nuclear military capability so they didn't use the -- the N-word but that I think is the subtext. When the United States invaded Iraq on the day that Baghdad fell in 2003, the North Korean foreign ministry put out this statement where they formally endorsed a -- a policy of deterrence but the way that they described it was interesting. They -- they talked about a deterrent force powerful enough to -- to repel to decisively beat back an attack. So they're -- they're not talking about deterrence by attacking American cities. They're talking about deterrence by attacking American forces near them so if it fails they can actually use it and defend themselves that way. And -- and this again they said "This is a lesson drawn from the Iraqi War," meaning the 2003 war. But I think the 1991 war was also on their minds. Now, since they left the Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 shortly before that statement and they tested their first nuclear device in 2006 and now have tested quite a few, they've become increasingly explicit about this. So the -- in three instances and counting they have described exercises by their strategic rocket force as rehearsals for nuclear war. The first time was March of last year, when they tested short-range missiles, Scud missiles, multiple ones in a ballistic setting, and said we are practising attacking ports on enemy territory where the foreign armed forces of aggression are deployed. So in another words, there is this bottleneck in space and time is -- as America flows forces into South Korea to prepare for war with the North, or to reinforce itself during early stages of a war, and that's when the North Koreans can act to defend themselves by destroying the key nodes, the points where those forces could come in. So then again, in July of last year, they did it again. And they talked about ports and airfields -- you know, this is kind of interesting, through which nuclear war equipment of the U.S. imperialists are brought in. This was a couple of days before -- I'm sorry, after it was announced that the USS Ohio, which is a former nuclear missile submarine that has been converted to fire

11 conventional cruise missiles, visited the Port of Busan in South Korea, and a few days later, they conducted this test and described this as -- in these terms. Then this March, after the start of our March exercises, they did it again using medium-range missiles and described as attacking bases of U.S. forces in Japan. Now, this is a look at the July exercise, where you see a handful of different missiles on a roadway in North Korea being tested as the sun is coming up. And this is a Kim Jong-un's command post. You'll notice the map here, these maps are the plans for the exercise, they have been in these photographs, these mini photographs for a long time, but this one was interesting because it marked the first use of the map positioned in a way that it was really legible, purposefully legible to us. It was sending us a message. You can see in that picture, it's awfully hard to read, this one not so much. If you turn it around and look at it, you see that thick line on the left that I have got the arrow pointing to, that is the flight of the missiles. So the launch point is in the lower left and the point it hits out at sea is in the upper right, and when you see it connects to this ark, and that ark runs all the way down to the Port of Busan and stops there. So there's a little signal there that they are rehearsing an attack on Busan to destroy the USS Ohio. So, just as we are rehearsing for a war against them, they are rehearsing for a war against us. In the March test of this year, they did the same thing but the ark went to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Southern Japan where the F-35s were participating for the first time in the combined exercises with South Koreans. So, so much for how North Korea plans to go nuclear. What do the South Koreans plan to do about it? Well, the South Koreans who have had ballistic missile force for many years have been modernising it rather aggressively. These are their Hyunmoo-2 ballistic missiles, if you are an aficionado of ballistic missiles, you may notice that it looks a lot like Russian systems, that's probably the origin of their technology. They are working on cruise missiles and they are threatening basically to annihilate not just North Korean nuclear missiles but large sections of Pyongyang to kill Kim Jong-un in the event that they think nuclear weapons might be used. This is their cruise missile attacking a target, notice the shape of the target, that's Kumsusan Palace in Pyongyang where Kim Jong-un shows up to honour his ancestors, see is this. So they are not being that subtle about it. And so, my time is up, I will leave you with this. What happens if during a conflict, America starts following through on its pledges to South Korea and starts flowing forces in? What happens if the North Koreans attack South Korea with conventional weapons in this event? And if threatened, they've threatened back against those threats at Kim Jong-un by threatening to attack The Blue House, the presidential mansion in Seoul. What happens if they attack the bases that the Americans are using in South Korea and Japan? What happens after this? I don't know the answers, but I'm afraid this is the set of circumstances that are being setup. Thank you. HEELEY: Another haunting presentation, thank you. I invite our next speaker to come up and we will go ahead and get that --- go ahead, up here. SHEN: Well, I thank the organizer for inviting. China-U.S., it's a rich, comprehensive and a complex relationship, but also positive interaction. Last year, the two countries traded for more than, on two way, about $500 billion;

12 and every three foreign students studying into the U.S., there is one from Mainland China; 2.6 million Chinese fly America each year, each is spending $8,000. And then we have robust everlifting partnership. This said, the relationship is complex. If I have to say where there is current danger of a nuclear war, between China and U.S., I would say the chance is almost zero, but not zero. That if it was the two side would act irrationally, the chance would amplify. First a scenario, Korea. China had a casuality of 180,000 men and women in early 1950 in Korea. We cannot accept American force to enter North Korea. Therefore the briefing in the White House and in the Congress with the little U.S. preemption, fine don't enter. Arm the forces, go on to force, don't enter North Korean side. Otherwise this may incur Chinese armed forces to reenter that part of the world. And the two armed forces may collaborate to defeat North Korea's nuclear weapon development. We have come aground. This is not 1950, but that we can also collide as to which armed forces should eject nuclear weapons first, and what's the intent of U.S. armed force. Therefore, so it'd be bad luck, miscalculation, could happen. Scenario two, Diaoyu islands. Last month, I was in Washington, I come again after two weeks, oh this time I found Senkaku sushi restaurant at SFO airport. It's so political, like children, I hope that nobody would care and Chinese would not boycott it. But this time, they care. NSA may ask to lease the space to open (inaudible). And if the airport would refuse, then I think the U.S. government idea, so miscalculation, misperception. And China has had a low-key acceptance of reality which is Japan police the region for 40 years, we do not send any government military or quasi government element to the region from 1972 to It's a status quo not in China's favour. When Japan nationalized the three main islands of the island cluster in 2012, the U.S. did not stop it and we have to do something at the time -- China can build aircraft carrier, one every four years and two shipyard to every five years. When our defence spending three or four times as big as Japan and GDP two times as big as Japan. It is hard to see Japan provoke to change its status quo. Then China had to follow Japan and maybe they'd be happy as Japan gives us the opportunity. Japan may have a deeper strategic miscalculation that China would attempt. And where is a super power? Super power should put the fire off -- America failed. President Obama spoke in Tokyo in April 2014 that Article 5 Japan-U.S. security allies is applicable to this place. But long time U.S. position is that that treaty is only applicable to whatever U.S. recognizes as Japanese territory. Until this time, U.S. has not had a position that this place is Japan's territory. U.S. has no position, U.S. only give Japan the right to have jurisdiction, not ownership. President Obama still has not changed position about its sovereignty. But he say, we need to defend Japan. So, at the moment, it can work maybe quite, but China would have to spend more over the next years. So this kind of arms race would possibly lead to peace or war? No one can determine what would happen. The chance of escalation to nuclear war is almost zero, but no one can say it must be so. It's more unstable and more insecure now then the year Scenario three, South China Sea. We don't talk about Nine-Dash Line, we talk about EEZ, China's own EEZ. China has difficulty in seeing the U.S. and

13 its military vehicles, its reconnaissance planes to be so close to China, like 18 nautical miles to China's mainland. That has led to the unfortunate air collision. So, China launched its jet fighters. U.S. espionage plane was hurt and landed in China's Air Force base, and we got some technology. U.S. lose face. So, after some negotiation, U.S. say we regret for this. China say, see you have apologized because the translation for regret can be very abiguous in China. Hopefully we have (inaudible) to mislead Chinese leadership to guide them to understand U.S. has apologized. Apology, the U.S. say no apology. I am so sorry, but I've not apologized. China had never, Chinese government had never told the Chinese the U.S. has apologized, but has mis-intentionally misled the China to mistake that U.S. has apologized. But it has misintentionally misled the Chinese to understand U.S. has apologised. So in this way we try not to escalate, but to deescalate. Who knows future chance can -- would continue to do this when we are more powerful. Who knows U.S. would not be treated at a future time because China are more powerful, U.S. would come to such place less frequently. Or U.S. would assume I'm the superpower, I would come as frequently as I used to be, because I have the freedom of navigation. This is international space, this is not a Chinese sovereign space, why I cannot come. Such a kind of tension remains. I heard President Trump has denied PACOM's request to send modern TDG to this region, before him. But be prepared for more encounting and misunderstanding and conflict that has a very slight chance to escalate into a nuclear war. Scenario four, my old good friend Arthur is sitting here. This is something about Chinese-U.S., Mainland China-Taiwan. China considers that as only, China. Taiwan is a part of me. Taiwan's constitution says I am the only China, mainland is a part of my China. And we can deal with this, and that is mainland China, Taiwan peaceful coexistence (inaudible). But time has changed. Taiwan has come to lead an interest again in thinking that mainland China is part of Taiwan, is a part of the Republic of China, and we ask her to accept our view, she is uninterested in doing it. And the new President, before swearing into his office, but after being elected has tweeted to call the Taiwan leader as President and say One China could be renegotiated. We think it has been the case, it has been negotiated, and there is an established model that should not be changed. We don't want to spend to buy it, to buy whatever we have got already. But the President considers that, I want you to spend money to buy it. If the two sides cannot make a concession, nasty things can happen. So these are the four scenarios. I think neither of them would easily lead to a nuclear war. But we are human, we tend to make mistake, and we made a mistake in Korean war, we made mistake in (inaudible). China, Soviet Union made mistake in (inaudible) island that almost lead to a nuclear war. No one can say never, then we need to sit, meet, talk. Xi Jinping went to Mar-a-Lago to talk. Before Trump comes to China, Xi Jinping came to summit event to talk. Soon after he became China's President. He cares to talk, to take a preemption, peaceful pre-emption to explain China's intent, in order for China not to be misunderstood. He wants to understand our friend. That would not make a chance of nuclear war to zero, but would significantly reduce the chance. So

14 U.S. President has recommitted One China again, and as two countries would take 100-day work plan to quickly rebalance our unbalanced trade status quo. China-Japan have already created an urgency liason (inaudible) for sea and air incident in East China Sea area. And China-U.S. have made lots of efforts to avoid air collision in South China sea. U.S. is happy to see International Court a way to make a peaceful ending, rather than armed conflict to settle dispute over the interpretation how far China would have its economic interest, whether this should extend into others' EEZ. These are peaceful means. How to have change of heart, not to wage a war but agree to disagree peacefully. That give me hope we still have chance to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. Thank you very much. HEELEY: Thank you very much. And our final speaker today, Dr. Blair, please join us. BLAIR: I think I will just sit here; it will be easier to project. Okay, good morning everyone, delighted to be here, thank you for coming. And I look forward to having the opportunity to engage with you in conversation or Q&A later on. A high-level American nuclear general said not long ago that the threat of a Russian nuclear attack against the United States was such a remote possibility, "That was hardly worth discussing." He added that, to him, "The greatest risk to my force is an accident, someone doing something stupid." Not only the United States but also the other eight countries that posses nuclear weapons run myriad risks every day of doing something stupid; risks of accidental detonations, of unauthorised launches, of mistaken launches based on faulty information or warning; of hostile encounters between opposing forces, ships, aircrafts, troops, encounters that spin out of control and spark conflict; and of lapses of security that result in nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, or other non-state actors. These are the very real risks, that are not that hypothetical and they are the grist for the mill of my talk this morning. The problems are pretty obvious in the case of the U.S. and Russia, which you all know posses the vast majority of the world's nuclear weapons. There are some inconsistencies here between what the General says and what our actual nuclear posture on both sides is today. Because if deliberate nuclear aggression between them is hardly worth discussing, then why do the two sides keep thousands of nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert, poised for immediate launch with a few strokes on a keyboard and pressing of the enter a few times. So these quick launch postures of the Unites States and Russia contradict the General's reassuring words -- although they are not that all that reassuring, as I will note in a minute. Under these postures, the early warning teams on both sides receive sensor data every single day that need to be urgently assessed as to whether this data represents a threat -- a nuclear threat to North America or to Russia. They have to assess this information very urgently and once or twice every month, they have to take a second look because it looks a little worrisome. And on occasion the attack indications look very real and all hell breaks loose, and the crews freak out, and we are in the midst of a very serious false alarm that could lead much too easily to the use of nuclear weapons. The process of decision-making from warning through decision to action is so fast that to me it's an accident waiting to happen. As the chief nuclear

15 ddvisor to President Reagan put it in his memoir, "The scope of disaster is immense. In a matter of seconds for technical or human failure, mutual deterrence might thus collapse." The Go code triggering a massive nuclear launch comes as a message -- it's very brief, it's the length of a tweet. Tweet in hand, U.S. underground crews can fire all the missiles under their control in the Unites States in 60 seconds -- I practiced this many hundreds of times when I served in the Strategic Air Command. Believe it or not, Russia has shortened the launch time even more. They've automated the firing process, linking command posts in the Moscow area with missiles in the field, and it takes the top leadership in Moscow only 20 seconds to fire these missiles out of siloes as far away as Siberia, and that these rockets as well as American rockets are wired to launch as soon as they receive a code, a short stream of computer code, and these missiles don't care where the computer code comes from, whether it's from The President or a missile launch control officer underground, or from a hacker that manages to worm its way inside the launch circuits. As soon as they receive that code, they launch and that creates a potential cyber vulnerability of the first order -- I'll return to that in a bit. At the same time, both sides today maintain plans to send this Go code, this tweet at the first signs of incoming warheads that are reported by the early warning sensors, satellites and ground radar. And under this plan, which we colloquilly refer to as Launch on Warning, the decision process is extremely rushed. To prevent panic, it is pre-scripted and it is driven by a checklist and it is rotely enacted. It is the rote enactment of a prepared script -- that's how I would describe it. In some scenarios, after only about a three minute assessment of early warning data, a U.S. President could receive a briefing on his options and consequences from the commander of -- the strategic command in Omaha, in as little as 30 seconds because of the time pressure on this protocol. Then the President has roughly six minutes to choose an option. So clearly, this command system, it's rigged to fire, it's streamlined for speed, even light speed, not for deliberation, not for rational assessment, and it is obviously a cosmic gamble to operate these postures the way that we do. And indeed, not surprisingly, we have come this close to disaster on several occasions on both sides. In one case, President Carter's national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was seconds away from calling President Carter in the middle of the night, 3 a.m., to tell President Carter that we were under massive nuclear attack by the Soviet Union and he had to decide right away to choose an option for retaliation. Luckily Mr. Brzezinski got a third call in this protocol to tell him that it was a complete computer glitch compounded by human error. A few years later, maybe three, a Russian early warning satellite mistook sun glint, reflections off the clouds, for U.S. missiles in flight and pushed Russia precariously close to launching on false warning. There have been really, probably a dozen close calls altogether, and it only takes one, one terrible false alarm to end civilization. I have only begun to scratch the surface of human error in these control systems -- you may recall one of the more recent incidents that occurred was in 2007, when six nuclear cruise missiles were, that had been stored at a U.S. base

16 in North Dakota were loaded by mistake into a strategic armour and flown across the country. No one knew the payload was nuclear, no one knew the nukes went missing at the base. The pilots didn't know they are carrying nukes. No one had any -- had to sign any papers to take custody of them. Going back a few years to the growing pain years of development of our arsenal in the '50s, '60s, there are at least 1,200 U.S. nuclear weapons involved in incidents of varying degrees of severity. Although the Russians don't advertise their accidents, their safety records are clearly as bad and probably much worse than ours, with nuclear forces crashing to earth and sinking to the bottom of the oceans. This isn't ancient history; between 2009 and 2015, the Air Force alone, U.S. Air Force experienced 1,300 incidents known as Dull Swords involving nuclear weapon systems. On the Russian side, it wasn't that long ago that one of its ballistic missile submarines caught fire in port and burned out of control for over a day, while carrying a full load of nuclear weapons. These are the kinds of problems that are not confined to the United States and Russia; they exist everywhere. Human fraility and propensity to do stupid things are universal, and they are probably far worse in the other nuclear weapons countries. Most of them are up to a century behind, at-least two decades or so, behind the United States and Russia in terms of safety and safeguards. Things like one-point safety, fire-resistant plutonium pits, and sensitive high explosives and PALs, Permissive Action Links, designed to prevent unauthorised launches. These countries are just not up to speed in this department and they are running even higher risks than we are for doing something stupid that would result in a nuclear detonation or in weapons being captured. I'll go back to Pakistan -- you've heard a lot about the geopolitics, let me just note a couple of technical points of interests. It has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world, see as pointed out, it has a '50s era doctrine of the early first use of nuclear weapons during a crisis with India. And it's urrently planning to increase the combat readiness of its nuclear forces in peace time and certainly during a crisis. At the same time, its weapons are unsafe and they are in the hands of the military with significant jihadist sympathies within the ranks. If the Pakistani nuclear weapon were dropped from an airplane today, or if the Taliban lobbed a mortar, a conventional mortar, into the Pakistani nuclear weapons storage depot, the weapons may well detonate for lack of these safety devices, with yields in the league of the Hiroshima bomb. And yet despite these risks, we are seeing militaries around the world lobbying to increase the alert levels and combat readiness of their nuclear forces. They are relying more on nuclear weapons in their strategy and they are lowering the threshold for the intentional use of their weapons. As I said, Pakistan plans to use them first and early, but so does Russia. Russia's strategy includes a tactic they called de-escalatory escalation, which means that they would resort to the early use of tactical weapons in a conventional conflict in order to shock the opponent into standing down. China and India today formally subscribed to a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons but that may be beginning to slip away, their internal debates