Challenges to Restraint in a Multipolar Environment

Table of Contents

As missile capabilities proliferate rapidly in the Indo-Pacific, it is apparent that states remain disinclined to seek negotiated restraints or other forms of risk reduction. There is little evidence to suggest that national policymakers see a systemic, region-wide problem or that China or North Korea are interested in any risk reduction dialogues. As the previous chapters illustrate, the drivers of missile proliferation are multifaceted but primarily center around the increased contribution of land-attack missiles in conventional warfare and growing threat perceptions across the region. The proliferation of missiles is thus largely a symptom of broader regional security dilemmas today, even as the growth in missile arsenals deepens those dilemmas. Moreover, there is a lack of even nominal restrictions on the theater missile forces of regional states, with the exception of North Korea, whose ballistic missile pursuits are specifically proscribed by UN Security Council resolutions, and Japan, whose missile ambitions must be compliant with its own constitutional restraints. As the North Korean case amply illustrates, the practical effect of Security Council resolutions in limiting the qualitative and quantitative growth of a state’s missile capabilities has been modest at best. The end of both the INF Treaty and the U.S.-South Korea missile guidelines and a greater appetite in the United States for pursuing new forms of defense-industrial cooperation with its allies have broadly transformed the structural context for missile proliferation in Asia. Finally, the complexity of the contemporary Indo-Pacific’s multipolar environment creates further obstacles for region-wide solutions.

The proliferation of missiles is largely a symptom of broader regional security dilemmas today, even as the growth in missile arsenals deepens those dilemmas.

Managing Proliferation and Reducing Risks

The demand-side drivers for missiles in Asia have been strong for years. Supply-side controls on missile proliferation, meanwhile, had been effective in slowing the growth of missile capabilities until about the 2010s, but they have become less effective as technology has advanced and diffused, indigenous missile production capabilities have expanded in North and South Korea, and Chinese and Russian technology have both remained relatively easy to obtain.

The MTCR, a multilateral export control regime, has seen some success in setting supplier state standards, but the regime’s normative underpinnings—including the practice of exercising a “strong presumption of denial” on the transfers of complete missile systems—have frayed over the years. As great power rivalries have intensified, the MTCR’s fortunes continue to trend in the wrong direction. For instance, some analysts cite the prospective transfer of U.S.-made Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles to Australia pursuant to the AUKUS arrangement as further undermining the norm against the “uncontrolled proliferation of delivery systems.”¹ While the MTCR’s guidelines permit transfers of such systems on “rare occasions” and based on an assessment of the nonproliferation credentials of a potential recipient state—a standard under which both Japan and Australia fare well—the political nature of supplier state assessments to this end could erode the MTCR’s intended purpose.² Efforts to strengthen the MTCR can be useful in constraining the rate at which emerging state pursuers of missile technologies develop their arsenals,³ but the regime hardly provides a panacea for stemming the already serious and substantial risks surrounding existing and anticipated missile deployments in the Indo-Pacific. The growth of Chinese and North Korean missile capabilities, for instance, has been largely orthogonal to the supply-side constraints put in place by the MTCR.

The Hague Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC), established as a politically binding (but not legally binding) arrangement in 2002 by MTCR partner states, is another facet of the global normative architecture around missiles and missile technologies. Unlike the MTCR, which is limited in membership, the HCOC now has 143 subscribing states, making it the most broadly accepted normative arrangement around missiles globally. The HCOC’s primary goals concern establishing norms against the proliferation of ballistic missiles and promoting general confidence building around ballistic missile and space-launch capabilities through transparency measures in peacetime practices. In particular, HCOC subscribers voluntarily “commit themselves politically to provide pre-launch notifications on ballistic missile and [SLV] launches and test flights.”⁴ While the HCOC enjoys wide global support, many key states in the Indo-Pacific remain nonsubscribers, including China, North Korea, Taiwan (which cannot subscribe), and several members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). (Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States are all subscribers.) As a result of this and other limitations,⁵ the HCOC has had little practical effect in constraining the proliferation of missiles in the Indo-Pacific. Its core confidence-building measure—the prelaunch notification system—has seen patchy compliance, including by established missile powers such as Russia and the United States. Proposals to improve, expand, and adapt the HCOC to contemporary realities could be useful,⁶ but it is unlikely that the regime will practically contribute to regional risk reduction in Asia in the coming years.

Other efforts to control missiles at multilateral and even global levels have not found success. One remarkable effort came in the late 2000s, when both Russia and the United States supported the idea of rendering global the INF Treaty’s bilateral ban on ground-launched missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. In a 2007 joint statement on the sidelines of the sixty-second UN General Assembly, Moscow and Washington called on “all interested countries to discuss the possibility of imparting a global character to [the INF Treaty].”⁷ This effort ultimately saw little interest from other states, and neither country revisited the idea.⁸ In 2008, a report by the UN secretary-general concluded that comprehensive, global controls on the proliferation and use of missile technologies “would probably be impossible.”⁹ Since this observation, relations among the major powers have deteriorated substantially, and missiles have proliferated more widely—in Asia and elsewhere—and seen widespread use in conflicts by state and nonstate actors alike.

Regional policymakers should understand that because large-scale conventional war is the most likely immediate antecedent to nuclear war and because missiles are likely to play an especially prominent role in any large-scale conventional war in Asia, measures of negotiated and unilateral restraint around missile capabilities can substantially contribute to reducing nuclear risks.

For the reasons described earlier in this report, policy interventions or regional diplomacy geared toward promoting a reversal or rapid cessation of missile proliferation in the Indo-Pacific—or globally—do not appear tractable in the short term. Instead, policymakers might seek to mitigate and limit the most negative potential consequences of missile proliferation, which include the possibility of rapidly proliferating missile capabilities contributing to heightened risks of nuclear war. Regional policymakers should understand that because large-scale conventional war is the most likely immediate antecedent to nuclear war and because missiles are likely to play an especially prominent role in any large-scale conventional war in Asia, measures of negotiated and unilateral restraint around missile capabilities can substantially contribute to reducing nuclear risks. Though under very different geopolitical and structural conditions, this was essentially the insight that led to Cold War–era arrangements, such as the INF Treaty and the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) talks,¹⁰ and eventually the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. In the context of the INF Treaty, nuclear-capable missiles were substantially more salient than conventional missiles, which have grown substantially in their precision and utility in the ensuing decades.

To be sure, contemporary geopolitics in Asia make readily apparent that the region is unlikely to find itself engaged in the sort of diplomacy that led to the INF Treaty or the MBFR talks. Asia today lacks the relatively neat bipolarity that existed in Europe late in the Cold War, where two collective defense treaty organizations—NATO and the Warsaw Pact, each comprising a nuclear superpower and otherwise large conventional military forces—sought to limit the risk and consequences of conventional and nuclear war through formal arms control. In Asia, the United States maintains its traditional hub-and-spokes network of alliances along with an unofficial and ambiguous commitment to Taiwan’s defense, while China, North Korea, and Russia are aligned to varying degrees. Moreover, the aforementioned late–Cold War processes took place in the aftermath of considerable U.S.-Soviet experience negotiating strategic arms control arrangements and other agreements beginning in the 1960s, including their monitoring and verification provisions. In Asia, the drawing board on arms control is nearly blank; North and South Korea have some limited and relatively recent experience in the form of their 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement in limiting various types of military activities,¹¹ but there are few other foundational building blocks for a formal regional arms control agreement that could contribute to the destruction of regional missile capabilities or otherwise impose quantitative caps on regional missile forces. North Korea offered up a unilateral moratorium on the testing of long-range missiles in April 2018, largely to build confidence and facilitate diplomacy with South Korea and the United States. However, that moratorium, which included both ICBMs and intermediate-range missiles, broke down in early 2022. Since 2019 and especially since launching an ambitious program of military modernization in 2021, North Korea has expressed no interest in negotiations with either South Korea or the United States. Moreover, a U.S.-China arms control process is nowhere in sight, despite repeated exhortations from Washington for Beijing to engage in noncommittal talks on strategic stability. Such a process may emerge on the other side of China’s ongoing quantitative nuclear force expansion, but missile-focused risk reduction cannot—and should not—wait for such a development. To the extent that China is engaged in verifiable arms control, it does so with neighboring states with which it has better political relations, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.¹²

Near-Term Risk Reduction and Organizational Change

Formal arms control in the vein of the INF Treaty and the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty may one day emerge out of a shared sense of necessity in the Indo-Pacific, but for short-term risk reduction to succeed, the most effective interventions may concern unilateral changes to how regional states posture their forces, communicate their intentions, and plan to carry out conventional military operations. At the most fundamental level, policymakers and decisionmakers across the Indo-Pacific and in the United States must ensure that military- and policy-planning processes sufficiently account for the risk of unintentional escalation, both inadvertent and accidental, specifically relating to long-range strike capabilities. While some of this planning has begun in the United States,¹³ it remains wholly insufficient generally in the Indo-Pacific—particularly given many of the escalation pathways and risks described in the preceding chapter that may implicate the United States and its allies. Finally, given the rapid growth in the ability of U.S. treaty allies to deliver strategic and escalatory effects with their own autonomously controlled missile arsenals, alliance managers in the United States and their counterparts in the Indo-Pacific will need to incorporate escalation risks into their policies and plans moving ahead.

For short-term risk reduction to succeed, the most effective interventions may concern unilateral changes to how regional states posture their forces, communicate their intentions, and plan to carry out conventional military operations.

The policy apparatuses of many regional states and their military organizations will likely be hesitant to undertake unilateral changes out of concerns that these changes, even if they contribute to a lower risk of nuclear war, may otherwise compromise conventional deterrence and therefore create the opportunity for unwanted nuclear escalation. For the conventionally weak state of North Korea, for instance, manipulating the risk of uncontrolled nuclear escalation in peacetime and in crises will likely continue to be a core strategic imperative; as a result, Pyongyang is unlikely to see substantial incentives to engage in comprehensive risk reduction. Despite this, the United States and its regional allies should take the lead in adapting their own policies and military operational practices to ensure that unintentional escalatory pathways to nuclear war stemming from their current and future missile deployments are limited. The organizational and policy shifts that might manifest in risk reduction need not compromise either general deterrence, which will be highly dependent on the aggregate balance of capabilities and political factors, or immediate deterrence in a crisis, which will be contingent on signaling, posturing, and other forms of strategic communication. Above all, the United States and its allies have a shared interest in averting nuclear escalation in all plausible conventional war scenarios on the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait. This should be ample motivation to ensure that their policies, postures, and military operational practices do not generate undesired escalation risks. On balance, unilateral organizational reform by regional states has the greatest potential to mitigate the risks of unintentional nuclear escalation stemming from the proliferation of missile capabilities in the Indo-Pacific.

A related means of risk reduction can emerge through new forms of coordination and consultation between the United States and its allies, including through trilateral and plurilateral formats. No two U.S. alliances in Asia are exactly the same, even if the threat perceptions underpinning allied planning and procedures may be shared. For instance, the U.S.–South Korea Combined Forces Command cannot be readily compared to the discrete command structures in the U.S.-Japan alliance. Moreover, the United States and its allies may not exhibit similar levels of risk acceptance in crises. Because growing allied missile capabilities can contribute to unintended escalation in the Indo-Pacific, Washington should begin addressing inadvertent and accidental escalation risks in the context of its existing consultations with allies, including at the military-operational level. In the U.S.-Japan context, the bilateral Extended Deterrence Dialogue can serve as a useful forum to candidly raise these issues. In the U.S.-South Korea context, these topics can be included in exchanges such as the Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue and the related Nuclear Consultative Group. The Nuclear Consultative Group, established pursuant to the April 2023 Washington Declaration, would be a particularly suitable venue—as would a potential trilateral U.S.–Japan–South Korea mechanism. With Australia, the bilateral Strategic Policy Dialogue would be a fitting forum for Washington to address these issues in an allied context. Across these dialogues, U.S. and allied officials should identify potentially divergent assessments of escalation risks and, where appropriate, pursue scenario-based approaches to intra-alliance dialogue. Tabletop exercises can play an important role in this endeavor. Taiwan, as a non-treaty ally with no formal military consultative dialogue mechanisms, presents a more complicated case, but Washington can seek to promote exchange through track 1.5 and track 2 dialogues on these and related matters. In 2022, over the course of the Russia-Ukraine war, U.S. decisionmakers demonstrated sensitivity to the escalatory risks of certain deep strike capabilities in the hands of a non-allied but friendly Ukraine. They should address similar risks with treaty allies and partners in Asia.

The United States and its regional allies should take the lead in adapting their own policies and military operational practices to ensure that unintentional escalatory pathways to nuclear war stemming from their current and future missile deployments are limited.

The next, most tractable pathway to meaningfully reducing missile-related escalation risks is two-party dialogue and confidence-building. The two most meaningful dyads here are U.S.-China and North Korea–South Korea (though a U.S.–North Korea process would also be desirable). In the U.S.-China case, a dialogue on missile-related risks should be subsumed into a broader process on strategic stability. The United States has strongly advocated for such talks, but China has shown little reciprocal interest. As of late 2021, the prospect of U.S.-China talks on strategic issues remained in the “early stages,” according to a senior U.S. official.¹⁴ Through October 2023, there had been no evidence of progress between the two sides. Instead, Beijing suspended certain military dialogues in the aftermath of Pelosi’s August 2022 trip to Taiwan.¹⁵ The two Koreas, meanwhile, have seen no meaningful bilateral dialogue since 2019, and military tensions have particularly spiked since the arrival of a conservative administration in Seoul in May 2022. Since the second half of 2022, Seoul and Pyongyang have traded barbs and carried out reciprocal shows of force. The 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement has shown little staying power. De-escalating the ongoing inter-Korean spiral may depend on the catalyzing effects of a serious crisis, but a crisis could just as easily spiral into a greater conflict. Given Pyongyang’s particular disinterest in dialogue around the premise of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,¹⁶ inter-Korean risk reduction may depend on a policy sea change in both Seoul and Washington.

Regional Dialogue and Confidence Building

While unilateral organizational changes are both the most tractable and meaningful near-term path to risk reduction, states should not entirely overlook the possibility for meaningful progress on regional risk reduction efforts. The place to begin with regional processes on risk reduction will be with general, region-wide dialogues that are inclusive and diverse in representation.

The ASEAN-led East Asia Summit (EAS) may be a useful venue for regional governments to raise concerns about missile-related escalation risks. The EAS has traditionally avoided issues related to nuclear escalation since its inception in 2005, but that appears to be changing in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the 2022 meeting of the EAS, then Chinese premier Li Keqiang underscored the “irresponsibility” of nuclear threats, in a possible indication of Beijing’s discomfort with the implicit and explicit threats to use nuclear weapons issued by various Russian officials, including Putin, in the course of the war.¹⁷ Similarly, shortly after North Korea carried out an unprecedentedly intense campaign of missile launches during military exercises, South Korean President Yoon used the 2022 EAS to emphasize that peace in the Indo-Pacific was premised on Korean denuclearization.¹⁸

Other forums centered around ASEAN, including the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting–Plus and the ASEAN Regional Forum,¹⁹ could make for useful consultative settings as well. The latter, for instance, has seen regular North Korean participation—a rare feature in regional security dialogues.²⁰ Indeed, the salience of missile-related issues is rising for ASEAN states as proliferation trends have intensified in the region.²¹ While certain ASEAN states may be reluctant to discuss these issues openly, the Indo-Pacific currently lacks other forums that could serve as logical starting points for region-wide consultations that could help identify shared interests.

Beyond ASEAN-centered forums, a more specialized regional forum—the Western Pacific Naval Symposium—could be a useful venue to discuss matters related specifically to ship- and submarine-based missile systems. The symposium, which includes Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States, could table transparency measures related to missile-related activities on naval platforms. Other specialized defense forums—notably, the annual International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La Dialogue—could also raise the prominence of missile-related escalation risks in the region. Though the dialogue has not traditionally featured nuclear weapons matters prominently on its agenda, the 2022 iteration emphasized regional nuclear issues, with calls from Japanese Prime Minister Kishida for the United States and China to engage in nuclear arms control and several questions on the drivers of China’s nuclear and missile buildup to various regional defense ministers, including then Chinese defense minister Wei Fenghe.²² The 2023 iteration featured nuclear weapons issues more directly on the agenda.²³ As the salience of nuclear matters rises in the Indo-Pacific, future Shangri-La Dialogues may address these issues regularly and directly, including in plenary sessions with regional defense ministers.

Short of arms control, institutionalized multilateral transparency and confidence building would be highly desirable. For instance, a shared recognition of risks stemming from missiles could prompt Indo-Pacific states to see value in a multilateral missile launch notification regime.²⁴ Such a regime could take best practices from existing arrangements—for instance, the HCOC or those between the United States and Russia, Russia and China,²⁵ and India and Pakistan²⁶—and seek subscribers across the region.

The least tractable—but most desirable—form of risk reduction around missiles in the Indo-Pacific would be a multilateral, verified arms control agreement. A ban on nuclear-armed GLCMs, for instance, is highly desirable. Eliminating an entire class of ground-launched missiles in Asia from a nuclear-delivery role would have a substantial effect on reducing escalation risks. China does not deploy any nuclear-armed cruise missiles. While North Korea has indicated that a new GLCM is a “strategic” weapon—that is, nuclear-capable, per Pyongyang’s traditional euphemism—it remains unclear whether Pyongyang has produced sufficiently compact nuclear warheads for such a system. The United States does not deploy any ground-launched, theater-range nuclear weapons and has no plans to. Because the Biden administration has scrapped plans to revive a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile capability, the sole nuclear-capable cruise missiles in the U.S. arsenal today are air-launched: the AGM-86 air-launched cruise missile and, soon, the modernized AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff missile. Russia does deploy theater-range, nuclear-armed GLCMs, including in its Eastern Military District, and would present a challenge to such a multilateral agreement. A multilateral regional agreement could still proceed by requiring Russia, for instance, to base any nuclear-capable cruise missile launchers west of certain longitudes. However, NATO allies would not be pleased, and Russia’s history of cheating on the INF Treaty with this same missile does not bode well for compliance with such a restriction, which presumably would be overridden in wartime anyway. Physical verification would also pose a substantial challenge—particularly in terms of Chinese and North Korean acquiescence to the intrusive protocol necessary to verify, for instance, that declared cruise missiles were non-nuclear objects. Limits on GLCMs could be circumvented by concealing nuclear-armed missiles (or swappable nuclear warheads) and using the same missile as a nuclear air-launched cruise missile or sea-launched cruise missile. Nevertheless, insofar as long-term, moonshot regional missile-oriented arms control is concerned, such a process could have substantial value in mitigating nuclear risks. Once implemented, such an arrangement, if complied with, could substantially mitigate mistrust and ambiguity around regional GLCM capabilities and create the conditions for follow-on agreements covering ballistic and nonballistic maneuverable missiles, including hypersonic missiles.

Scoping Risk Reduction: Who Should Be at the Table?

While the states examined closely in this report possess substantial missile capabilities today or will soon possess such capabilities, with implications for escalation in the Indo-Pacific, the capabilities of other regional powers including India and Russia bear on regional dynamics as well.

India’s conventional and nuclear missile forces, while not a primary driver of Chinese threat perceptions and defense investments, are nevertheless a consideration for Beijing.²⁷ Notably, a 1996 China-India agreement on confidence building along their disputed land borders is somewhat unique among bilateral undertakings by China in that it provides for the nondeployment of “surface-to-surface missiles” within “mutually agreed geographical zones.”²⁸ While the agreement has come under substantial stress amid intense border clashes between the two countries in recent years²⁹—especially beginning in 2020—it provides at least one case when Beijing willingly accepted a measure of restraint in a reciprocal manner. However, China remains reluctant to engage with India on new measures of military restraint. Furthermore, India remains mired in a competitive nuclear dyad with Pakistan, adding potentially yet another country that ought to be considered in the course of regional risk reduction efforts. Overall, India’s direct military involvement in a large-scale conventional war in East Asia is unlikely and, while a China-India conventional war cannot be ruled out, limiting the scope of such a war will depend mostly on bilateral dynamics between Beijing and New Delhi. For these reasons, subregional confidence building and risk reduction efforts in southern Asia may hold greater promise for addressing India’s role in the Indo-Pacific.³⁰

Similarly, Russia’s missile deployments and activities in its Eastern Military District are of special concern to Japan and the United States.³¹ Both Japan and South Korea have also grown increasingly concerned about apparent China-Russia collusion in certain conventional military operations, such as intrusions into Seoul’s air defense identification zone or presence operations near disputed islands administered by Tokyo in the East China Sea.³² The scope of possible China-Russia cooperation in the context of a conventional war in Asia remains uncertain and hotly debated as the two are not formal allies but have coordinated on military matters in new and unprecedented ways. Similar concerns may surface about potential Russian support for North Korea in a conflict, given rapid shifts in that bilateral relationship.³³ The ongoing war in Ukraine has had a significant effect on Russia’s stocks of long-range precision strike capabilities, but the plausibility of incorporating Moscow into any postwar multilateral risk reduction process in Asia will likely be highly contingent on a postwar settlement in Europe. For Washington, reengaging Moscow on strategic nuclear arms control will take precedence over promoting Russian engagement in a more limited regional risk reduction process. Though these processes need not be mutually exclusive, it will likely be politically challenging to incorporate Russia into an Asia-specific risk reduction process. Finally, though Russia will remain a relevant military actor in East Asia—particularly with its air and naval capabilities—the substantial degradation of its conventional military capabilities in the course of its campaign against Ukraine could suggest that missiles currently deployed in its Eastern Military District could be relocated westward, either for use or to augment perceived deterrence requirements against NATO. Given the uncertainties associated with Russian missile production in a postwar scenario, however, policymakers should not rule out the possibility of Moscow once again prioritizing a robust and potentially growing East Asian missile presence. Russia would also be able to internally relocate missiles and launchers eastward if needed.

A comprehensive approach to missile-related risk reduction would suggest that India and Russia ought to be at the table, even if this would further reduce the feasibility of arriving at multilateral measures. Increasingly, Myanmar,³⁴ the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam ought to be engaged given their respective capabilities and regional roles. Vietnam has legacy Scud-type surface-to-surface missiles and may soon enter talks to potentially purchase the Indian-Russian supersonic BrahMos missile (a capability Hanoi has long coveted).³⁵ Thailand and the Philippines are U.S. treaty allies, and the latter is expecting deliveries of three BrahMos supersonic anti-ship cruise missile batteries.³⁶ Manila is unlikely to accede to the permanent basing of the U.S. precision strike systems that are under development, such as the Typhon or the PrSM,³⁷ but the U.S.-Philippines alliance is responding to changes in the regional missile threat environment; for example, during the bilateral U.S.-Philippine Balikatan exercises in 2022, the two countries deployed Patriot missile defenses for the first time.³⁸ These states should certainly engage in regional discussions on confidence building and risk reduction, including through the ASEAN-led forums mentioned earlier. Their incorporation into possible multilateral processes focused primarily on reducing nuclear escalation risks in East Asia—especially in the Taiwan Strait and Korean Peninsula—is less essential and would likely heighten the already high political and diplomatic thresholds to facilitating regional risk reduction.

Notes

¹ Kolja Brockmann, “The Missile Technology Control Regime at a Crossroads,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, October 1, 2021, https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-backgrounder/2021/missile-technology-control-regime-crossroads.

² Brockmann, “The Missile Technology Control Regime at a Crossroads.”

³ For instance, see William Alberque, “Revitalising Arms Control: The MTCR and the HCoC,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, November 2, 2021, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/research-paper/2021/11/revitalising-arms-control-the-mtcr-and-the-hcoc.

⁴ “Frequenty Asked Questions About HCoC,” Hague Code of Conduct, accessed November 29, 2022, https://www.hcoc.at/what-is-hcoc/frequently-asked-questions.html.

⁵ Other commonly cited limitations of the Hague Code of Conduct include its nonbinding nature, a lack of verification or enforcement mechanisms, a lack of a permanent secretariat, and the fact that it was drafted by MTCR partners (instead of a larger group of states with varied capabilities and interests concerning missiles and missile proliferation).

⁶ For instance, see Nikolai Sokov, “The Hague Code of Conduct: Multivector Expansion,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, October 11, 2019, https://nonproliferation.org/the-hague-code-of-conduct-multivector-expansion.

⁷ “Joint U.S.-Russian Statement on the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles at the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly,” U.S. Department of State, the Office of Electronic Information, Bureau of Public Affairs, October 25, 2007, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/oct/94141.htm.

⁸ Former U.S. secretary of defense Robert Gates also recounted in his memoirs that Russia proposed leaving the INF Treaty in 2007, citing concerns about intermediate-range missiles in Iran, Pakistan, and even China. See Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, reprint edition (New York: Vintage, 2015), 154.

⁹ David Santoro and Brad Glosserman, “Time for a Reckoning: Missiles Have Flown under the Radar for Too Long in Asia,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, April 1, 2021, 8, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/research-paper/2021/04/missiles-asia.

¹⁰ Abbott Brayton, “MBFR and Conventional Forces Reductions in Europe,” World Today 40, no. 12 (1984): 497–507, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40395573.

¹¹ “Agreement on the Implementation of the Historic Panmunjom Declaration in the Military Domain,” National Committee on North Korea, September 19, 2018, https://www.ncnk.org/sites/default/files/Agreement%20on%20the%20Implementation%20of%20the%20Historic%20Panmunjom%20Declaration%20in%20the%20Military%20Domain.pdf.

¹² “China and Neighbor Countries Kick Off Annual Border Disarmament Compliance Inspection,” Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China, June 26, 2019, http://eng.mod.gov.cn/xb/News_213114/TopStories/4844446.html.

¹³ Ankit Panda and James Acton, “Why the Pentagon Must Think Harder About Inadvertent Escalation,” Defense News, December 2, 2020, https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/12/02/why-the-pentagon-must-think-harder-about-inadvertent-escalation.

¹⁴ Jeff Seldin, “US, China in ‘Early Stages’ of Possible Talks on Nukes, Cyberspace,” Voice of America, November 19, 2021, https://www.voanews.com/a/us-china-in-early-stages-of-possible-talks-on-nukes-cyberspace-/6320510.html.

¹⁵ Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu, “China Halts Military, Climate Dialogue With U.S. Over Pelosi Taiwan Trip,” Reuters, August 5, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-premier-evil-neighbour-next-door-is-showing-off-her-power-our-door-2022-08-05.

¹⁶ Colin Zwirko and Jeongmin Kim, “Kim Jong Un Says He Will ‘Never Give Up’ Nuclear Weapons, Rejects Future Talks,” NK News, September 9, 2022, https://www.nknews.org/2022/09/kim-jong-un-says-he-will-never-give-up-nuclear-weapons-rejects-future-talks.

¹⁷ Simon Lewis, “China Premier Li Emphasised ‘Irresponsibility’ of Nuclear Threats at Asia Summit -U.S. Official,” Reuters, November 14, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-premier-li-emphasised-irresponsibility-nuclear-threats-asia-summit-us-2022-11-14.

¹⁸ “Yoon Says NK Denuclearization Is Precondition for Peaceful Indo-Pacific,” Korea Times, November 13, 2022, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2022/11/356_339740.html.

¹⁹ A notable limitation of many region-wide forums is the lack of North Korean participation, but senior North Korean representatives have notably participated in the ASEAN Regional Forum in recent years.

²⁰ Shawn Ho and Seksan Anantasirikiat, “What North Korea Gains From Participating in the ASEAN Regional Forum,” NK News, August 27, 2021, https://www.nknews.org/2021/08/what-north-korea-gains-from-participating-in-the-asean-regional-forum.

²¹ For instance, see Daniel Hurst, “Indonesian Ambassador Warns Australia AUKUS Pact Must Not Fuel a Hypersonic Arms Race,” The Guardian, November 2, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/03/indonesian-ambassador-warns-australia-aukus-pact-must-not-fuel-a-hypersonic-arms-race-in-the-region. The Philippines is seeking to procure the Indian-Russian BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, while Vietnam has introduced indigenous anti-ship cruise missiles. See Yeo, “Philippines Signs Deal for BrahMos Supersonic Anti-Ship Missile”; and “Vietnam Unveils Its New VCM-01 Anti-Ship Cruise Missile,” Navy Recognition, May 28, 2020, https://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php/naval-news/naval-news-archive/2020/may-2020/8491-vietnam-unveils-its-new-vcm-01-anti-ship-cruise-missile.html.

²² “Transcript: Japan PM Kishida’s Speech at Shangri-La Dialogue,” Nikkei Asia, June 11, 2022, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Indo-Pacific/Transcript-Japan-PM-Kishida-s-speech-at-Shangri-La-Dialogue; and “Chinese Defence Minister Says Country’s Nuclear Arsenal ‘for Self-Defence,’” Reuters, June 12, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-defence-minister-says-countrys-nuclear-arsenal-for-self-defence-2022-06-12.

²³ “IISS Shangri-La Dialogue – Speaker Agenda,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, June 2023, https://www.iiss.org/events/shangri-la-dialogue/shangri-la-dialogue-2023/speaker-agenda/.

²⁴ Dmitry Stefanovich, “[WMD] Great Power Risk Reduction Measures and Lessons for the Asia-Pacific,” Asia-Pacific Leadership Network, January 18, 2022, 28, https://www.apln.network/analysis/special-report/great-power-risk-reduction-measures-and-lessons-for-the-asia-pacific.

²⁵ The existing U.S.-Russia and China-Russia arrangements only cover long-range missile launches.

²⁶ The India-Pakistan arrangement covers ballistic missiles but notably excludes cruise missiles.

²⁷ Tong Zhao and Toby Dalton, “At a Crossroads? China-India Nuclear Relations After the Border Clash,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 19, 2020, https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/08/19/at-crossroads-china-india-nuclear-relations-after-border-clash-pub-82489.

²⁸ See Article III, “Agreement Between the Government of the Republic of India and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Confidence-Building Measures in the Military Field Along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas,” UN Peacemaker, November 29, 1996, https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/CN%20IN_961129_Agreement%20between%20China%20and%20India.pdf.

²⁹ Pranab Dhal Samanta, “Chinese Action Violates 1993, 1996, and 2013 Border Agreements,” Economic Times, June 18, 2020, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/chinese-action-violates-1993-1996-and-2013-border-agreements/articleshow/76405795.cms?from=mdr.

³⁰ For a recent assessment of these dynamics, see Toby Dalton, “Plus Ça Change? Prospects of a Nuclear Deterrence Multipolarity in Southern Asia,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 5, no. 2 (July 3, 2022): 243–261, https://doi.org/10.1080/25751654.2022.2158702.

³¹ Jesse Johnson, “Tokyo Beefs Up Intelligence-Gathering After Russian Subs Test-Fire Cruise Missiles in Sea of Japan,” Japan Times, April 15, 2022, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/04/15/national/russia-missile-test-sea-of-japan.

³² Dzirhan Mahadzir, “Japanese, Korean Fighters Scrambled in Response to Joint Russia-China Bomber Patrol,” USNI News, November 30, 2022, https://news.usni.org/2022/11/30/japanese-korean-fighters-scrambled-in-response-to-joint-russia-china-bomber-patrol; and Mari Yamaguchi, “Japan Sights China, Russia Warships Near Disputed Islands,” Associated Press, July 4, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-china-japan-beijing-2907f714439ae841e9e1bb05ca85e991.

³³ Edward Howell, “North Korea and Russia’s Hot-and-Cold Relationship Rapidly Heats Up,” NK PRO, October 7, 2022, https://www.nknews.org/pro/north-korea-and-russias-hot-and-cold-relationship-rapidly-heats-up.

³⁴ Myanmar is in the throes of an intense civil conflict, as of 2023, but its military possesses anti-ship cruise missiles sourced from North Korea and has received extensive industrial assistance from Pyongyang over the years. See Catherine Boye, Melissa Hanham, and Robert Shaw, “North Korea and Myanmar: A Match for Nuclear Proliferation?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 27, 2010, https://thebulletin.org/2010/09/north-korea-and-myanmar-a-match-for-nuclear-proliferation; and Panda, “North Korea’s New KN19 Coastal Defense Cruise Missile.”

³⁵ Vu Anh, “BrahMos Aerospace Offers to Sell Supersonic Missile to Vietnam,” VnExpress International, December 10, 2022, https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/brahmos-aerospace-offers-to-sell-supersonic-missile-to-vietnam-4546613.html; and Anuvesh Rath, “Exclusive: India Likely to Sell BrahMos Missiles to Vietnam in Deal Ranging Up to $625 Million,” Zee Business, June 9, 2023, https://www.zeebiz.com/india/news-exclusive-india-likely-to-sell-brahmos-missiles-to-vietnam-in-deal-ranging-up-to-625-million-239380.

³⁶ “Shore-Based Anti-Ship Missile System Contract Signed,” Department of National Defense of the Republic of the Philippines, January 28, 2022, https://www.dnd.gov.ph/Postings/Post/Shore-based%20anti-ship%20missile%20system%20contract%20signed.

³⁷ While Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is more positively disposed toward the United States than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, various domestic political constraints leave the prospect of U.S. missile deployments to the Philippines unlikely. For background, see Michael Beltran, “The US May Force the Philippines’ (Willing) Hand,” Lowy Institute, December 6, 2022, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/us-may-force-philippines-willing-hand.

³⁸ Frances Mangosing, “A First for Balikatan: US Patriot Missiles in PH,” INQUIRER.net, April 4, 2022, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1577746/a-first-for-balikatan-us-patriot-missiles-in-ph.