CHAPTER 5
The most intensive efforts will be in the development by the United States and Russia of long-range, high-precision, conventionally armed weapons systems (cruise missiles launched from heavy bombers, submarine-launched cruise missiles, and cruise missiles launched from surface ships). Development of boost-glide hypersonic systems and long-range ballistic missiles is also very likely (similar to those already being developed under the US Prompt Global Strike program). China, India, Israel, and other countries are likely to follow the United States and Russia down this road. If East-West tensions increase, the development of defensive and offensive weapons could drastically undermine strategic stability and destroy the nuclear arms-control regime, including arms limitations and nonproliferation. In this more competitive context, an arms race in space might develop. The space powers will continue to develop quantitative and qualitative space-based missile attack early warning systems, intelligence, navigation, communications and broadcasting, and military command-and-control systems. The likelihood of space incidents (such as the collision of Russian and US satellites in 2009) might increase. Such incidents also include the possibility that authoritarian and irresponsible regimes will attempt to disrupt the operation of space systems, with unpredictable socioeconomic and military consequences. If an arms race in space does get under way among the United States, China, Russia, India, Brazil, Japan, and other countries, these countries are likely to employ symmetric and asymmetric measures to counter the threats in space and coming from space. In an environment of growing cooperation among the major powers, Russia and the United States could reduce their nuclear arsenals to around one thousand strategic and tactical warheads in ten to fifteen years. At the same time, the scale of deployment and technical characteristics of future offensive and defensive conventional, high-precision weapons systems could be limited by agreements between Russia and the United States, and also by multilateral agreements. The UK and France will get involved in this process, in one way or another, by the mid-2020s. By this time, it could be possible to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force and conclude the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, at least among the five big nuclear powers. If—with the help of Russia, the United States, and China—nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan is avoided, these countries could conclude a nuclear-arms limitation treaty during the 2020s. As part of efforts to stabilize the situation in the Middle East and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime (especially pertaining to Iran’s nuclear program), by 2035, Israel could do away with operationally deployed nuclear weapons (following the South African example). By 2035, North Korea’s political and economic system will most likely go through changes that will result in Pyongyang fully renouncing nuclear weapons. During the next twenty years, China might begin to play a greater role in nuclear and other arms-control efforts, mostly likely in bilateral effort with the United States. Greater Chinese involvement in nuclear and advanced conventional arms-control efforts would be motivated by China’s desire to take Russia’s place as the second superpower, a status traditionally associated with the privileged role of counterpart in strategic arms talks with the United States. The only way to prevent an arms race in space would be to improve the legal basis for activity in outer space, particularly by expanding restrictions and bans on weapons deployment in orbit and development of land-, air-, and sea-based means of destroying objects in space. Under any scenario that takes place by 2035 (much later than the deadline set by the 1992 Convention), global stocks of chemical weapons will have been destroyed in full. Those pertaining to biological weapons are different, however, because the ban on these weapons established by the 1972 Convention will be not enforced due to the lack of a verification system. Development of new bans and control measures for new types of bio-weapons (genetic engineering and so on) would be possible on a multilateral basis only in the context of cooperation among the major powers.
Proliferation of Critical Materials and Technology Preserving and strengthening the international nonproliferation regime (for nuclear weapons and missile technology) requires agreement among the major powers: Russia, the United States, and China. Even if these countries cooperate, however, success is not guaranteed, given the growing number of actors 40