APLN Policy Brief 27

The following is a summary. Click on the adjacent link to download the full brief.

Strategic nuclear policy dialogue with/between the Asia Pacific’s four nuclear-armed states (China, India, Pakistan and North Korea) is under-developed. In recent years, overall dialogue has improved between the United States and China. Yet a dedicated strategic nuclear policy dialogue between the two is lacking. Meanwhile, efforts to launch dialogue between India and Pakistan have been unsuccessful, despite rising competition, which is in turn affecting India–China relations, where dialogue is also non-existent. Finally, and no less important, strategic nuclear policy dialogue with North Korea, which could in theory succeed where a denuclearization-first strategy has failed, remains an untested option. This paper reviews these efforts.

About the Author

David Santoro is director and senior fellow for nuclear policy at the Pacific Forum, Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he specializes in strategic and deterrence issues as well as non-proliferation and nuclear security, with a regional focus on Asia–Pacific and Europe. Before joining the Pacific Forum CSIS, he worked on nuclear policy in France, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. He has also been a visiting fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Institute for International Strategic Studies in London. You can follow him on Twitter at @DavidSantoro1.

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