This week, Dmitry Stefanovich analyses risk reduction and incident prevention mechanisms for the Asia-Pacific while Matt Korda assesses the nuclear weapons that might be used in a Korean Peninsula conflict. Tanya Ogilvie-White argues that Asian leadership on institutionalising No First Use policies could promote their wider adoption.

• Establish a regional, multilateral long-range missile and space launch rocket notification regime that enable states to monitor and verify compliance with the regime.
• Establish hardened, modernized, and harmonized multilateral hotlines between the capitals of the region for transmission of missile launches notifications and for crisis communications.
• Delimit deployment of ballistic missile-firing submarines to reduce adversaries’ fear of disarming strikes and development and deployment of long-range Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) capabilities.
• Decouple nuclear weapons from aircraft staging bases so that non-strategic nuclear weapons are noticed when they are deployed.  
• Reinforce the nuclear-use taboo by more stringent application of the Law of Armed Conflict to nuclear operations of all kinds. 

• The DPRK might launch nuclear weapons at targets in the ROK, Japan, and the United States if it perceived an immediate existential threat to its survival.
• The United States would likely only initiate a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula if it believed that the DPRK was about to launch its own nuclear weapons.
• Russia and China are only likely to use nuclear weapons in a conflict involving the Korean Peninsula if their core strategic interests were threatened.

• “Asia-Pacific perspectives on no-first use of nuclear weapons” by Tanya Ogilvie-White.
• “No-first-use of nuclear weapons: Australian perspectives and possible contributions” by Marianne Hanson.
• “Examining NFU – lessons from Southern Asia” by Manpreet Sethi
• “China and the international debate on no first use of nuclear weapons” by Tong Zhao.
• “‘No first use’ in the context of the U.S.-Japan Alliance” by Nobumasa Akiyama.