NPS News Profile:
NPS Track 2 Diplomacy Stabilizes U.S.-China Strategic Relations
By Barbara Honegger
August 06, 2008
For three years, the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC) has been quietly facilitating “Track 2” diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China, and the fruits of that effort have just been published in an anthology edited by the Center’s co-director, National Security Affairs (NSA) Assistant Prof. Christopher Twomey.
The Center, the research arm of the NPS Department of National Security Affairs, hosted and co-organized the U.S.-China Strategic Dialogue, whose third annual session was held in Honolulu last November. The book, Perspectives on Sino-American Strategic Nuclear Issues, consists of papers by conference participants structured around paired national perspectives on contemporary nuclear issues. Half of the chapters are by U.S. nuclear policy makers and academic experts, including NPS faculty members, the former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and half by active duty and retired Chinese flag officers and academicians.
“Track 2 diplomacy is commonplace in international affairs, and has played a constructive role in trying to resolve many ongoing or potential disputes, like the Oslo talks between Israel and the Palestinians,” said Twomey. “In this case, the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Contemporary Conflict together with our Pacific Forum-Centre for Strategic and International Studies partner provide a venue to bring mid-level government and military officials with the ear of their nations’ decision makers together with academic participants in an unofficial setting.
“The purpose of this ongoing dialogue is strategic nuclear threat reduction, stability enhancement and increased transparency between the U.S. and China, the two most important great powers in Asia today,” Twomey explained. “This is achieved by identifying important misperceptions of both sides’ nuclear strategies, capabilities and doctrine and highlighting potential areas of cooperation and confidence building. Increasing each side’s understanding of the other’s red lines, crisis dynamics and escalation potential can enhance security in a time of crisis, reduce proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and lead to greater stability. Because the conferences are in an academic setting, they’re a safe venue for frank discussions with potential rivals to get some transparency about intentions.”
“Though there is no overt arms race between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China and we’ve have maintained a 1998 agreement not to target nuclear weapons at each other, both sides are undergoing an extensive strategic force modernization at a time of potentially increased conflict over Taiwan, North Korea, Japan and other parts of East Asia,” Twomey noted. “China already has a few dozen land-based missiles with nuclear warheads that could reach the west and east coasts of the U.S., and has three ballistic-missile-launching submarines in the water.
“The problem is real and growing and requires active measures to tamp it down, but this new reality isn’t evoking the academic and intellectual response that it should,” Twomey said. “There’s a real gap in analytic work on nuclear strategy by the upcoming generation of U.S. scholars because of the end of the Cold War, so a secondary goal of the conference series is to build up this community. More broadly, NPS’ National Security Affairs Department is also working to carry this forward by creating a credential program that will focus on strategic nuclear issues.
“The Naval Postgraduate School is the perfect sponsor for this kind of informal diplomacy because we sit at the intersection of the Ivory Tower and the Washington Beltway,” Twomey explained. “As faculty members, we get to do exciting work in both worlds. The U.S.-China conference series flowed out of Track 2s we’ve done with Russia and India. Founding CCC director Prof. Peter Lavoy is currently National Intelligence Officer for South Asia, which includes India. And NPS has also done Track 2s with Pakistan and Russia.
“We will definitely continue these dialogues, and will be using simultaneous translation for the fourth conference, so we will be able to include Chinese analysts who don’t normally participate in such discussions with the U.S. [due to the language barrier].” The fourth U.S.-China dialogue will be held in early 2009, also in Hawaii.
The bi-lateral dialogues and anthology are sponsored by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, the lead agency responsible for addressing threats from weapons of mass destruction, as well as other key U.S. agencies. The book is the latest in the Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies series published by Palgrave Macmillan. The series general editor is NPS National Security Affairs Prof. James Wirtz, Interim Dean of the NPS School of International Graduate Studies, who also contributed a chapter, “U.S. Nuclear Posture Review and Beyond: Implications for Sino-American Relations.” Conference reports from the first two dialogues in 2005 and 2006 were previously published and are available from the Center.
In addition to being the book’s editor, Twomey authored the introduction, “Dangers and Prospects in Sino-American Strategic Nuclear Relations,” and the concluding chapter “Comparing Perspectives: Dangers to Avoid, Prospects to Develop.”
Twomey earned a B.A. in economics from the University of San Diego, a master’s in Pacific (Rim) International Affairs from the University of California at San Diego, and his Ph.D. in the history of U.S.-China coercive diplomacy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before coming to NPS in 2004, he was an International Security Fellow with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Twomey has lived and studied in Beijing, in 1994, 1998-99 and 2001.
The Center for Contemporary Conflict analyzes current and emerging threats to U.S. national security and conveys its assessments through briefings, conferences, publications, the ship-board Regional Security Education Program and the e-journal Strategic Insights.
