An arms race or opportunity for cooperation? Analyzing the rise of hypersonic missiles.
In 1945, the United States became the first country to use nuclear weapons on populated areas, bombing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the years that followed, the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik would entangle Moscow and Washington in a nuclear arms race that culminated in the Cold War. Now, a new form of missile technology brings the potential to throw the United States back into an arms race: hypersonic missiles.
Hypersonic missiles make improvements on current missile delivery technology. What distinguishes them from other missiles is not only their speed, which is faster than a typical ICBM, but how the warhead reaches its target. Hypersonic missiles can be delivered in such a way that their actual targets are unknown and where the time countries have to detect them is very low.
Several countries are currently developing this technology, such as the United States, China, Russia, and others. Some top American military officials believe that the development of these weapons could lead to another Cold War era — this time focused on a Sino-American showdown rather than against the Russians.
With China being the United States’ top adversary, American observers are concerned about its advancements in hypersonic technology; they see the United States’ hypersonic missile program as falling behind. Furthermore, if America wants to maintain its technological superiority in the world, it needs to ramp up missile program funding and development. However, arms increases by the United States in response to Beijing may trigger security dilemma issues among the two great powers.
The rise of hypersonic missiles presents some unique problems in the context of great power conflict. With standard security dilemma issues, offense-defense distinguishability is an important component of states’ calculations for how they should react to arms increases. Essentially, if a state is able to distinguish whether an arms increase is for defensive rather than offensive purposes, it is then possible to avoid a spiral of continually increasing arms. In this instance, American military analysts believe that China’s missile developments are for offensive purposes. Furthermore, China’s advancements are concerning to the United States because Beijing’s objectives are viewed as undermining America’s technological advantages, leading Washington to feel as though it must also engage in development, otherwise it risks its security.
In the case of hypersonic missiles, they present an additional distinguishability issue that fits the security dilemma mold: conventional-nuclear arms distinguishability. If it can be determined that a missile has a conventional warhead, states do not have to worry about a nuclear threat and can deliver a proportionate response with similar conventional weapons. However, if these missiles are carrying nuclear warheads, then states are inclined to react in kind with their own arsenals, leading to nuclear war and mutually-assured destruction.
With hypersonic missiles, it is hard to determine the type of warhead being carried. In the short amount of time it takes for the missile to reach its target, states must decide whether to treat it as conventional versus nuclear and, in turn, whether they will preemptively escalate the conflict to a nuclear level. These complicated security dilemma issues raise the question of how states could respond to the development of hypersonic missiles. Two possible outcomes are discussed here: an arms race or arms control.
If nations frame missile development as offensive acts by their adversaries that must be countered, they create a reputation game where they are motivated to develop arms to appear more technologically advanced than their competitors and to bolster their military/security capabilities. This would lead to continual arms increases by both (or multiple) parties, subsequently resulting in an arms race.
The other approach is arms control. China, Russia, the United States, and all the other states developing hypersonic missiles (absent North Korea) are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. If they want to keep in the spirit of the treaty to “make every effort to avert the danger of [nuclear] war,” then arms control is necessary to ensure that the technology does not become so widespread that it becomes redundant to try to limit its production. To be successful, countries could frame this as an opportunity for multilateral cooperation and an avenue to show that global denuclearization is still an attainable goal.
Whether the world is thrown into another arms race depends on the actions of states. Countries developing this technology must decide to either continue to engage in arms increases or work toward multilateral cooperation to preserve goals of denuclearization and global peace. In the end, the emergence of hypersonic missile technology will only be an arms race if states make it one.
This article was originally written for Professor William C. Wohlforth’s class “International Politics” at Dartmouth College.
