Matthew Kroenig discusses nuclear deterrence, rules-based international order, and great power competition. The following is a transcript of the lecture.

Great, thank you for that introduction. It’s a pleasure to be back here. I think this is the fourth or fifth year in a row I’ve had the honor to speak here, and it’s true. My siblings are good-looking, but I got the brains, at least some of them. As Mark pointed out, I spend a lot of time thinking about nuclear weapons. We can talk about that more in the Q&A if you’re interested, but I thought for my presentation I would provide a broader perspective on U.S. foreign policy over the past 70 years.

As Mark mentioned, like all of you, I’m a Christian, and for much of my early career, these parts of my life were separate. I had my religious life and my professional life. But in part thanks to Mark and the opportunity to participate in venues like this, I have been thinking more about how they interrelate. You might think there are some tensions, but I’ve come to realize that by supporting U.S. foreign policy and an engaged America, we are doing good in the world. I’m working on a book now titled Force for Good: How American Power Makes the World Safer, Richer, and Freer. I believe the United States has been the greatest force for good in the world over the past 70 years, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

You sometimes hear people say, “Does the United States really have a strategy in the world?” or “Because of our democracy, are we just focused on the next election cycle?” People say we’re too polarized to have a coherent strategy. We get in the Iran deal, we get out, and you hear people say, “China has a plan for 2049. We can’t think past the next election cycle.” But in this book, I argue that the United States has had a fairly consistent grand strategy since World War II. Sometimes, these debates about differences between administrations are the narcissism of small differences. But taking a step back, there is a way the United States has approached the world over the past 70 years that is unique and different from how, say, the Chinese Communist Party, Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union would have structured the world. Essentially, it’s a three-part grand strategy, and I want to walk through each of the three parts and talk about the results.

First, is creating a lot of different names. We could debate the names for the next hour, but a rules-based international system… is it a rules-based system? A liberal system? A U.S.-led system? But basically creating this post-World War II international system. Second, inviting other countries to join that system. And third, defending the system from challengers—those who would try to disrupt it or tear it down.

Step one: building a rules-based international system. We’re still living in the world that the United States and its democratic allies created after World War II. After World War II, they looked back on the previous half-century, realized that didn’t go very well, and asked, “What kind of system do we want to construct?” They did a number of things. One, they created strong alliances. The United States created strong alliances in Europe and Asia, two regions of the world that caused World War II and had seen warfare for centuries before, so they created strong alliances in Europe and Asia to keep the peace in these important geopolitical regions. It also developed informal security arrangements in other parts of the world. No formal allies in the Middle East. People are sometimes surprised to hear that Israel is not a formal ally, but there are strong security partnerships with Israel and other countries in the Middle East. By creating these strong alliances, they tried to secure the most important geopolitical regions on Earth.

Continuing in the security realm, the United States and its allies set up systems to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The United States was the lead architect of the nuclear non-proliferation regime and has worked hard to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to both friends and enemies. We see the efforts now with Iran, North Korea sanctions, and threats of force to stop our enemies. But the United States also goes to great lengths to stop our friends from building nuclear weapons. One of the things we do is extend our nuclear deterrent and say, “Don’t build your own nuclear weapons. You can rely on American nuclear weapons.”

Also, the United States has used its power to secure the so-called global commons, to make sure that the seas, aerospace, cyberspace, and outer space are safe for commerce and travel. We kind of take that for granted because we’ve had it for 70 years, but look back before 1945. The high seas weren’t always safe for international trade. You’d have to worry about pirates or enemy boats sinking your ships.

The United States and its allies have worked hard to make the world safer over the past 70 years, and what’s been the result? Zero great power wars for 70 years. Pretty remarkable. We saw great power wars in every stage of history until 1945. Since 1945, zero great power wars. The number of people who die in armed conflict, from the 1600s until 1945, one to two percent of the world’s population could expect to die in armed conflict. Now the number is less than 0.1 percent. Drastic reduction. Some international relations scholars would say, “Well, it’s just nuclear deterrence. Everybody’s been too afraid to fight because of nuclear weapons.” I think that’s partly true, but I don’t think it’s North Korean or Soviet nuclear weapons that have been keeping the world safe. It’s been American nuclear weapons, extending deterrence to over 30 formal treaty allies. Now 60 percent of global GDP in the 30 democratic countries is protected by U.S. nuclear weapons. Without a powerful and engaged United States, it’s very unlikely we would have experienced this really remarkable peace over the past 70 years.

What about in the economic realm? After World War II, the United States and its allies got together and said, “In the immediate inter-war period, we really got some things wrong. There was a lot of protectionism, trade wars, high tariffs, and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.” The United States got together and said that didn’t work. “We really want an open international system. We want countries to adopt free markets. We want to have an open economic system, low tariffs for your trade,” and so they set up institutions designed to do that. The global agreement on tariffs and trade, which later became the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and a number of institutions to promote free markets and global economic interdependence. The United States also used other tools. For example, when it provided development aid to countries, it would say, “We’ll provide you with this aid, but we want some guarantees that it’s not just going to be wasted. We want you to see market-based reform in your countries as a condition for this aid.” U.S. allies did some of the same things. The European Union said, “Okay, if you want to join the European Union, you need to make economic reforms. You need to lower your debt and your deficit, and meet certain free market standards to become part of your club.”

What has been the result in the economic domain? I wish I had some figures behind me, but if you look at levels of global economic interdependence from 1945 to the present, it’s really remarkable. There’s a number of ways to measure globalization. One common measure is imports plus exports as a percentage of GDP. Essentially, as a percentage of global wealth, how much of it is due to trade? What you see going back to the beginning of when we have data up until 1945 is basically flat and low. A little bit of an increase right before World War I, comes crashing back down, and then after World War II, straight up, and then again after 1991 up even further as the countries that had been behind the Warsaw Pact, behind the Iron Curtain, joined the free world and adopted market economies.

During the same time, there was a lot of economic theory that globalization contributes overall to improved standards of living, and you see the same thing in the numbers. In 1945, 66% of the world’s population lived in poverty. Now it’s 10%, still too high, but billions of people have been lifted out of poverty over the past 70 years. Global GDP, the average per capita standard of living, is roughly five times higher today than it was in 1945. The world is much wealthier today than it was before this era of U.S. leadership. What are other explanations for this? Some economists would say, “Well, it’s technology. It’s globalization. It’s the internet. It’s cheap air travel,” and I think there’s something to that, but where was the airplane invented? Where was the internet invented? This was also the result of American ingenuity, and still, these are political choices. We do see countries like North Korea decide to cut themselves off from this globalized world, but it has been the United States and its allies encouraging countries to liberalize their economies. These are political decisions, not just the internet.

Finally, what about democracy and human rights? The United States and its allies have also worked to promote democracy and human rights around the world since 1945, and it’s done that in a number of ways. The most obvious way was occupation after World War II. We occupied Western Europe. Our forces occupied Germany and helped them establish new democratic forms of government. Decolonization… We put a lot of pressure on our allies after World War II to give up their overseas empires. So India got independence, for example, as a new democratic country, but many others… we also used conditionality when it came to democracy and human rights. We said, “Okay, you can join NATO if you want, but you have to become a democracy.” Part of the reason Ukraine didn’t get in before the war was a huge encouragement to Hungary, the Czech Republic, and other countries to adopt democratic forms of government after the end of the Cold War.

The United States has also led by example, and again, the end of the Cold War is the best evidence for this. During the Cold War, you had a lot of countries around the world adopting communist forms of government, single-party rule. After the end of the Cold War, many of those countries adopted democratic forms of government, mimicking the United States. What has been the effect of U.S. influence there? We often forget that before World War II, there were only a handful of democracies on Earth. The world is much freer today than it was before the beginning of this U.S. era. It’s very hard to understand the great improvement in the human condition over the past 70 years without taking into account a powerful and engaged United States promoting security, free markets, and democracy and human rights. That’s pillar one: setting up this system.

Pillar two is inviting other countries to join the system. Anybody can join any country if they want to, you know, not build nuclear weapons, not support terrorism, not threaten their neighbors, adopt a market-based economy, and respect human rights. Welcome to the club. Nazi Germany and imperial Japan were enemies during World War II. Within a couple of years, we said, “Welcome. You’re allies. Build the system with us.” Same thing after the end of the Cold War. We were pointing nuclear weapons at Warsaw Pact countries. A few years later, we were welcoming them to the club. Join NATO. Join the EU. Welcome.

I often get questions about U.S.-Iran relations, and people say, “Why do Americans hate Iranians so much? Does it go back to the hostage crisis in the 1970s?” I say no. It’s Iran’s behavior. It’s that they build nuclear weapons, build missiles, support terrorism, and commit egregious human rights violations. I’ve said correctly that if Iran today said, “Great news. We’re giving up our nuclear program, we’re giving up our missile program, we’re no longer going to support terrorism, we’re going to hold free and fair elections,” there would be bipartisan celebrations in Washington, and we’d say the same thing we said to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan after their transformations. We’d say, “Welcome to the club. Happy to have you.”

The third part of the strategy is defending this system from those who would try to tear it down. During the Cold War, the big one, of course, was the Soviet Union, so this grand strategy was organized around defending the system from the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, the threat came from rogue states, regional autocratic powers that felt threatened by the system for a variety of reasons, built nuclear weapons, and missiles to challenge the United States and terrorist organizations. That was the focus of the U.S. national security strategy in the 90s, the 2000s, to some degree the 2010s.

Now the biggest challenge to the system comes from China, and to a lesser degree from Putin and Russia. These are now the big priorities in the U.S. national security strategy: trying to defend the system that our allies and we built over the past 70 years from Russia, which is trying to disrupt the system, trying to play a spoiler role, and China, which really wants to displace this system and set up a Chinese-led system that would be very different in all of those various ways. It’s an interesting thought experiment because some people may not be used to thinking of the world this way, but imagine if Nazi Germany had won World War II. Would the world look the way it does today?

Imagine that. China overtakes the United States, becomes the world’s leading power, and has the ability to reshape the international system to its preferences. Would it look the same way it does today? The answer is clearly no. The world we’re living in is a world shaped by constitutional democracies to fit the way we think the world should be ordered. That works for us, and the results have been remarkable. I’ll end my remarks there and look forward to your questions and comments. Thank you.

Q&A

Question: Nathan Moyes, the Turner University. I have two questions, a fun one and a serious one. The fun one: how do you feel about the pentomic army as it relates to drones today? The second question, the more serious one, is about defending the system. Considering there’s a lot of non-conventional or non-state threats like terrorists and hacktivists, how should we address those types of threats?

Answer: I think I missed a key word in your first question. You said pentomic, yes?

Response: The strategy from the 60s, I think, General MacArthur advocated it.

Answer: First, on drones, it is changing the nature of warfare. Looking into the future, we can imagine militaries that have very few manned systems. The United States has always had pilots and aircraft flying the airplanes, sailors in ships and submarines, drivers in tanks. It won’t be too far into the future where I think a lot of those systems are unmanned. You have a lot of military experts who say, “Why does the United States even continue to build manned platforms? That’s the old way of doing things.” There will be big implications, both positive and negative. On the positive side, you’re risking fewer American military personnel if they’re not there. On the other hand, some people worry: does that make it easier for leaders to go to war? If it’s going to be our robots fighting the enemy’s robots, does it seem like an easier, cost-free decision? Putting it in a broader historical context, and I’m a political science professor, my last book started with the Greeks and the Persians 2,500 years ago and came to the present. Military historians say we’ve seen various revolutions in military affairs that have fundamentally changed international relations and warfare. There’s the gunpowder revolution in the 1600s, the nuclear revolution in the 1940s.

Many people, including me, suspect we may be on the eve of a new revolution in military affairs. There are just so many new technologies coming online at the same time: unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles, quantum computing, additive manufacturing to produce weapon systems. We can’t quite see it yet, but I think we may be on the verge of a country figuring out how to put together all these new technologies for a new way of warfare. We may be seeing indications of it on the battlefield in Ukraine right now. Pretty remarkable, the way drones are being utilized by both sides. And the second question…

Oh, terrorism. Terrorism is a challenge. If I was giving this lecture 15 years ago, it probably would have been the primary focus. I started graduate school in August 2001. I thought I was going to focus on European political economy. I thought it’d be a good excuse to go to Italy and eat good food. Then September 11th happened a few weeks into my graduate training, and I reoriented to focus on national security strategy. That’s the reason I’m in this field.

After Bin Laden was killed, many people said, “The war on terror is over. It was really about Al Qaeda. Bin Laden was the leader. Now he’s dead. We don’t have to worry about terrorism anymore.” I was on the other side of the debate, saying no, this is still an attractive tactic for radical groups, and the ideology continues to exist. The strategic motivation continues to exist, and unfortunately, I was correct. We saw the rise of ISIS just a couple of years later. ISIS and Al-Qaeda are both on the back foot. It has been a difficult operational environment for them over the past 20 years because of the U.S.-led war on terror. Some people say the past 20 years were a mistake, that period of history is over. Let’s focus on China.

I still think the ideology continues to exist. The strategic motivations continue to exist, and all it takes, God forbid, would be an attack on Washington or New York tomorrow, and terrorism would once again be at the top of the national security agenda. It continues to be a challenge and something we need to take seriously. Other questions?

Question: Nathaniel Kroenich, Regent University. Regarding the European Union, I know it’s kind of a realist principle to consider both your friends and your rivals. Is the EU gaining more power and economic influence something that the United States should eventually become wary of, or is that something we should welcome?

Answer: In 2020, I published a book on democracies versus autocracies and great power rivalry, starting with the Greeks against the Persians up through the U.S. and China. This is one of America’s greatest strengths: that other countries like us, they want to be our friends. They’re afraid of Xi. They’re afraid of Putin. That’s been a strength of democracies over the millennia. We tend to be better at building friendships and partnerships.

I think this is an asset. If you look at the U.S.-China competition, one way IR scholars measure power is GDP. The U.S. has about 23 percent of global GDP. A little bit of an aside—people sometimes say the United States is declining. That’s not true. The United States has been between 20 and 25 percent of global GDP since the 1960s. We’re at 23 percent today. That’s where we’ve been for the past half-century. What has changed is that China is rising. Twenty years ago, China was 2 percent of global GDP. Ten years ago, it was 9 percent. Now it’s 16 percent. So it’s closing that gap.

There’s reason to believe that China is leveling off or declining—we can talk about that if you’re interested—but to the main point, if it’s the U.S. against China, it’s 23 percent of global GDP against 16 percent. That’s a little too close for comfort. If you add in the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other democratic allies on our side, we’re close to 60 percent of global GDP. Working with friends and allies, we have a preponderance of power to decisively shape global outcomes. I think it’s an asset, but it’s not easy. They have their own interests, and getting them on the same page has been a challenge. It’s been remarkable. Three or four years ago, talking to Europeans about China, they essentially said, “What’s the problem? Everybody’s getting rich. We want to sell them BMWs.” They’ve come a long way in the past few years, and we’re closer to having a common assessment on China. They’re not quite where we’d want them to be, but they’re closer. The other piece is burden-sharing.

Yes, we want to work with our allies, but they also have to chip in and do their fair share. This has been a common complaint going all the way back to Eisenhower. Secretary Gates in the Obama Administration made his last major speech on a trip to Europe, complaining the Europeans weren’t doing enough for their defense. Of course, Trump made this a major issue. One upside of the war in Ukraine is that it has woken Europeans to the need to realize that security is a real thing.

Major war is possible in the 21st century. We have seen big announcements from the Germans, Poles, Romanians, and others to increase their defense spending. Finland and Sweden, two capable countries, are deciding to join NATO. I think there’s movement in the right direction, but still more work to be done because the biggest defense challenge the United States and its allies face is that we have to be able to deal with Russia and China.

At the same time, Admiral Richards, head of U.S. Strategic Command, has said for the first time in U.S. history, we have to deal with two near-peer nuclear powers. Russia’s conventional military is getting chewed up, but it still has enough nuclear weapons to end this meeting in 30 minutes. China is quintupling the size of its nuclear arsenal. The United States could deal with both of those challenges on its own, but it would be much better if we have our 30 wealthy allies helping us with that challenge.

Question: Sean McGuire from Cairn University. I’ve heard a lot about Putin’s possible use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Can you speak to what those options look like? The only thing I have in mind is the traditional bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What options does he have?

Answer: This is an issue I’ve worked a lot on and probably gotten more media attention on in the past month than in the rest of my life. I’ve been quoted by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and everywhere in the past month on this. A couple of points: I think Putin hasn’t made up his own mind yet as to whether to use nuclear weapons. On one hand, I think he sees it as attractive because basically, Russian strategy is that they realize if they got into a major war with NATO, they had conventional inferiority. So their plan to defeat NATO was to rely early on nuclear weapons, nuclear threats, first to try to get NATO to back down, but as a last resort, using nuclear weapons to beat NATO’s conventional forces.

It’s part of their strategy. They exercise for this. Putin has participated in televised exercises where he launches a nuclear attack. It tells you something about how Russian culture around nuclear weapons is very different. Can you imagine Biden going on national TV, proudly executing a simulated nuclear attack? Kind of hard to imagine, but that’s what Putin does. They’ve built a force for this: 2,000 so-called non-strategic nuclear weapons. The Russians have nuclear-armed torpedoes to go after ships, nuclear-armed depth charges to go after submarines, nuclear-armed surface-to-air missiles to nuke airplanes, nuclear-armed missile-defense interceptors to nuke incoming missiles, nuclear short-range missiles, nuclear bombs. Basically, any weapon system you can imagine, the Russians put a nuke on it.

So they have a wide variety of weapons to choose from to conduct an attack and varying yields. Some very large weapons, but they’re believed to have some weapons that may be sub-kiloton. Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. Sub-kiloton would mean less than 1/15 of Hiroshima. A weapon like that, you use it here, and Georgetown would basically be fine. It would have a devastating local effect if you used it on a military base, completely destroying the base with one weapon instead of a bunch of conventional weapons, but you limit the fallout. You limit the damage.

What Russia could do is… I think they’re already using nuclear weapons. They’re using the threat of nuclear weapons to deter the United States successfully. The Biden Administration is carefully calibrating its involvement because they fear nuclear escalation. But as the next step, Putin could use a single nuclear weapon, maybe a nuclear test, maybe against a Ukrainian base in the hope that the rest of the world would back down, and he might be right in that hope. How would the Western Europeans react? How would the Biden Administration react if a nuclear weapon was just used in Ukraine? Maybe they would say, “Okay, this has gone too far. We’re not going to fight a nuclear war over this.” Finally, as the next step, you don’t build 2,000 of these battlefield nuclear weapons to use one. So they could use five, ten, a hundred against Ukrainian tanks, Ukrainian bases, Ukrainian supply lines to win the war. At least avoid losing the war.

On one hand, I think Putin would like to do that. But why hasn’t he done it yet? He made these threats in February. It’s almost November. Why hasn’t he done it? I think he has been deterred. I don’t think it’s out of the goodness of his heart. I don’t think he thinks this would be inappropriate. He’s committing war crimes, invading his neighbors. I think he’s afraid of the consequences. He’s afraid that, who knows what would happen? Maybe this would lead to a big war with the United States. Maybe this would lead to a big war with NATO. I think he hasn’t decided. He’s on the fence. On one hand, this could help him avoid losing in Ukraine. On the other hand, maybe he gets into a big war with NATO. That’s even worse.

The best thing that we can do is play on his fear. The Biden Administration’s rhetoric hasn’t always been great on this. John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman about a month ago, said, “If Russia uses nuclear weapons, there’d be catastrophic consequences.” I said, “Okay, that’s good,” and he said, “For example, the radioactive material could blow back into Russia,” and I thought, you know, Putin’s perfectly willing to kill a lot of Russians. I don’t think he cares if some people on the border get radiation sickness. But then a couple of weeks ago, Jake Sullivan on the Sunday shows, I thought was perfect.

He said, “There would be catastrophic consequences for Russia. There’d be a decisive U.S. response.” He left it kind of vague, but I think that was enough for Putin to think, “Alright, this could get scary. Do I really want a war with NATO or the United States?” I hope that those kinds of statements will be enough to deter him, but I think there is a real risk. When people ask me to put a number on it, I’ve said I think a 20% chance. It’s not likely, but I think it’s not zero. Other questions?

Question: Good afternoon. John Lee from American University. My question is also on nuclear deterrence, increasingly facing North Korea’s missile provocations. There’s a sentiment growing in South Korea and Japan that we can trust U.S. extended deterrence even more if the U.S. would make a promise to return U.S. tactical nukes deployed in Japan or South Korea in a similar nuclear co-sharing arrangement the U.S. has with NATO countries. It’s popular in South Korea and Japan, but as a U.S. nuclear expert, what is the U.S. take on such positions?

Answer: During the Cold War, the United States used to forward-deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of its allies. In Europe, having nuclear weapons in Germany made it very clear to the Soviet Union that if you try to conduct a conventional invasion, you’re going to be overrunning nuclear weapons, U.S. forces with nuclear weapons. It’s very likely that it would go nuclear, and it was thought that would contribute to deterrence. We got rid of a lot of our nuclear weapons in Europe, but not all of them. Roughly 200 gravity bombs remain in Europe, and we also had nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Asia, but then after the end of the Cold War, we brought all of those back. There aren’t nuclear weapons today, but the United States does have a formal policy of extending nuclear deterrence to Japan and South Korea, and we engage in close dialogues with those allies.

We’ve gotten better about it. In fact, a new national defense strategy just came out today and said one of the major goals of U.S. defense strategy is to assure our allies, and that’s been pretty consistent for many administrations. There are a number of ways to assure our allies. One of the things we do is bring allies here and show them our nuclear weapons. You want to climb around on a nuclear submarine, see how it works. We have dialogues about what threats we see from North Korea. If North Korea used nuclear weapons, how might we respond? We deploy conventional forces on the territory of allies. Thirty-eight thousand U.S. forces in Korea, I think today. That’s another source of assurance. If you get into a war with North Korea, it’s not just you—American forces are going to be involved immediately.

Some South Koreans, not the South Korean government, but some South Koreans, have said, “Maybe the United States should return nuclear weapons.” I don’t think it’s necessary for deterrence or for military purposes because we do have other capabilities including nuclear weapons on submarines, on long-range bombers, that in some ways would be more helpful for a Korean contingency.

But I do think assurance is important. If there was a South Korean or a Japanese government that said, “We’re really nervous. All these other efforts you’re making… we’re not sure if that would work. We really would feel better if you brought nuclear weapons back,” I think that’s a conversation the U.S. government should be willing to have. But I don’t see any pressing operational need right now. Time for one more question.

Question: Thomas Foster, national security student at Regent, Lieutenant United States Navy. I have a question about China. Has there been any consideration about a Chinese version of the New START Treaty? Given what’s happening in Russia, do we even want to pursue something like that, given that a nuclear threat can happen even if we have an agreement? Does that mean that policy, to go back to Dr. Patterson’s point at the beginning of the day, is there a certain point where policy is not the answer and more hard power deterrence is?

Answer: There’s basically been a bipartisan consensus in U.S. strategic forces policy. The consensus is strong deterrence and strong arms control. We need to make sure that we have a nuclear deterrent that can protect ourselves and our allies, deter our enemies. But we should also engage in talks with our adversaries if they’re willing to put limits on their nuclear program in a way that makes us safer, that we can trust and verify. That’s also in our interest. Essentially, the national security and defense people are okay with arms control as long as we have a strong deterrent, and the arms control people are happy with a strong deterrent as long as they can try to talk and find agreements to reduce nuclear risks. I think that basically works. We should pursue both paths.

Part of the problem on the arms control side right now is China’s engaged in this massive nuclear buildup and refuses to even talk about arms control. The Trump Administration tried to negotiate trilateral arms control, tried to get a deal with both Russia and China at the same time. China refused to even come to the table. We have this New START agreement in place with Russia, but it doesn’t cover all nuclear weapons, so Russia is building nuclear weapons, like these 2,000 battlefield nuclear weapons I was talking about, that aren’t covered in the treaty. Essentially, you have Russia building up despite the fact that it’s in the treaty. China is building up, and so I suspect that when New START ends in 2026, when it expires, for the first time since the 1970s, we won’t have arms control agreements in place. It’s very hard for me to imagine a new arms control deal that places verifiable limits on Chinese and Russian arsenals.

I think we should try. I think we should talk to them, but again, the Chinese refused to even come to the table. Going back to this bipartisan two-track approach, let’s try this. I don’t think there’s much there, so yes, we do need to make sure that we have a strong deterrent. Basically, our nuclear forces that we have today were designed in 2010, but the world is very different today. It’s much more dangerous today than in 2010. It’s projected to get even more dangerous over the coming decades. So I do think we need to take another look at our strategic forces. Is this really what we need, or do we need to strengthen them for the challenges we face? Thank you.