Gonna double down on how insane all of this is. To recap yesterday's discussion, there are two ways to think about China joining a multilateral arms control agreement with the United States and Russia. https://twitter.com/KingstonAReif/status/1264004155062005762

The first way of thinking about it is to note that there are very clearly areas in which arms control might benefit China, and where an assertive diplomatic effort might push the PRC to recalibrate its interests and its approach to defense.

These areas are ably presented here; read it for yourself, because it's quite good. https://ifsh.de/file/publication/Research_Report/002/20200224_IFSH_Research_Report_002_final.pdf

There are also tremendous, and quite possibly insuperable problems with developing a multilateral framework, even in the long term. Won't go into those now, but bad faith, incongruous economic expectations, the complications of military and technological asymmetry are all big.

Such that even in the long term (10-20 years) the prospects of significant multilateral arms control between the Big Three seems unlikely to me. Not impossible, but unlikely.

But y'know what? Probably worth a serious, sustained, professional effort.

Now, let's try to connect these dim but not hopeless prospects for Big Three Arms Control (BTAC?) to Trump administration policy. Because that's what some folks on this here website have been trying to do for the last couple of months.

The Trump administration has made clear that it believes that threatening New START, made credible by the abrogation of Open Skies, and combined with threats of heavy spending and renewed testing, can force China and Russia to the table in the short term.

And "short term" here is very short indeed, even if there's a one year extension of New START.

And let me explain, in technical terms, how to evaluate the Trump administration's plans:

They are fucking insane.

Arms control agreements are incredibly technical, take a very long time to negotiate, require careful calibration between domestic and international players, and necessitate a strong political commitment combined with an extremely professional diplomatic corps.

The idea that Russia, much less China, could be compelled into such an agreement in the time frame that the Trump administration is operating under is (and I risk repeating myself) Fucking Insane.

And this is why decent people of good character with a firm grasp on reality appreciate that when the Trump administration says "let's leverage this to bring in China!" what they mean is "let's kill New START because we don't like treaties."

If you're serious about Big Three Arms Control, you should be especially disdainful of what the Trump administration is doing, because at the very least it sets those prospects back and probably exterminates them altogether.

I feel like the true lesson of the Trump Era is that keeping Trump and his minions as far as possible from the things you care about is always the right call. Applies to arms control, health care, disaster preparedness, whatever. He destroys everything he touches.