Deterring the New Pacing Threats of Opportunistic and Coordinated Aggression with Matthew Costlow

In this one-hour virtual event, Matt Costlow will give a talk on his latest Occasional Paper, https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Vol.-5-No.-3.pdf

Department of Defense has set the People’s Republic of China as the “pacing threat” – but this may severely understate the true nature of the threats the United States and its allies face. Given the increasing interconnectedness of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, the new pacing threats should be opportunistic and coordinated aggression by one or more of America’s adversaries. The United States and its allies are not postured to confront threats of sequential or simultaneous conflicts, whether against peer or regional powers, in geographically distant theaters.

This raises the question of what increased U.S. reliance on its nuclear forces may look like when confronting these threats, and what can be done to improve deterrence.