Nuclear India@25 and the Adapted Nuclear World Order
India’s track record as a responsible nuclear weapon country is reflected in its policy of nuclear restraint.
- Rajiv Nayan
- May 11, 2023
India’s track record as a responsible nuclear weapon country is reflected in its policy of nuclear restraint.
Complete demilitarisation is essential to assure the full safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant complex, despite the significant safety design features of the facility.
Although the ideas of nuclear arms control, nuclear security and nuclear disarmament have featured in several US official statements and joint statements with other countries, will US adopt the ‘No First Use’ policy, remains to be seen.
The rapid increase in the nuclear forces of China, as revealed in the 2021 Pentagon Report, is a matter of serious concern. Several countries are undertaking exercises to ascertain the strategic and security implications of the feared expansion of the Chinese nuclear stockpile.
The Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has not succeeded in adding any additional universal stigma to nuclear weapons. It lacks the support base needed for replacing the Cold War vintage “Mutual Assured Destruction” with “Mutual Assured Abstinence”. The nuclear weapon countries’ faith in the deterrence logic remains intact.
Even as nuclear safety protocols and processes have been strengthened since the 1986 disaster, learning from Chernobyl should be a continuing, ongoing process.
India’s tryst with its destiny for the twenty-first century will greatly depend upon how it prioritises its strategic necessities in the face of current Covid-19-induced economic crisis. While still on course to be the third largest world economy by 2050, India will need to ensure it has the essential tools—economic, military and diplomatic—by then to provide the necessary leverage as a great world power. Great thinkers have stressed and history has shown that maritime power is one such leverage.
On May 8, 2018, President Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Since the JCPOA is endorsed by a United Nations Security Council Resolution and supported by the international community, Trump has had to justify this controversial decision. Based on data extracted from Trump’s Twitter account and taking advantage of Theo van Leeuwen’s (2008) discursive construction of the legitimation model, this article addresses the following question: How has Donald Trump attempted to delegitimize the JCPOA?
As the focus and priority of the international community in recent years have been on averting nuclear terrorism and nuclear accidents, the nuclear experience of synergising safety and security can be highly useful in combating threats like COVID-19.
Even after five decades of its entry-into-force, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is largely seen as a Cold War era instrument that has failed to fulfill the objective of creating a pathway towards a credible disarmament process.