A nuclear family

The BJP´s nuclear misad venture is proving in comparably costlier than earlier imagined. After the worst-ever buffeting at the Conference on Disarmament, P-5 meeting and Security Council, New Delhi has been delivered another wallop by the G-8, with Southern states joining them. This under scores our unprec edented global isoation: barring Iraq, Nuclear India has no allies. It just won´t do to pretend that India is the Boy on the Burning Deck single-handedly battling the unequal global nclear order. India has not challenged that discriminatory order; it merely wants to join it – on the discriminators´ side. But the P-5 have created yet another category for India and Pakistan – nuclear-possessor, as distinct from nuclear-weapons, states (nwss).

Deterring deterrence
Three reasons explain why India has won no sympathy even from those who have no interest in perpetuating the global nuclear order, viz. the bulk of the world´s 185 states. First, India knew better. It was neither innocent of power realities nor so cynical as to embrace nuclear deterrence. Ever since Gandhitaught us that "the moral… from the supreme tragedy of the Bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counter-bombs…", we consistently argued that nuclear deterrence is profoundly immoral, illegal and strategically irrational. Besides being "abhorrent", it is fraught with instability, ratcheting up of threats and counter-threats and hence an arms race. When Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar told the Conference on Disarmament in 1996 that "we do not believe that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is essential for national security and… the existence of nuclear weapons diminishes international security", he was distilling the essence of a long-standing doctrine – "fundamental precepts". The same goes for India´s 1995 World Court plea that use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, and their manufacture and possession should be declared illegal.