The role of nuclear weapons in having preserved the long peace of the Cold War is debatable. How do we assess the relative weight and potency of nuclear weapons, west European integration, and west European democratisation as explanatory variables in that long peace? There is no evidence that either side had the intention to attack but was deterred from doing so by the other side’s nuclear weapons. Moscow’s dramatic territorial expansion across eastern Europe behind Soviet Red Army lines took place in the years of U..S. atomic monopoly, 1945–49. Conversely, the Soviet Union imploded after, although not because of, gaining strategic parity.

Historical evidence

To those who nonetheless profess faith in the essential logic of nuclear deterrence, a simple question: are you prepared to prove your faith by supporting the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran in order to contribute to the peace and stability of the Middle East, which presently has only one nuclear-armed state?

It is equally contestable that nuclear weapons buy immunity for small states against attack by the powerful. The biggest elements of caution in attacking North Korea — if anyone has such intention — lies in uncertainty about how China would respond, followed by worries about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s conventional capability to hit populated parts of South Korea. Pyongyang’s puny arsenal of useable nuclear weapons is a distant third factor in the deterrence calculus.

Against the contestable claims of utility, there is considerable historical evidence that we averted a nuclear catastrophe during the Cold War as much owing to good luck as wise management. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis is the most graphic example of this. Australia’s most respected strategic analyst, former Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Dibb, argues that Moscow and Washington also came close to a nuclear war in 1983. Frighteningly, Washington was not even aware of this scare at the time and any nuclear war then would have used much more destructive firepower than in 1962.

Compared to the sophistication and reliability of the command and control systems of the two Cold War rivals, those of some of the contemporary nuclear-armed states are dangerously frail and brittle.

Nor do nuclear weapons buy defence on the cheap: the Arihant cannot substitute for the loss of the Sindhurakshak. They can lead to the creation of a national security state with a premium on governmental secretiveness and reduced public accountability. In terms of opportunity costs, heavy military expenditure amounts to stealing from the poor. Nuclear weapons do not help to combat India’s real threats of Maoist insurgency, terrorism, poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and corruption. Across the border especially, there is the added risk of proliferation to extremist elements through leakage, theft, state collapse and state capture.

NPT

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) has kept the nuclear nightmare at bay for 45 years. The number of countries with nuclear weapons is still, just, in single digit. There has been substantial progress in reducing the numbers of nuclear warheads. But the threat is still acute with a combined stockpile of 17,000 nuclear weapons, 2,000 of them on high alert. The NPT’s three-way bargain between non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses is under strain. The Conference on Disarmament cannot agree on a work plan. The Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty has not entered into force. Negotiations on a fissile materials cut-off treaty are no nearer to starting. The export control regime was damaged by the India–U.S. civil nuclear agreement.

The net result? The world is perched precariously on the edge of the nuclear precipice. As long as anyone has nuclear weapons, others will want them; as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will be used again some day by design, accident, miscalculation or rogue launch; any nuclear exchange anywhere would have catastrophic consequences for the whole world. We need authoritative road maps to walk us back from the nuclear cliff to the relative safety of a progressively, less-heavily nuclearised, and eventually, a denuclearised world.

Our goal should be to make the transition from a world in which nuclear weapons are seen by some countries as central to maintaining security, to one where they become increasingly marginal, and eventually entirely unnecessary. Like chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons too cannot be disinvented. But like them, nuclear weapons too can be controlled, regulated, restricted and outlawed under an international regime that ensures strict compliance through effective and credible inspection, verification and enforcement. (军控协会)

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