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15 India and the global nuclear order: a quiet assimilation Indian nuclear tests of 1998 altered the contours of the security architecture constructed during the Cold War. No doubt, with the end of the Cold War, this security environment was under stress, but Indian nuclear tests were the first open challenge, by a “responsible” as opposed to a “rogue” member of the international community, to this system. Some might argue that surreptitious Chinese nuclear and missile proliferation and clandestine nuclear programs of states such as India, Pakistan, and Israel
The global nuclear order appears to be under significant pressure as of early 2020. This order is defined as the web of international arms control agreements anchored around the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and supported by norms against use of nuclear weapons and nonproliferation. At seemingly every stage in its history, the order has featured scholarly assessments that it is in some form of crisis. 1 However, the simultaneous converging developments since 2017 are jeopardizing the system
For decades, nuclear weapons have been portrayed as essential to the security of the few states that possess them, and as a very ‘normal’ part of national and international security. These states have engaged in enormous programmes of acquisition and development, have disregarded the humanitarian implications of these weapons, and sought to persuade their publics that national security was dependent on the promise of killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians. The term ‘nuclearism’ has been used to describe this era, and several elements of nuclearism are explored here to identify how these states have been able to sustain their possession of nuclear arsenals. By perpetuating a discourse of ‘security’ which avoided international humanitarian law, by limiting decisions on nuclear policy to small groups of elites, by investing vast amounts of resources in their nuclear programs, and by using the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to perpetuate their privileged status as nuclear states, despite their promises to disarm, the great powers have been able to sustain a highly unequal – and dangerous – global nuclear order. This order is now under challenge, as the Humanitarian Initiative explored the implications of nuclear weapons’ use. Its sobering findings led non-nuclear states, supported by civil society actors, to create the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, making these weapons illegal, for all states. The Humanitarian Initiative has posed a challenge to all the elements of nuclearism, and has resulted in a significant rejection of the existing nuclear order. The treaty will not result in quick disarmament, and it faces several hurdles. It is, however, a notable achievement, delegitimizing nuclear weapons, and contributing to the goal of a nuclear-free world.
Weapons. The fifth broad element supporting nuclearism detailed in Chapter 1 of this book was the domination of the global nuclear weapons debate and the construction of a global nuclear order by the P5 nuclear weapon states, who have exploited the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to produce outcomes favourable to themselves. This powerful element is now far less secure than it
-researched or well-defined at a scholarly level beyond the description given by its original framers (Lifton and Falk 1982 ). Most of us know instinctively what ‘anti-nuclearism’ is, but nuclearism, even as it has affected the entire nuclear age and shaped the global nuclear order, has remained a vague and largely unexplored concept within academia. In the
security at the same time that they represent one of the most abnormal undertakings in human history. These various paradoxes make it difficult to find a way to proceed with the management of nuclear weapons in global politics; indeed they have rendered it almost impossible to dislodge the prevailing global nuclear order established by the nuclear weapon states, and to create a world free of nuclear weapons
has always been marked by dangerous rivalry and the threat of catastrophe, and the global nuclear order has been characterized by inequalities and inconsistencies. These problems have become even more pronounced today: although numbers have dropped, the lethality of many nuclear weapons has grown, as has the sabre-rattling between the United States and Russia, the United States and China, the United
attack. Third, there is a lack of transparency and accountability in the realm of nuclear doctrine, developments, and decision making. Finally, the continued existence of nuclear weapons is driven by nine states that possess nuclear weapons, and such a situation is evidence of a global nuclear order that constitutes both a ‘nuclear apartheid’ (Biswas 2001 ) between the nuclear weapons haves and have-nots, and ‘thermonuclear subjugation’ (Scarry 2014 , 22) of citizens across the globe. How decisions about nuclear weapons have
Kissinger responded, ‘There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?’ (quoted in Teaiwa 1994 , 101). These racist views of indigenous people and people of colour in the Global South became further entrenched in the realm of high politics as the Cold War progressed. Measures designed to limit nuclear proliferation came to support and reify a global nuclear order that privileges majority white, Western nuclear weapons states whilst denying the rest of the world the same rights. This structure of the global nuclear order has been referred to
changing the global nuclear order to accommodate India with the 2005 framework for the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement, Iran has become a litmus test that India has occasionally had been asked to pass to satisfy US policy-makers. Nascent Indian–Iranian ties have been categorized as an “axis,” a “strategic partnership,” or even an “alliance,” which some in the US strategic community have suggested could have a potentially damaging impact on US interests in Southwest Asia and the Middle East.10 At the same time, the Indian left has also developed a parallel obsession