When President Donald Trump announced that the United States would consider resuming nuclear testing, he did more than reopen an old debate. He reminded the world how fragile the post-Cold War consensus on restraint has become. For nearly three decades, a voluntary global moratorium on nuclear testing has held, not because it was legally binding, but because it was politically convenient and morally persuasive. That consensus is now fraying.
Washington’s doubts about the reliability of its nuclear arsenal without testing mirror similar trends elsewhere. Russia has revived activity at its Arctic test sites. China is expanding its facilities at Lop Nur. When the most powerful states begin to question the sufficiency of self-restraint, the assumptions that have governed the nuclear order start to erode.
India cannot ignore these shifts. Since 1998, New Delhi’s voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing has symbolised strategic maturity and moral confidence. It reassured a sceptical world that India’s nuclear programme was guided by discipline rather than defiance. That policy opened the way for diplomatic legitimacy, the end of sanctions, and the civil nuclear cooperation agreements that followed. Yet restraint, if left unexamined, can harden into inertia. India must now re-evaluate its position, not to be the first to test again, but to ensure it is not the last to adapt.
The global nuclear landscape has changed profoundly since India’s tests a quarter-century ago. Russia has withdrawn from key arms-control regimes. China is expanding its stockpile at an unprecedented rate and constructing new missile silos. The United States is openly questioning whether computer simulations can indefinitely replace physical verification. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which India never signed, remains in limbo because even the major powers have failed to ratify it. The stability of the nuclear order has rested less on shared conviction than on temporary convenience.
India’s doctrine of credible minimum deterrence, anchored in its No First Use pledge, has served the country well. It balanced responsibility with readiness and underscored India’s image as a restrained power. Yet credibility is not a permanent condition. Deterrence depends not only on the existence of weapons but on confidence in their performance. India’s arsenal today is built on designs validated in 1998. Since then, technology, materials, and delivery systems have evolved. The Agni-V, with intercontinental range, is now operational. Submarine-launched missiles are entering service. The next step, multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, will require new levels of assurance about yield, miniaturisation, and reliability.
Computer modelling and subcritical tests can extend existing knowledge, but they cannot replace empirical data. Even the United States, with its vast experience and computing power, no longer sounds entirely confident that simulations alone are sufficient. For India, with far fewer validated data points, the uncertainty is greater. The question is not whether India should rush to test, but how it should prepare for a world in which others might.
To reconsider restraint is not to advocate recklessness. Testing, if it ever becomes necessary, can be scientific, limited, and responsible. A carefully designed series of underground tests, intended for validation rather than demonstration, could provide assurance about the reliability of new-generation designs. More importantly, it would communicate to adversaries that India’s deterrent remains modern and credible. In nuclear strategy, perception is as crucial as capability; credibility must be seen to be believed.
Yet, India must guard the moral and diplomatic capital that its restraint has earned. Its standing as a responsible nuclear power derives not only from technological competence but from the prudence with which it exercises that power. The challenge is to maintain readiness while sustaining restraint, to keep the option of testing alive without being the one to reopen the nuclear gates.
To assume that restraint is cost-free is to misunderstand the evolving balance of power. China’s arsenal continues to grow in size and sophistication. Pakistan is diversifying into tactical and sea-based systems. The United States is designing new warhead classes and signalling readiness to test again. If India clings indefinitely to unilateral restraint, it risks being left outside the framework that will define the next era of arms control. Strategic autonomy demands flexibility, not fixation.
Should testing ever become unavoidable, it must remain consistent with India’s ethical framework of credible minimum deterrence and No First Use. Testing for validation, not for showmanship, can coexist with these principles. Its purpose would be knowledge, not escalation; preparedness, not provocation.
Beneath the technical debate lies a deeper question: Can a democracy sustain credible deterrence without periodic verification? Can leaders, in good faith, ask their scientists and soldiers to depend on weapons whose ultimate reliability has never again been confirmed? These questions cannot be answered through nostalgia for the moral clarity of 1998. They require an open, informed national debate that treats deterrence as a living equation of technology, psychology, and politics.
India’s restraint after 1998 demonstrated maturity. Its willingness to re-examine that restraint today would demonstrate confidence. Strategic autonomy was built on the courage to act when others doubted and the wisdom to pause when caution demanded. That same courage, the ability to judge when readiness serves peace better than ritual, is needed again.
Trump’s statement may never translate into explosions under the Nevada desert. But the silence that has held since 1992 is already beginning to crack. The question for India is whether to remain a passive observer or to shape the contours of the emerging order. To stand still in a moving world is not prudence; it is paralysis.
India’s moratorium on nuclear testing was a promise to itself, not a treaty with others. Like all promises of restraint, it carries a half-life. When circumstances change, renewal requires re-examination. Strategic maturity now lies not in denial of change, but in readiness for it. If the world is returning to an age of verification through detonation, India must ensure that its deterrent remains not only moral but credible.
Mattoo is dean and professor, School of International Studies, JNU and former member of the National Security Advisory Board
