The bombing of Hiroshima with an atomic weapon on August 6, 1945, that killed almost 1,40,000 people and led to the end of World War II is a pivotal event in global history. It marked the dawn of the apocalyptic atomic age, wherein nuclear weapons demonstrated their enormous destructive capability — first in Hiroshima and three days later over Nagasaki. Progressively, a norm was internalised globally that Nagasaki would be the last time that a nuclear weapon would be used militarily. And so, the nuclear taboo was born.
It is a matter of considerable relief that the nuclear-weapon nations of the world have so far respected the sanctity of the nuclear taboo. But the run-up to the 80th anniversary suggests that the taboo is under stress in a very unexpected manner. The recent war of words between the US and Russia, laced with menacing references to nuclear weapons, is cause for deep concern and augurs ill for global nuclear stability and restraint.
The US and Russia (which inherited the nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union) were the two superpowers of the Cold War decades and had amassed thousands of nuclear weapons of varying yields. After the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis that saw these two nations stepping back from the precipice, they arrived at a modus vivendi that neither nation would use the dreaded nuke except to “deter” the other. Thus was born the deterrence doctrine of MAD — mutually assured destruction — an anomalous form of ensuring “security” in a SAD manner: Self-assured destruction.
To regulate the spread of nuclear weapons, the two superpowers introduced the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) in 1970, and while this had no legitimacy in law, it was a de facto imposition of realpolitik and techno-strategic power. The world was divided into the nuclear haves — the first five nuclear weapon powers (US, USSR/Russia, UK, France, and China) — and the permanent nuclear have-nots, who were compelled to forego the option of ever acquiring nuclear weapons.
The quid pro quo was that the latter, the NNWS (non-nuclear weapon states), would have access to civilian nuclear technology, and they would not be threatened by an NWS (nuclear weapon state). Concurrently, the NWS agreed to “negotiate in good faith” towards disarmament — this remains the elusive Holy Grail.
In summary, the world had evolved two norms to ensure the sanctity of the nuclear taboo. One, that nuclear weapons would not be brandished to resolve territorial disputes (Pakistan was rebuked for its attempt to do so in the 1999 Kargil War), and secondly, the sovereignty of a NNWS would not be violated without legitimate sanction.
These norms were respected in the main for almost three decades from 1991, the year that marked the end of the Cold War. During this period, Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons to Russia. Both the US and Russia maintained a degree of nuclear restraint, and there was no sabre-rattling for almost three decades, from 1991 till 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and Moscow found it necessary to invoke its nuclear capability.
This was a major setback to the deterrence template and agreements such as the 1975 Helsinki Accords that sanctified the inviolability of borders in Europe. This was compounded in June 2025 when Israel, not an NPT signatory, attacked Iran, a NNWS, on the assumption that Tehran was about to acquire a nuclear weapon in violation of its NPT commitment. Regrettably, Israeli impunity was tacitly endorsed by the US — this was another body blow to global nuclear non-proliferation norms.
In the latest stress test for the nuclear taboo, Washington and Moscow have engaged in a menacing exchange after former Russian Dmitry Medvedev’s remarks, followed by Trump ordering the deployment of two nuclear submarines in response. The attack on Iran has gutted the spirit of the NPT, and regulating the spread of nuclear weapons will now be even more challenging. The stark lesson among the NNWS is that Ukraine blundered in giving up its nuclear weapons, and there is no sanctity in treaties.
The more alarming exigency is a breakdown in US-Russia relations and an unintended military escalation. While the probability is low, it merits notice that both nations possess the world’s largest nuclear arsenals — Russia with 5,459 warheads and the US with 5,177 (Federation of American Scientists’ 2025 report on the Status of the World’s Nuclear Forces). Even a limited exchange could cause catastrophic loss of life. A 2019 Princeton University simulation estimated 91.5 million casualties in the first few hours of a US-Russia nuclear war, with long-term effects like radioactive fallout and global cooling adding to the atomic apocalypse.
If the world was spared a repeat of Nagasaki, it was more luck and individual rectitude than collective sagacity. One can only hope that this holds for the foreseeable future. India, which was once in the vanguard of the global disarmament effort, has remained muted since it acquired nuclear weapons in 1998. This gauntlet must be picked up again by Delhi with other like-minded nations.
The writer is director, Society for Policy Studies
