Opinion It’s a MAD MAD world

Article six of the NPT states: “Each of the parties to the treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and nuclear disarmament and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” These formulations are being held forth to project NPT as an important milestone on the road to a world without nuclear weapons though President Obama has wondered whether he will see that world in his lifetime. The four US statesmen accept that,on this road of arms control and nonproliferation with reference to which they have advocated further steps,they are unable to see the mountain top of a nuclear weapons-free world.

According to a recent article by the two co-chairs,the Commission envisages building up momentum for various arms control steps such as CTBT,FMCT and mutual reduction in arsenals between the two major powers upto 2012. This is also to meet the expected demands of the 2010 NPT Review conference. Thereafter,they envisage,upto 2025,the reduction of arsenals to truly minimum numbers and development of agreed nuclear doctrines dramatically limiting occasions for the deliberate use of nuclear weapons.Thereafter will come the stage to move towards a world without nuclear weapons

The reality is that the NPT,while paying lip service to nuclear disarmament,was specifically designed to freeze the status quo in favour of the possession and further proliferation of nuclear weapons in the hands of five declared nuclear weapons powers. While the original NPT was for a duration of 25 years,and it was argued that nuclear weapons were a Cold War necessity,after the end of the Cold War,the NPT was extended unconditionally and indefinitely,thereby vesting them with legitimacy as weapons for those five nations. If they were legitimate for them,so were they for others who had not undertaken the NPT obligation. So will they be for those who renounce the NPT obligation according to due procedure. The present crisis in proliferation is to be traced to the deliberate legitimisation of the weapons in 1995.

No weapon which is considered legitimate is likely to be given up. No legitimate weapon can be prevented from proliferating. For the last six decades there has been a sustained effort at building a mystique around nuclear weapons and defending their legitimacy. India’s attempt to include the use of nuclear weapons as a war crime within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court was voted out. In today’s world,killing a few hundred people is a war crime. But killing hundreds of thousands is not,if a nuclear weapon is used to sanctify the killing. That world can never stop proliferation nor eliminate nuclear weapons. The perceived success of the NPT was more due to skillful alliance management than due to the effectiveness of the treaty. Yet the weapons have been held forth as the bond which held the alliances together. On the utility of nuclear weapons as the primary instrument which generated deterrence and spared the world a nuclear war,the former US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara wrote in an article in the May/June 2005 issue of Foreign Policy that launching a nuclear weapon against a nuclear adversary would be suicidal. He said he had never seen any US or NATO nuclear war plans that concluded that initiating the use of nuclear weapons would yield the US or the alliance any benefit. His statement to this effect has never been refuted by NATO defence ministers or senior military leaders. Yet it was impossible for any of them,including US presidents,to make such statements publicly because they were totally contrary to NATO’s established policies.

President Reagan and the Soviet general secretary declared,in a joint statement in 1985,that a nuclear war could not be won. Except for the first use of nuclear weapon against Japan in an asymmetric situation,the weapon has not been used in active hostilities. Chemical weapons were used by both sides in the first world war causing hundred thousand casualties and a much larger number of wounded. But the impact of chemical weapons on the war itself was marginal. After the war,the Geneva Protocol was signed in 1925 pledging no first use of chemical weapons.Though both sides in the second world war had very large stockpiles of more lethal weapons,they were not used partly due to a sense of mutual deterrence and partly due to the realisation that the weapons were not effective instrumentalities to win the war. In 1993,chemical weapons were eliminated through a treaty.

Given the nature of nuclear weapons,the ranges of their missile delivery systems and their reach,in a nuclear war the entire territories of both combatants will become battle fields. Given the compulsion to use them or lose them,it is unrealistic to envisage controlled escalation or regulated firing of missiles. Is a nuclear war fightable in a militarily meaningful sense and victory achievable? If not,nuclear war is very much like a jihadi suicide bomber’s undertaking. If this is realised,then much of the mystique and aura surrounding nuclear weapons will be blown away and the process of delegitimisation of the weapon can begin as it did with the Geneva Protocol for chemical weapons. That requires a change in the mindset of the western strategic establishments for which,at present,there are no signs. They can appoint a commission of former strategic force commanders of the eight nuclear weapon states and ask them to deliberate and reach a conclusion on the fightability of a nuclear war in the meaningful military sense. Will the ICNND dare to do it?

The writer is a senior defence analyst