Disappointed nuclear non-proliferation activists, meanwhile, while opposing further nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, note that China’s behavior confirms their earlier fears that the US-India nuclear agreement would establish a bad non-proliferation precedent. It permits New Delhi to engage in nuclear commerce despite India’s refusal to join the NPT, expanding its nuclear weapons stockpile. The Indian deal has thus prompted Pakistan to expand its own fissile material production and oppose a treaty that would cap fissile material stocks at present levels, which would legitimize New Delhi’s stockpile advantage over Islamabad.
But there’s more to the Chasma reactor dispute than the question of equity between India and Pakistan—the deal goes to the heart of concerns over civilian nuclear cooperation and proliferation in Asia. Chinese assertions of the need to maintain a nuclear balance between Pakistan and India reflect the interconnected nature of these three countries’ nuclear programmes. After the Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s, the Chinese Communists redoubled their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons to counter the USSR’s superiority in nuclear and conventional force. China’s successful development of an atomic bomb in 1964 in turn persuaded Indian leaders to pursue nuclear weapons. After India detonated a non-deliverable fission device in May 1974 at its Pokhran testing site, China increased its sharing of nuclear material and technology with Pakistan, allowing Islamabad to respond quickly when India finally detonated several deliverable nuclear warheads in May 1998.
Indian policymakers cited China’s actions, including its growing nuclear weapons capacity and Beijing’s transfer of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technologies to Pakistan, as the reasons for their tests (and in the process implied that New Delhi was seeking the capacity to target China with nuclear weapons).
But what’s perhaps the most fundamental point about the dispute with Pakistan is that it could so easily apply to many other Asian countries that might plausibly seek nuclear weapons—after all, its successful acquisition of an expanding nuclear force encourages other governments to believe they too could acquire a nuclear arsenal and overcome the resulting international opprobrium.
That’s not all. Nuclear proliferation anywhere increases the risk that a non-rational actor, whether a leader of a state or a terrorist group, will acquire nuclear weapons. Everything being equal, the risk of nuclear accidents or nuclear weapons diversion to non-state actors rises with the increase in the number of nuclear weapons states. Both these considerations also apply to India, North Korea, Iran and other potential new nuclear weapons states.
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Dr.k.r.sheikh
if nations wants to show respect to each other,their is no need of weapons.but exceptionally west needs to show respect region not a single country of their choice.
Bastich
Are you an infant? No one, even the lowliest of peasant will ever consider a nuclear war. Even the ground realities in India/Pakistan/China are testament to this. A Nuclear war implies the end to all the participants (and the neighbours as well).
Even if India and Pakistan go to war- there’s no chance any country will even consider using Nukes – for not only they will lose any international support even in defeat – they’ll have everything to lose – not just their national pride!!
Can we stop these “India Pak Nuclear Holocaust” BS and stick to topics that are pragmatic?
T Rama Bhat
“Yet even setting aside the question of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands, nuclear competition between India and Pakistan is especially dangerous.” :- Pakistan is able to fund this program because of the financial aid that they are able to extract from USA and other western countries by playing on their strategic fears and stringing them along. Money is after all a fungible commodity. Even though aid is not given for this purpose specifically, they are able to avoid spending their own capital for relevant needs and divert it. In fact, these powers waive off the debt due to them from Pakistan regularly. Pakistan has never felt the pinch of the expenditure towards their nuclear armament development as they are sure loans made to them will be waived off to them in future also!
It is China that is the nuclear arms proliferator (sitting securely in the club of “accepted” nuclear weapons states) that has designed the Pakistan nuclear bomb and tested it, unofficially, prior to 1998. They have given them the technology for nuclear-tipped missiles also and are working on giving them technology for upgrading these missiles.
“Pakistani leaders in particular have concluded that their nuclear arsenal has deterred India from again using its conventional forces to attack Pakistani territory. As a result, Pakistan’s implicit nuclear doctrine presumes the possible first use of nuclear weapons.” :- This is an argument raised by western powers to instill fear in our media, intellectuals , and political leaders. It is a pity that many Indians lap up this theory hook line and sinker.
Even USA has restrained itself from the nuclear first-strike option at the height of cold war. Using this first strike option is not a joke. Every world leader knows that there will be a retaliatory strike from the opposite nuclear power which will destroy the “first-strike” power also. No nation wants to commit suicide enmasse .After all, wars are fought to gain something and not to lose the lives of a majority of one’s own population. That is why Pakistan is desperately clutching to the illusion of “strategic-depth” in Afghanistan against the possibility (however remote) of a conventional military offensive by India.
If we go by their rhetoric that their threshold is very low, and at the first possible opportunity they will use the nuclear first strike option, then the necessity of seeking the “illusion of strategic-depth” will not arise. The Punjabi military leaders of Pakistan will dare not risk enmasse suicide.
Aj
@Kayani
What rubbish. The highest possibility of nukes falling into the wrong hands is in Pakistan right now. What universe are you living in mate?
Kayani
There were no concerns shown when India went into deal with the USA despite unsecure nuclear facilities in India which are posing highest possible risk in the region.
ronnie
Exception,exception,exception.Here is one more exception.The bullying and declining ex hyper power is reaping what it sowed by making an exception.