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Obama and a nuclear-free world

The headline of a nuclear-free world was so catchy that few who followed Barack Obama’s speech in Prague on Sunday would have paid attention to the American President’s disclaimer that such a goal was probably not achievable in his lifetime. Mr. Obama is not even 50 yet. Life expectancy being what it is these days, his prediction effectively means the world can forget about the United States military ending its dependence on weapons of mass destruction for at least the next half century. For the interim, however, Mr. Obama made three promises. First, he would reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy. Secondly, he was committed to the “immediate and aggressive pursuit” of Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as the first step towards pushing for the CTBT’s entry into force. Thirdly, a verifiable ban on the dedicated production of fissile material for the manufacture of nuclear weapons would be a top priority. A few days earlier, Mr. Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, announced their intention of negotiating a new strategic arms reduction treaty. At Prague, the U.S. President also said he would press other nuclear weapon states to make cuts in their arsenals. In exchange for these commitments or announcements, none of which is necessarily new, he laid down that the rules governing proliferation had to be tightened. He added, in the context of North Korea’s satellite launch, that countries which refused to play by the rules would have to be punished.

Taken together, the Obama package represents a definite move forward from the insular and unilateral approach of the Bush administration on proliferation matters, even if the counterproductive use of threatening language remains the same. American ratification of the CTBT would be a step forward but this step would be meaningful only if Washington were to end all work on the design and refinement of new nuclear weapons, whether of the “mini nuke” or the Reliable Replacement Warhead variety. India, which will find itself under pressure on the CTBT front sooner or later, needs to be proactive in emphasising the crucial importance of nuclear disarmament. The basic argument for possessing nuclear weapons is provided by deterrence theory — a dangerous and false doctrine. The stark truth is that the possessor of nuclear weapons stands committed to threatening to perform, and to actually performing, under certain extreme circumstances, insane genocidal actions that must never be countenanced. Even if abolition will take time, there is no reason why all nuclear weapon states cannot sign a treaty banning the use, or at least the first use, of this genocidal instrument of war. Such an agreement would do more to prevent their use than the promise of abolishing nuclear weapons by the middle of this century. If he is serious about his stated goal, Mr. Obama should be thinking of the time horizon of his present elected tenure, not of a lifetime.

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