Universal Nuclear Disarmament: What Can India Offer?
Universal nuclear disarmament is not a new concept. From the time that the weapon was first used in 1945, and once the horrendous destruction that it could cause was understood, countries have struggled with the challenge of how to put the genie back into the bottle. To little avail. Nuclear abolition has proved to be an elusive objective owing to the lack of sufficient political will to actually undertake the exercise. In fact, the politics of the possession of nuclear weapons and questions over the very desirability of eliminating nuclear weapons have always overshadowed all other considerations. Arguments against a nuclear weapons free world have often hidden behind the assumptions of unfeasibility of nuclear abolition owing to the complications involved in the logistics of handling dismantlement and destruction of already built up stockpiles of nuclear warheads and the safe storage of recovered fissile material.
Author - Manpreet Sethi, Project Head on Nuclear Security, Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi, India.