Nuclear deterrence a joke, nuclear blackmail a reality!

Raju Korti
Intolerance is a transgression that seems to work only within a country's national borders but when it crosses national shores, it acquires a different dimension and hue altogether. Like the proverbial one nation's poison becoming another nation's meat. As tensions escalate between Israel and Iran once again after a brief but direct conflict -- unlike the proxy conflict it was earlier -- Iran has sounded the all familiar bugle of changing its nuclear doctrine "if its existence is threatened by Israel."

Iran's Supreme Leader Kamal Kharrazi's response was calibrated: "We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb, but should Iran's existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine," Kharrazi was quoted as saying, with Tehran already signalling that it has the potential to build such weapons. The country has desisted from having nuclear weapons after the earlier Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banned their development on the premise that building and stockpiling nuclear bombs is 'haraam' (religiously forbidden). That went for a toss a couple of years later when one of its ministers said the Western pressure could push Tehran to seek nuclear weapons.

That the Nuclear deterrence is fickle, volatile and a double-edged weapon is a no-brainer. Nations possessing nuclear weapons have been trumpeting it guised as national security bogey as also to threaten rival nations. Remember, Pakistani establishment's periodic threats of nuking India, the Chinese nuclear threats against Japan in the past, Trump's "fire and fury" threats to North Korea, itself ruled by a whimsical lunatic, and now Vladimir Putin's saber-rattling machismo about the use of nuclear weapons if pushed to corner by the US and NATO. The world has been constantly sitting on powder keg right from the days of Cuban missile crisis.

Security experts around the globe attributing the stability and world peace to the Nuclear Deterrence Doctrine is specious and is good only in theory but non-sensical in practice. The argument that the possibility of a nuclear war died a natural death with the Cold War stands demolished. Technological and geopolitical expediencies raise a question mark over the efficacy of a Nuclear Deterrence Doctrine. 

For long, direct or indirect nuclear threats have been the default position of states possessing nuclear weapons. Such threats believed to be the essence of deterrence have been laid to rest as nuclear threats are no long only historical curiosities. We have entered an age where the risk of nuclear use -- deliberately or by accident or, worse still, miscalculation -- is rising. The international community is justifiably concerned that in unstable Pakistan, its nuclear armoury could fall into the hands of whom Islamabad is known to dismiss as "non state actors"; is as much serious as an eccentric dictator of the rogue North Korea issuing nuclear threats at the drop of a hat in his bluster and bravado. Also recall how the US in its self-arrogated wisdom spread the canard of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction and used it as a ruse to attack it.      

Regional tensions, proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials to make them -- along with terrorism and new technologies like cyber -- mean the risk of a nuclear weapon or device being used is rising. On the flip side the inability of the governments to manage the increasingly complex global security is also eroding. The self-righteous US bandied the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and tried to ram it down India's throat but India refused to budge on the premise of it being discriminatory. Security concerns are peculiar to a nation and there are no fixed guidelines that can address these concerns. 

Do not go by the so called progress in the reduction of nuclear weapons since the Cold war. The world's combined inventory of nuclear warheads remains at a very high with nine countries possessing roughly 12,000 warheads as early as beginning of 2024. A stockpile enough to destroy the universe many ties over.! US and Russia together alone have close to 88% of the world's total inventory. A state that swears by the Nuclear Deterrence Doctrine needs no more than a few hundred nuclear weapons for national security, if at all there is a justification. On the contrary, many states are increasing their nuclear stockpiles. In a world polarized on political ideologies and territorial disputes, a global conflict always looms large even if it could be just two nations at war.

There is only a thin line that divides nuclear deterrence and nuclear blackmail. And a momentary impulse that decides a sane leader from a maniac overcome by misplaced authority and convictions!