World today is in turmoil, wars, tariffs, El Nino, energy price rise and to top them all, natural disasters like the recent Nepal one. So what’s new, these are events which occur periodically and the people are accustomed to living through them. Post Second World War, with two rival groups at play, there seemed to be a balance of power and countries were forced to act with caution. UN was active and functional handling all kinds of crises and managing peace despite the challenges. There were wars in that era too, and prolonged ones like the Vietnam war. UN which though was not as honest a peacemaker as we would have wished it to be, but still it had a say in global matters and its voice was heeded to. It was controlled by the P5 nations but since USSR and China were on the opposite side of the troika of US, France and UK, a member state could hope to latch on to either of the groups for support. But it was not the auspices of UN alone which brought sanity in the global affairs, the deterrence associated with nuclear weapons too played a vital role in keeping things in check.
However, times have changed, two major powers of the world are embroiled in a raging conflict with no end in sight in the near future at least. Yes, we have a maverick leader of the so called free world, who has behaved like a bull in the china shop, bent upon wrecking the global order totally. Russia-Ukraine war has been on for four years plus, with Russia too suffering some heavy losses, while Ukraine has ended up losing some vital territory also. US is at its wits end, not having a clue about conflict termination in the Iranian mess that they have found themselves in. The surprising aspect is that despite the losses suffered by these nuclear powers, there has been no credible nuclear threats posed on their respective adversaries, other than some veiled ones. India and Pakistan too were involved in a skirmish post Pahalgam terrorist attack, where India damaged some critical Pak military installations, but there was no mention of the use of nuclear weapons by either side, despite both being nuclear powers.
Is a nuclear weapon as the ultimate, a “brahmastra” as we understood it, a dead philosophy then? Pakistan has a declared first use policy of these weapons, especially against India. But India has called their bluff on three occasions in the last decade or so, the surgical strikes, the Balakot strikes and now Op SINDOOR. On the flip side, if Ukraine or Iran did possess nuclear weapons, would they be at the receiving end? Hasn’t North Korea been spared despite grave provocations because it is reported to be in possession of nuclear weapons? Despite its discriminatory nature Nuclear Proliferation Treaty did manage to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle. Barring the P5, only India and Pakistan are overtly declared nuclear powers, while North Korea and Israel are known to be in their possession. Ironically China has allegedly been the culprit for the limited clandestine proliferation that did take place as both Pakistan and North Korea have benefitted from Chinese largesse. US too closed its eyes despite clear indications of Pakistan pursuing nuclear weapons technology in the seventies and eighties, so much so, that US Presidents regularly signed the certificate as required by Larry Pressler amendment for almost a decade.
The current global situation has emerged due to failure of known policies of deterrence. Possession of a nuclear weapon doesn’t imply its usage in even grave circumstances such as the prevalent ones, but its non-possession puts the country at a huge disadvantage. The militarily superior power in both the cases, US as well as Russia have not exercised the nuclear option in the conflict, Iran and Ukraine were seriously handicapped without these weapons. The other major aspect about use of nuclear weapons is the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) propounded during the cold war, where the adversaries were aware that usage by one would invite a similar response if not stronger, which would prove to be calamitous for the whole world. For smaller nations like Israel a nuclear Iran is an existential threat, Pakistan too suffers from a similar predicament and hence will be ill advised to indulge in nuclear sabre rattling. Mere possession of a nuclear weapon thus does not guarantee any favourable conflict termination.