Strategic Analysis

The Urumqi Crisis: Effect of China’s Ethno-national Politics

Experts are still searching for a settled answer to the causes and aftermath of the violent unrest between the Han and Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province that erupted on July 5, 2009. The long-simmering resentment of the native Uyghurs against the Han-dominated groups coupled with the deepening economic crisis is believed to have been the major reason for the ethnic riots. The questions being asked now are: Was it a crisis of ethnicity or economy? Why did the crisis manifest itself this way? And was the crisis a prelude to China's terrorism problem?

Nuclear Disarmament and Proliferation: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament, has long been a dream of world ever since it witnessed the horrors of the effects of its use in the Second World War. Nuclear disarmament is likely to be the centre of debate at the forthcoming NPT Review Conference.

Stop Worrying and Start Moving Towards Global Zero

The Political Factor in Nuclear Retaliation

That a nuclear taboo exists indicates the divide between conventional and nuclear war. It is no wonder then that India – though a nuclear weapons power – deems nuclear weapons not for military use but for deterrence purposes. These are, therefore, taken as political weapons. Seeking to deter use of nuclear weapons against India or its forces anywhere, India's nuclear doctrine promises ‘massive’ punitive retaliatory strike in case of nuclear use by its enemy. This is evidence that the Indian leadership is cognizant of the special status of nuclear weapons.

Ali Ahmed
March 2010 |
Strategic Analysis

The Realist Case Against Nuclear Disarmament

Nuclear disarmament is once again fashionable. If rhetoric was sufficient, nuclear disarmament should be easily achievable. But what the rhetoric hides is not only the difficulty of achieving nuclear disarmament, but also the instrumental manner in which that rhetoric is being deployed. At the height of the Cold War, the two superpowers traded a number of detailed proposals for controlling the atom.

India and the NPT

India's nuclear development has been accompanied by a dual track strategy of developing and building weapons while criticising the non-proliferation regime as discriminatory and simultaneously making public statements and proposals in favour of nuclear disarmament. But with international progress likely on aspects of nuclear disarmament over the next few months, India will be in the spotlight at the forthcoming 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference to help move the disarmament and non-proliferation agenda forward.

The NPT and India: Accommodating the Exception

In different international bodies and in statements by various world leaders, universalisation and a possible revision of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are figuring quite frequently. Certainly, in the emerging context for universalisation, the relationship between India and the NPT may be reviewed. Several relevant options are emerging to define the relationship between India and the NPT. This has put the relationship between India and the NPT in the international limelight.

The Importance of 2010

In international relations, the more powerful have a way of underplaying history or overemphasising it, depending on how helpful or otherwise it may be in promoting their immediate objectives. It is interesting to note that even a country like India, which is beginning to sense the stirrings of power, is tending to fall into the same pattern.

Reforms in the NPT and Prospects for India’s Accession: A Situational Analysis

Since its indefinite extension in 1995, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been on the sidelines, with its utility eroding in the post-Cold War security environment, as new instruments took over the anti-proliferation mantle. Being the cornerstone of the regime and near-universal in character, the NPT has nonetheless survived despite a host of challenges threatening its existence. Its future, however, is imperilled unless the member states take remedial actions, including a restructuring of the treaty to suit 21st century requirements.

Special Editor’s Introduction

The failure of the 2005 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference (RevCon) almost signalled doom for the treaty. The NPT, since it came into force, has always travelled a slippery slope encountering various hurdles on the way. Its problem did not end even after it acquired the ‘near universal’ status. With the exception of India, Pakistan and Israel, all countries have joined the treaty, though North Korea withdrew from it and later conducted a couple of nuclear tests.