Daily Times

“Hell,” writes Richard Flanagan, the winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize for his powerful novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, “is an eternal repetition of the same failure.” This quote undoubtedly possesses different meanings for different people but it seems particularly instructive for those interested in studying international relations, specifically from the viewpoint of nuclear deterrence. In the wake of the recent border skirmishes and the rekindled hostility between Pakistan and India, hysteria reigns supreme on television screens across both sides of the Line of Control (LoC). In this insecure ether, it was only a matter of time before the threat of nuclear war resurfaced. Somebody said one thing, someone said another and, before you know it, the international community is getting all jittery over this latest instalment of the conflict going nuclear.

Now, of course, there is a larger historical context to all this. The rivalry between Pakistan and India, ever since the unceremonious end of colonial rule in the subcontinent in 1947, has seen many twists and turns and the fanatical sense of competition has produced indifference, amity and confrontation between the neighbouring countries, sometimes all at the same time. Somewhere around the mid-1970s, this competition naturally poured into the most obvious sphere of warfare weaponry, hence kick-starting an overwhelming nuclear arms race that could only end in inconceivable misery if taken to its logical conclusion. In December of last year, the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility released a peer reviewed study focused on charting out the consequences of a nuclear conflagration between Pakistan and India. Unsurprisingly, the study revealed that the impact of a regional nuclear war would not be limited to South Asia alone and the consequent destruction of atmosphere due to radiation, decreased crop yields and outright famine would mean that nearly a third of the world’s population might be wiped away. In case you were wondering, the death toll would be more than two billion, i.e. the numeral 2, followed by nine zeroes!

So far though, even with Pakistan and India having slung fatal war machines at each other four times in the past, the threat of nuclear war has thankfully remained manageable. Even with suicidal vindictiveness running amok every once in a while, saner minds have prevailed in times of intense crises, and nuclear deterrence has played a large role in this regard. Deterrence can be defined as the use of threats by one state to convince another to refrain from initiating an aggressive course of action. A threat serves as a deterrent because it convinces its intended target not to carry out any belligerent actions due to the potential costs and losses involved. The nuclear deterrence theory furthers this notion by maintaining that nuclear weapons of one state are intended to deter other nuclear-capable states from using such weapons due to the certainty of retaliation and the possibility of mutually assured destruction (MAD). What this translates into is that once both Pakistan and India achieve nuclear capability, no matter how much bellicose verbiage is hurled around, neither would be tempted to use nukes against the other, which has historically been the case, so far at least.

Nuclear deterrence had its heyday in the midst of the Cold War between the US and the former Soviet Union. With hostility between the two nations at its peak during those decades, building up nuclear arsenals was just another corollary to the fixated urge to outdo each other. Thankfully though, even during testing times such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the mortal peril of a global nuclear conflict loomed large, the nukes were never used.

However, there is a catch. The theory of nuclear deterrence supposedly solves the problem of survival and security faced by insecure states through presupposing the availability of nuclear weapons at every state’s disposal. In a hypothetical world governed by nuclear deterrence, the planet would be a safer place to live in only when each state has nuclear weapons to defend itself. However, while this makes a lot of theoretical sense, the reality is that we live in an irrational world and thus the potential for calamity increases manifold by increasing the number of nukes on earth. The only possible solution is the elimination of nuclear weapons altogether but as we have found out time and time again, this is something easier said than done. Despite being the only country in the world to ever have used nuclear bombs against another, the US has been active in reducing nuclear proliferation since the end of the Cold War. Sadly though, while some old arsenals have been destroyed, a significant number of nukes still remain. And because of the US’s failure to actively engage North Korea in a dialogue over nuclear capabilities, other countries like Iran have also realised the utility of increasing international stature through attaining nuclear status and, as a result, more and more nuclear material is being produced.

But what is so special about nuclear weapons? Why have they been demonised so much? After being used to catastrophic effect in WW II, we have mercifully not seen another demonstration of their destructive force. But, perhaps precisely because of that reason, nukes have attained exceptional status. Not only do they kill indiscriminately on a colossal scale — think billions — the fact that their damage is irreversible also adds to the menace. Moreover, putting such doomsday devices at the disposal of the few, where the consequences are shared by the many, also raise important moral questions on a universal scale.

However, if the threat is so obvious, why do we not stop? To this end, I think that nuclear weapons are a peculiarity of the post-industrial, post-modern times we live in. Maybe they are a most uncomfortable answer to one of the biggest questions of our age: after eons of progress and scientific advancement in our habitat, what is next for human civilisation? In the academic study of the cosmos, there is an absorbing notion that despite there being the possibility of other, more advanced life forms, perhaps the reason we are yet to establish contact with other civilisations is because the level of scientific advancement needed to achieve interstellar communication also spawns unintended leaps in methods of self-destruction. So, before we ever get to travel to other constellations, it is far more likely that we would have already done a fantastic job of expunging ourselves and everything we hold dear because we were too imprudent to see the consequences of the choices we were making. Maybe that is what we get when we accept the idiotic principle that peace can only be maintained by arranging to defend ourselves with weapons that could not possibly be used without committing suicide.

Endnote: The inspiration for the concluding line of this article is an analogous quote from the 1959 film On the Beach, which is a portrayal of the impact of global nuclear war on the human condition.

The author is a freelance columnist with degrees in political science and international relations