Rizwan Asghar

Dear Sir, Pakistan is a nuclear state, with a stockpile of more than 130 nuclear weapons. There is no way these 130 weapons can be used without blowing up the whole planet. With four operating plutonium production reactors, Pakistan’s capacity to produce fissile material for weapons continues to grow. When would it stop? No one […]

Nuclear terrorism is an absolutely terrifying but unobservable phenomenon. Given that there has never been an actual terrorist incident involving nuclear weapons, disagreement exists over how seriously we should take the threat of nuclear terror. Intelligence experts believe that a determined terrorist group is capable of acquiring and transporting nuclear weapons to the target state. […]

“No system of safeguards that can be devised will of itself provide an effective guarantee against the production of atomic weapons by a nation bent on aggression.” — Harry S Truman The quote above echoes apprehensions expressed by many disarmament advocates since the dawn of the atomic age that inadequate application of nuclear safeguards remains […]

“It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.” — Noam Chomsky Call it paranoia or forewarning, but human beings of planet Earth are rapidly hurtling towards civilisation’s end due to their own self-destructive approach. The end of the world will not come as a result of some cosmic interloper hitting the […]

The history of the 20th century was shaped by two major changes in the global international system. Firstly, the multipolar European order, established in the early 19th century, collapsed with the rise of the Nazis in Germany in the early 1940s. Secondly, the end of World War II gave rise to a bipolar system, which, […]

In this second nuclear age, we have entered a new and dangerous phase of unchecked proliferation wherein missile competition between the major regional powers threatens to disrupt the global strategic balance. Several international arms-control agreements and our broader multilateral diplomatic efforts have remained unable to stave off this threat. The continuous deployment of ballistic missiles […]

The abrupt and unexpected end of the bipolar cold-war system was an exogenous shock for Washington’s policymakers as well as all leading scholars of international relations. The Soviet Union’s decision to withdraw its troops from Eastern Europe sparked an intense debate among scholars regarding the factors accounting for the peaceful end of the conflict. Since […]

One silver lining to the dark cloud hovering above Pakistan-India relations is that it has made our policymakers aware of the need to cultivate better bonds with our neighbouring countries. There is a widespread consensus among scholars and journalists that Pakistan’s relations with its neighbours have hit a low point because of our security establishment’s […]

A theory’s utility lies in its ability to explain phenomena at the conceptual level and predict observable outcomes. With the gradual transformation of the discipline of international relations into an empirical science, the criteria to assess the validity of international relations (IR) theories are how well they can explain and predict state behaviour. And the […]

Realism, the oldest theoretical paradigm in the discipline of international relations, has become the focus of academic criticism in the post-cold war era. Realist scholars are under attack not only from liberals in academia but also face difficulties in finding tenure-track jobs in the United States. Several American academics erroneously believe that realism is obsolete […]