It is heartening to know that a UN General Assembly Committee adopted a resolution to launch negotiations next year on a new treaty banning nuclear weapons. The campaign for nuclear disarmament CND which began in the 1960s with people like Bertrand Russell vigorously advocating it may soon come to fruition. The cold war tensions between the US and the USSR sustained is a specious logic of a balance of terror to prevent global connect. Later such tensions eased and Start I and Start II talks were held between the two superpowers and both countries effected cuts in their nuclear arsenals, though Russia more than the US complied. So the terror remained. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) proved abortive. China explored the bomb in LOP developing its own nuclear technology. Nuclear technology passed on to other countries on the sly. Indian scientists with their own technology produced the bomb at Pokhran in 1999. Pakistan retaliated with three. Some other countries have secretly built nuclear plants-Israel and Iran are known to have done so.
The United Nations General Assembly dealing with disarmament and international security has taken a resolution which reiterates the universal objective of taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations. India has however abstained from supporting the resolution. Although Delhi has not signed the NPT and has a nuclear weapon, it has always been committed to comprehensive nuclear disarmament. But India’s present stand is sensible. D.B. Venkatesh Varma said India had been “constrained” to abstain on the resolution. This has obvious reference to Pakistan’s jingoistic role and support to terrorism. Pakistan is a nuclear power and its intentions can never be trusted. India is on the whole not convinced that the UN move can lead to a comprehensive nuclear disarmament. Some ‘rogue’ countries may always remain out of the net. The question is: how and when can the world be free from the menace of the nuke?