Fomenting a Trackless Nuclear Arms Race

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(Or The Dying Throes of American Exceptionalism)

By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche

Madness of an Epoch

The fragile set of agreements and understandings that falteringly oversaw the stewardship, purpose, utility and proliferation of nuclear weapons which evolved during the Cold War, are today being recklessly breached. Notwithstanding that these very protocols came about as a direct consequence of the many nuclear catastrophic near-misses, false alarms and fortuitous circumstances – instances so unsettling that even a deranged nuclear theology could not dismiss them.

Nuclear policy maker’s world-wide are today in a tizzy on account of the inability to come to grips with the US President’s 30 October 2025 statement of having ordered his ‘Department of War’ to commence immediate resumption of testing nuclear weapons ‘on an equal basis’. This has put strategic planners in a quandary; after all, when has America since the Cold War, ever considered their strategic posture or policies predicated on ‘equivalence’? Should nations hasten to open the doors to a nuclear arms race through explosive testing, and then risk being accused of Tilting at Windmills or, are they at an inflection point when Cold War nuclear theology gives way to a far more ominous, volatile and uncertain nuclear destiny that could leave them forever lagging in a trackless nuclear arms race?  

Are we then witness to the disintegration of an ephemeral unipolar world and the dying throes of American exceptionalism?

The Nobel Laureate Assembly Declaration for the Prevention of Nuclear War of July 2025, is  significant for drawing the worlds focus on the unprecedented risk of nuclear conflagration that may be sparked of by the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, which in turn may lead to the abrogation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, both of which have thus far have been the cornerstones of  the international nuclear arms control architecture. The Nobel Laureate Assembly requested “…every nation to publicly recommit to all nonproliferation and disarmament objectives and obligations in the treaty and reject and condemn nuclear proliferation by any state…” and for that matter asserted, “…we call on all states to reiterate their commitment to a moratorium on nuclear explosive testing…”. Clearly the Nobel laureates saw any unilateral declaration would signal the start of a nuclear arms race afresh.      

What was the Trump Declaration?

The President of America on the eve of his summit with President Xi Jinping of China at Busan, South Korea stated, on his social media site Truth Social “…because of other countries nuclear testing programmes, I have instructed the Department of War, to start testing on an equal basis”. Two anxious questions arise in the absence of explication or of any annotation; was it implied that the US was to recommence explosive testing? And what was the need? Or indeed, was it more symptomatic of a nuclear age not only troubled with strategic uncertainty, but also by a disintegrating nuclear theology and control norms; leaving perils of unintended nuclear conflagration on a razor’s edge?

No nuclear weapon armed state has conducted nuclear explosive testing in over a quarter-of-a-century barring North Korea, and even they declared a self-imposed moratorium in 2017. In a curious follow up statement, President Trump alleged that countries including Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea have conducted underground nuclear explosive tests unknown to the public. All four countries were quick to deny the allegation.

Indeed, Russia on, 21 October, 2025, test flew a ‘nuclear powered’ cruise missile the “Burevestnik” and on 28 October, test launched an autonomous ‘nuclear powered’ torpedo the “Poseidon”; the former, intelligence indicates, has been under trial since 2019, while the latter since 2016 ; these therefore are neither new nor can the tests be classified as explosive nuclear testing. As far as the other three countries are concerned there is no evidence to support the allegation that they have conducted explosive nuclear test since the moratoriums announced by them. It is equally well known that nuclear armed nations periodically conduct sub-critical or inert testing of their stockpile in order to modernise or service their arsenal along with delivery systems.  As a matter of fact, the USA in August 2025 conducted an inert air launched nuclear weapon system from their advanced F-35 fighter aircraft. However what remains unanswered is the assertion by the President of the USA, of ‘secret underground explosive testing’.   

Explosive Nuclear Tests

To come to grips with the magnitude of global explosive nuclear testing since the first atomic bomb test on the morning of July 16, 1945, the world must note that nuclear-armed states have conducted 2,056 explosive nuclear tests. The reported individual tally of tests is as follows: United States with a current stockpile of over 5,225 war heads led the way with 1,030 explosive nuclear tests; second is the former Soviet Union with a stockpile of 5,580 warheads conducted 715 tests, France with an arsenal of 290 warheads has carried out 210 tests, Britain with an arsenal of 225 warheads conducted 45 tests while China, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel with an estimated stockpile of 500-50-180-170 and 90 warheads respectively, carried out 45-6-3-2 tests (data for Israel is not known). Globally, nuclear tests culminated in a cumulative yield of over 500 megatons, which is equivalent to 500 million tons of TNT.  

Studies indicate increased rates of life threatening cancer have been associated with nuclear testing along with other fatal ailments linked to radionuclides. While the land remains radioactive for centuries after the test making it noxious for human habitation. That, the impact of testing on the human anatomy is devastating and has immediate and long-term effects caused by radiation and radioactive fallout is well known. However, our immediate concern is with the strategic impact of resumption of explosive nuclear testing.      

Strategic Significance of Resumption of Explosive Nuclear Testing

A resumption of explosive nuclear testing (RENT) would not just put in disarray the New Strategic Arms Restriction Treaty (START), which is the only current and existing arms control agreement between the USA and Russia that puts a cap on the number of deployed nuclear warheads and places verifiable limits on all arrayed intercontinental-range nuclear weapons; but would also, potentially, pull down the whole edifice of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The demolition of the most widely adhered to treaty in this field would in consequence pave the way for other nations to start or resume nuclear testing, nullifying the urgency of the nuclear taboo and increase the risk of nuclear carnage.  A crisis of credibility would be fuelled among non-nuclear states and amidst members of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The collapse of the NPT and the termination of the new SALT agreement would, in short, result in nuclear anarchy and in a way, to the erosion of the political idea of American leadership and exceptionalism in geopolitics.   

Moribund Nature of Exceptionalism

A less understood impact of RENT is the beginning-of-the-end of American ‘exceptionalism’. For most American politicians and officials, exceptionalism is the conviction that the United States is different from, superior to and not subject to conventions that bind other nations. There are distinctive strands within this exceptionalist belief that is shared by Americans of all hues particularly those in public positions and that is; the unshakeable conviction that America is not only qualitatively unique, but that this distinction has providential character. This understanding is at the core of the American nationalistic outlook.  

The concept traces its origin to the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’, founders, authors and American philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries when they declared that the New World was to be seen by the rest as a “shining city on a hill” (originally a Biblical quote) and a “beacon to the world”. These phrases were bandied about by Presidents, puritans, scholars and charlatans over the years making it a part of their civilizational folklore drawing links with the Omniscient for their global deeds and indeed, misdeeds (never mind that the nation’s history is dark – built on stolen land, genocide and enslaved labour). So it was “in God we trust”; ideology of “Manifest Destiny” to rule from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts; George HW Bush’ “Line in the sand” in Iraq 1990 (again Biblical); to vanquish “evil empires” and their acts were a “model of Christian charity” that worked a divine plan.  

The idea of exceptionalism, admittedly, resists empirical evaluation but the theme has played a role throughout U.S. history, shaping an imperious and overweening understanding of its station in the comity of nations and motivating actions that placed the state above international scrutiny. Exceptionalism proposed three characteristics to the American people; to establish a myth of origin, to build a Providence-ordained heroic cut-out for identity and thirdly, to provide justification for their global deeds; how-so-ever feral and crude they appear to the observer.

Belief in the very idea of American exceptionalism has taken a mortal beating over the last three decades since the curtains came down on the Cold-War. The reasons for its decline may be attributed to the following arguments:

  • Political misuse of the theory of exceptionalism to justify foreign policy decisions that placed the United States “above international law”. America invoked exceptionalism not as a model of global leadership but as a rationale for unilateralism; so apparent in the fabrication of the narrative of weapons of mass destruction and consequent invasion of Iraq, the twenty year war in Afghanistan, sponsoring regime changes in Libya, Ukraine and the many other countries; while deploying armed forces for over 251 military interventions between 1991 and 2023; this is according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, a U.S. government institution. The instances of use of military power differ greatly in magnitude, purpose, extent of hostilities, and legality of intervention. The persistence of armed expansion into somebody else’s territory, and dealing harshly with people who resist that occupation is a recurring theme in American history whether it was their belief in the policy of ‘Manifest Destiny’, occupation of Mexican territories, invasion of the Philippines, the atomic bombing of Japan, war in Vietnam, the invasion of Iraq or indeed the bombing of Iran, the many regime changes brought about in South and Central America; evidently, God’s permission ‘disavowed’ the need for any semblance of morality. The recent 03 January 2026, abduction of the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros that America executed using overwhelming military power on Venezuela is a stark declaration of the end of any need for a divine fig leaf to cover military action. Quite brazenly, the US administration has stated its incentive was commercially motivated centred on control of the largest known oil reserves in the world of 303 billion barrels of oil. No advancement of democracy, no human rights safe guards, no intention of upholding any ‘rule-of-law’ or even providing a bulwark against global security breaches; just an action model based on old fashioned 19th Century imperialism.      
  • From the socio-economic standpoint, belief in ‘the American way’ was mortally eroded, first during the recession of 2008 and then again during the economic chaos that the COVID-19 pandemic wrought globally. What the world witnessed was rapacity in place of benevolence, paralysis in global response in place of leadership to tackle what was an existential challenge to humankind; and when a dawdling riposte emerged the wretched relief it offered was not only disjointed, selfish and selective in approach but was woefully inadequate. America accounted for over one million fatalities and, incidentally, had amongst the highest toll per million population (3,642/mill pop).
  • The surrender of captaincy in world affairs became apparent when the US opted for an insular and transactional approach towards trade, tariffs, and the superintendence of global order; of significant note is the current move that America has made to monetise security of its alliance commitments. Traditionally, national security policy aimed to mitigate threats; now it seeks to profit from them, transforming international security and order to a negotiable commodity.  Policies that pre-empt and mitigate threats serve as stabilizers against the spread of extremism, criminal networks, and influences that tend to disrupt world order. They prevent the very crises that later demand costly military intervention. Yet under the logic of monetization, their worth is measured only by immediate returns. The deeper contradiction lies in the state’s perceived conflict between profit and protection. Security, in its broadest terms, means safeguarding national interests, economy, critical infrastructure, public welfare, ensuring sustainable prosperity and maintenance of an order based on rule of law. Monetization reverses this logic; it transforms security into tradeable merchandise and chattels. Geopolitical stability requires balancing competing interests, recognizing the strengths of other states, cooperating with partners, and maintaining a long-term strategic horizon. Movements such as the “Make America Great Again” are more of an admission of failure to be deserving of the mantle of world hegemon or to be worthy of exceptionalism.
  • The canard of promoting democracy which has been a primary goal of US foreign policy since the First World War from the time when President Woodrow Wilson embarked on his “visionary internationalism”. While some administrations in America pursued it with missionary zeal, others gave it lip-service and still others weaponised it as a tool to dispose off inconvenient regimes as a rigour of a doctrinal system that portrays the ‘current autocratic enemy’ as diabolical by nature. In these instances the pursuit of enforcing “democracy” by pre-emptive action was neither unlawful nor illegal (from the US perspective) and if it involved casting aside multilateralism in favour of naked power, then that strategy was preferable (The Bush Doctrine). Did such dogmatism in policy stimulate anarchy? Questions will persist; in what way did ‘Agent Orange’ promote democracy, or the carnage in Iraq, Syria Gaza and Afghanistan?  Or the propping up very corrupt dictatorships in Latin America and prolonging the war in Ukraine? And what of Africa which has become a strategic focal point for major power play leading to the worst kind of savagery in the Sahel, Libya, Mali Ethiopia, Sudan, and Congo?  
  • Then there is the global financial mayhem that has thrown monetary institutions across the world in a downward spiral leading to a breach in fiscal trust between nations across the board. This has been caused by the coming together of three events; the war in Ukraine, the Western world’s ill-advised decision on 12 December 2025 when the EU indefinitely froze Russian central bank assets and transforming temporary sanctions into a permanent financial instrument to support Ukraine. The decision departs from established legal and institutional norms of sovereign asset protection. This illicit blockage of pecuniary assets undermines global financial trust and provokes fragmentation in the international monetary order. In the meantime Russia determined to fundamentally counter financial sanctions through developing an alternate stable and failsafe arrangement called the “System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS)” to the existing world-wide interbank inter-bank transacting order. This is their response to the “fiscal law of the jungle”.
  • Perhaps the last nail in the coffin of American exceptionalism was hammered home in the recently concluded World Economic Forum 2026. The Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, addressing the forum in the context of the US demand for annexation of Greenland, brought into sharp focus that the “Rupture” in the current World Order was not a transition. In a candid confession, he emphasised that “great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion and supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” He went on to suggest that nations must not live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when alliances become the source of subordination and timidity. He then called upon the ‘middle powers’ to unite at a time when “great powers abandon rules and values for their own interests, middle powers, he declared, have a choice: compete with each other for favour (of the Hegemon) or act together with impact”. And then warned that “if you (middle powers) were not at the Table you were on the Menu”. Leaving little doubt that the World Order of the past had given way to Disorder.     

The Overwrought Mantle  

There is no doubting the fact that American exceptionalism boosted national identity and pride but it also generated a misplaced sense of entitlement that has developed into ignorance and mistrust of contrary perspectives. The consequence is, paradoxically, insecurity and hostility towards nations that have found it difficult to swallow the idea of duplicity in standards of international relations and that America’s armed interventions and wars are endorsed by and for Providence; particularly when one notes the graveyard of nations that chose to “heel” to American decree.

The failure to neither shore-up American socio-economic global sway in recent years nor globally promote democracy without equivocation or hidden agendas has had a corrosive triple effect on its image as a unique hegemon. First, its global influence as an anchor for trade and financial relations, which besides giving it critical influence also provided it with unparalleled monetary control; second, it’s overseeing of global security, and diplomacy (however partisan it may seem) endowed it with the status of a global policeman, and thirdly, it has quite awkwardly dropped the overwrought mantle of exceptionalism in favour of transactional vainglorious benefits. This last fact has hacked away at its standing amongst the concert of nations and withered its role as a global superintendent of order. Notwithstanding how much harder it may drive sanctions, twist resistance to its writ or raise the decibel level on the crusade for supposed democracy, the actuality of the end of unipolar dominion and the emergence of a multipolar world order will not change.   

The loss of the ‘license’ to dominate was never more apparent than when President Trump, in frenetic reaction, scuttled to declare resumption of testing nuclear weapons “… on an equal basis.” Which raises the question; has anything for the USA, even vaguely related to international relations, in recent years been on equal basis?   

Shredding of the Cold War Nuclear Theology

In developing nuclear postures, historically, there appeared to have been an obsessive shadowy urge to find ways to use the weapon. After all, the first reaction to strategic military revision is to find ways of defeating it, and in the process upsetting the existing equilibrium. The past will suggest that the cold-warriors with each doctrinal attempt to enhance kill-capability, credibility and survivability of their nuclear arsenals only achieved in pushing the world closer to the brink.

In the wake of the first Soviet atomic test in 1950, the US tabled a report titled National Security Council – 68 (NSC-68). This report was to become the mantra that guided world order till the end of the Cold War, and in particular defined and drove doctrines for use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. The report contrasted the design of the ‘authoritarian’ with that of the ‘free state’ and the inevitable nuclear clash that would ensue. In this scheme of things, the crises in Berlin, the Korea peninsula, and Vietnam appeared logical, while the threat of mass destruction was even justified. In these circumstances the urge-to-use remained palpable.

NSC-68 came at a time when the previous 35 years had witnessed the most cataclysmic events of that century; two devastating World Wars, two revolutions that mocked global status quo, and the collapse of five empires. Change also transformed the basis of power; key determinants were now a function of ideology, economic muscle, military prowess, and the means of mass destruction. Power had decisively gravitated to the USA and the USSR. The belief that the Soviets were motivated by a faith antithetical to that of the west and driven by ambitions of world domination provided the logic that conflict and violence had become the order of the day. Nuclear theology was consequently cast in the mould of armed rivalry and its nature characterised by friction. The scheme that carved the world was ‘containment of Communism’. In turn, rationality gave way to the threat of catastrophic force as the basis of stability; with ideology now backing nuclear action the tension-to-use was tangible despite acknowledging that there was no way in which escalation could be predicted or controlled.

There is an inherent limit to how precisely predictions can be made, let alone prognosticate impact particularly when polity, power, ideology and people are involved. The historian Michael Howard cautioned against those who would play the oracle: “Doctrinal stasis is not a bad thing when the alternative is to match an opponent’s mistakes” – which implies that understanding and responding to a military doctrine is in the main a futile exercise in crystal-ball gazing. Howard’s conception of doctrinal stasis, when applied to nuclear-armed states, is critical for stability primarily when destructive capability is not in question but intent is. This suggested making the best of a disastrous situation. It thus became the wisdom-of-the-time that nuclear weapons constitute a powerful deterrent against a nuclear attack. However, an interstate relationship is often equally influenced by historical biases, irrational leadership, unintended events, and hostility. As arsenals developed to the extreme, antagonists were compelled to the acceptance of a nuclear strategy that aimed at deterring war rather than fighting it. Even so, the quest for doctrines that acquiesced to nuclear war-fighting were advanced, almost as if control of escalation was a given, and yet, it was precisely here that all the uncertainties lay. For, the essential claim of deterrence theorists, that the probability of an intentional nuclear exchange is low, may be acceptable as long as arsenals are survivable, capability of retaliation is assured and there exists belief in the lack of political purpose in its use. Unfortunately, this core premise is flawed on two perceived counts: firstly, the vulnerability of arsenals and secondly, that there is no seeming political purpose in the use of nuclear weapons.

Also, the frailty of theory lurks in the unspoken part of it. That is, can a deterrent relationship hold in the face of persistent nuclear doctrinal changes? Noting that military doctrine of the post-World War II era began with intentional “first use of the nuclear weapons” which progressed to multiplying nuclear capability to overwhelm an adversary. All the while debates raged on the morality of nuclear weapons it even led to flights of complex theological contradistinctions, of whether humanity was usurping a divine role by possessing such destructive power? This persuaded a perverse doctrine that impelled the idea of a “balance of terror” (Albert Wohlstetter) predicated on the threat of “mutually assured destruction”; and then followed the notion that nuclear escalation could be controlled by adopting a policy of “flexible nuclear response” introducing the absurd belief that there could be proportionality once a nuclear exchange began (JFK) before all else, the concept was unsound in its assumption of ‘mirror imaging’ both the process and content of strategic decision-making. The Cuban nuclear crisis of 1962 highlighted that in a strategic nuclear war there was going to be no winners. However, despite this obvious lesson, planners were adamant in their quest for logic to accommodate their burgeoning arsenals. Solutions only masked the atrocity of a nuclear war; for they did not answer the central issues of, what political purpose was served? And, did credible means of control exist?

The period between 1968 and into the 1990s was a period of easing of Cold War nuclear tensions and fostering of détente. It witnessed several arms control agreements that promoted an easing of nuclear anxieties that took the form of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972), SALTII (1979), Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF, 1987), Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991 and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996.  But these détente measures did not prevent the intrusion of dangerous paradoxical short-lived doctrinal precepts into nuclear theology; they included: the 1974 ‘Schlesinger doctrine’ that suggested a wider array of nuclear options (!); ‘the Dead Hand’ a Strangelovesque doomsday machine that could launch an all-annihilating retaliatory nuclear strike automatically; development of new nuclear war-fighting capabilities, and the move away from strategic arms limitation. Even more bizarre nuclear postures were to emerge such as “escalate to de-escalate” (the Kremlin’s alleged military doctrine released in 2000) and the return of the “pre-emptive” nuclear first strike.

The crumbling of the Soviet Union brought down the curtains on the NSC-68 basis of global stability. In its trail, some scholarly works suggested the emergence of one globalised world and an end to the turbulent history of man’s ideological evolution. Some saw a benign multi-polar order. Yet others saw ­- in the Iraq Wars, the invasion of Ukraine, the continuing war in the Levant, Afghan imbroglio, and the splintering of Yugoslavia – a violent clash of civilisations shaped by religio-cultural similitude. However, these illusions were dispelled and found little use in understanding the realities of the post-Cold War world as each of them represented a candour of their own. The paradigm of the day (perhaps) is the tensions of the multi-polar; the tyranny of economics; the anarchy of expectations; and polarisation of peoples along religio-cultural lines, all compacted in the backwash of a technology rush. An uncertain geopolitical brew as the world has ever seen seethes under the looming shadow of continued nuclear weapons proliferation.

At Cold War’s end, leaders, recognising how often and how close to a nuclear catastrophe decentralising control of nuclear weapons had brought the world to, made reciprocal pledges to substantially retain control and cut-back on tactical nuclear weapons. Collectively, the pledge was to end foreign deployment of entire categories of tactical nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, this lofty vow today lies in tatters to the extent that there is the absurd belief that one could escalate into the nuclear dimension in order to de-escalate a conflictual situation.

The US National Security Strategy (NSS) of December 2025 read in conjunction with their “prospective” Nuclear Posture as outlined in the document titled “The next administration’s nuclear posture” places perplexing demands on the analyst. It necessitates the ability to maintain several contradictory viewpoints at the same time which serves more to confuse than provide clarity of intent. While the thrust of NSS 2025 is the act of an “Atlas” unburdening the weight of playing global hegemon, it maintains condemnation of predatory state-directed subsidies, perceived unfair trading practices and threats to supply chains as it seeks to establish world-wide commercial domination. The strategy has, in a baffling way, sought pre-eminence through nationalism and economic coercion. Inexplicably, it also commits to maintain the “world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military,” and “the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent” in order toprotect interests, deter wars, and win them, if necessary quickly and decisively, with the lowest possible casualties to our forces.” How this is going to be achieved is also puzzling particularly since most of the Pentagon’s major weapons programs over the last quarter of a century have not fulfilled expectations, if not being outright failures. The failure of the Zumwalt-class destroyer due cost-overruns, F-35 stealth combat aircraft , Littoral Combat Ship, failure of the Future Combat System, and Ford-class aircraft carrier are just a few of the systems that have cost a fortune yet failed to deliver capability. The latest tranche of weapons program is now showing signs of repeated mistakes. The Sentinel ballistic missile program saw 81% cost growth and the project teeters on the brink of closure, while the Navy recently cancelled the Constellation-class frigate. Does the aggregate of these setbacks and cancellations suggest the paucity of R&D and industrial competency to meet strategic security objectives? And this muddled state of the nuclear mire comes at a time when the only nuclear arms control treaty the “New SALT” is due to expire on 26 February 2026.

Indeed the Cold War nuclear theology, over the last 8 decades, has in its encounter with the irrationality of global leadership and the sightlessness of untameable science and technology, been unable to reconcile the contrary demands of survival, growth and competition; each in turn being seized and reconstructed by powerful nations leaving existing nuclear theology in a deranged state without an alternative as world order degenerates to disorder.

Conclusion

The concept of self-ordained exceptionalism stands never more exposed and vulnerable than when it runs into opposition, made up of middle powers that choose to withhold acknowledgement of any form of exceptionalism on grounds of its malfeasance. And when this dynamic is backed by power, then the concept becomes decadent. And so it is with such ‘providentially’ ordained mantles. The period after the break-up of the Soviet Union saw the short lived emergence of a unipolar world in which the USA ascended the throne of global hegemony and saw in it not just victory of an ideology but also the confirmation of its self-anointed station of exceptionalism. With it the Hegemon transcended circumscription and sought control of world order conjointly with the wheels that moved global economics; with neither accountability for outcomes nor any legal restraint as we saw so vividly in America’s wars post the collapse of the USSR. Some social scientists and other pretenders predicted that globalisation and the unipolar situation would produce a stable society in which “man may be said to be, at last, completely satisfied”. But in the wings of geopolitics there were rumblings; optimism waned as new conflicts, terrorism, disruptions and the rise of competition for power, economic growth, technology and resources became the order of the day.

The Hegemon and the unipolar world are woefully ill prepared to cope both in terms of power and to balance the inequities that the economic structures of the post-cold war spawned. The chemistry of inadequacy added to the diffusion of global power and the retreat of the Hegemon from engagement to the adoption of a muddled strategic posture of the day which has precipitated a self-serving anarchic and often nepotistic strategic posture. This narcissistic deportment has released forces of change that challenge existing international order in a quest for a more nuanced multipolar world. All of which suggests the growth of multiple power centres, as we note in contemporary times, each with significant economic, military and political clout.

While, undoubtedly, the risks of unintended conflict are much more due complexity of relationships; the distribution of power provides the necessary balance and affiliation between actors will provide a persuasive thrust to equilibrium of the system. That is, as the system moves away from unipolarity/bipolarity towards multipolarity, the frequency and intensity of conflicts may be expected to diminish. Theoretically, instability in unipolar and bipolar systems appears to be substantially greater. It seems rational, then, that in  multipolar circumstances if the spread of nuclear weapons is slowed down as is the case, the transition of the international system to the latter system where the increased number of independent yet powerful actors influence, positively, the likelihood of international stability. This will set the Dooms Day clock back and buy humankind some valuable time to seek a more dependable premise for world order other than the one extant in which the ‘threat of catastrophic force is the basis of stability’.     

The hope for humankind is the belief that the value of nuclear weapons lies in non-usage; its futility is in attempting to use it to attain political goals. And as long as none of the individual Poles of the Multipolar system or a combination thereof believes no benefit is to be had through use of nuclear weapons or through revision in doctrinal underpinnings, there is an absence of anxiety in the collective cognizance; setting into motion a more certain or positive chain reaction dampening calamitous risk. Indeed, in this context, nuclear doctrinal stasis, for starters, and a “No First Use” doctrine is a great idea; while this may not assure happy endings, it provides a footing for a historical quest to do away with the obscenity of a nuclear war.            

The 1984 Archetype: China’s New Form of Human Civilization

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Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

Interminable Wars

George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” depicts a dystopian society in which the super-state of Oceania is steeped in totalitarianism and perpetual war. In Oceania’s state of ceaseless conflict with either Eastasia or Eurasia, the ruling Regime holds a monopoly on violence and its unending wars are a part of a mechanism to maintain control over its citizens. This persevering condition unifies the population in the face of a common enemy, justifies unquestioningly the need for strict government regulation and diverts resources away from bringing about changes in the lives of the people. Reality itself is pliable, in a fluid sense, and exists only in the mind; and therefore the core axiom of the state was bending and manipulating the mind. Additionally, the regime’s efficient use of the secret ‘thought police’ for guileful suppression of its citizenry, structuring a bureaucracy that not only monopolises facts but also determines the past to model a present and a future of its fabrication while its agencies desensitise generations of citizenry to accept a reality of its making by continuously changing it. As George Orwell put it, “by a lack of understanding they (the citizenry) remained sane”. As for the interminable wars; there never was intended to be any winner or loser, no pitched battles, no blunders, no surrender; just an instrument to enable a miserable war economy and a reason for mind-bending oversight.

By constantly altering historical records and presenting false information as fact; a world is created in which the objectivity of truth ceases to exist. This manipulation allows the regime to shape citizens’ beliefs and perceptions according to their agenda. The theme of language-engineering and therefore constriction of ideas is enforced by the creation of “Newspeak” that highlights the power of language and rhetoric to shape perceptions and control thought. In the novel, ‘Newspeak’ is designed to limit expression and eliminate dissent by restricting vocabulary and simplifying grammar. Similarly, in contemporary politics, language can be used to manipulate public opinion; through the ubiquitous tweet, frame debates, and obfuscate the truth. Politicians and public figures may employ euphemisms, Doublespeak, and carefully crafted messaging to influence people’s dogmas and actions. The novel underscores the manner in which these linguistic tactics can shape the mind of the listener.

Reality, censorship and control of information in 1984 strike a dangerous harmony with contemporary issues of media management and peddling “fake news.” In the novel, the establishment constantly bridles facts to create and maintain its current version of reality. Similarly, in today’s world, the spread of misinformation, biased reporting, and outright falsehoods through social media and other channels can mould public opinion, undermine trust in institutions and indeed, change the idea of actuality itself. Transformation of reality, as E.M. Forester put it, was “at the turn of the kaleidoscope”; much as leadership of a current superpower has so vividly shown.   

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, propaganda and indoctrination are central to the Government’s ability to maintain control and suppress dissent. The State uses various methods, including controlling media, and promoting an overarching ideology that justifies its actions. This portrayal is relevant to contemporary concerns about the influence of ideologies and radical beliefs on society. Today, we see the rise of various extremist groups and the spread of their beliefs through online platforms and social media. These groups often employ spin-doctoring and brainwashing techniques to recruit members, gain influence and motivate them even to the extent of suicide bombing.  

War and the perversion of its significance from “extension of politics by other means” is refined to denote a stable state of conflict that ensures the perpetual churning of the wheels of military industry in Oceania’s interminable yet finely tuned wars against the other two super states of Eurasia and Eastasia. The aim is to achieve a balanced condition of disorder that neither seeks gains nor strives for victory; but pursues relentless power and control of their citizenry. The goal is to impress upon the populace the persuasion that “War is Peace”.  The concept of perpetual war in 1984, serves as the prime mechanism for the Regime to maintain its sway over the populace. In today’s world, we can see parallels with on-going global conflicts and the manner in which war is used as a means of control and manipulation by those in power.   

In order to understand the complicated foreign relations between Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia; one has to note the tacit agreement between the states not just to keep the public immersed in the war effort to destroy any surplus generated by their economies but to ensure that the inhabitants are suspended in a mind numbing, wasteful yet enduring circle of want. While alliances shift, like dunes in a desert, what remains steadfast is the motivation for perpetual war to not just maintain the status-quo, but to uphold the promise of security and the preservation of the hierarchical society. Disputed expanses formed by the equatorial region provide the necessary resources of expendable material and manpower to power the war making effort.    

Two plus Two Will Make Five: the Piety of Order

Nineteen Eighty-Four, borrowed generously for its belief in control of a state’s citizenry from the rise of Fascism in Europe and from Cold-War Soviet Union for its dystopian description of a future three and a half decades after the author had penned his novel. Yet, it is not the year of its setting that is significant; what is – is, how often authoritarian and so too ‘democratic’ leaders alike; have since emphasised the central theme of the book that by convincing the citizenry through their “lack of understanding they remained sane”; for it is understanding which brings with it an acute sense of responsibility and the urge to defy. It has been the object of contemporary oligarchs to contradict and mask this very sense of responsibility till all feeling for it is abandoned; this is the state when ‘two plus two will make five’.

Historical conclusions that are drawn, redrawn and again recast from contrived struggles of the past provide the canvas for composing principles, beliefs and ideals that are fluid in their interpretation and form. And since these endeavours were achieved through, “naturally”, extreme hardship and at monumental cost, they provide the right path to realize not only greatness, but also give to the Regime legitimacy and the right to control and perpetuate for society a rosy vision of the status-quo.

At the heart of Nineteen Eighty Four, is the tragic menace of not just the totalitarian State but even so called democracies that place power above the citizen. Tragic, for its universally terrifying influence on the other nations; and menacing, for the crimes of the State masked in the piety of order.      

Contemporary Conflicts through the Prism of 1984 

Major conflicts and crises, in recent times, are incessantly unfolding around the world with West Asia and Europe being particularly affected. The Russia-Ukraine war and the on-going conflict in Israel, Gaza and Iran are significant drivers of global instability. Additionally, conflicts in Sudan, Syria, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sahel, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are causing widespread anxiety over their purpose and the motive of the sponsors thereof. So much so that the unremitting conflict level is at it’s highest since World War II. Not only have these wars caused major humanitarian crises through their barbarity but their complex nature suggests complicity of the major players of the day. The purpose is clearly, for power, control and pecuniary benefits. One notes the bedeviled fact that the source of munitions that fuel these conflicts and indeed profit from them are the same few promoters of the wars. After all, the most successful corporate enterprise in contemporary times is the arms industry; underscoring the monetary mainspring for interminable wars. Shades of 1984?

The conflict in Vietnam brought into sharp relief the West’s institutional outlook towards war and peace when haloed establishments like the Norwegian Nobel Committee stood up to recognise the talent of the likes of Henry Kissinger in 1973 for waging “peace” on that hapless peninsula. War and Peace, to the lofty standards of the Committee, were astoundingly, seen as occupying the same domain that marks humanity, in other words the cycle of arms production is consistent overall with the logic that more military expenditure equals more arms exports and therefore more wars resulting in more peace!? While others would suggest how on earth the Committee could hold two such contradictory ideas simultaneously unless they were doing an exercise in “Double Think”. The script is out of 1984.

When Nineteen Eighty-Four is viewed from a historical distance leaving Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the Cold War behind, we see the novel and its ideas of interminable wars, omnipresent-surveillance, Newspeak, Thought Police and Double-Think take form in any ideology or system of governance.

The post-Cold War era witnessed the war in Iraq that began in 1991 continued through that decade in various forms sometimes euphemistically called enforcement of the no-fly zone; non-compliance of UN sanctions; UN Resolution to destroy Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD); western media worked overtime to, first convince themselves and then the world, of the imminence of the use of WMDs by the ruling dispensation in Iraq. A narrative was spun of the looming threat of release of biological, chemical and nuclear carnage. A case for invading Iraq in March 2003 was built on three basic premises: that Iraq had WMDs; that it was developing more of them; and that it was failing to comply with its disarmament obligations under a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions. All of these premises were based on scraps of unreliable and fabricated information. None of them was true. The web of chicanery culminated in full scale invasion of Iraq in 2003 only to expose the falsehood of the very premise of the existence of WMDs. There were no stockpiles of WMDs nor was there a programme to produce WMDs. Nevertheless the country was occupied; the existing dispensation was toppled while a vicious insurgency developed. American and coalition forces eventually withdrew from this “interminable war” in 2011 with nothing to show other than over half a million casualties, a demolished nation and a festering insurgency; the only end it seemed to have served was to keep the wheels of the Western arms industry in motion to fuel a war that filled the coffers of several corporate entities.  Concurrently, a war on terror was announced post the appalling terror attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and two other locations in Washington DC and Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001. The war took America, along with a coalition of forces to invade Afghanistan and topple the existing dispensation of the Taliban. The conflict meandered through the next two decades as objectives of the invaders kept changing without tangible outcomes. It ended with an ignoble withdrawal of the coalition force and ironically the Taliban back in power. There is also a network of security think tanks located in the main decision-making centres of the world (In Brussels alone) there are hundreds of arms industry lobbyists, who influence politicians and officials globally as they develop policies related to the logic of ‘more arms translates to more peace’ . Their objectives include pushing for arms manufacturing, sale, promotion and publicity to respond to a seemingly limitless number of threats. 

A New Form of Human Civilization

When Premier Xi Jinping addressed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the centennial of the Party on 01 July 2023, he took a page out of 1984 as he institutionalised the manipulation of reality in order to build a “new form of human civilization”.  For humanity, it has pretensions of being the new world order; based on value assertions of the CCP’s leadership and, importantly, the aspirational beliefs that serve China’s strategic interests internationally. It is significant to observe that the claim made for the “new” refers singularly to the supposed difference between China’s value propositions and those of the rest of humanity.

Civilizations do not evolve by decree. Rather, the growth, expansion and, in some cases, the eventual waning of civilizations follow a long process comprising elements beginning with individuals who through proximal circumstances and necessity, form cultural groups and societies. Members of the group applied their intellect to make viable economic existence and prosperity of the community. Often this led to a division of labour and the time it afforded, to some, gave rise to beliefs that evolved and were institutionalised in the form of cultural practices unique to that community. Through adaption and intercourse with peripheral societies across geography and belief systems these cultural practices were codified into religions. From this stage to politics and the evolution of security structures was a natural development. With further expansion the civilization encountered new communities and even civilizations at various levels of development; this either resulted in assimilation and the creation of a larger universal empire or the challenge brought about decline and disintegration (as Arnold Toynbee has suggested). The process of civilization is slow; its development, growth, flourish and decline, takes several millennia.

Premier Xi’s call for his ‘new form of human civilization’ stressed the deep historical strengths of the “Sinic Civilization”, and also upheld and defended the contemporary relevance of Marxism against the backdrop of problems in current global affairs. How the strengths of the Sinic Civilization and Marx’ theories were to be reconciled, is clearly another futile exercise in ‘Double Speak’; for ultimately, China’s “new form of human civilization” only makes sense if the CCP leadership hopes to pack a set of value claims that legitimize its totalitarian leadership at home, and project a coherent set of aspirational values abroad that serve China’s strategic interests.

The Paradox of Reconciling Contradictory Values

In sum what is suggested, claim Beijing scholars (who have since burnt midnight-oil to make sense of the ‘new civilisation’) is that China had improved its hard power, such as the economy and the military, but was weak in soft power. By soft power was meant ideals such as a cultural value system that from the CCP’s stand point was the moving force of ‘the new form of human civilization’ add to that was the need for a legitimate political system  widely recognized by the international community. For its cultural values, Beijing has dug deep into its history to the period of the ‘Warring States’. Yet in order not to lose sight of the fact that Communism in China is a far more recent importation, classical values had somehow to be fused with Marxist beliefs to introduce modernity and legitimacy to the muddle.  

The period of the Warring States, that was to source ‘classical values’ extended from 425 BCE to 221 BCE; it was an era of derangement, war and transformation that led to the establishment of the Qin Dynasty and a partial unification of the seven major antagonistic states. Significant in that era were the proliferation of thought and the development of ideas such as Confucianism, Daoism (Taoism) and Legalism or the fa tradition through the works and oral teachings of philosophers of the likes of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and Sun Tzu. These three schools of thought were the wellspring of Chinese classic values. Beliefs that may be distilled from the teachings of Confucius and Laozi of the period are those that are common to civilizational states; they include social order along with the natural order of things, morality, harmony with nature, virtue, education and the importance of knowledge; Taoism complements and enriches Confucianism. While both these philosophies were denounced by Chairman Mao’s dispensation, they remain a dormant and arcane part of Chinese life.

In contrast to Confucianism and Taoism, the fa tradition was a philosophical principle that sought to bring a harsher order of governance. It was developed by a Chinese thinker of the same period named Han Feizi and suggested that human actions were, in the main, driven by selfish motives and had a propensity to choose wrong over right unless deterred by strict laws; significantly, it ushered in a preference for centralised control and the subservience of the individual. The insistence was on rule-by-uniformity as advantageous over reliance on human factors in politics. The far reaching effects of this tradition through history to this day appealed more to the mandarin’s sense of order and manifested in the modern day resurrection of Legalism and the fa perspective on power and control.     

Marxism, in the meanwhile, justifies and predicts the emergence of a classless global society without private property. This global society, as Marx predicted, would be preceded by the violent seizure of the state and the means of production by the proletariat, who would rule in an interim dictatorship. Its values are marked by the tendency to relate the abstract to material significance; therefore values in the Marxist ideology with a sprinkling of “Chinese characteristics” are restricted to the labour value, utility value and exchange value with emphasis on patriotism at its core.  

Values, therefore, from the CCP’s perspective, are a reflection of labour, utility and transactional significance of an undertaking as modified by the “spirit-of-the-times”. Reforms and innovations may be deemed necessary by the Party when it chooses to bring about changes. Variations are determined by the threat posed by the vicissitudes of time, technology and circumstances.  The eventual validity of transformation is subject to four critical features; the collective over the individual, negation of the profit motive, adherence to the laws of the CCP and abhorrence of hedonism. Put together this engineering of elements, ideas and behavioural characteristics constitute the basic contents of the Party’s core value system. In all this is the absence of the idea of culture that permeates soft power, defined as a “Country’s ability to influence others without resorting to coercive pressure. In practice, that process entails countries projecting their values, ideals, and individual discernment across borders to foster goodwill and strengthen partnerships” (Joseph Nye, 1980).

Given the inherent confutations that erupt when developing soft power in repressive conditions, the creation of a political system that is both legitimate and acceptable to the larger mass of humanity appears an arduous ask.   

Whole-Process Peoples Democracy

In an effort to bring about reconciliation of such vastly contradictory value systems, the CCP in 2019, developed a perplexing concept of governance called “whole-process democracy”, which by 2021 was re-christened whole-process people’s democracy, the introduction of the word ‘people’s’ was more to retain the Maoist flavour of the masses. Under this design, Premier Xi suggested that democracy was an ethical view by which the morality of an act is judged by the intrinsic value of the outcome, in which the most important criterion for evaluating the success of democracy is whether democracy can “solve the people’s real problems. Real and effective socialist democracy, he declared, was to be removed beyond dogma to an instrument of positive consequences; its litmus test was whether it enabled the people to follow the guidance and will of the CCP “. More than anything else, this ‘new’ conception serves to establish the absolute authority of the Party on all political, social, civic and matters of international relations the supremacy of the Party over all else was assured; democracy, as Chairman Xi goes on to proclaim, “is not an ornament to be put on display, but an instrument for addressing the issues that concern the people”.

‘Whole process people’s democracy’ in the Chinese political lexicon, integrates law-based elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight through a series of regulations and institutional arrangements; the controlling elements of this characterisation are italicised to underscore the paramountcy of the Party. Power and Control at the centre is very suggestive of the 1984 archetype.  

In the World to Come

The world, through the lens of the CCP, is a “competition between two ideologies and two social systems”; between Marxist Communism and democratic ideology that has embraced capitalism. History, Xi Jinping suggested, should be interpreted through “the fundamental point of view of historical materialism”; that is, all institutions of human society are the product of its economic activity. Consequently, social and political change occurs when those institutions cease to reflect how the economy functions. The problem arises when we note that history is not solely the function of economic activity but a complex outcome of human actions, events both natural and man-made, international relations, technological changes, social dynamics, nature of demography and a host of other factors and forces that make the overall course of human history unpredictable rather than a foreseeable discipline.

The declarations emanating from Beijing are amply clear of what their global ambitions are. Whether it is Premier Xi’s persistent reference to the China Dream or its goal of Rejuvenation and the realisation of a ‘new human civilisation’; CCP’s clear goal is a systemic change of the international order with China at its centre.” World leaders are unanimous on one count; China’s diplomacy and military posture demonstrate a “determination to promote an alternative vision of the world order”. 

The USA as leader of the western world, in the meantime, has unhinged the very institutions that it had created to put in place the idea of global order and has unilaterally rejected the post Second World War system that governed global trade and adopted a protectionist approach to economics declaring trade wars against all its partners. These measures encompassing tariffs, export controls, and strong-arming strategic investments by allies aimed at ‘reversing decades of industrial decline and restore American pre-eminence in technology and manufacturing’. However, economists predict that the long term effect of these protectionist measures would serve only to shrink the overall size of the global economy rather than give it a fillip. While on the international security front, an irresolute America has been reluctant to stabilise the situation in the protracted Russia-Ukraine war or bring an end to the genocide in West Asia. In this geopolitical climate marked by the absence of competent global guardianship, it is difficult to portray China as the main disruptor of stability, despite the CCP’s vision of a “New World Order” as a unified system with China’s “superior” civilization in leadership role.  

Sensing its time is nigh, Beijing, on its part, has seized the opportunity to make known its intentions to don the mantle of global stewardship; in March 2023, China surprised the world by achieving a rare and unexpected diplomatic breakthrough. Chinese leader Xi Jinping brokered an agreement between long time antagonists Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations that could reshape the Middle East. On the economic front, President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), whose scope and scale is staggering, recorded over $70 billion in construction contracts and $5 billion in investments in 2024, setting a new peak for the program. Since its inception in 2013, the BRI has facilitated $1.18 trillion in funding worldwide, primarily through loans from Chinese banks and development institutions directed toward infrastructure projects. Last year, West Asian countries were the biggest recipients of BRI investment and lending at $39 billion, followed by Africa at $29.2 billion and Southeast Asia at $25.1 billion. Perhaps most significant when looking forward, China has positioned itself as a leading force in AI through a distinctive approach to vertical innovation.

It was also this instant that was chosen to unveil two Chinese initiatives; the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and the Global Development Initiative (GDI). The former aims to guide discourse on global governance; while GDI’s goal is to arrogate the international dialogue on global development, place it under the CCP’s sponsorship and infuse it with Chinese ‘Values’. These twin initiatives are China’s “blueprint” for transforming the global order. They form a part of a body of ideas meant to reinforce Premier Xi’s concept of the ‘New Form of Human Civilization’. In this world-to-come, the CCP will be in the lead and the democratic value system, hitherto at the centre of the rules based order, will be given an insignificant role in global governance.    

Clash of Disquieting Policies

The White House, in the face of Beijing’s relentless urge for control and domination, appears inadequate from all perspectives, to come to grips with the impending challenge that China poses. Whereas the need of the hour is to strengthen existing economic and military partnerships;  the inexplicable protectionist policies adopted, the on-going war in Ukraine and the unending carnage in Gaza have come together to derange global trade  and put the international security system in disarray. The US from a guarantor of the global trade system has, overnight, morphed to operating a global protection racket! While global trade and commerce may well find alternatives at the expense of economic growth; it is the latter turmoil in the international security system that has an enduring impact on global stability. The lack of focus on Beijing and its geopolitical manoeuvres even suggests an arguable reliance on the CCP’s military and economic overreach to bring about a, knock-on-wood, collapse in its global designs and an implosion within that society.  

A significant economic move that China has made is to decouple its supply chains from dependence on the west, rather than the other way around. Chinese policymakers have doubled down on their commitment to become technologically independent, especially in strategically critical sectors like semiconductors.  It also works to Beijing’s advantage in realising its vision of ‘rejuvenation’ and the creation of a ‘new human civilization’ driven by ‘Chinese Values’. We may remind ourselves that there is nothing benign about Beijing’s vision for it has not been reluctant to coerce, use military force and use all its ‘agencies’ to back its diplomacy and shape global governance. The agencies alluded to are the United Front Work Department (UFWD) and the International Liaison Department (ILD) that provide teeth to realise China’s foreign policy objectives and to influence the will of people to conform to China’s point of view. This is done through the instrument of distortion of facts, disinformation, indoctrination and indeed manipulating and falsification. It not only shapes narratives about China in foreign media, targets Chinese government critics abroad and co-opts influential overseas figures; but also indulges in clandestine operations. As Sun Tzu in his treatise on “The Art of War” suggested: “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. This is just what the UFWD and the ILD are all about.  

Indo-Pacific littorals and in particular the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) partners are perplexed by the capricious US policies on regional security commitments raising lingering doubts over the integrity of their defence structures, and fears  that Washington may well barter off the objectives of the QUAD for a grand deal with Beijing. While Pacific allies of the US were swayed by the thought of their strategic importance in the region in the face of an assertive China would naturally place them in a more favourable position than their NATO counterparts; this has proven to be a false premise. On the contrary, precisely because of their role in the US–China competition, it is amply clear that the former’s assurances to its Indo-Pacific partners now come with a higher price tag and inconsistent demands.  

Questioning the Credibility of Extended Nuclear Deterrence  

Driven by a desire to deter China and preserve the balance of power in favour of the US, the ‘transactional nature’ of Washington’s misshapen policies makes apparent that it now gauges collaboration with partners on the basis of two questions: in what way does the alliance benefit the US and how does the partnership enhance America’s security interest? And, will military entanglement serve to deter China? While the real question ought to be; what is the credibility of extended deterrence and what if in a crisis it is breached? Will the US take the next step? Particularly if the ‘next step’ is to raise the crisis to the nuclear dimension; will the US balk at the prospect of taking action that runs contrary to their own strategic interests? Contemporary global nuclear circumstances are marred by deep fissures in both; nuclear disarmament structures and the absence of rationality in nuclear postures of nuclear armed states. Add to this is the escalating global tensions; the re-emergence of a nuclear arms race; the heightened risks of proliferation; the aggressive spread of terrorism and  retreat from globalisation that have catalysed the breakdown of the existing rule of international law. Seen together these factors have enhanced the probability of a nuclear exchange.   

Challenges to the nuclear deterrence security framework take various forms. One notable problem is increasing multi polarity. The US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War were for the most part principally concerned about each other. However, the contemporary geopolitical balance is skewed as the number of nuclear-armed states has increased to nine, and yet nuclear doctrines have remained stratified in the Cold War mould. Strategies have to adjust, instead of an assumed binary confrontation; this has led to affected nations doubting whether in a situation between a non-nuclear state and a nuclear armed one, is there any reliability that a third power is likely to intervene on the side of the non-nuclear state with nuclear weapons and in doing so invite a nuclear confrontation?

There are today potential strategic chains of nuclear-armed states. With other technologically advanced nations such as South Korea, Japan, Germany, Indonesia and others contemplating the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The Anglo-French Northwood Declaration of July 2025 puts the final nail in the coffin of the US sponsored commitment to assurances of protection against a nuclear attack. Unfortunately the first casualty in this new multipolar circumstance is the diminishing credibility of the very idea of “Extended Deterrence”.  

Making Light of the Use of Nuclear Weapons: Enhanced Case for “No First Use”

Most countries long held the view that nuclear weapons are exceptional and represent a dramatic type of escalation if used, and that such use would drive a distinctly different and unpredictable set of responses compared with the use of non-nuclear assets. The inability to predict or control escalation in nuclear war was held as an article of faith and was a critical aspect of nuclear weapons’ deterrent effect.

There is, however, a growing perspective that the use of low yield nuclear weapons is integral to large scale conventional war-fighting as it is at the lowest rung of the nuclear escalatory ladder. From this standpoint the blurring of conventional and nuclear deterrence that involves integration of conventional and nuclear war-fighting in concepts throws up an absurd solution as to how specific conflicts may be resolved, and therefore what constitutes effective deterrence in such scenarios. “Integration of low yield nuclear weapons to further a conventional campaign, or increasing reliance on nuclear weapons, implies that conventional operations be planned and executed in a manner that factors the possibility of the adversary resorting to a first strike with nuclear weapons”.  This statement made in 2016 by the Assistant Secretary of Defence, Robert Scher, before the US Senate Armed Services Sub-Committee on Strategic Forces is irresponsible, since the policy claims to be able to forecast the response of the adversary. Unfortunately the release of a weapon of mass destruction sets into motion an uncontainable chain of events that rapidly overwhelms the very purpose for which conflict was fought.

Regardless of one’s posture, it is undeniable that contemporary geopolitical circumstances cast doubt on the overall credibility of nuclear deterrence in its Cold War manifestation; and that there is a strong case for re-examining and reviewing existing assumptions and approaches to nuclear deterrence; a first step is global adoption of a “No First Use” irrespective of weapon yield. After all war is an extension of politics by other means, and it can be no nation’s case to pursue it to destruction of the very purpose of polity!

A Return to Interminable Warfare: The Principle of Universality  

Stepping back for the moment to take a long view of the globe from the standpoint of on-going major conflicts we note with some alarm that there are more than 50 armed struggles currently playing out that cover the entire spectrum of conventional warfare ranging from territorial annexation to anti-terrorist operations and wars against drug cartels. The co-existence of these conflicts, some destructive in the extreme, that girdle the globe in a wide belt of unabating violence poses a credibility problem vis-a-vis large geographic masses of material prosperity. In some cases we defend what is termed as fundamental principles of humanity being transgressed; while others we view by double standards based on clashing interests and the revenue these very wars generate for a politico-military-industrial complex. We note, with some disillusionment, countries that make up the NATO alliance have been ordered to increase their defence expenditure quite summarily by the White House to 5% of their GDP, at a time when their defence expenditure is less than 2%.  At the same time other countries like Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, Libya, Yemen and Sudan wilfully cultivate and sponsor terror groups as instruments of policy; and all the while the UN looks on. Murderous Conflicts that have raged on over the years particularly in Africa, and West Asia; for ‘known’ reasons, do not register on the global conscience. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have been characterised by the fact of not only their protracted nature, intensity, intractability and their mass casualties but also being internationalised to an extent when many nations have had to take sides; all along the wars are fuelled by a steady supply of munitions just enough to sustain the purposeless wars. The reader will not fail to note the likeness to the wars in 1984.

New forms of technology, political narrative-control and cyber warfare threaten a country’s chosen path of governance, manipulate entire populaces and indeed beguile people into doing the controller’s wishes. Hegemonic powers have accorded themselves the right to wage wars at will under a self-professed doctrine of “anticipatory self-defence” with unstated bounds as exemplified in the conflicts in Ukraine, West Asia, Africa, Central America and the Indo-Pacific. International laws, treaties, rules of world order are militarily coerced on other nations with much self-righteous posturing, but the same laws are dismissed as irrelevant to the hegemon on account of their self-appropriated ‘exceptionalism’; the USA’s continued support for the war in Gaza despite being declared as genocide by the UN and Beijing’s scant regard for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) while making sweeping claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea within its contrived ‘Nine-Dash LIne’ and arrogating rights to the sea’s abundant resources, despite the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague rubbishing the Nine Dash Line entitlement. China, however (having ratified the UNCLOS); rejects the Court’s authority.

These are some of the many cases in point. And as Naom Chomsky points out “the most elementary of moral truisms is the principle of universality: we must apply to ourselves the same standard as we apply to others”.    

A Conclusion: The Refusal to Understand

There are many malevolent geopolitical crises currently confronting humanity. Not forgetting effects of climate change which most of the world, including China, is squarely confronting while the White House is in denial of it. It is in such tempestuous times that the world is being presented an escape in the design of Beijing’s ‘new form of human civilization’; an egress from the nature of contemporary reality and the impact of overwhelming power on the growth and development of nations and its people. Political views, notwithstanding no differentiation can be made between conservative autocracies and the authoritarianism of the Left when exercising unqualified power as we note the effects of an elected overlord sitting in the White House upending an established world order without a thought given to an alternative or an authoritarian in the ‘Forbidden City’ shaping a ‘new form of human civilization’. And yet, in this unsettling world, we see no evidence of societies or global institutions, confronting the forces of anarchy that the very same order placed on the seat of power; if it is because modern society and the systems it put in place are far too grounded in the short term partisan pre-occupations, then must it also be said of these institutions: By the refusal to understand they remain sane?    

Triggering Nuclear War: Hazards of Husbanding Wargames

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Vice Admiral (retired) Vijay Shankar

Busting the canard that, between India and Pakistan the nuclear overhang is so fragile that a terrorist provocation by Pakistan cannot be met by a conventional response, for fear of triggering a nuclear exchange.

Wargaming

The roots of wargaming trace back to ancient India and China. The former refined the art to the classic board game of Chaturanga which in time evolved to the modern game of Chess, where a campaign was waged between two opponents through manoeuvres by the two arrays alternately; each piece had intrinsic abilities limited in their facility to engage the adversary. Much like the dynamics that drive a nation state whose comprehensive power is the aggregate of its individual strengths as defined by indices that take into account military, political, economic, cultural and leadership factors. So the game was played between two equivalent forces pitted against each other. The skills of a player was determined by his dexterity to manoeuvre, thrust, balance and out-think his adversary through deception and by attaining a stronger strategic posture within the rules of the game. Loss of the king led to what, in geopolitical terms, is referred to as the end of a regime.  

Both China and India also gave to the world the classic texts “The Arthashastra” by Chanakya and “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu emphasizing the importance of strategic thought as a critical feature of statecraft. The two texts form a compilation of aphorisms and principles that outlined the framework for wielding power and, indeed, waging armed conflict. They also prescribed the determinants of good national politics and defined the groundwork for use of modelling and wargaming as a training and decision-making tool. As history progressed, various cultures, including the Greeks and Romans, developed their own wargames, demonstrating their utility in honing military strategy.

The 19th century marked a significant transformation in the field of wargaming, particularly with the Prussian Army. Theorists such as Carl von Clausewitz translated their experience in the field to formalizing the concept, recognizing that military decision-making could benefit from structured simulations of battle scenarios. This in turn led to the development of Kriegsspiel, a table top wargame that allowed officers to practice operational and tactical decision-making.

The essence of the wargame is in discerning the thought processes of a Planner in arriving at a strategic, operational or even tactical decision; and analyse how best to arrive at an optimal outcome that could serve the purpose of enriching the art of state craft, developing war fighting doctrines or even honing skills of a tactical Commander. The intention was not to steer the wargame in a direction that served to fulfil or satisfy a preconceived argument.

The South Asian Stability Wargame

In March 2013, the Centre on Contemporary Conflict at the US Naval Postgraduate School conducted a strategic wargame, euphemistically called the ‘South Asian Stability Workshop’. The event was scheduled in Colombo Sri Lanka.  

The Wargame was politico-military in nature; its stated objective was to “examine crisis escalation dynamics in South Asia”. It involved the creation of a setting that was steered through events and three sequential response moves for which the country teams developed political and military directives. The directives for each move were analysed and adjudicated by Control setting-up specific situations for the next move. The third move was to lead to a possible decision to use nuclear weapons. Events were triggered by a planned Pakistan sponsored terrorist attack in a crowded sports stadium in India that resulted in the indiscriminate killing of a very large number of spectators including several VIPs. The entire process that shaped and drove the wargame was controlled within the rigid parameters of the following structure:

  • A scenario design that put in place the geographical setting, forces involved and the objectives of each side. This left little planning elbow room.
  • Country teams were assigned, however the participants neither had exhaustive domain expertise nor the behavioural bent of extant leadership. 
  • Game mechanics which included rules, parameters, and decision-making processes were established to govern how players could interact with the scenario.
  • Gameplay followed a rather inflexible path of decision making, issue of orders to forces, and engagement in strategic and operational discussions. The game in effect yo-yoed from the tactical to the Strategic levels with unreal rapidity.
  • The use of conventional forces in response to the terrorist provocation at once saw the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons by Pakistan in the tactical battle area where Indian Independent Combat Groups (ICG) launched rapid retributive thrusts to strike at terror infra-structure and their supporters.    
  • Analysis: Observers or analysts monitored the game, collecting data on the decisions made, outcomes, and the impact of those decisions on the scenario with only one purpose; to initiate a nuclear exchange.

As the game proceeded, the intention of Control became more than apparent; it was to compress the existing nuclear overhang to an extent where it provided the space for acts of State sponsored terror but none for a conventional kinetic response. The Game turned out to be a not so convincing argument for the tendentious notion that, between nuclear armed nations, there was no space for retaliatory action by conventional forces to terror attacks planned, armed, trained and sponsored by one of the States that had adopted the use of terror as an instrument of foreign policy.  

Launch of a Nuclear Canard that Persuaded a Strategy of Restraint

After the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, there was a surge in tensions along the Indo-Pak Line of Control in Kashmir which constituted, as interpreted by US ‘experts’, an imminent nuclear flash point. Two contributory factors provoked this ‘narrative’ said the American interlocutors; firstly, the antagonists involved were undeclared nuclear armed states and secondly, events of 1989 that led to the withdrawal of Russia from Afghanistan had released the victorious Mujahidin for deployment elsewhere and in Kashmir; it also set in motion a hubris in the Pakistan ‘deep-state’ that translated to a brutal insurgency in the Indian state of Kashmir. The latter resulted in genocide and mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits out of the State leading to the shoring-up of Indian security forces in the State. To substantiate the American narrative a dubious report was released by the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research titled “India-Pakistan Relations: A Delicate Balance” that suggested (rather contrarily) that in the unlikely event of  “hostilities, India may escalate the conventional war by triggering events to take out all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (ironically, as recent as end 1989, the Bush Sr administration had signed off the fact that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons) facilities in coordinated surgical strikes.” This document was further addled in May of 1990, when the then Deputy NSA Robert Gates, came scurrying to the sub-continent on a covert Quixotic mission to defuse a mythical nuclear war.     

And thus began a long saga of misinformation and half-truths that emphasised the canard that between India and Pakistan the nuclear overhang was so fragile that a terrorist provocation by Pakistan must not bring about a conventional response by India for fear of triggering a nuclear exchange. Unfortunately, from the 1993 Mumbai bombings, hi-jacking of IC 184 in 1999, through the Kargil ‘invasion; to the assault on the Indian Parliament in 2001, the 2008 three day carnage in the financial capital of Mumbai and a host of other terrorist onslaughts by Pakistan based terror outfits (Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahedin) the self-shackling mantra of denying conventional response to terrorist attacks took root in India as the inane ‘Strategy-of-Restraint’ which contributed in large measure to paralysis of military policy when confronted with incidents of cross border terror attacks.

To Bleed India by Inflicting a Thousand Cuts: Instrumentation of Terror Groups

Carl von Clausewitz’s unerringly wise counsel ought to have fallen on Indian ears, that even the “simplest” strategic decision making can be bewilderingly difficult. And so it must be with Pakistan’s threat of nuclear weapons usage in protraction of a terrorist attack sponsored by them in the first instance; despite there being no precedence of such action, nor incentive of benefit or even inclination to escalate to a nuclear exchange. The Pakistan Establishment’s doctrine has remained committed to two cardinal dogmas, firstly the instrumentalisation of Islam using jihadi proxies as tools of a policy (Fair Christine, Fighting to the End, Pg. 80-89) to “bleed India by inflicting a thousand cuts”; and secondly, to support the discredited ideology of the “Two Nation” theory in order to sustain popular appetite for unending conflict with India. In this frame of reference, the question of intensifying the conflict to the level when nuclear self-destruction is assured appears aberrant.

The link between sub-conventional warfare and nuclear war fighting is at best a tenuous one. Conceptually, no amount of tinkering or reconstitution of nuclear policy can deter a conventional response to terror attacks. Such a notion would appear far-fetched because of the very nature of the weapon involved. Pakistan has in its arsenal tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) with the stated purpose of countering an Indian conventional strike. Almost as if to suggest that they control the levers of nuclear escalation. This is an odd proposition since India does not differentiate between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, (the bed rock of its “No First Use” policy).   

In the end analysis, the use of nuclear weapons introduces a new and uncontrollable dimension. Logically, if a Pakistan sponsored terror attack is the triggering event of a sequence of reactions, then it must equally be clear that their nuclear red lines give space for a conventional response. After all, the premise that a terror attack is seamlessly backed by nuclear weapons is not only ludicrous but is not even the Pakistan case. For, when dealing with the threat of use of nuclear weapons, to suggest that ambiguity and First Use provide options, is to suggest that nuclear war fighting, almost in conventional terms, is an option. This is denial of the nature of nuclear weapons and statements that have emanated from Pakistan’s leadership support the idea that only a threat that jeopardises the very existence of that State can provoke the First Use of nuclear weapons, by which is implied;

  • Loss of vast territories
  • Substantial destruction of the military
  • Economic strangulation
  • Destabilising of the nation can provoke the first use of nuclear weapons.

Against the reality of conventional war with its limited goals, moderated ends and the unlikelihood of it being outlawed in the foreseeable future, the separation of the conventional from the nuclear is a logical severance. Nuclear weapons are to deter and not for use; intent is the key; transparency and an abhorrence of ambiguity are the basis of its credibility. These remain the foundational principles that a nuclear weapon state must adhere to. Given the politics of the region, historical animosities and the influence of jihadi principles on the military in Pakistan, the dangers of adding military perfidy is more than just a possibility; however, to link nuclear malfeasance appears fanciful.

And yet the bizarre hypothesis still persists that relations between the two nuclear armed neighbours are plagued by a nuclear nightmare; of Pakistan in possession of a hair-trigger, opaque, nuclear arsenal that has embraced tactical use under decentralised military control, steered by a doctrine seeped in ambiguity and guided by a military strategy that carouses and finds unity with jihadists, not forgetting that the effect of an enfeebled civilian leadership in Pakistan that is incapable of action to remove the military finger from the nuclear trigger only adds to this premise. But, it does not take a great deal of intellectual exertion to declare that this nightmare in the wake of Operation Sindoor stands busted.

The catch is, as Cohen so succinctly put it (The idea of Pakistan, Cohen Stephen, Pgs. 97-130) “Pakistan will continue to be a state in possession of a uniformed bureaucracy even when civilian governments are perched on the seat of power. Regardless of what may be desirable, the army will continue to set the limits on what is possible in Pakistan.” At the core of this outlook is the rather obsessive “utilisation of Islamist militant groups as tools of foreign policy” (Fighting to the end, Fair, Christine Pg. 85) and the fatal contradiction of neutralising some inconvenient jihadi groups while instrumentalising others to further their revisionist policies.

Operation Sindoor; Larger Impact of the 88 Hour War

From a long term war fighting perspective ‘Operation Sindoor’ signals a strategic metamorphosis in the nature and manner in which a nation’s military must reform in order to fight and win a modern conflict that is limited both in time and objectives.

On 22 April 2025, Pakistan sponsored terrorists killed, in a most barbaric manner, 26 tourists in the idyllic meadows of Baisaran near the hill station of Pahalgam in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. What was singularly heinous about the massacre was the identification by religion of the victims and selection of men only shot at point blank range in front of wives, women and children with instructions to carry their message of religious odium to the rest of India. This assault was not a random incident of terrorist violence but carried with it a diabolical urge to arouse large scale sectarian passions within the country. The Resistance Front (TRF) was quick to claim responsibility for the carnage. The Front is an offshoot of the UN proscribed terror organisation, Lashker-e-Taiyba. It claimed control and responsibility not once on 22April but again the very next day. However, TRF denial on 26 April came after the Pakistani security establishment pressured the LeT-linked terrorist group to distance itself from the mass slaughter; for the purpose of the terror attack had failed on three counts. Firstly, the objective of undermining normalcy returning to Jammu & Kashmir, particularly, to impact the mainstay of the economy, tourism (a record 23 million tourists visiting the valley in 2024) had come a cropper as the flow of vacationers was quickly restored. Secondly, anticipated sectarian passions were never aroused as massive protests by Kashmiris erupted across the Valley against the attack. And lastly, the international community’s widespread and unconditional condemnation of the attack along with expressions of sympathy towards the victims. The immediate Indian reaction to the massacre came on 23 April with the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) being held in abeyance followed by a promise of a kinetic response at a time and place of choice.  

Operation Sindoor was more than a swift and precise military response to another cross-border terrorist attack. It marked a strategic inflection point. In just 88 hours, India used indigenous systems to strike hardened targets across the border with precision, speed, and overwhelming effect. No US systems. No foreign supply lines. Just BrahMos missiles, Akashteer air defence units, Rudram anti-radiation missiles, the Netra Airborne Early Warning & Control System (AEW&CS) and loitering munitions designed or assembled at home. The Operation was conducted in three distinct phases.

  • Phase I (Night 06/07 May), Operation Sindoor launched in retaliation for the Pahalgam massacre; targeted nine terrorist centres from Bahwalpur in the south, Muridke and Sialkot in the Lahore sector and Muzaffarabad along with 4 other sites in POK.
  • Phase II (08-09 May), Pakistan military response to the Indian attacks on terror sites with missiles, drones and UAVs, as it took ownership of the terror infrastructure.
  • Phase III (10 May), Indian suppression and counter-air operations aimed at destruction of select Pakistan air defence networks followed by crippling attacks on strategic Pak air assets, infrastructure and Command & Control networks. Pak DGMO calls for a ceasefire. India agrees for cessation of fire.

During Phase I, India targeted nine terrorist strongholds. Five in Pak occupied Jammu and Kashmir which included Sawai Nala camp in Muzaffarabad- a training centre for Lashkar-e-Taiba. Syedna Bilal Camp in Muzaffarabad- This was a staging area of Jaish-e-Mohammed. Gulpur camp in Kotli – This was a base camp of LeT that was active in Rajouri and Poonch areas of Jammu. Barnala camp in Bhimber.  And Abbas camps in Kotli- Fidayeen of the LeT were prepared here. Targets within Pakistan included Sarjal Camp and Mehmoona Joya camp, both in Sialkot. Markaz Taiba Centre in Muridke – Terrorists who participated in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks were trained here. Markaz Subhanallah in Bahawalpur; the HQ of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) where recruitment, training, and indoctrination of terrorists targeting India was undertaken. Significantly the last two were major centres of terror activities and housed the headquarters of the LeT and the JeM. Battle damage Assessment revealed that all these targets were hit with uncanny accuracy and minimal collateral damage. Phase II and III emphasised, with telling impact, the inviolability of Indian air defences and the effectiveness of Indian counter air and offensive air operations.

Neutral analysts have determined that India’s Operation Sindoor was a decisive triumph for India, because Pakistan could neither penetrate Indian air defences nor could they cause any disruption to the offensive action taken by the Indian military. Indian airspace was free of any Pakistan aggressive action, while Indian counter air operations had rendered Pakistan open to bombardment by Brahmos, UAVs, hovering munitions and other missiles.

Eleven Pak air bases had been struck to the extent of annulling their operational capabilities. Also, five air-defence systems of Chinese origin had been destroyed opening vast gaps in their air defence environment. While at least two of their AWACS had been destroyed along with several fighter aircrafts either in the air or on ground; the strikes were accompanied by large scale spoofing and deception manoeuvres. More importantly their command centres including the vital one at the Nur Khan air base that houses its nuclear command facilities along with strategic mobility control and communication networks was rendered dysfunctional.

Meanwhile, Pakistani air-defences—built largely around older Chinese systems like the LY-80, HQ-9/P, and FM-90—were powerless to detect, deter, or respond to the strikes. In the skies over Pakistan, India didn’t just dominate, but its counter-air operations redefined and placed awkward questions for regional deterrence.  

Perspectives for Arm-Chair Strategists

The ‘88-hour’ engagement came as a breath of fresh air to strategists long entrenched in the belief that limited armed engagements could only be decided by the occupation of territories, weight of destruction and casualties rather than the impact of demoralisation, exposing vulnerabilities of defences and out manoeuvring of the adversary. In a reverse analogy, just as the machine gun and trench warfare provided the negative and bizarre logic for the clash of mass against mass resulting in a meat-grinder military doctrine; swift and complete counter air operations followed by targeted offensive air operations are the key to success in limited modern operations. Remember in Operation Sindoor counter air and offensive air operations followed in rapid succession of minutes rather than hours which had a paralysing and unbalancing effect on the adversarythat quickly resulted in the first calls for a ceasefire.

For the arm-chair strategist, some of who bewailed the fact that, cessation of operations came at a time when the Pakistan air space was wide open to an extent when a joint air-land thrust ought to have expanded their objectives to the occupation of territory and salients in POK. This is symptomatic of a lack of understanding of the nature of modern power, its application and its deterrent impact; that is, to prevent certain threats from materializing by posing an even greater threat. There is no inevitable symmetry between offensive and defensive power as both are influenced as much by resolve as by magnitude of power and immeasurable considerations such as surprise, geography, limitations on purpose and indeed the degree to which objectives are pursued. These characteristics of power will also determine the risks that the state is willing to take. Perils are heightened as offensive power gains the edge over the defense and penetrates to an extent when friction clutches-in. In operation Sindoor, objectives were limited, risks of getting embroiled in a drawn out slugging match of attrition particularly on land was to be avoided, remember the higher political directive “Samay seemit hai aur laksh bade” (Time is limited and our aims are large) almost as if to suggest that the engagement must be brought quickly to a decisive conclusion without jeopardizing our long term developmental agenda. Assessment of risks had to account for possible escalation and how far the adversary’s nuclear bluff could be called. Importantly, deterrence provided incentive for innovation, both political and operational to India that ran consistent with rapidly changing technology, as long as it was brisk in time and limited in space. The key consideration was that Sindoor was retaliation to an act of terror; so-much-so that had Pakistan chosen not to respond militarily, the operation would have concluded after Phase I.  

As for the “narrative-war” which some severe critics of Operation Sindoor believe ‘India lost the plot’; is there really any such thing that has a lasting impact in this age of transparency? In the American lexicon ‘narrative’ implies “a story or account of events, or the like, whether true or fictitious”. Surely the final arbiter was the stark photo evidence of the demolition of the JeM headquarters in Bahwalpur, devastation of the LeT headquarters at Muridke and other terror camps and critically the suppression of the Pakistan air-defences and the neutralisation of their strategic air stations including the Nur Khan air base. After all it was the Pakistan Director General of Military Operations that sued for a cease-fire.     

Legacy of Op Sindoor

A flawed strategic anti-terrorist doctrine will lead to not just advancing enticement for similar acts of terrorism but also absorb great energies and resources of the State in attempting to reconcile the act with advocacy of restraint; besides projecting an underlying softness of the State. In the absence of a doctrine, the case reduces to responding by determining the absolute rights and wrongs as determined without considering that the very sovereignty of the nation (by which is implied the ultimate authority of the State for the maintenance of order) is on trial. This makes for a recipe of inaction; unfortunately it was, to a great measure, the ill-conceived policy followed by India in the past.    

Perhaps the compelling legacy of Operation Sindoor is the new norm it has set for the Indian government, the use of force against terrorist-linked targets in Pakistan proper has now moved from “anomaly” to the “rule”. Whereas past crises of similar nature would elicit symbolic action, future attacks on Indian soil – especially those traced to organizations and infrastructure across the border, will invite a response of equal or greater intensity to target and degrade entities enabling terrorist action; which includes support and financing elements.      

Technology and Survivability of Nuclear Forces

There can be no absolute cure for war; yet in the absence of a total remedy for conventional war, there had to be hope to prevent catastrophe; from this developed the idea of deterrence, the instrument to enable deterrence was the nuclear weapon. And therefore the first and most vital condition from a nation’s security standpoint is to institute measures that provide a guarantee to the state (as well as the adversary) that a response to a nuclear attack will be a devastating retaliation in kind. As Churchill, in 1955, put it “…by a process of sublime irony, the world was facing a situation where safety will be the sturdy child of terror (balance of terror), and survival the twin brother of annihilation (MAD)”.  

The question then arises; will emerging technologies raise expectations to enable the employment of forces that will significantly reduce the survivability of an adversary’s nuclear forces in a conflict? If not, then is the perspective that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) remains a powerful reason for a deterrent relationship to hold valid? Also, if missiles today can perform all of the technical functions of the strategic nuclear bomber with greater speed and more precision, then are we witnessing the phasing-out of the manned air vector? But at the same time has adequate thought been given to the change in character and vulnerability of a nuclear second strike policy based entirely on the missile (ballistic or cruise) launched from mobile carriers and driven by Artificial Intelligence? Operation Sindoor, within a matter of hours had exposed the vulnerability of the Pakistan air-defences and their National Command Authority. Did this in turn expose their nuclear arsenal to counterforce action? Also, will not the reliability of a counterforce strategy decline with time, technology and transparency? These are complex questions for the political leadership for whom nuclear strategy may be but one of his concerns, excessive complexity may itself lead to paralysis as Clausewitz had noted.

Conclusion

We began with the propagation of an intricately fabricated canard that “between nuclear armed nations, there was no space for retaliatory action by conventional forces to terror attacks planned and sponsored by one of the States that had adopted the use of terror as an instrument of foreign policy.” Despite the fact of the disingenuousness of the sham; its plausibility lay in the proposition that linkage between Pakistan’s use of terror organizations as a tool of state policy to wage war on India has perverse consequences that link it to nuclear escalation. This bizarre correlation, Pakistan will have the world believe, comes to play if and when India chooses to respond with conventional forces to a terror strike puppeteered by their “Deep State.” Fatefully this policy has led to a self-destructive urge that has decomposed the diversity of Pakistan society. Not only are some terror clients at war against the state but some have led the persistent call to violence against Shias, Ahmedias, Barelvis, Agha Khanis, Borees, Baluchis and not forgetting Hindus and Christians. The Army has shown absolutely no predilection to eliminate these outfits; only because they serve their purpose in India and for fear that any act against their terror clients is acceptance that the ‘two-nation’ is misbegotten and indeed spurious. 

At the heart of the matter is Pakistan’s, or at least its army’s, rejection of any separation of the Maulvi from the state. There are two critical reasons for this; firstly Muslims are seen to constitute a separate nation despite the fact of the creation of Bangla-Desh and the Muslim demography of India almost equalling that of Pakistan.  Secondly, the army’s self-appointed role to defend the “two-nation” ideology. Six days before the carnage of Pahalgam, the Pakistan Army Chief, on 16 April 2025, ranted on this ludicrous theme at a public convention of overseas Pakistanis, notwithstanding the successive military defeats it has suffered at India’s hands or the political and diplomatic setbacks it has faced has convinced it to revise its defunct ideological dogma. Operation Sindoor is yet another case of having suffered crippling strikes to its terror infrastructure as well as its vital air assets and air defence networks in just 88 hours. Yet, defeat for Pakistan is only with the death of its ideology and this can only occur if the army wills it. No amount of economic hardships (the state has been to the IMF for a bail out on 25 occasions in its short existence) nor has the failure of its many dictatorships that ruled it for 34 of its 78 years of existence in any way prodded the army to surrender its power or even allow a political system to take root in that country. The improbable paradox is that Pakistan is a case of an army that depends on an interminable conflict with India, a failing economy, splintering society, rapacious politicians and geopolitics of international opportunism for its very existence.

So the question that begs to be asked is why the leading democracy in the West is so disinclined to bring about a revision in the politics of Pakistan. And why, indeed, has it so vigorously supported the nuclear canard even though terrorism is a common universal scourge? And does the US Government need to be reminded that during the twenty-year “War on terror” in Afghanistan the Pakistan state and its army played a treacherous and duplicitous role that milked the US administration of over $32 billion while all the time providing safe havens and logistics to the very groups that they were fighting the war against. And who can forget where Osama-bin-Laden had gone into hiding, before he was found and killed. The White House, historically, works with and through the Pakistani army to manipulate that state’s foreign policy; it served a strategic “Pentagon-led” purpose up to the break-up of the Soviet Union. Is there a reason why the US is unlikely to lose interest in the failing Pakistan and is that because of the rooted relationship that their deep states have nurtured and benefited from over the years? Or does the sustenance of the nuclear canard form a part of, a yet unseen, strategic scheme?