(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 17^th and 18^th 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 19^th 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.