Nuclear arms race

As expected, the recently concluded US-India nuclear deal has triggered sharp response from Pakistan. Of course, Pakistan did not say in so many words that it would match India's US-assisted nuclear capability bomb by bomb, but it also did not say that it would not.
After day-long deliberations on Thursday the country's apex strategic decision-making body, National Command Authority, made it abundantly clear that "requirements of future credible minimum deterrence" would be met at all costs. In simple words, that means now that India is going to divert its un-safeguarded fissile material to produce additional nuclear weapons, Pakistan would follow suit.
Given the history of nuclear arms race that Cold War fuelled between the United States and its rival superpower, the Soviet Union, it would not be unreasonable to assume that the deal would start a race also between India and China. And, if nothing is objectionable about the US-India deal then why should Pakistan and China not sign up a matching nuclear cooperation agreement? Will that be prompting nuclear arms race?
What Pakistan is, therefore, asking is that the United States should offer it a nuclear deal like the one it has done with India. "The objective of strategic stability in South Asia and global non-proliferation regime would have been better served if the US had considered a package approach for Pakistan and India with a view to preventing a nuclear arms race in the region", the National Command Authority observed.
The Authority also took issue with the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament asking about the slow progress on the proposed Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT). And, it also asked the Nuclear Suppliers' Group to evolve a criteria-based approach to enable Pakistan to access civil nuclear energy under the IAEA safeguards. Now that the US has abdicated its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Pakistan is urging the international nuclear watchdogs to ensure that India does not succeed in exploiting the deal to enhance its nuclear arms stockpile.
That the United States would be looking the other way if India transgressed the agreement, is not unlikely, given that the agreement exempts New Delhi from a bar not to conduct new nuclear tests. Quite rightly then there obtains an impression that the American nuclear bonanza has been offered, in glaring violation of the NPT, to furnish India with power and prestige to act as counterweight to China.
Ironically, the US-India nuclear cooperation deal that essentially tends to stir nuclear arms race in the region lends the much-needed validity to the argument that the Question Nuclear should be revisited in order to make it contemporary with the present times. Over the last half a century that nuclear technology is being used both for generating power and making bombs the international community has tried to regulate and monitor its usage with the help of various treaties, protocols and safeguards enforced by watchdogs like the IAEA, Nuclear Suppliers' Group and the Conference on Disarmament.
But the success in controlling the immense power of this genie has been partial. On the power generation side, after initial boost in the 60's and 70's it suffered setbacks, mostly under pressure from environmentalists. But now that global warming which is believed be a major challenge to life on the planet Earth is attributed to excessive use of fossil fuels, the lobby for clean nuclear energy is back in business. Reports suggest that countries like South Africa, Argentina and Brazil who had abandoned their nuclear programmes are planning to restart their uranium enrichment facilities.
On the weapons side, nuclear technology must bow out - if humanity has to survive a nuclear holocaust. How the international community creates an acceptable balance between these two conflicting uses of nuclear technology remains the crucial question. If the US-India nuclear agreement has failed to offer a logical answer to this question that should not mean that the attempts at finding the right solution should be given up.