The real deal with the NPT
In India the NPT is seen as a clever ruse created by the US to give it a final say on nuclear affairs. Per the Indian perception the US has floated a vast amount of propaganda to secure itself a moral high ground in the world of nuclear affairs and from this position of altitude in the global order, it secures its interests in the global nuclear arena. As a result of this, the Americans can do whatever they want, and no one is going to question them.The NPA are the guardians of this strategy. Their approach to other nations seeking to change their place in the nuclear pecking order is to shove the NPT in their face and then use percieved violations of the NPT as grounds for leverage against them.
The Chinese have turned this strategy on its head. They have violated the NPT and used the threat of more violations to get the Americans to sign off on whatever changes the Chinese wanted made to the global order. As the Chinese have evolved this approach over many years, and because the Chinese approach does not directly conflict with American claim to moral supremacy over them, the NPA have developed a way of handling Chinese behaviour. They have invented a language of absurdity, a network of lies to pretend that the Chinese have done nothing wrong in the quest for leverage. This allows the NPA to pretend that nothing is wrong with the NPT.
The Indian approach is very different. The Indians do not violate the NPT as they are not bound by it. They do not subscribe to the idea of American moral leadership of the global nuclear agenda as they do not think the Americans really want to see a nuclear weapons free world. The absence of any steps by the US towards nuclear disarmament speak volumes for their lack of enthusiasm. The Indians are happy to give the Americans an illusion of dominance as long as India gets what it wants from the international order. Alternatively if India is denied what it wants, India will simply point out where the NPT is obviously broken and take away the NPA ability to pretend that nothing is wrong with the NPT.
The NPA are free to carve out another NPT without India's advice on how to do things but that will meet the exact same fate as this one.
posted by maverick @ 10:54 AM
7 Comments:
Hi Maverick,
Great Posts. Used to be your big fan on the disreputable forum.
More power to you.
hi all,
should one buy a forum for maverick where he can post his views more freely? Let us know
From the very beginning of human evolution, mankind has strived to develop weapons both for offence as well as self-defence, although in later years "defence" has become just an euphemism to hide the real intent of "offence". Any one who has seen the first few scenes of the film "2000 - A Space Odyssey" will know what I mean. History also tells us that those who developed newer weapons tried to prevent others from getting similar weapons in their hands, for as long as possible.
India lost out to China and also to Persia and Europe, in the case of gunpowder, and has had to suffer several invasions by hordes of foreigners. The British brought a new ploy in the form of getting a toehold in to India via the ruse of "trade". The Americans want to combine these two approaches by trying to blunt India's weapons capability and simultaneously attempting to economically overwhelm it via unequal "trade".
For me, the primordial "Indian" sellout dealer was Ambi Raja who betrayed Raja Pururavas to Alexander. (There may have been others of Ambi's ilk before, that I do not know of.) Ambi's DNA, unfortunately, is still running in Indian blood, often in excessive quantities amongst our modern day politicians.
To stay alive, India must not give up the right to develop weapons of equal or greater capacity than other nations of the world.
Hi,
Thank you for your support but I am as free as I care to be.
Sanatanam,
What you say seems indisputable, however one has to ask oneself what is humanity's overall trajectory at this point. Sure human beings have developed all manner of technologies and vastly changed the nature of communication but where is humanity going as a whole?
Will humanity surrender its leadership to someone purely because they have a huge arsenal? even when they seem keen to pollute the earth to the point of destruction?
Given the way that things are progressing, the most dangerous weapon at this point a slowly burning coal fire in small hovel in Bihar. Uncontrolled driven by the force of an unstoppable economy.
A strategy of deliberate provocation can be used to deal with almost any sense of hostility provided there is a way to handle that sort of information. In the absense of a means of managing the volume of information such a strategy requires, there is no predictability in events and the strategy becomes unworkable - the confrontation spirals rapidly.
It is right now a meeting ground for opposites. Our side - technical experts and scientists and their side - bureaucrats and apparatchiks. We are ofcourse timid, cowardly and couldn't hurt a fly. They are big and powerful with tens of thousands of incredibly destructive weapons at their beck and call. And yet...
What would make a nation so powerful and superior behave like Pakistan does with us?
Pakistan is a nation in a perpetual state of crisis. A nation in search of an identity. They hate us because it is in their nature, but what makes a nation twice its size, with an economy several times larger than our own, with weapons that we cannot possibly dream of making fear us so much?
It seems to me that if the smallest perturbation gives way to insecurity, then all notions of security are unviable, and no weapon can provide peace of mind.
Does the difference between us and them become clear now?
hi m,
we all indians and hindus in particular believe in law of karma that: what we do today will come back to us in equal measure at some point of time. This is inescapable. In the same way American govt. will one day have to pay for it did to innocent citizens of Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
The nation most likely to do that right now is pakistan.
Hi anonymous,
The Americans do not grasp this cyclical stuff. They are linear thinkers, divergent.. but linear all the same.
They actually believe that acts like Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be forgiven. They simply do not appreciate the cost of something like Dresden or Tokyo in civilisational terms.
I sometimes wonder if this is a misapplication of some little known Calvinist theology. All too often in the US the rich and powerful have used Calvinism to justify their actions on the moral plane believing somehow a justification would free them from the unbreakable laws of consequence.
Maverick,
The disreputable forum has its own linear thinkers. But they run the show so they can not be challenged.
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