The significance of the US-Russia nuclear arms reduction agreement, reached in Moscow last Friday, goes beyond the numbers of missiles and launchers that the two sides have agreed to slash. The agreement is dubbed Start-2 (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks), a follow-up to the Start-1 pact which expired in December.
The concerns are not any more that the two countries with the largest nuclear stockpiles would trigger a world war that would annihilate us many times over. Those were real fears at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s. Today such probabilities are remote.
The reason that Americans are both anxious and keen to flaunt this new treaty — and the Russians too feel they are part of the game — is that the danger of nuclear attacks is now emanating from rogue states and rogue non-state actors and not so much from the former ideological rivals. In the American view, it is Iran, North Korea and some Islamic terrorist groups like the Al Qaeda that constitute this danger.
That is why Americans want to build anew international framework to cope with it. There is a crucial meeting that US president Barack Obama is hosting next month on the issue of nuclear arms control which prime minister Manmohan Singh will be attending. Obama seems to have felt the need to have this treaty in his bag to boost American credibility while putting forward proposals to check nuclear arms proliferation.
India will be drawn into this phase of negotiations because it is an unrecognised, along with Pakistan, nuclear weapons state. The Americans and others in Europe have a deep fear that it is the nuclear weapons in Pakistan that might fall into the hands of Islamic extremists. Any pressure on Pakistan in this matter will involve India because Pakistan would insist on its neighbour and rival taking commensurate measures.
India might argue that it is already observing a voluntary moratorium and that it is bound by its minimum credible
deterrent doctrine. That may not be a sufficient defence plea. India will be under immense American and international
pressure when talks get going. Ramifications of the Moscow agreement need a closer look in New Delhi.
In the changed world, the issue of nuclear arms is not
something of concern elsewhere. It has moved into the
neighbourhood.
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