State of the Union

for the 1963 treaty, banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and underwater. This significantly reduced global levels of fallout but, unfortunately, did little to check the nuclear arms race. It led to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), though India didn’t become a part of it.

As the peace movement intensified across the world, seeking a halt on further production as also a rollback of the burgeoning arsenals of the P-5 or N-5, the dominant nuclear veto powers midwifed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) into existence (in 1968), effectively dividing the world into nuclear weapons states (NWS) and nonnuclear weapons states (NNWS). This was regarded by the ayatollahs of non-proliferation as the gold standard of the global nuclear order.

India carried out a peaceful nuclear explosion on May 18, 1974, enigmatically named “Smiling Buddha”, the first known nuclear test outside the N-5. However, it was not until 1998 that the “second nuclear age” began in the right earnest. In May 1998, both India and Pakistan carried out back-to-back nuclear tests. By then there was a buzz around the world that certain other nations were also de facto nuclear weapons states, while some others were just a step away from becoming so.

On October 9, 2006, North Korea shattered the East Asian calm with its nuclear test. Though initially estimated as just a “fizzle”, it laid the foundation of a highlycorrosive and unstable nuclear weapon and missile programme that is now the biggest headache for the world.