What is the greatest threat to humanity? On the pecking order of all the possible responses, Islamic terror would rank first — way ahead of others in our strife-torn time — followed by poverty, climate change, and the rest. The fact that not many would recognise nuclear threat as the most prominent implies how little our world is aware of the danger. How many countries could be officially declared nuclear powers and how many are aspiring to be? What is the notion of security that drives countries with colossal developmental problems to aspire for nuclear status? What sort of games do nuclear nations play with each other? How do these games contribute to the emerging world order or peace initiatives? What are the alternatives to deal with nuclear ambitions of aspiring nations? Has the post-Cold War security environment made the world more convenient for nuclear ambitions?
The book under review engages deeply with some of these questions. In fact, the author has chosen to focus on questions that are far more specific and limited in nature. The book is seemingly indifferent to an ethical concern, such as existential issues of human civilisation or why nations need nuclear weapons at all. Instead, the author is realistic by looking at the world as it is, and optimistic about the future of nuclear ambitions, if not nuclear proliferation, as is generally understood in political discussions. Thus, the book is not about how to build a nuclear-free world or why poor nations aspire to be nuclear, but to grasp the intricacies of various clandestine and overt games that nuclear powers play to advance their own security, or at least to manage ongoing or emerging conflicts.
Written as a doctoral thesis at Harvard University, the book has undergone considerable revision by its author. Some of the chapters were already published in reputed academic journals. What we have at hand is not just a well-researched book, but one with insights about how nation states behave with one another in order to address their own sense of security and the predicaments of a highly competitive security environment.
The author restricts his research mainly to two questions: First, what are the nuclear strategies adopted by regional powers and why. Second, what effects these choices have on their ability to deter conflict. He seeks to explore the experiences of non-superpower nuclear states such as India, Pakistan, China, Israel, South Africa and France. Much of the scholarship on this subject has been about how these regional powers have acquired nuclear weapons. However, the strategies deployed by them have not been investigated yet by scholars. This is precisely where this research pushes boundaries. The author also tells us bluntly, and rightly so, that there is a tremendous Cold War hangover in scholarship that seeks to grapple with questions pertaining to the nuclear strategy of regional powers almost in the same light as that of superpowers. This is not just inadequate but obsolete.
The nuclear postures of regional nuclear powers, he claims, do not emulate superpower attitudes. Instead, they formulate their own. Their strategies are very distinct and often situation-specific. Employing data collected from his extensive fieldwork, he develops three possible nuclear postures: the first one is called catalytic posture; the second, assured retaliation posture; and the final one, asymmetric escalation posture. He also formulates a novel theory of sources of nuclear posture, which he calls ‘posture optimisation theory’ wherein a regional power could optimise its nuclear stance as a response to both external and internal security considerations. All these explanations may sound rather technical to the general reader, but the author has made an effort to present it in an accessible language. There are parts of the book (chapters 9 and 10) that certainly demand basic statistical understanding for a proper grasp of the research methods.
In conclusion, he says that states “pursue nuclear weapons for deterrence purposes, suggesting that they have to do a lot more to reap a substantial benefit from nuclear weapons than simply acquiring and testing them.”(p.311). He further adds that “states have nuclear weapons and more states may acquire them in future.” He makes no bones about the overt or covert ongoing nuclear weapons race in our world. What does it say about the future of peace movement? At another level, one wonders whether the nature of the current conflict in Syria, Libya or Iraq could have been any different had these wounded countries been nuclear states. Such questions clearly fall outside the purview of this book. At the same time, they are legitimate questions to be raised to understand the value and validity of the research. The book has something invaluable not just for scholars of international relations but also for diplomats and journalists who need to stay abreast of the unfolding nuclear world.
Mujibur Rehman is the editor of Communalism in Post Colonial India: Changing Contours. He teaches at Dr. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
