ISAS Insights

It has been long since advocates of a world without nuclear weapons have had any reason to cheer. Over the past decade things appear to have gone from bad to worse. The entry into force of the arduously negotiated Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) could not be effected for want of a requisite number of ratifications.2 India and Pakistan tested a number of devices each in 1998, and a decade later North Korea joined the ranks. The 2005 Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was an unmitigated disaster.3 The Bush administrationÔÇÖs interventionist actions in Iraq and Afghanistan fuelled the notion that a surefire way to protect oneself from bigger powers was to acquire nuclear capability by hook or by crook. While it is true that deterrence held, and no conflict occurred involving nuclear weapons, with the increase in acquisitions by a larger number of states, the mathematical probability of a disaster, even unwitting or unintended, was enhanced.