86 : Towards a World without Nuclear Arms: Can 2010 be a Year of Hope?
Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Senior Research Fellow at the ISAS
9 December 2009
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.