For decades, the hallowed halls of the United Nations in New York and the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva were the spiritual homes of a specific kind of Indian idealism. From the moral high ground of the Nehruvian era to the detailed pragmatism of the late 1980s, India was the world’s most persistent advocate of a nuclear-weapon-free world.
The peak of this ambition was perhaps June 1988, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi stood before the UN General Assembly to propose a ‘New Action Plan’ for universal, non-discriminatory and time-bound nuclear disarmament. It was a bold, three-stage roadmap to eliminate the world’s most terrifying weapons by 2010. Indian diplomats, many of whom built storied careers on their mastery of these intricate multilateral negotiations, argued that disarmament was not just a moral imperative but a developmental one. The logic was clear: every rupee or dollar not spent on a nuclear warhead was a resource freed for schools, hospitals and infrastructure.
Today, as we navigate the mid-2020s, that dream has not just been deferred; it has collapsed. The ‘global zero’ we once championed has been replaced by a ‘global me too’—a lethal scramble for more deadly, more precise and more unpredictable nuclear arsenals. For India, the collapse of this dream is not merely a diplomatic setback; it is a seismic shift in our national security calculus. Disarmament can simply no longer be a priority when the need for re-armament grows apace.
India’s ‘tough neighbourhood’ has morphed into a theatre of permanent instability. To our north, China’s nuclear expansion is no longer a secret. Beijing is rapidly modernising its triad, building hundreds of new missile silos and moving away from its historical ‘minimum deterrence’ posture.
To our west, Pakistan’s nuclear rhetoric has grown increasingly reckless. Islamabad’s frequent nuclear sabre-rattling and its focus on tactical (short-range) battlefield nuclear weapons have lowered the threshold for potential use, turning the subcontinent into a hair-trigger zone. The collusion between the two, evident during Operation Sindoor, has ominous portents for India.
Beyond our immediate rivals, the periphery is fraying. Nepal and Bangladesh face internal political upheavals that create vacuums for external influence; Afghanistan under the Taliban remains a black hole of uncertainty; and the return of a more transactional, America First posture under the Trump administration has introduced a layer of unpredictability in our most important strategic partnership.
In an era where the US seems less committed to its traditional security guarantees even to its Nato allies and the Quad summit has been indefinitely postponed, India realises it is as alone as it has ever been. The Indian disarmament dream feels like a relic of a gentler age.
The global architecture designed to prevent nuclear catastrophe is in ruins. The world is witnessing a troubling resurgence of armed conflict and political instability, bringing the spectre of nuclear tension back to the forefront of international concern. While the decades following 1945 were frequently marked by bitter great-power rivalries and localised wars, the current era feels fundamentally more precarious. For the first time in 80 years, these escalations are occurring without the constraints that once provided a semblance of order.
The core of the danger lies in the systemic collapse of the post-World War 2 framework. The United Nations’ norms and institutional mechanisms have been almost entirely hollowed out. We are navigating a period of high-stakes friction, without the traditional safety-nets or established pathways for de-escalation that historically prevented regional crises from spiralling into catastrophe. The last decade has also seen the systematic dismantling of arms control treaties. From the death of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to Russia’s suspension of the New START and its withdrawal from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, the guardrails are gone.
Simultaneously, the peaceful use of nuclear energy—once the promised reward for non-proliferation—has become a flashpoint for conflict. The ongoing crisis surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme illustrates how thin the line has become between civilian technology and weaponisation. For India, which fought hard for a civil nuclear exception in the Indo-US Nuclear Deal of 2008, the tightening of global technology controls and the erosion of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s oversight authority create a more restrictive and suspicious global environment, with attendant risks for all.
Perhaps most alarming is the interaction between nuclear weapons and emerging technologies. We are entering an era of ‘techno-nuclear’ risk. Artificial intelligence is being integrated into command-and-control systems, potentially shortening decision-making windows to mere seconds and increasing the risk of accidental escalation through algorithmic error.
Pakistan’s announced development of hypersonic missiles, which can bypass existing defence systems, and the vulnerability of nuclear communication networks to cyber-attacks, have made the old rules of deterrence obsolete. The convergence of AI, cyber-warfare and space-based sensors means that a state’s nuclear second-strike capability—the very foundation of stability—can now be tracked and targeted. When everything is visible, everything is vulnerable; and when everything is vulnerable, the pressure to ‘use them or lose them’ becomes overwhelming.
For the Indian strategic community, the lesson is sombre. The diplomats who once specialised in drafting disarmament conventions must now specialise in managing escalation ladders. The resources we hoped to divert to development are increasingly being swallowed by the necessity of a credible, survivable deterrent.
India cannot afford to be the last romantic in a world of ruthless realists. While we must maintain our long-term commitment to a world without nuclear weapons as a moral North Star, our immediate policies must reflect the grim reality of the 2020s. This means accelerating our own modernisation, hardening our command structures against cyber threats, and engaging in cold-eyed alignments to balance a rising China.
The disarmament dream died not because it was wrong, but because the world’s major powers lacked the courage to follow Rajiv Gandhi’s roadmap when the window for universal nuclear disarmament was open. Now that window has slammed shut. In this new age of nuclear anarchy, India’s priority must shift from chasing a universal peace that others have abandoned to ensuring our own survival in a world that has never been more dangerous.
Shashi Tharoor | Fourth-term Lok Sabha MP, Chairman of Standing Committee on External Affairs, and Sahitya Akademi-winning author of 25 books
(Views are personal)
(office@tharoor.in)