scholarly journals The US-India Nuclear Pact: A Good Deal

2006 ◽  
Vol 105 (694) ◽  
pp. 375-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dinshaw Mistry ◽  
Sumit Ganguly

Stronger us-India strategic ties resulting from the pact would lessen India's need to greatly expand its nuclear arsenal and would bind Indian governments more firmly to norms against nuclear testing.

Subject Upgrading the US nuclear arsenal. Significance The United States is undertaking the most comprehensive modernisation of its nuclear forces since the 1970s and 1980s. Over the next ten years, annual US spending on nuclear weapons is projected to increase from about 15 billion dollars to 25 billion dollars per year to upgrade the three legs of the US nuclear arsenal: land-based missiles, submarine-based missiles and strategic bombers. This recapitalisation is considered necessary to sustain deterrence against growing strategic threats from Russia and China and regional nuclear threats from North Korea, but will entail trade-offs among other military assets far more likely to be used in any conflict. Impacts Russian rhetoric towards Ukraine and eastern Europe will strengthen the hands of pro-nuclear lobbies in Washington. Greater nuclear spending will increase the drive to find savings in military personnel costs. By shifting pensions to retirement savings accounts, it will increase the attractiveness of the military as a mid-career employment option.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-393
Author(s):  
Dawn Keetley

Three narratives from different historical moments - the US film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the US/Canadian film The Thaw (2009) and the first season of the British television series Fortitude (2015) - disclose shifts in the imagining of prehistoric creatures emerging from thawing ice, and all three thus intervene in evolving discourses surrounding climate change, nature and agency (both human and nonhuman). Beast was released at what many scientists have declared the very beginning of the ‘Anthropocene’ - that geological era marked by humans as primary shapers of planetary life. An iconic film of the Atomic Age, Beast features a thawed creature from Earth’s prehistory, and the fault-lines are sharply drawn between it and the humans who unknowingly unleashed it. Although the consequences of nuclear testing (along with the notion of the ‘Anthropocene’) were decades in the future, Beast imagines those consequences with startling and destructive clarity. In the twenty-first century, the long-term effects of nuclear energy, and industrial global capitalism more generally, have become strikingly evident. The thawed creatures of both Fortitude and The Thaw have neither the visibility nor the separateness of the ‘Beast’ from 1953, however. Tracing increasingly entangled notions of existence, culpability and responsibility in the Anthropocene era, these twenty-first-century creatures incubate within human hosts, becoming interwoven with the human, and thus complicate familiar notions of agency.


2018 ◽  
pp. 155-199
Author(s):  
Chaitanya Ravi

This chapter examines the period from March 2006–August 2007 and describes the debate over waiver legislation in the US Congress, the Hyde Act that emerged and the debate in India among serving and retired nuclear scientists over the Act’s implications for India’s nuclear programme and its ability to conduct future nuclear tests. The core of the chapter is a description of how the perceived strictures in the Hyde Act on nuclear testing such as the termination clause reignited the simmering debate over the success/failure of India’s lone 1998 thermonuclear test and exposed rifts between the serving scientist (Dr R. Chidambaram) who publicly vouched for its success and a group of retired nuclear weapons scientists who believed otherwise. The chapter ends by detailing how this domestic debate influenced the Indian negotiating position on nuclear testing.


Survival ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
James E. Doyle
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-304
Author(s):  
Bhaswati Mukherjee

The emerging dynamics between President Trump, NATO and EU promises to constitute a fascinating new narrative of the changing contours of the international order in this millennium. President Trump has completely reversed American policy towards NATO. As a businessman, Trump has made it clear that henceforth US funding and support would be linked to the US getting a ‘good deal’ from its NATO partners. NATO had earlier anchored itself to the benchmark goal that 2% of a country’s GDP should go to defence spending. President Trump is yet to establish close and friendly relations either with NATO Secretary General or leaders of NATO Member States. Trump’s public embrace of autocratic rulers has caused resentment within NATO. On CSDP the earlier European approach was to lean heavily on the Americans to fund NATO. The friction between the goals of NATO and CSDP increased under the Trump Presidency because of Trump’s insistence on burden sharing of resources and funds among NATO Member States. The CSDP and NATO have overlapping mandates which could be complicated in crisis situations. An independent CSDP remains the core issue causing friction. The U.S. and other non EU weapons producing countries (chiefly Norway and soon the U.K.) also believe that CSDP is manipulating the rules of defence procurement in favour of companies based on EU soil. Is the US justified in attacking CSDP? Many EU Member States believe that protecting European defence industries is a small price to pay for ensuring that a NATO under American leadership not get involved in small regional wars, as an example, in Francophone Africa. Brexit is casting a long shadow. EU and NATO would need to realign themselves from a strategic perspective. NATO and the EU need to prepare for a strategic scenario post Brexit. Following Brexit, 80 percent of NATO defence spending will come from non-EU members. This would shift the onus of decision making within NATO away from the EU. One of the greatest challenges for NATO and the EU is America’s new narrative on Iran and North Korea. EU and NATO are slowly waking up to the new reality that there will be no “business as usual”. If NATO’s military deterrence loses its credibility, this will undermine the credibility of both EU and NATO and endanger international peace and security. What could the EU and NATO do next? Are there any “low hanging fruits” that could be picked in the near future? The EU and NATO understand that there can be no ‘business as usual’. The new global narrative on security would depend on how NATO and EU respond to America’s changed narrative. A timely response is the need of the hour.


Author(s):  
Marybeth Lorbiecki

Twenty-two-year-old Aldo Leopold arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico Territory, in July 1909, burning with the “fervor of a sawdust evangelist.” The Forest Service had sent him to his first choice—District 3, encompassing the twenty-one forests of the South and Southwest. His duties were outlined in his manual: preserve a perpetual supply of timber for home industries, prevent destruction of forest cover (which regulates the flow of streams), and protect local industries from unfair competition in the use of forest and range. The district chief was Arthur Ringland, a stocky, energetic Yale graduate only a few years older than Leopold. Ringland sensed the new graduate’s enthusiasm and assigned him to the wildest lands in the district—the Apache National Forest in Arizona Territory. The land had originally belonged to the Apache Nation, but in 1886, the US Army forced most of the members onto a nearby reservation. This left but a few ranchers, farmers, and miners in the region. The forest headquarters rested in Springerville, Arizona, a two-day stagecoach ride from the last railroad stop. No automobiles carved tire treads over these plateaus and canyons. Travel was by foot, horse, or mule. Forest Assistant Leopold, the newest greenhorn among many, wasted no time in purchasing a feisty gray stallion called Jiminy Hicks, a saddle, a rope, and a few good roping lessons. Within the month, he also acquired pistols and a “rubber butt plate” for those long days in the saddle. The rubber plate came in handy since Aldo put in a good deal of time astride Jiminy Hicks. Throughout July and the beginning of August, Leopold inspected trees, marked them for cutting, planted seed plots, fixed fences, and met the other rangers. Working under Supervisor John D. Guthrie, Aldo contributed his two bits on policy decisions about grazing permits, water rights, and timber sales. Guthrie’s long hours and dedicated stance inspired the young ranger. The simplicity of life on the range, where one had to live out of a pack, made Leopold feel tough and free. On his own time, he hunted, mapped out the forest for himself, climbed mountains, and tested trout streams.


Subject Potential US adoption of a 'no first use' nuclear weapons policy. Significance The administration of US President Barack Obama is reportedly considering the adoption of a 'no first use' nuclear weapons posture in his final months in office. A no first use policy would involve the United States declaring that it would only use its nuclear arsenal in response to a nuclear attack, never as a preliminary move in escalating tensions. This shift would be a significant departure from Washington's earlier posture, which maintained ambiguity as to whether nuclear weapons would be used in a hypothetical conventional attack on the United States or its allies. Impacts Arsenal upgrades and shifts in doctrine favouring tactical nuclear weapons would counteract the benefits of a restrained declaratory policy. Technological breakthroughs with hypersonic missiles are likely to undermine existing legal and diplomatic arms control arrangements. Obama may take up the pursuit of nuclear arms reductions with an ex-president's public profile. Eastern NATO allies will react strongly against any hint that their security does not fall under the US nuclear umbrella.


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