Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence

Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence

By Dr Arvind Kumar

Today the world is at a precipice of another world war. The situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine is very fragile. Indeed today tactical nuclear weapons have been fully integrated into U.S. armed forces and are treated just another weapon.

We stand on a nuclear precipice, and any attempt to dispel this ideology of nuclearism and its myth propounding the legality and morality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence must come to grips with the fact that the nuclear age was conceived in the original sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The start of any progress towards resolving our nuclear predicament as human beings must come from the realization that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence have never been legitimate instruments of state policy, but have always constituted instrumentalities of internationally lawless and criminal behaviour.

The use of nuclear weapons would also violate Resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly that repeatedly condemned their use as an international crime. We must understand that when dealing with nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence: They are not simply immoral, they are not simply illegal, but they are criminal across the board!

If mass extermination of human beings is a crime, the threat to commit mass extermination is also a crime. Humankind must abolish nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons abolish humankind!