Nuclear power and human security

Abstract

This article argues against the conventional wisdom of taking the alleged success of cold war deterrence as a viable model for South Asia. It notes that we are only beginning to fully understand the costs of the cold war, costs that are incommensurate with a logic that argues that since a nuclear exchange did not take place between the United States and the former Soviet Union, it provides a credible model for India and Pakistan to follow. The article argues that domestic populations of nuclear weapons states are the principal victims of nuclearization due to the risks built into the constitution of expensive technologically sophisticated megaprojects and makes the case for why international pressures against proliferation must be replaced by domestic groups acting in concert internationally. In short, domestic legal and moral constraints are the most appropriate means of controlling the inherently anti-democratic and militarist tendencies of the nuclear complex.