Overuse of the N-word

A day after US President Donald Trump threatened to wipe North Korea off the map, it was Pakistan’s turn to chime in. For the second day in a row, a presumably responsible member of the global community brandished the nuclear word. The stand-in Pakistani Prime Minister told a US audience that his country’s response to a sudden Indian military blitz (called Cold Start in military speak) would be in the form of fielding nuclear weapons in the battlefield. No one, bar NATO in Germany during the Cold War, has ever toyed with this option. Thankfully neither does Pakistan because its PM added that there has been no deployment so far.

It would be very messy if countries began deploying nuclear weapons in the battlefield because the threat of an accidental hit is high. That is why countries mount nuclear weapons on long-range missiles. In addition to giving them the option to hit faraway targets, the deployment well away from the battlefield ensures that their own forces are not annihilated if the weapon misfires or is hit by an enemy barrage. 

Pakistan is not alone in facing scepticism about its use and storage of nuclear weapons. India is also in the same boat because the five permanent members of the UNSC struck a “grand bargain” to retain nuclear weapons while others were deprived of that right, regardless of their security calculations. The answer to resolving this contradiction is complete disarmament. Though the ban-the-bomb movement has existed since nuclear weapons, much water has flown under the Wein in Vienna where such matters are discussed. This thought will always remain an unmet honourable resolve. The world instead must examine creative solutions to ensure that the option of using nuclear weapons is not freely brandished and it remains on the periphery of strategic thought. The naysayers won a moral victory this July when 122 countries endorsed a UN treaty banning nuclear weapons. Nothing may come out of it but the anti-nuclear movement should use it as a scaffolding to make the use of N-word politically blasphemous in political conversations.