What if a rogue state threatens to nuke another state?

South Asia is a flashpoint of nuclear war because three countries which share boundaries with each other are locked into border disputes with India acting as a defender against two belligerent neighbors Pakistan which is always supported by another neighbor China.

These three countries – India, China, and Pakistan have nuclear bombs. Of the three, Pakistan is the only country that has threatened, on several occasions in the past as well as in the present, to nuke India with the explicit or tacit support of China.

Pakistan is confident that China will always be by its side and join the war with Pakistan against India. Lately, just within a span of a week on August 22 and 26, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan boasted of using nuclear weapons against India and wanted superpowers to intervene in the internal matter of India regarding the reorganization of the northern part of Jammu and Kashmir.

All the South Asian countries are directly affected by nuclear war if it takes place because its radiation just not kill the humans where it drops but also kills others who are living in adjoining neighborhood because of its all spreading radiation.

How far will this threat come true only a war, if it breaks out, in future will prove? Pakistan is confident that China will join the war against India because both China and Pakistan have been posturing together against India on all the international platforms including UN (United Nations) with regard to issues like terrorism and Kashmir which India is legally entitled to hold as its sovereign territory but not allowed to because much of its part is shared between the other two neighboring countries – Pakistan and China.

All the South Asian countries are directly affected by nuclear war if it takes place because its radiation just not kill the humans where it drops but also kills others who are living in adjoining neighborhood because of its all spreading radiation.

Officially, both India and China are committed to ‘no first use’ but Pakistan is not. As Pakistan has openly confessed that India is the sworn enemy against which their nuclear weapons will be used. In such a fragile and volatile situation that South Asia has been caught into because of nuclear threat hurled by Pakistan, it is the right time to assess the damage of the explosion of nuclear bombs.

Only two atomic bombs have been dropped in entire human history on August 6 on Hiroshima and on August 9 on Nagasaki of Japan in the year 1945 by the US in the final reckoning time of the World War-II.

The uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima had an explosive yield equal to 15 kilotons (15,000 US tons of TNT). It razed and burnt around 70 percent of all buildings killing an estimated 140,000 human beings of all age groups.

Isn’t it a duty of nuclear responsible states to collectively pressure the rogue and irresponsible state which out of its desperation and poor judgment — driven by hate and intemperance — detonate a nuclear bomb without knowing its real consequence?

Those who survived were infected by spreading nuclear radiation as a result of which were caught by cancer and chronic disease precipitating their death. Three days later a slightly larger plutonium bomb (of 21 kilotons) exploded over Nagasaki killing 74,000 people by the end of 1945 besides leveling the city to the ground.

Ground temperatures swelled to an unbelievably high level to reach 4,000°C and rains laced with nuclear radiation owing to infected atmosphere poured down for decades killing and radiating scores of survivors. About half of the deaths happened on that very day when the bombs were detonated.

Today nuclear bombs are much more powerful than what it was 74 years ago. Just imagine, what will happen when nuclear bombs are detonated on a city of the strength of explosion measuring 45 million tons (50 million US tons) of TNT which is at least 3333 times more powerful than a bomb dropped on Hiroshima?

Isn’t it a duty of nuclear responsible states to collectively pressure the rogue and irresponsible state which out of its desperation and poor judgment — driven by hate and intemperance — detonate a nuclear bomb without knowing its real consequence?

Are we really progressing towards mutually assured destruction to finish the human civilization due to our own stupidity? Albert Einstein, the celebrated physicist of 20th century though did not work directly on the atom bomb but he is often considered as the nuclear or atom bomb because his famously researched equation (E = mc2) was used to develop an atomic bomb.

It was Einstein’s initiative that motivated the then US Government to start research on developing atomic bombs which were ultimately used (some even say tested) by detonating on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the year 1945. Albert Einstein was aware of the devastating effects of nuclear weapons. Therefore, he cautioned everyone against its use.

He is quoted to have said, “I don’t know what weapons might be used in World War III. But there isn’t any doubt that World War IV will be fought with stones and spears.” Call it Einstein’s apprehension or foresight, this is where we are standing today staring in the face of death.

A rogue state harboring terrorists is brandishing its nuclear weapons to arm-twist another state to force the fulfillment of illegal demands. South Asia will be engulfed into flames of nuclear war if restraints are not put by the international community on a belligerent nuclear state that threatens to nuke a country which follows the avowed principle of ‘no first use’.

Arms Control Association in its latest report on June 2019 has said that the world’s nuclear-armed states possess a combined total of nearly 14,000 nuclear warheads – more than 90% belong to Russia and the United States. And the rest shared among other 7 nuclear states.

This will force India to change its long-held policy in face of the recurrent threat of Pakistan nuking India as hinted by the Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on August 16 said, “Till today, our nuclear policy is ‘No First Use’. What happens in the future depends on the circumstances.” It was a clear message to go for a pre-emptive strike to save the large scale devastation caused by the hasty decision of any irresponsible leader threatening to nuke India.

What if a rogue state threatens to nuke a pacifist country with no track record of waging a war except in self-defense? It calls for a collective action in self-defense either exercised on behalf of UNO or collectively launched from all the nuclear-armed states or pre-emptive measures of all options included by the threatened state in order to diffuse the impending threat of nuclear war and disable the power of an irresponsible nuclear-armed state to exercise any nuclear option in future against any country.

A slight miscalculation or intemperance or paranoia of a misguided leader or madness acquired by perpetual hatred against another religion or a state will wreak untold damage and destruction of human civilization which will continue for a centuries to remind all of us about a folly of a flawed leaders who maneuver to rule over the common people only to destroy them in no time.

There are 9 declared nuclear states and some like Iran is in the process of developing it. These ten nuclear states have developed lethal missiles (both of short and long-range) with nuclear warheads attached on them: United States (6,185), Russia (6490), United Kingdom (200), France (300), Israel (90), Pakistan (160), India (140), China (290) and North Korea (30).

Arms Control Association in its latest report on June 2019 has said that the world’s nuclear-armed states possess a combined total of nearly 14,000 nuclear warheads – more than 90% belong to Russia and the United States. And the rest shared among other 7 nuclear states.

This is the conservative state which has been shared but in reality, the actual numbers of warheads shared among the nuclear-armed states exceed way above 1500 in numbers which if unleashed just a quarter of the total available nuclear arsenals will cause the collapse of civilization called a nuclear holocaust or nuclear apocalypse.

Aside from immediate destruction of cities and human life, a nuclear war causes firestorms, a nuclear winter, widespread radiation sickness and temporary loss of modern technologies because of electromagnetic impulses.

The International Day against Nuclear Tests is observed on August 29 every year since 2010 to bring public awareness and education about the effects of nuclear global nuclear tests and their use in the war between and among sovereign states. The first nuclear test was conducted by the United States in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945, and since then more than 2050 nuclear tests have been conducted all over the world.

Nuclear weapons tests are conducted in the air (atmospheric tests), water (underwater tests) and below the ground (underground tests) causing immense destabilization in the delicate balance of air, water, and land – vital components of all kinds of life including human beings.

The ICAN ( International Campaign to abolish nuclear weapons) – a non-governmental organization (NGO) spread over 100 countries devoutly working for implementing the United Nations nuclear weapon ban treaty adopted in New York on July 7, 2017.

Let us join our hands to advocate for the nuclear weapons-free planet in the interest of all the life-forms and to save this planet Earth. Nuclear tests must be kept outside of assertion of the sovereignty of a country and professing nationalism which in fact wipe out both.