Nuclear Ban Treaty and the Southern Asian ‘Nuclear Troika’

Of late, nuclear weapons, like other weapons of mass destruction, have been multilaterally outlawed. However, the nuclear weapon states—barring North Korea and the sole victim of nuclear weapons, Japan—have remained outside the treaty process. This lack of active involvement in the treaty process exposes a potential hollowness when nuclear weapon states issue the usual clarion call for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. This article presents a comparative enquiry into the policy approach of the three nuclear weapon states in Southern Asia—China, India and Pakistan—that proclaim themselves to be ‘responsible’ nuclear states regarding the nuclear Ban Treaty. While China’s stated position seems to be based more on realism than morality, India’s reservations are related to the procedural aspects of the initiative. Pakistan, in line with China’s more realistic considerations, links its stance on the nuclear Ban Treaty with fissile material stockpile, conventional force disparity, and India’s upper hand in this domain. However, one common thread in the positions of the three countries is their assertion that a gradual, step-by-step approach towards nuclear disarmament is necessary. All three countries believe that elimination of nuclear weapons cannot be achieved overnight; instead, it requires sustained global efforts that take the whole picture—strategic vulnerabilities and security deficits of different strategic arenas—into consideration. While China and India propose somewhat interrelated procedures, like the universal no-first use (NFU) treaty, Pakistan’s position seems to be more reactionary. At the end, this study proposes an out-of-the-box suggestion for a tripartite regional NFU treaty as a harbinger for a future universal NFU treaty.