New Nukes

India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament

Achin Vanaik

Praful Bidwai

June 2000

Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, two of India's most respected and experienced journalists and longtime anti-nuclear activists, examine the causes and consequences of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, and provide a framework for understanding the global context in which they occur.

The recent Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests brought nuclear proliferation and the terrible threat of nuclear war back to the world's center stage. The south Asian nuclear moves have raised regional tensions, transformed Kashmir into a potentially nuclear flashpoint, increased the poverty of already devastated populations, fueled a conventional and possibly nuclear arms race far beyond the borders of the two countries, and vastly distorted definitions of international status and influence. On the global level, the newest entries into the restricted club of admitted nuclear-capable nations have rendered obsolete the post-World War Two nuclear status quo.
Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, two of India's most respected and experienced journalists and longtime anti-nuclear activists, examine the causes and consequences of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, and provide a framework for understanding the global context in which they occur. They also map out a new approach to nuclear abolition, in which not only south Asia's new nuclear states, but the oldest and mightiest Western nuclear powers would at last begin serious efforts towards full and complete nuclear disarmament.

Publisher:

Olive Branch Press

ISBN:

1-56656-317-8

Achin Vanaik

Professor of International Relations and Global Politics, Delhi University

Vanaik is one of the leading analysts on globalisation, democracy and security issues in South Asia, a renowned specialist on nuclear arms, and and a co-founder of the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND), and South Asians Against Nukes. As well as a recognised academic, Vanaik also writes regularly for various national newspapers and was formerly the assistant editor of the Times in India. He is a co-recipient, with Praful Bidwai, of the International Peace Bureau's Sean McBride International Peace Prize for 2000.

Praful Bidwai

Independent Journalist

Praful Bidwai is a political columnist, social science researcher, and activist on issues of human rights, the environment, global justice and peace. He currently holds the Durgabai Deshmukh Chair in Social Development, Equity and Human Security at the Council for Social Development, Delhi, affiliated to the Indian Council for Social Science Research.

A former Senior Editor of The Times of India, Bidwai is one of South Asia’s most widely published columnists, whose articles appear in more than 25 newspapers and magazines. He is also frequently published by The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique and Il Manifesto.

Bidwai is a founder-member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India). He received the Sean MacBride International Peace Prize, 2000 of the International Peace Bureau, Geneva & London.

He was a Senior Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Bidwai is the co-author, with Achin Vanaik, of South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999, a radical critique of the nuclearisation of India and Pakistan and of reliance on nuclear weapons for security.