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Ending the Ukraine War in an Imperfect World

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Published in the Hindu on July 8, 2022

The war in Ukraine has been underway for over four months. What began as a European conflict has had global repercussions. Of course, Ukraine and its people have borne the maximum brunt. More than five million Ukrainians have left the country and over eight million are internally displaced. Rising casualties and large-scale destruction have set back the country by decades. Recent estimates for rebuilding the destroyed cities and infrastructure are as high as $750 billion.

During 2020-21, most economies that could afford to, provided generous financial support to its citizens in the form of direct payments and subsidised food to tide over the economic hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chains suffered disruptions, aggravated by politics. Economic recovery has generated demand creating inflationary pressures. Today, inflation rates are rising across the world and in the largest economies have reached levels not seen since the early 1980s. As these countries tighten money supply, fears of recession loom large. The war in Ukraine has aggravated the situation for the poorer countries by creating food and fertiliser shortages. The sharp surge in energy prices threatens the prospects of economic recovery. Prospects of collective global action to deal with these challenges appear remote, given growing tensions among major powers.  

And so, the war grinds on, with no end in sight.

The inevitable conflict

It is a fact that Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in gross violation of the United Nations Charter and international law; it is equally true that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is not an innocent bystander. In 2022, Russia is the guilty one but NATO’s folly was to forget that the cost of its expansion goes up as it gets closer to the Russian border. Its strategic error was in concluding that Russia was in terminal decline and adopting an ‘open door’ policy.

By 2005, 11 former East European and Baltic states had joined NATO. Addressing the Munich Security Conference in 2007, President Vladimir Putin described NATO’s decision of moving eastwards and deploying forces closer to Russian borders, “a serious provocation”. The warning was ignored. At the NATO summit in early 2008, the U.S. pushed for opening membership for Ukraine and Georgia. France and Germany, sensitive to Russian concerns, successfully blocked a time-frame for implementation. As a compromise, it was the worst of both worlds. It convinced Russia of NATO’s hostility and dangled prospects for Georgia and Ukraine that NATO couldn’t fulfil.  

Later that year, Russia intervened in Georgia on the grounds of protecting the Russian minorities, taking over the neighbouring provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In 2014, following the Euromaidan protests in Kiev against the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russia separatists, assisted by Russian mercenaries, created autonomous regions in eastern Ukraine. The fuse, lit in 2008, was now smouldering.  

Post-2014, NATO continued to strengthen its relationship with Ukraine by providing it training and equipment, formalising it in 2020 by making Ukraine a NATO Enhanced Opportunity Partner. British and U.S. warships’ presence in the Black Sea began to increase. In 2019, U.K. entered into a cooperation agreement with Ukraine to develop two new naval ports, Ochakiv on the Black Sea and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov, a move that Russia saw as potentially threatening. The die was cast.

Liberalism trumps realism

Neither side wanted war. NATO members insist that Ukraine would not be joining NATO but remains unable to walk back from its 2008 statement. This would be seen as ‘appeasement’. In diplomacy, appeasement had long been accepted as an honourable route to ensuring peace, practiced by the British since the mid-nineteenth century in its dealings with European powers and especially the U.S. as it sought to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Neville Chamberlain too used appeasement to negotiate “peace in our times” in 1938 but Winston Churchill employed it to pillory him and the term never regained respectability thereafter.

An equivalent term surfaced – sensitivity for each other’s core interests -practised during the Cold War to prevent the U.S. and USSR from getting into conflict. With the end of the Cold War, this became history. The liberal school, having vanquished the Marxist school of thought, was now convinced of the righteousness of its cause. If only the rest of the world could be made to see reason, democracy would flourish, free markets ensure prosperity and a Western led rule-based order prevail. The triumph of liberalism led the neo-con believers towards interventionism (Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Colour Revolutions, Syria); others, attracted by the prospects of Chinese and Russian markets, deluded themselves that economic growth would lead to political openings.

The realist school of thought cautioned against military interventions backed by a one-size-fits-all democratic prescription and the risks of excessive economic dependence on China but these voices were dismissed. Many U.S. scholars and strategic thinkers cautioned against NATO enlargement, warning that Russia may be weak but it would be reckless to ignore its security interests; they were charged with ‘appeasement’. Liberalism was upholding ‘moral values’; amoral realism was easy to reject as immoral.

French President Emmanuel Macron talked in February of the Finlandisation model as an option for Ukraine. Austrian neutrality imposed by US, USSR, UK and France in 1955, enshrined in its constitution was mentioned. But these solutions had found acceptance in a war weary Europe when politics was frozen by the Cold War. Finland had accepted limited sovereignty and just two presidents guided it – Urho Kekkonen (1956-82) and Mauno Koivisto (1982-94) and both also served as prime-ministers before assuming the presidency. In 2022, such stability is impossible with power politics in flux, rivalries sharpening and populism on the upswing.

In early March, in an interview to Russian media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that Ukraine was not pressing for NATO membership but wanted neutrality to be guaranteed; he even talked of autonomy for Donbas as a compromise and a period of ten years for talks on Crimea. But that interview was soon forgotten.

How wars end

Wars often develop their own momentum and the Ukraine war is no exception. Russia possibly anticipated a short, sharp conflict, a collapse of the Kiev regime (perhaps similar to what happened in Kabul last August), and lack of NATO cohesion. It has had to readjust its aims as it has settled down to a long and brutal war. The G-7, European Union (EU) and NATO have displayed unusual cohesion and Ukrainians have shown exemplary grit and motivation. Russia is in a bind. Even its limited war aims of controlling Donbas and the Black Sea coast have been a slog. Finland and Sweden joining NATO will squeeze it further in the Baltic Sea. Ukraine’s ability to fight depends on how long western funds and military hardware keep flowing.

In a moral world, there is a right and wrong and Russia should be held to account. But in the real world, other factors come into play. A blame game or establishing the root cause will not help end the crisis. Eventually, talks will need to take place, between Ukraine and Russia and with NATO and U.S. playing an outsize role behind the scenes. This means acknowledging Russia’s security interests in its neighbourhood.

The problem is that the war is now being cast in binaries – a battle between freedom and tyranny, between democracy and autocracy, a choice between rule-based order and brute force. This makes compromise difficult. And Russia cannot be defeated unless NATO wants to engage in a full-scale war.

The longer the war continues, the greater the suffering for the Ukrainians. The more territory Ukraine loses, the weaker will be its bargaining position at the table. And the longer the war continues, the greater the risk of an inadvertent escalation. History tells us that when faced with choices, major powers have a propensity to double down. The nuclear taboo has held since 1945; sane voices need to ensure that it is not breached. The sooner the war ceases, the better for Ukrainians, Russians and the world. It is an imperfect world but we don’t have another.

*****

The Nuclear Taboo is Key to Preventing Collapse of the Nuclear Order

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(APLN, July 7, 2022)

The nuclear scenario today appears confusing. On one hand, the nuclear taboo has held, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a near universal treaty, and nuclear weapon stockpiles are a fourth of what they were at the height of the Cold War, and yet, on the other hand, there is a perception that nuclear risks are higher than before.

At such moments, it may be useful to return to the basic principles, the realisations that helped lay the foundations of the nuclear order more than seven decades ago.

The first realisation from the successful Trinity test conducted by the US on 16 July 1945, was the immense destructive capacity of the new weapon. Witnessing the mushroom cloud, Robert Oppenheimer – one of the bomb’s inventors – pondered a line from the Bhagvad-Gita, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of the worlds”. One month later, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings reinforced the gravity of those words.

The second realisation was the worry that other countries too could now go down this path. In 1946, this led to the Baruch Plan (authored by Bernard Baruch) that envisaged transferring control to an international body so that there would not be any national arsenals. However, there were internal differences within the United States and Soviet Union did not trust it.

Once the USSR exploded its nuclear bomb in 1949, the Baruch Plan died a natural death. Even as the United States and the Soviet Union embarked on their nuclear arms race, they found convergence in the notion that nuclear materials and knowhow must be restricted. Non-proliferation became a shared objective leading to the NPT in 1968.  

The third realisation was the imperative to manage nuclear risks. It was driven home in 1962 when both US and Soviet leaders realised how close they had come to a nuclear exchange during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It led to establishing fail safe communications, hotlines and nuclear risk reduction measures together with arms control.

Reconciling these three realisations helped lay the foundations of the nuclear order, shaped by the political dynamics of the Cold War. In a bipolar world, there was one nuclear dyad, the US-Soviet dyad, and deterrence was a two-player game. Strategic stability was reduced to nuclear stability and nuclear arms control was the answer. It kept the allies in check and reassured the third-world countries that the two nuclear superpowers were ‘responsible’.

Arms control and the nuclear taboo

Nuclear arms control revolved around the notions of ‘parity’ and ‘mutual vulnerability’ because US and Soviet arsenals were based on similar triads. The ABM Treaty (1972) limited missile defences thereby guaranteeing mutual vulnerability. Meanwhile, strategic planners and negotiators worked on numerical limits for strategic launchers and warheads leading to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I and II, Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) I and II and New START in 2010. Together with unilateral initiatives undertaken after the break-up of the Soviet Union, these arms control measures helped draw down the US and Russian arsenals by over eighty percent, from nearly 65,000 in early 1980s to less than 12,000 today. The other seven nuclear-armed countries between them possess another 1,300 warheads.

Non-proliferation grew as a norm as the NPT got extended indefinitely and unconditionally in 1995. It has come to enjoy near universal adherence with only four countries outside it – India, Israel and Pakistan (that never signed) and North Korea (that withdrew). It has therefore reached the limits of its success since all four are nuclear-armed states.

Most important, the nuclear taboo has not been breached, despite some close shaves.

Today, this nuclear order, consisting of the ‘taboo’, arms control and non-proliferation is under strain. The ‘taboo’ is only normative, arms control is fraying and the NPT, a victim of its success.

Fundamentally, the political order has changed. Deterrence is no longer a two-player game; there are multiple nuclear dyads (United States-Russia, United States-China, India-China, India-Pakistan, United States-North Korea) and these are linked together in loose chains. Instead of parity, it is an age of asymmetry, both in terms of doctrines and arsenals.

Without ‘parity’ and ‘mutual vulnerability’, arms control needs to be redefined. Meanwhile, there is growing mistrust that prevents meaningful dialogue among major powers to define new areas of convergence.

The NPT delegitimised proliferation but not nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons research and development has continued and most nuclear powers are modernising and expanding their arsenals. Today, nuclear science and technology is a mature eighty-year-old technology. Terms like ‘threshold states’, ‘lead times’ and ‘break out’ did not exist when the NPT was negotiated. The political challenges inherent in the NPT surface every five years at the Review Conferences, especially since 1995.

Finally, technology doesn’t stand still. Developments in missile defence, cyber and space, dual use systems like hypersonics and conventional precision global strike capabilities have blurred the firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons. This has created nuclear entanglement and in the absence of transparency and guard rails, raises the risks of use: advertent, inadvertent, accidental or on account of misjudgement. With the emergence of global terrorism, new threats have emerged highlighting the importance of nuclear security.

The collapsing nuclear order

The conflict in Ukraine has sharpened the growing nuclear risks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has engaged in repeated nuclear rhetoric, placing the Russian arsenal on ‘special alert’, and later warning of ‘unpredictable consequences’.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky bemoaned the fact that had Ukraine not signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, voluntarily relinquishing the nuclear weapons on its territory, Russia would not have invaded. Such statements have raised the salience of nuclear weapons. For countries that feel threatened by militarily more powerful adversaries, it is the ultimate security guarantor.

At the same time, it also means that a state possessing a nuclear deterrent can commit aggression against a smaller non-nuclear country. While NATO members have provided billions of dollars’ worth of military supplies, NATO has been deterred from either putting boots on the ground or imposing a ‘no-fly-zone’ that might bring it into direct conflict with a nuclear Russia.

The nuclear order was based on arms control, non-proliferation and a taboo. Today, the old nuclear arms control model is almost dead and a fresh convergence appears remote. Non-proliferation is under strain given the new found attractiveness of nuclear weapons and non-nuclear weapon states are actively considering nuclear powered submarines that will further strain the NPT debates. The ‘taboo’, only normative to begin with, is being eroded by growing nuclear rhetoric, presently by Russia and in recent years, by US, North Korean, Indian and Pakistani leaders.

Yet, the old realisations still hold. Nuclear weapons remain an existential threat for humanity. In an ideal world, arms control should be revived, non-proliferation buttressed and the ‘taboo’ reinforced, preferably with a legal instrument. But we don’t live in an ideal world and have to make choices. Reviving arms control has to await a modus vivendi among the major powers.

And between ‘non-proliferation’ and the ‘taboo’, I firmly believe that preserving the ‘taboo’ against use of nuclear weapons is critical, more so than ‘non-proliferation’. The world has lived with first two, then five and now nine states possessing nuclear weapons. The NPT and the world can possibly live with another one or two more. But if nuclear weapons are used, for the first time after 1945, and the nuclear taboo is breached, neither the NPT nor the non-proliferation regime will survive. A breach of the ‘taboo’ will bring about a collapse of the entire nuclear order.

Today, the only way forward for reconciling the NPT and the Ban Treaty, for reducing nuclear risks is to reinforce the nuclear taboo. It has lasted since 1945.  We need to ensure that it lasts through the 21st century so that we are able to collectively negotiate a more lasting solution to the challenges of the new nuclear age.

*****

Macron’s second term will be harder – his centrism pushed opponents to extreme Left & Right

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Published in The Print on April 29, 2022

President Emmanuel Macron scored a decisive victory over his Right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen last week, polling 58.5% of the national vote to win a second term. It is a tremendous political achievement for 44-year-old Macron who fought his first election in 2017, created a new political party, Le Republic En Marche (France On The Move) and has sought to enlarge the liberal-pragmatic-centrist space on the political spectrum at a time of increasing polarisation. Only two of his predecessors have won second terms, Francois Mitterand in 1988 and Jacques Chirac in 2002 and both were in politics for decades.

Born in 1977, Macron graduated in 2004 from the Ecole National d’Administration (ENA), the prestigious and highly competitive school which has trained a majority of French leaders, in politics, civil service, judiciary and business. In 2008, he left government to do a four-year stint as an investment banker with the venerable Rothschild & Co, returning to government in 2012 in President Francois Hollande’s office. In 2014, he joined the cabinet as minister for Economy and Industry only to resign two years later to embark on a political career in 2016.

Macron’s political instinct was right. Coming after the Brexit vote and a Trump victory, political populism was rising and Europe was drifting Rightwards. Macron provided the alternative – Centrist politics.

Macron’s middle ground

The European Union (EU)’s precursor, the European Economic Community (EEC) established in 1957, following the Treaty of Rome, consisted of a homogeneous group of six countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands). These six countries were also founding members of NATO which had been set up in 1949.

The 28 member EU, a result of hasty expansion during the 1990s, was a heterogeneous lot. The idea of Europe with a variable geometry, proposed as a compromise to accommodate differences, disguised political disunity, with some EU members proudly claiming to be “illiberal democracies.”

According to Macron, Europe had relied too blindly on the US for its defence and needed to take charge of its destiny, of the European project. There were growing differences between ‘new Europe’ and ‘old Europe’ that created factions within NATO, after its doubling from 14 countries in 1991 to 28 today.  

The 2008 financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis highlighted the difficulty of having a common currency among 19 different countries at varying levels of development and governance structures. This had created disenchantment with globalisation. Right wing parties were gaining ground in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and even in the Nordic states. In France too, the Right-wing Front National of Jean Marie Le Pen had been rebranded by his daughter Marine Le Pen as National Rally and its image makeover was attracting the disenchanted. The fragmentation of the Left had begun in the 1990s and now it was happening on the Right.

Macron successfully exploited this in 2017 to capture the middle ground, appearing as a pragmatic centrist, committed to the EU and the Euro, pro-globalisation and business friendly but progressive on social issues. He brought a message of confidence, reviving optimism about France, based on technology, education and innovation. It was a meteoric rise and he won a resounding victory with a 66% vote.

Rebuilding the Centre

While he redefined the Centre successfully, the opposition got pushed to the extremes, on both the Right and Left of the political spectrum. The gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests in 2018 were spontaneous and not led by any political party. In some ways, it was a confused protest; it saw the capitalist state as a villain but yet wanted a bigger but benevolent state as saviour to provide more services and benefits. However, Macron’s handling reflected a lack of empathy and reinforced his image of being a technocratic, pro-rich, aloof president.

Disenchantment grew and was successfully exploited at both ends of the political spectrum, by Jean Luc Melenchon on the Left and Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour on the Right.

French elections follow a two-stage process. Unless the first round throws up a winning candidate obtaining over 50% of the vote, a run-off takes place between the top two candidates. In the first round held on April 10, Macron took the lead with 27.8% but with Le Pen and Melenchon following with 23.1% and 21.9% respectively. For the first time, the candidates on the far right and far left accounted for 58% of the vote. Traditional mainstream party candidates were routed. The centre-right candidate Valerie Pecresse, who had been part of President Chirac’s team and was later Higher Education Minister in President Sarkozy’s cabinet got 4.8% while centre-left Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris since 2014, was reduced to 1.7%.

It was a wake-up call for Macron who had not spent time on the campaign trail, engaging more in high profile diplomacy on the Ukraine war, relying on appearing presidential. The strategy had backfired and Le Pen exploited it successfully as rising cost of living became the most important issue for nearly two-thirds of the electorate by appearing a more normal and approachable candidate. In the final stages, the run-off round became a referendum, a question of who the voters disliked more. An abstention of 28%, the highest since 1969, reflects the disenchantment of the people with the choice on offer.

The message has registered with Macron who instead of striking a jubilant note adopted a conciliatory tone in his victory speech, ‘promising to be a president for all’ and thanking those who helped defeat Le Pen. The latter was an acknowledgement of the Left vote; 41% of the Melenchon’s voters held their nose but voted for Macron just to prevent a Le Pen victory.

Macron’s challenges in his second term are greater. In 2017, his party won 314 seats in the 577 strong National Assembly but this time both Melenchon and Le Pen are calling the Assembly elections scheduled for mid-June as a ‘third round’. If Macron loses control of the Assembly, he may be forced into an uneasy co-habitation that will limit his policy options. It is the fate that befell both his predecessors, Mitterand and Chirac, in their second terms. Macron is aware that French voters can be fickle; a quick and convincing image make-over is necessary if Macron has to create history, by becoming the first president to win a second term and keep control of the Assembly.

*****

Macron’s Re-election, A Victory With Challenges

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Published in the Hindu on April 27, 2022

Last Sunday, French voters gave President Emmanuel Macron his second term and Europe heaved a collective sigh of relief. Though Mr. Macron scored a convincing victory over far-right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen, his victory margin diminished compared to the 2017 run-off, from 66% to 58.5%, while Ms. Le Pen improved her score from 34% to 41.5%, reflecting the changing character of French politics. Nevertheless, given that only two popularly elected presidents have won second terms (Francois Mitterand in 1988 and Jacques Chirac in 2002), Mr. Macron has reason to feel chuffed. European Union leaders, facing twin challenges of the Russian war in Ukraine and a tepid recovery from COVID-19, have enthusiastically welcomed Mr. Macron’s victory given Ms Le Pen overt Euroscepticism.

A changing politics

France’s two-step voting process means that in the first round, voters express their real preferences; in the second round, with the field narrowed to two, they reject the one they dislike more.

At the beginning of the campaign in February, there were a dozen candidates but by end-March, most were fizzling out. The first round, held on April 10, showed the decimation of the two traditional parties that have ruled France since the 1960s, the centre-right Republicans and the centre-left Socialists. Republican candidate Valerie Pecresse, had been part of Mr. Chirac’s team and also Higher Education minister with Mr. Nicholas Sarkozy, managed a 4.8% vote share while Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris since 2016, got a mere 1.7%. From the days of Socialist presidents like Mitterand and Hollande, and Republican presidents like Sarkozy, Chirac and Valery Giscard d’Estaing, this was a rout.

These two parties have been losing ground, from a collective 56% of the vote in the first round in 2012, to 27% in 2017 when Mr. Macron emerged on the scene and captured the imagination of voters as a pro-Europe, business friendly, forward looking liberal. In 2017, this enabled him to redefine the Centrist vote, successfully poaching from both the Republican and Socialist bases.

Five years later, Mr. Macron had a record to defend and counter the image of being a pro-rich, aloof and elitist president. His response to the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests lacked empathy. Ms. Le Pen capitalised on this by seeking to appear more human and approachable, a single mother and a cat lover.

A rough campaign

In the first round on April 10, Mr. Macron led with 27.8%, followed by Ms. Le Pen with 23.1% and left-wing populist Jean Luc Melenchon (France Unbowed) with a credible 21.9%. Extreme-right-wing journalist turned candidate Eric Zemmour whose presence helped Ms. Le Pen appear relatively moderate also got 7% vote. Other mainstream candidates Jean Lasalle, formerly MoDem (Democratic Movement) and Yannick Jadot (Greens) only managed 3.1% and 4.6% respectively. The fact that far-right and far-left parties accounted for 58% of the vote in the first round reflects the growing polarisation in domestic French politics. Centre-left voters switched from Ms. Hidalgo and Mr. Jadot (Greens) to Melenchon and centre-right from Ms. Pecresse to Mr. Macron.

The slow rightward drift in French politics has sharpened since the terrorist attacks in 2015 and the consequent debates on identity and laicite (French version of secularism) emerged as key themes in the early weeks till the Ukraine war and rising cost of living assumed priority.

Mr. Zemmour’s campaign exploited the ‘great replacement’ theory, (originally propounded by Renault Camus) – that non-white, non-Christian and non-French are gradually replacing white Christian French population. Mr. Zemmour grew his base by asking young French people if they were willing to live as a minority in the land of their ancestors. Ms. Le Pen, conscious of the need to retain her base lest they drifted to Zemmour, promised a ban on the hijab (headscarf) and a constitutional amendment that would distinguish between “native born French” and “others” for access to education, housing and other social benefits and restricting citizenship to only those who have “earned it and fully assimilated.”

Mr. Macron was late to join the campaign, thinking that he could ensure support by appearing presidential, involved with geopolitics of war in Ukraine. Since December when tensions began rising, he has had nearly two dozen telephone conversations with President Vladimir Putin, visited Moscow and Kyiv and had multiple exchanges with NATO and EU leaders. He filed his candidature on March 3, a day before the deadline and spent little time on the campaign trail before the first round. His poll ratings slipped from 30% in early March by five points leading to a strategy shift.

It is only in April that Mr. Macron realised that the “progressive liberal centrist” platform that had delivered victory in 2017 was no longer working. The field was dominated either by a utopian extremism of the Left or a nationalist extremism bordering on racism on the Right. Mr. Macron began to talk about building a ‘dam’ to preserve the Centre. To shift the debate from ‘identity’, he promised full employment in five years, tax cuts for households and small businesses and softened his stand on raising the retirement age from 62 years to 65, spreading it over a nine-year timeframe.

For the second round, the debate turned personal. Mr. Macron highlighted Ms. Le Pen’s ties with Mr. Putin, describing him as her ‘banker’, called her a ‘climate sceptic’, blamed her policy as ‘spelling the end of the EU’ and made the election a ‘referendum on secularism and Europe’. Ms. Le Pen blamed him for ignoring the rising cost of food and fuel and declining pensions, sought a ‘Europe of nations’ rather than an EU, called him ‘a climate hypocrite’, and the election a referendum on “Macron or France’.

The obstacles, from June

Having secured his second term, Mr. Macron urgently needs to douse the flames of polarisation. The 72% turnout on Sunday is the lowest in a presidential run-off since 1969. In addition, of the 34.5 million votes cast, the three million blanks or spoilt ballots reflect disenchantment with both candidates. Mr. Melenchon has declared that Macron’s presidency ‘is floating in a sea of abstentions and blank or null ballots’. Over a third of the voters didn’t vote for Mr. Macron and many left-leaning voters only did so because they hated the far-right Ms. Le Pen more.

National Assembly elections are due in June and if the Left take the Assembly, Melenchon could become prime minister; a prospect of co-habitation that ensures policy gridlock. In such a scenario, polarisation will only increase and Mr. Macron’s centrist experiment would be a short-lived reprieve from the rightward shift.

That is why at his victory speech at the foot of the Eiffel tower, Mr. Macron struck a conciliatory note, thanking those who helped defeat Ms. Le Pen and “promising to be a president for all.”

Relief in Europe, India

Such was the concern in Europe about the election that in an unprecedented move, Portugese and Spanish Prime Ministers Antonio Costa and Pedro Sanchez and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz co-authored an op-ed in Le Monde on April 21, urging French voters to reject Ms. Le Pen. The congratulatory messages pouring in from western capitals reflect relief as a Le Pen victory would have severely damaged western unity, at a critical moment in Europe.

India too has reason to be happy with Mr. Macron’s victory. India and France have enjoyed a solid strategic partnership, established in 1998 that has expanded to cover cooperation in defence, nuclear and space sectors, climate issues and renewables, cyber security and counter-terrorism. French presence in the Indo-Pacific has prodded the EU too to shift towards an Indo-Pacific strategy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be traveling to Germany and Denmark on a bilateral visit in the first week of May. It provides a welcome opportunity to spend a day in Paris to congratulate Mr. Macron and impart new momentum to the relationship.

*****

NPT’s Midlife Crisis

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Published by the Valdai Discussion Club on April 8, 2022

(https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/npt-s-midlife-crisis/)

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had entered into force on March 5, 1970 and saw its fifty-year anniversary in 2020.  The 10th Review Conference (RevCon) was originally scheduled to take place in April-May 2020. However, COVID-19 intervened and after repeated postponements, it is now scheduled for August 1-26, 2022.

Today, the NPT is often described as the cornerstone of the global nuclear order. It enjoys near-global adherence and all countries except four (India, Israel, and Pakistan never joined, and North Korea withdrew in 2003) are parties to the NPT. The original text of the NPT gave it a lifespan of 25 years and the 1995 RevCon extended it into perpetuity. Despite such an impressive record, there is a sense of disquiet that clouds the forthcoming RevCon and raises uncomfortable doubts about its future. The question is: will the NPT overcome its midlife crisis, or will it become a victim of its own success?

Accepting political reality

Since this is the age of virtual reality, in the Nuclear Metaverse, the mood among the believers is sanguine. Global nuclear stockpiles are at an all-time low. The two global nuclear superpowers, the USA and USSR that had accumulated over 65,000 nuclear weapons between them have reduced their arsenals to below 15,000 and the operational numbers are lower still. The NPT has been successful in preventing proliferation and only four countries have gone nuclear since it came into effect. The treaty enjoys widespread adherence. Most significantly, nuclear weapons have never been used since 1945, creating a de-facto if not a de-jure, nuclear taboo.

But in the real world driven by politics, the reality looks different. The reason is that the NPT is the product of a global political order that existed in the 1960s and that bipolar world is now history. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 had brought home the risks of global nuclear annihilation to the leaders of both the USA and the USSR.

At the bilateral level, it created a process of bilateral nuclear arms control, beginning with the Hot Line and leading to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and treaties like the SALT I and II, START I, INF, ABM etc. However, this structure is under strain. In 2002, USA unilaterally walked out of the ABM Treaty and in 2019, the INF Treaty collapsed. The old model of bilateral arms control was based on ‘nuclear parity’ and ‘mutual vulnerability’ and no longer holds in an age of multi-polarity marked by asymmetry.

The Cuban Missile Crisis also generated a convergence of interests between the two rival hegemons that nuclear proliferation should be strongly curbed. This helped kickstart the negotiations for the NPT. To make it attractive, it was initially conceived as a three-legged stool – non-proliferation (countries without nuclear weapons would have to forswear their right to acquire them and accept full scope safeguards); disarmament (obliging the five countries with nuclear weapons – USA, USSR, UK, France and China, to negotiate in good faith to reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear arsenals though no time-frame was prescribed); and third, to ensure that non-nuclear weapon states would enjoy full access to peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology.  

Evaluating the NPT

On closer examination, it would appear that it is only on the non-proliferation front that the NPT was successful. In fact, during the first fifteen years of the NPT, the US and Soviet arsenals increased from below 40000 to nearly 70000, making it clear that a nuclear arms race was on. The subsequent reductions in the arsenals were driven by the political dynamics and not NPT-related compulsions, because no disarmament negotiations have ever taken place in the NPT framework.

Further, recently declassified papers reveal that there were over a dozen instances where the US and USSR came close to initiating a nuclear exchange, many of which were based on system errors or misperceptions about the intentions of the adversary. Today, with rising tensions and nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, the risk of accidental or inadvertent nuclear exchange remains high.

Even the nuclear taboo is under strain, because the major nuclear powers are pursuing research into developing more usable low-yield nuclear weapons. Ballistic missile defence, hypersonic systems that carry both conventional and nuclear payloads, and growing offensive cyber capabilities that can interfere with command-and-control systems blur the dividing line between nuclear and conventional weapons and create incentives for early use.

Nuclear technology is a 75-year-old technology and while export controls have helped in curbing proliferation, new developments in computing and simulations, dual use systems, space and cyber capabilities increase risks of nuclear entanglement in ways that could not have been foreseen in the 1960s.

The NPT has therefore reached the limits of its success as far as the proliferation objective is concerned. However, its packaging as a balanced three-legged stool has been exposed to reveal a rather wobbly one-legged stool because it de-legitimised proliferation but not nuclear weapons. It recognised five nuclear-weapon states because they had tested a nuclear device before January 1, 1967, the cut-off date under the NPT who converted their special responsibility into an exclusive privilege to retain their nuclear arsenals permanently. 

Rediscovering political relevance

The clearest reflection of the growing political frustration among other countries was reflected in the in the humanitarian initiative spearheaded by a coalition of non-governmental organisations and civil society to negotiate a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. The negotiations were concluded in 2017 and in January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force. Today, 86 countries are signatories, and of these, 60 have ratified their participation. All of these are non-nuclear weapon states, party to the NPT in good standing. The TPNW outlaws the development, testing, production, manufacturing, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, stationing, deployment, use, threat of use, transfer, or receipt of nuclear weapons. According to them, since nuclear weapons were the only weapon of mass destruction not subject to a comprehensive ban, despite their catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences, the TPNW plugs a significant gap in international law. Expectedly, all countries that possess nuclear weapons (and their allies) have refused to have anything to do with the TPNW, reflecting the growing political divisions.

If the NPT has to retain political relevance, it has to adapt to the changed political realities of the 21st century and acknowledge the advances made in nuclear science and technology. Merely repeating the tired cliches of the past is clearly not enough. A new political convergence of interests has to be built if the NPT has to successfully overcome its midlife crisis.

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