 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today is the 72nd anniversary of the horrific nuclear bombing in Hiroshima in 1945. To discuss more about this and the threat to the world in terms of nuclear weapons, we have Prabir Pulkhaista, founding editor of NewsClick and D. Raghunandhan who is from the Delhi Science Forum. Prabir and Raghu, welcome to NewsClick. How do you see the present world in the context of growing number of nuclear weapons? I think the scenario as for nuclear weapons are concerned has actually worsened considerably. Back from the days when we used to talk about the development of the neutron bomb and the new threats nuclear weapons are posing at that particular point of time. So from 80s, the seed has actually started worsening now. There was an interregnum where the nucleus stalemate had been recognized. There were steps to disarm. There were the salt negotiations, the start negotiations and treaties. There was a stepping back from the brink as it were at that point of time. Today things have actually become much worse. We have new nuclear weapon states, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea. We have this recognition that the United States and Russia seem to be preparing at least a scenario of a nuclear weapons exchange. And this we could go to the history of this later. This certainly has brought the nuclear weapon threat much closer. In fact, recently Chomsky has a long speech on this where he says that we have now come to the brink of extinction. And humanity will have to decide very quickly which path it wants to tread for extinction or for survival of humanity. And at the moment an accidental weapon exchange, if you are on the brink, any small thing can trigger a holocaust. And I think that's the kind of scenario we're facing. Let's not forget in that whole period what is called the Cold War, they were on a hair trigger alert for a long period and a number of exchanges were very narrowly averted. Some of them as malfunctioning of equipment. Some of them as alarms which had been falsely raised. All of this is something that can trigger a holocaust, a complete extinction of humanity, not a genocide, complete ethnoside as it were. So I think this is a very, very dangerous moment. And on 6th of August today, we remember Hiroshima. It's important for us to bring back the peace movement, the nuclear disarmament movement, because all of that sort of went away after the fall of Soviet Union. And this was thought that this is the end of that kind of nuclear hair trigger which the world was on. This has not really happened. Well, if you ask me besides what Prabir has just said, ever since we saw a large number of countries going nuclear, some overtly and openly and some with a bomb under the bed, if you like, there were attempts at apparently trying to contain the spread of nuclear weapons and of rolling back the stockpiles of nuclear weapons which the leading nuclear powers were holding. None of that has actually happened today. The architecture evolved globally to try and contain the spread of nuclear weapons which revolved around the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has completely failed in checking the spread of nuclear weapons either to more countries or the depth of nuclear weapons held by specific nuclear weapons nations. Neither of them has been checked. There was a recent conference of the countries of the world who are part of the NPT and once again the issue was raised there about Article 7 which calls for complete denuclearization, nuclear disarmament in the world. The one aspect of the NPT which has been completely ignored since its inception precisely because the leading nuclear power the United States has refused to denuclearize and in fact has also refused to declare a no first strike policy which means even today the United States retains its right to use nuclear weapons against not only other nuclear weapon states but against anybody and if the United States does not take any measures to step forward to even attempt or commit itself to a pathway to denuclearization there is no way in which any other country is going to do. So as I was saying I think the world is certainly a more dangerous place today or at least has not been a less dangerous place and I think we will have a chance in future discussions today to see how in a sense the dangers of proliferation are across countries and the danger of proliferation by countries of types of weapons etcetera has actually intensified. Raghur to talk more about non-proliferation treaty. Do you think that the non-proliferation treaty still holds the key to universal disarmament? It never did and it never will because it is fundamentally flawed as a structure because the NPT says that the permanent five powers are allowed nuclear weapons but nobody else is allowed. The whole point of nuclear weapons in the world is if one power has it it is an obvious inducement to others to also have nuclear weapons if for no other reason than self-preservation. If I know that you have a weapon with which you can hit me obviously I will want something with which I can defend myself against the strike and that builds in an incentive to me. The P5 led by the United States in this case claimed that we are good people we have got nuclear weapons but we will not use them but all our experience has shown that this cannot be trusted. The United States still today remains the only country which is actually used a weapon continues to proclaim that it retains the right to use nuclear weapons and if you see in the recent past some countries which had acquired nuclear weapons capabilities Libya for example gave up its nuclear weapons. It did not have nuclear weapons it was trying to get some capability. So it gave up the efforts accepting the assurances that you would be safe from attack. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was also the US claimed had weapons of mass destruction which turned out later not to be the case but in any case they both these countries which sought a nuclear weapons capability in order to defend themselves saw themselves attacked by the US led forces their leaderships killed and destroyed after giving up their nuclear weapons. So today when the United States under Donald Trump wants to negotiate with North Korea and asks North Korea to denuclearize from the North why will the North do it when it has seen what has happened in Iraq and Libya and it knows what is on the cards if it denuclearizes there is no incentive for them to do so currently there is no incentive for India and Pakistan to do so either and Israel has never made a secret of the fact that although it has nuclear weapons it has no intention to giving them up because that is the sole currency that it has for dominance of the region. So given this logic that possession of nuclear weapons brings you power on the international stage it is an obvious incentive for everybody else to pursue it. Iran had acquired some capabilities but entered into an agreement with the United States and Europe to tone down that capability that it has and today finds the United States turning around and reopening the discussion which must be making the Iranians wonder why they agreed to the attempts that they did in the first place. So I do not see that the current structure paves the way for any attempts at denuclearization or nuclear disarmament NPT certainly has not helped I think either the NPT's article 7 should become the guiding of the clause of the NPT and compel universal nuclear disarmament or we should be thinking of a completely new architecture for global nuclear disarmament. Quick response also to the question is that disarmament was never put as a time bound program it was supposed to be in the article 7 it was supposed to be something which would be good would be done as good faith negotiations. The good faith negotiations took for a very brief period and stopped again after that particularly with various steps the United States took which I am now going to get into right now. But this is one central issue that that happened and we must also see the context that Raghur talked about not only regime change in Iraq and Libya but also the United States is a sole country I would not say the sole country but certainly one country which has invaded a number of other countries or had regime change operations and none of it sanctioned by the United Nations bar you can talk about Afghanistan being the only one where there was some semblance of even negotiations all of them were unilateral ones you can start from their backyards in Latin America to various places. So given the American record of invading other countries and having nuclear weapons Raghur talked this issue of blackmail that the fact is not only that they can bomb countries using weapons of mass destruction but in a pre-emptive strike. So this is it's not just a preventive strike but a pre-emptive strike. So these things essentially this postulates make then defense against weapons the other weapons also issue on the cards because honestly the conventional weapon strength of the United States is so huge that for countries to resist using conventional weapons becomes difficult. Therefore North Korea's argument was nuclear weapons and missiles is a low-cost tragedy for us to fight what could be an invasion by the United States. I think that's also the reason today that traction particularly after Gaddafi's regime change and killing I think has become also an issue on which the nuclear non-proliferation treaty virtually has lost all significance. Previ talking about the blackmail we have seen in recent times especially after Donald Trump has come to power about the rhetoric of my nuclear button is big bigger than yours much bigger. So in this context we also see that there is an escalation of relationship between United States and Russia where Russian the US rhetoric of threat and rhetoric is quite increasing and we also see that Russia has recently acquired a smart weapon. Do you see the there is an increasing nuclear race which is happening? Well the US media has tried to project it as suddenly Russia unleashing a nuclear race. There is a set of new weapons Russia has talked about some of them it seems are fairly advanced in terms of what it can do. It also said very clearly that they are doing it because America refuses to talk to them United States refuses to talk to them and has ringed them around with the ABM shields. Now ABM treaty was designed essentially to do what is called a certain kind of parity between nuclear weapon states. The assumption being if both sides are able to destroy each other they will not use nuclear weapons and in order to that race nuclear weapons race to be frozen they did not want anti-ballistic shields to be deployed because then the one conventional way of overwhelming such shields is to increase the number of weapons. So this would have been an astronomical increase in nuclear weapons as more and more shields are deployed. So this is the reason why the ABM treaty anti-ballistic design treaty was seen as a measure which would actually bring a kind of nuclear freeze and if necessary even a nuclear disarmament because it assures mutual assured destruction which otherwise seems to be a very contrary logic for any peace to happen. This is the logic now United States withdrew in 2001 from the ABM treaty that itself sounded a warning that this whole argument of a nuclear parity would actually disappear and this could lead to renewed arms race. It would not have happened even then if two things had continued one the continuation of the start, continuation of the start talks which is how to bring down the number of weapons that essentially gets frozen. Deployment of ABM shields then start happening in Poland Baltic. Now they are supposed to be initially talk was against Iran it does not make any sense being all done on the borders of Russia and Russia immediately are repeatedly asked who are you deploying it against there is really no answer. There also now nuclear weapons which are there in Europe which can be delivered in any place at least near Moscow in a matter of 3 to 4 minutes. So given this shortening of strike times and the fact you are putting a ballistic missile shield around Russia, Russia's conventional reply would be then to scale up its weapon strength. What they have done is not the numbers but they are the kind of weapons hypersonic weapons things which can go in a zigzag way close to the ground and increasing the range of such weapons again submarine based weapons which can do or go really travel much further. So they have really used what I would call conventional increase in strength of the of how the delivery systems can operate which can defeat the ABM shield and Putin was very clear he said we have this weapons but what we want is America United States to recognize that this is an unwinnable war and come and negotiate on nuclear disarmament or at least scaling down the weapons and that's something the United States has refused to do. I think that is the reason why this quote-unquote nuclear race started and it is an unfortunate fact that the US media on this is so loyal shall we say to the larger geostrategic interests of the United States that it does not recognize that this can't constitutes a threat to humanity. It's not a question of Russia and the United States. It's a really question of humanity that the whole globe is at stake not Mother Earth but all human beings on Mother Earth is really facing extinction. This is something that they don't seem to recognize and that is why it's important to bring back this issue on the Hiroshima Day 6th of August important to bring back to the doomsday clock which had been pushed back a little because of all the nuclear disarmament measures which Russia and the United States has done that is now being has been advanced and we are much closer to new nuclear Armageddon than we have ever been in the past except for a brief period in the Cold War during the Cold War. I think that's the threat we all now carry. Thank you Praveer and thank you Raghu for speaking to the news click. Thank you for watching NewsClick. Please log in to our website www.newsclick.in