The nuclear summit of 47 countries that was convened by the United States skirted the real issues of proliferation and disarmament of atomic weapons by the nuclear weapon states. Instead, the hyped up discourse was centred on preventing the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-state actors or “irresponsible” state actors, shifting focus away from the primary problem – that of state terrorism in both its nuclear and non-nuclear forms. The self-serving talk of nuclear terrorism legitimises the possession of these instruments of mass destruction by the nuclear weapon states.

A s expected, at the recent nuclear summit of 47 countries in Wash- ington, US President Barack Obama waxed eloquent on the extreme danger of fissile materials falling into the hands of groups like Al Qaida which would then make and use a nuclear bomb. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, among others, dutifully applauded this view of the dangers of non-state nuclear terrorism seeking only to put his own spin on the matter by indirectly pointing the finger at Pakistan as a collaborating culprit in this respect.

Given that the very nature of nuclear weapons discourse by nuclear weapon states (NWS) is unavoidably hypocritical and dishonest, is it not time for a closer look at the apparently self-evident, and certainly self-serving (to NWS) claim that one of the great dangers today and tomor­row, if not the great danger, is that of nuclear weapons being built or falling into the hands of “terrorist groups”? One of the purposes and effects of this self-serving talk of nuclear terrorism, and hence its popularity and frequency, is that it legiti­mises and excuses the NWS themselves. It does this in a number of ways. First, it dramatises the wholly artificial “divide” between the so-called responsible nuclear powers and the supposedly irresponsible nuclear agents, actual or potential. These irresponsible agents are of course selec­tively identified – among NWS it is said to be Pakistan and North Korea; among aspirant states it is Iran and Iraq; among non-state aspirants it is supposed to be a range of Islamist groups.

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