The Proliferation Trap: Global And Regional Risks – OpEd
Recent remarks by India’s Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Anil Chauhan, have once again raised alarm about New Delhi’s evolving military posture and its troubling implications for global security.
Speaking on September 30, 2025 during the centenary celebrations of the Military Nursing Service in Delhi Cantonment, General Chauhan declared that India “will not be deterred by nuclear blackmail” and emphasized that radiological preparedness must be an essential component of national security. He went further, highlighting readiness against nuclear and biological threats — statements that reveal much more than routine strategic signaling. They point toward a dangerous normalization of nuclear thinking in India’s security doctrine, one that threatens regional stability and undermines global non-proliferation norms.
For decades, the global community has sought to limit the spread and role of nuclear weapons. Through frameworks like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), nations have worked to reduce nuclear risks and move toward eventual disarmament. India, however, remains an outlier in this global effort. It has never signed the NPT, arguing that the treaty is discriminatory, yet it has steadily expanded its nuclear arsenal and delivery systems well beyond the notion of “credible minimum deterrence” that it once espoused.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI, 2025), India continues to modernize its nuclear triad — enhancing land-based missiles, sea-launched ballistic missiles, and nuclear-capable aircraft. These moves place it among the few states actively expanding their arsenals, contributing to an emerging nuclear arms race not only in South Asia but also in the broader Indo-Pacific region.
Even more concerning is India’s integration of nuclear thinking into conventional military planning. General Chauhan’s emphasis on “radiological preparedness” as part of national security goes beyond the traditional concept of nuclear deterrence. It signals a readiness to incorporate nuclear scenarios into operational planning — a move that risks lowering the threshold for nuclear use and increasing the potential for catastrophic miscalculation.
This creates what analysts call a “security betrayal trap”: regional rivals, perceiving India’s nuclear expansion and doctrinal assertiveness as threats, are compelled to enhance their own capabilities in response. Pakistan, in particular, faces an increasingly complex strategic environment, forced to balance against both India’s conventional military superiority and its growing nuclear arsenal. This dynamic escalates risks of arms racing, crisis instability, and miscalculation — especially in a region marked by historical hostility, unresolved disputes, and fragile deterrence equations.
Moreover, India’s approach undermines global arms control efforts. By enjoying strategic privileges without disarmament commitments, India embodies what some scholars call a “disarmament deception syndrome” — a dual-track strategy that allows it to expand nuclear capabilities while avoiding the responsibilities that other nuclear states face. This double standard erodes the credibility of international nonproliferation regimes and sets a dangerous precedent for other states seeking similar exceptions.
The consequences of India’s shifting nuclear posture are most acutely felt in South Asia, where even small missteps can have devastating consequences. India’s pursuit of prestige-driven military capabilities and assertive doctrines heightens tensions with Pakistan, where conventional asymmetries already fuel strategic anxieties. By openly discussing nuclear preparedness as part of routine national security policy, Indian leaders risk normalizing nuclear weapons as tools of statecraft rather than weapons of last resort.
Compounding these risks is India’s ongoing modernization of its command and control systems and strategic delivery platforms. Rapid advancements without corresponding transparency measures or confidence-building initiatives make the regional security environment more volatile. The integration of nuclear capabilities with emerging technologies such as cyber warfare, space-based systems, and artificial intelligence adds another layer of complexity, heightening the risks of accidental escalation or preemptive miscalculation.
India’s growing nuclear ambitions and doctrinal assertiveness represent more than a regional security challenge — they pose a significant threat to global peace. The normalization of nuclear readiness in Indian strategic discourse signals a departure from traditional deterrence toward a more aggressive, prestige-driven posture. Without external checks, this trajectory risks destabilizing not only South Asia but also the broader global security order.
India’s recent statements mark a disturbing shift from nuclear weapons as deterrents to nuclear weapons as instruments of strategic identity. By integrating nuclear and bio-threat readiness into its broader security framework, India is militarizing domains traditionally reserved for civilian governance and diplomacy. The world cannot afford complacency. Without decisive international engagement and structural reforms to the global nonproliferation regime, India’s pursuit of nuclear prestige risks igniting a new era of arms racing and strategic instability. The stakes are not just regional — they are existential. Global peace and security depend on ensuring that nuclear weapons remain weapons of last resort, not tools of political ambition.
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I would like to make several comments on Ali Khan Bangash’s 6 October essay on the nuclear “proliferation trap”. First and foremost, atmospheric computer modelling in the early 1980s suggested that a threshold existed for nuclear explosions beyond which the sun could be blotted out by sufficient black carbon injected into the upper atmosphere, resulting in weeks or months of cold, dark conditions (nuclear winter, see the TTAPS study of 1983: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.222.4630.1283).
Subsequent modelling starting in 2007 using modern computers lowered this threshold dramatically: Rather than the hundreds or thousands of nuclear explosions which TTAPS and other researchers originally believed necessary to trigger the nuclear winter phenomenon, it became clear that 100 Hiroshima-sized explosions (~15 kilotons) over urban areas would be sufficient to trigger the deaths of billions of people (https://www.giss.nasa.gov/pubs/abs/xi08000i.html).
This presents an irreducible problem for advocates of nuclear deterrence: Any nuclear conflict which approaches the aggregate of 1.5 megatons over urban targets is likely to trigger unacceptable GLOBAL casualties — innocent civilians from the other side of the world who have nothing to do with the conflict in question. Strategically, this represents an even greater nightmare than “standard” nuclear attack planning: What to do if the enemy explodes ~1 megaton of nuclear weapons over your cities? Retaliate, and risk laying waste to large swaths of humanity and civilization?
It is clear to those who have eyes to see that the only rational future for nuclear deterrence is, in the short term, self-deterrence, and, on an urgent basis in the longer term, total nuclear disarmament.
Some other thoughts:
>According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI, 2025)
SIPRI, as with the rest of the global disarmament community, bears an enormous responsibility here. The facts of nuclear winter must be shared, not only with the rulers of all current and potential nuclear weapons states, but with the entire planet. Nothing else matters.
>Moreover, India’s approach undermines global arms control efforts.
Irrelevant. The nuclear winter problem is immune to arms control solutions so long as global arsenals exceed 1.5 megatons of explosive power.
>The consequences of India’s shifting nuclear posture are
Irrelevant. See above. The nuclear winter problem admits of no local solution. Global and complete nuclear disarmament is the only rational answer.
>Global peace and security depend on ensuring that nuclear weapons remain weapons of last resort, not tools of political ambition.
See above. The only solution is total nuclear disarmament.