The war in Ukraine is a “global war” and the distant war in Europe will soon make its presence felt in India’s neighbourhood, said D.B. Venkatesh Varma, former Indian Ambassador to Russia on Wednesday. In the backdrop of the hair-trigger nuclear posture between Russia and the U.S. and the emergence of China as a major nuclear power, he said one of the most consequential decisions by India was to not sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“With the rise of China as a nuclear peer competitor, the bipolar nuclear deterrence structure (comprised of the U.S. and Russia) has morphed into a tripolar nuclear structure whose stability remains untested. This remarkable story of China’s emergence as a major nuclear power, unconstrained by the NPT, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Fissile Missile Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) and non-existence of any arms control in the space, cyber and maritime spheres is really unbelievable…,” Mr. Varma said while speaking at a seminar on ‘Global Nuclear Landscape’ organised by the Centre for Air Power Studies. “China benefited initially from big power distract, now it benefits from big power perfidy and incompetence.”
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Talking of India’s standing, Mr. Varma who retired as India’s envoy to Moscow last October, said India stands in a “relatively” advantageous position because of what it had done and what it had refrained from doing. “Looking back, one of the most consequential decisions by India was to not sign the NPT, and the three-decade struggle to wriggle out of its constraints in the civil nuclear deal... The India as we know today would not have existed (had it signed the NPT),” he stated while stressing on the need to depend on own resources to build on the capabilities in the military, nuclear, space and cyber domains.
In an era of big power competition and open confrontation, the expectation that one big power will prioritise India’s security interests or the notion that we have shared security objectives "is borne more out of fantasy than out of reality". “Independence in thought and action - strategic autonomy. There is no mantra, but this one mantra,” he stressed.
On the war in Ukraine, Mr. Varma said the war is acquiring new objectives as it goes forward and added that contrary to assumptions that wars would be short due to international pressure, they are going last long.
