Revision summary
Post-1968 progress included the NPT bargain, INF and START/New START cuts, and chemical and biological bans. Russia’s war, INF collapse, frozen New START practice and China’s expansion reopen nuclear politics. Great powers taking sides in regional conflicts raise the value of nuclear hedges and missiles. Idealism’s institutions remain; Waltzian anarchy is again the loud fact. Jeopardised is accurate; total erasure of the non-proliferation majority is not yet true.
Model answer
Introduction
- The decades after 1968 built a thin but real disarmament and arms-control architecture: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, bilateral United States–Soviet and then United States–Russian cuts, and bans on chemical and biological weapons. The statement that a changing global order and regional wars with great powers taking sides have jeopardised that progress is largely right. The comment should say how, and how far.
Body
What progress existed
- The NPT created a bargain: non-nuclear-weapon states abstain; recognised weapon states pursue disarmament in good faith; civilian nuclear cooperation is allowed. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, START and New START cut and capped deployed strategic arms. The Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention set legal floors. Nuclear-weapon-free zones and IAEA safeguards were the daily machinery. None of this abolished nuclear weapons. It slowed spread and reduced some inventories.
How the present jeopardises it
Great-power rivalry has returned as the organising fact. Russia’s war on Ukraine, discussed in 1(c), came with nuclear threats and a breakdown of cooperative verification. The INF Treaty collapsed earlier amid United States–Russia accusations. New START’s implementation has been frozen in political terms even when paper remains. China’s arsenal expansion sits outside the old bilateral frame. The United States, NATO allies and Russia treat nuclear weapons again as usable political currency, not as a residual Cold War stockpile.
Regional wars pull patrons in. Ukraine is a NATO-supported defence against a nuclear-armed invader. In West Asia, great-power alignment around Israel, Iran and armed groups raises the value of missiles and, for some states, of a nuclear hedge. The Korean peninsula and AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines show that proliferation and naval nuclearisation remain live. Export controls and sanctions replace inspections when trust dies. Waltz would say anarchy was always there. The idealist machinery of 1(d) needed a minimum of great-power concert that no longer exists.
Conventional arms racing, hypersonic missiles, and dual-use space and cyber tools further blur the old counting rules of warheads and bombers.
Comment
‘Jeopardised’ is the correct verb. Treaties are unravelling or unused. Disarmament Article VI of the NPT looks empty when weapon states modernise. The progress is not fully erased: most states remain non-nuclear; chemical weapons still carry stigma; the IAEA still inspects. A comment that says ‘disarmament is over’ is too neat. A comment that says the architecture is healthy is false. The 2020s are a backsliding decade for arms control, driven by revisionist war and by a order in which the United States, China and Russia do not share one security regime.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD P[Past gains NPT START INF] --> J[Jeopardy] O[Changing order] --> J W[Regional wars patrons] --> J J --> M[Modernisation threats frozen verification]
Conclusion
Past gains in non-proliferation and bilateral cuts depended on a workable great-power bargain. Sided regional wars and a contested order have broken that bargain. Disarmament is jeopardised. It is not yet a blank page, because the NPT membership and the stigma of some weapons still exist.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
"Deglobalisation is displacing globalisation." Comment.
Next question in the 2024 paper (Q2). View answer →
-
Is AUKUS a proliferation problem?
It transfers naval nuclear propulsion to Australia under NPT interpretations that many non-nuclear states contest. It is part of the Indo-Pacific contest, not a new warhead state.
-
Did disarmament ever really happen?
Inventories fell from Cold War peaks, and testing norms held for a time. That is progress. It was never general and complete disarmament.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2025 · Q5(d) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Does the Non-Aligned Movement have any future in the wake of India's growing indifference towards it? -
2025 · Q8(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 20 marks
India's reluctance to perceive any 'existential threat' inevitably made the multilateral path to nuclear security a 'default option' until it decided to cross nuclear Rubicon in 1998. Identify and analyze some of the major reasons behind this shift in India's position on the nuclear question -
2024 · Q3(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Do you agree with the view that the USA uses NATO as a traditional tool of strategy to perpetuate its hegemony in the world? -
2024 · Q8(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the implications of the scrapping of the Free Movement Regime with Myanmar by the Indian Government on the complex ethno-political dynamics of the north-eastern region. -
2023 · Q3(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 20 marks
"During the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement tried to become a Third force in World Politics, but failed because it was too large and unwieldy." Discuss -
2023 · Q3(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Account for the rise of European Union as a highly influential regional organisation -
2023 · Q4(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the various constraints on American hegemony today. Which of these are likely to become more prominent in the future? -
2023 · Q6(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 20 marks
Arms trade, economic ties and congruent geo-political interests are no longer the three pillars of India - Russia relationship in the emerging strategic context. Comment
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2024 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the interpretive approach to the study of comparative politics.
Approaches to the Study of International Relations
The interpretive approach studies political action as meaning in context, following Weber’s verstehen and later cultural and linguistic turns. It replies to behaviouralism’s search for covering laws by asking how votes, nations and authority are understood locally. Thick description, ethnography and discourse analysis are typical tools. It explains legitimacy, nationalism and everyday state practice that a constitution or a class map alone cannot supply. Limits are relativism, weak generalisation, and neglect of material and institutional constraint if used alone.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2024 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Explain the central tenets of the World-Systems Theory.
Approaches to the Study of International Relations
Wallerstein’s unit is the capitalist world-economy since the long sixteenth century, not the isolated nation-state. Core, semi-periphery and periphery form a durable three-tier division of labour. Unequal exchange and strong/weak states move surplus toward the core. The theory rejects modernisation’s national ladder and differs from Waltz’s interstate anarchy as first cause. Limits include economic determinism and underplaying state autonomy and culture; mobility exists but hierarchy persists.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2024 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
The expansionist tendencies of the current Russian regime indicate its intentions for the realization of a Greater Russia on the lines of the Soviet era. Comment.
Comparative Politics
Russia’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine, plus pressure on Belarus and nuclear signalling, show expansionist intent in the post-Soviet space. The Greater Russia story denies full independence of neighbours, especially Ukraine. The Soviet analogy fits geography of control more than ideology: today’s regime is nationalist and oligarchic, not a communist world-system. Morgenthau and Waltz explain power and structure; they do not make the war merely defensive. Comment: accept expansionism; reject a simple USSR restoration.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.