Beware the “N-Word”!

International Relations

We are not yet facing an imminent nuclear confrontation. But history teaches us that catastrophe seldom announces itself in advance

By Vijay Makhan

As the US–Iran war resumes its destructive course, nuclear escalation may remain remote. But in a conflict without a clear objective, an exit strategy or an effective diplomatic mechanism, even the unthinkable can no longer be dismissed.

The guns blaze anew. After a relative restraint and yet another failed attempt to end the war, missiles and drones are once more traversing Middle Eastern skies. The ceasefire Memorandum of Understanding has proved scarcely worth the paper on which it was written.

The war launched on 28 February was proclaimed in Washington as a short, decisive incursion. Iran’s nuclear capacity would be obliterated; its leadership would collapse; regime change might follow. Six months later, none of those objectives appears to have been achieved. The conflict, far from demonstrating overwhelming power, has turned into one of undefined destination.

In recent articles, I have repeatedly argued that wars are far easier to begin than to conclude and questioned the recurring great-power temptation to believe that military superiority permits political realities to be bent to one’s will. Bombs can destroy indiscriminately but cannot so readily extinguish nationalism, historical memory or a people’s capacity for resistance.

Nor are the repercussions confined to the battlefield. Economies thousands of kilometres away, including Mauritius, are bearing the brunt of decisions in which they had neither voice nor part. The conflict is therefore not only exhausting armies; it is also exhausting societies, exasperating public opinion and hardening attitudes across an already fractured world.

It is against that background that the “N-word” is beginning to be whispered in certain quarters. There is no evidence, at present, of a decision to employ nuclear weapons against Iran. The possibility remains remote and should not be transformed through speculation into an established threat. Yet one can never be too careful when a prolonged war frustrates those who had promised a rapid victory—and when the world’s most powerful military is directed by a President whose conduct on the international stage has frequently verged on the brash and unpredictable.

Therein lies the warning. Nuclear weapons do not have to be used to become dangerous. Their mere invocation gradually normalises the idea that they may again constitute usable instruments of warfare rather than deterrence.

This should compel us to revisit the succession of treaties elaborated since the Cold War. What did they profess to accomplish—and what have they failed to achieve?

The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 prohibited nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. It did not end underground testing or the development of more sophisticated weapons.

The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty rested on three pillars: non-proliferation, peaceful nuclear cooperation and eventual disarmament. It may have prevented the emergence of many more nuclear-armed states but its application has become increasingly unequal. The non-nuclear majority agreed not to acquire the bomb; the nuclear powers undertook, under Article VI, to pursue negotiations towards disarmament.

The Treaty has thus proved more effective at discouragement than prevention of acquisition. Meanwhile, the obligations of the non-nuclear majority are rigorously enforced, while the nuclear powers’ commitment to disarm appears indefinitely postponed.

There is also a consequential ambiguity at the Treaty’s core. It does not define a “nuclear weapon”, nor establish precisely when its “manufacture” begins. A state may therefore acquire much of the scientific knowledge, technology, nuclear material and certain components necessary to approach the threshold without assembling a weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards can monitor declared nuclear material, but they cannot eliminate the technical knowledge or latent capacity that could enable a future “breakout.” 

The 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is yet to formally enter into force. Agreements between Washington and Moscow reduced portions of their Cold War arsenals, but several were later abandoned, suspended or simply withered. The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons represented the clearest rejection of the bomb by the international majority. Yet the nuclear-armed states—and most countries sheltered beneath their nuclear umbrellas—remain outside it.

These treaties have therefore managed the nuclear danger without eliminating it. The paradox? A few states maintain that nuclear weapons are indispensable to their security while insisting that their acquisition by others would pose a danger to humanity.

Iran exposes the contradiction. It is told that it must not acquire nuclear weapons. But what conclusion might it, or any other threatened state, draw if a nuclear power were even to contemplate their use against a non-nuclear adversary? Would that strengthen non-proliferation—or persuade others that possession of the bomb provides the ultimate insurance against attack?

The collapse of the 2015 nuclear agreement is equally instructive. Diplomacy had produced a verifiable framework limiting Iran’s nuclear activities. The United States withdrew from it in 2018 and is now attempting, through warfare, to contain a danger that painstaking negotiation had placed under international supervision.

Bombing may destroy installations and delay a nuclear programme. It cannot bomb scientific knowledge out of existence—but may provoke and reinforce the determination to acquire nuclear capability.

Where, through all this, is the United Nations? As I have observed throughout this crisis, it was marginalised when the war began, sidelined during the inconclusive peace initiatives and remains largely absent as hostilities regain momentum. An international system designed to prevent war has once again been reduced to counting its consequences.

We are not yet facing an imminent nuclear confrontation. But history teaches us that catastrophe seldom announces itself in advance. It emerges from miscalculation, wounded pride, accumulated frustration and the disappearance of credible exits.

The “N-word” should therefore remain a warning—not a prediction. But it is one the world would be reckless to ignore. For, once the unthinkable becomes speakable, the distance separating rhetoric from action may prove far shorter than humanity imagines.

2 September 2026

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 4 September 2026