Doctrinal Fallout

The defence minister of India's Hindu nationalist government has celebrated the country's status as a nuclear power by implying that the present policy of not striking first with weapons of mass destruction may be about to undergo a Narendran modification. India developed its capacity for justifiable genocide twenty years ago in order to deter what it claimed was a threat from the Heathen Chinee; nevertheless, and despite the subcontinent's long and enviable heritage of British imperial values, Pakistan was somehow prompted to develop its own nuclear weapons in order to deter the threat from India. The re-definition of deterrence as "striking first if we should happen to feel like it" has precedent among the similarly primitive Christian nationalists who run the United States; fortunately we are all aware, because the pious and the patriots never tire of telling us so, that the two great peacekeepers in human affairs are religion and nuclear weapons.