05 August 2023 The Hindu Editorials Analysis | The Hindu Newspaper Analysis | Daily Current Affairs
05 August 2023 The Hindu Editorials Analysis | The Hindu Newspaper Analysis | Daily Current Affairs #editorial #currentaffairs #upsc
Satyavan Anand
The Hindu Editorials Analysis
The lessons of Hiroshima must not drift away
Worldwide’s pursuit of Saudi-Israel rapprochement
Incremental injustice
A tentative rethink
The lessons of Hiroshima must not drift away
The morning of August 6, 1945, dawned
clear and sunny as the Enola Gay
wheeled over Hiroshima and dropped
its payload on the city centre. The 15kt
uranium bomb exploded 600 metres above the
Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall,
instantly flattening everything and everyone
below. Only the skeletal construction of the hall
remained, bearing witness to the moment when
our beliefs about weapons and wars changed.
The concept of deterrence
In the intervening 78 years, we have witnessed
the rising and fall of nuclear threats. Especially as nuclear weapons
became more powerful, it became clear that any
nuclear use would be a global job.
The taboo is grounded firmly in our treating
nuclear weapons as different: nuclear weapons,
in Bernard Brodie’s celebrated phrase, are the
‘absolute weapon’.
The special
status of nuclear weapons rests on the
continually reaffirmed knowledge gained from
the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that
nuclear weapons are indiscriminate and do not
distinguish between combatants and
noncombatants; they contaminate the
environment for decades; and the effects of the radiation are felt for generations. There are
people in Japan still living with the consequences
of August 1945.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued
several veiled and not so veiled nuclear threats,
ranging from reminding the world of Russia’s
nuclear weapons status at the start of the war
against Ukraine.
Thirty eight years after the leaders Ronald
Reagan of the United States and Mikhail
Gorbachev of the Soviet Union declared that ‘a
nuclear war cannot be won and must never be
fought’ (and less than a year after Mr. Putin and
President Joe Biden reaffirmed this pledge in June
2021), Russia was raising the spectre of nuclear
Armageddon in Europe.
The U.S., for example, has tactical weapons ranging
from a fraction of 1kt to 170kt. The bomb that fell
on Hiroshima was 15k.
At the height of the Cold War, there were
almost 70,000 nuclear weapons scattered around
the globe, either in storage or deployed, some on
hair trigger warnings. That we avoided a nuclear
exchange is down in part to the lessons of
Hiroshima, and in part to sheer, dumb luck, as
the history of near misses throughout the Cold
War demonstrates.
Worldwide’s pursuit of Saudi-Israel rapprochement
The proverbial propensity of the ‘Middle
East’ to outpouring surprises is on call again.
This time it is about the chances of
success of dogged, albeit quiet, United States
diplomacy to reconcile two regional
powerhouses, viz. Saudi Arabia and Israel.
is taking place under challenging
circumstances. The White House has had tepid
relations with leaders of both countries, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi
Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin
Salman.
After nearly eight decades of the U.S. Saudi
“Energy for Security” compact of 1945, Riyadh
has been assiduously diversifying its strategic
options. It has reconciled, at least tactically, with
its archenemy Iran through Chinese mediation.
Saudi-Israeli rapprochement would have a
mildly positive impact on India. It would take away
a contradiction in India’s regional policy and
better align Saudi Arabia with us. It may open
opportunities as the U.S. pushes back China from
the part. But then, it may also give Israel
reasons to hyphenate India with Islamic
countries, including Pakistan.
Incremental injustice
In upholding the conduct of a survey by the
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) at the
Gyanvapi mosque, the Allahabad High Court
may have endorsed a surreptitious attempt to alter the character of the place of worship. Both the
High Court and the Varanasi District Court,
which ordered the ASI survey on July 21, had held
earlier that the suit filed by some Hindu devotees
to assert their right to worship some deities and
images within the mosque precincts was not
barred by the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which froze the status of all places of worship as on August 15, 1947.
A tentative rethink
Less than a month after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council appeared to have
sealed a compact on the long deliberated
issue of the appropriate tax to be levied on Online Casinos Saudi Arabia, horse racing and the booming online games
industry, it was convened afresh this Wednesday
to revisit the matter. The rethink on the Council’s
move to impose a 28% GST on the face value of
bets placed by participants was ostensibly triggered by an outcry from industry and a nudge
from the Electronics and IT Ministry that is steering the e-gaming policy.