First, the tests diminished their net security, economic potential, influence and status. India still lacks effective deterrent capability against China. The subcontinent itself is more dangerous after the tests. Nuclear weapons failed to deter Pakistani infiltration or Indian retaliation and escalation to aerial bombardment in the two-month war in Kashmir last year.

Nuclear weapons cannot help India and Pakistan solve any of their real problems of poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition. While the economic sanctions imposed on both countries were pinpricks for India, they took Pakistan to the precipice of disaster. The almost total condemnation from around the world was proof of just how isolated both countries were in the international community.

Second, the tests revealed a gaping hole in the NPT. India and Pakistan could make, deploy and use nuclear weapons, but would not qualify as a nuclear power under the NPT because they did not test before 1967. If one of the existing five gave up nuclear weapons, it would still be a nuclear power. This is Alice in Wonderland stuff where words mean whatever the nuclear haves choose them to mean.

Trying to denuclearize South Asia is as unrealistic as demanding total nuclear abolition, immediately. Just as weapons that have been invented cannot be disinvented, so too that which has been tested may be detested, but cannot be de-tested. There is a real conundrum here that needs to be addressed more seriously than through finger-wagging at the subcontinent's nuclear naughtiness.

Third, the entire nonproliferation regime is not in danger of imminent collapse. The 1998 tests did not produce fresh countries of proliferation concern. We are still stuck with the same NPT rejectionists and cheats. Most countries signed the NPT because they have no compelling security need for nuclear weapons, do not believe that these will confer any political benefits, and have concluded that the option is either too costly or simply irrelevant. They believe their security needs are better met through a rejection than an embrace of nuclear weapons. For India the NPT is illegitimate because it is a denial of the equality of opportunity to proliferate; for most the regime is valuable for providing security from proliferation and the promise of disarmament.

Fourth, the 1998 tests confirmed that the logic of nonproliferation is the same as that of disarmament. The NPT is tied to a frozen international power structure decades out of date. Nuclear weapons are neither necessary (witness Germany and Japan) nor sufficient (witness Pakistan and North Korea) to be an effective player in modern diplomacy. Yet not one country that had nuclear weapons when the NPT was signed in 1968 has given them up. They preach but do not practice nuclear abstinence. They justify their own nuclear weapons in national security language, but deny such weapons to anyone else for reasons of global security.

Confronted with a world that cannot be changed, reasonable people adapt and accommodate. The turning points of history and progress in human civilization have come from those who set out to change the world. Nuclear weapons are the common enemy of mankind. Like chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons too should be outlawed under an international regime that ensures strict compliance through effective and credible inspection, verification and control regimes.

As the only victim of nuclear weapons, and as a bridge between Asia and the West, Japan is uniquely positioned to engage both potential proliferators and the recalcitrant disarmers. The Non-proliferation Treaty review conference in New York is in real need of creative and imaginative leadership. Can Japan rise to the challenge?

Ramesh Thakur is vice rector of the United Nations University. These are his personal views.

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