New threat

Saudi Arabia has apparently joined the race for nuclear arms, and that is a worry for world nations. It is a particularly huge worry for Israel, and by extension the US. Although evidence currently is restricted to satellite imagery, there is every possibility that the Saudis are building such a deterrent. The issue with developing a nuclear deterrent against a neighbour is that it is bound to incite an equal and opposite reaction. US sanctions and such other economic embargos cannot stop countries that are gripped by fear of the other from stepping up defences. The problem here is that the country that has been trying to police the world against developing nuclear deterrent is itself not rid of nuclear weapons. While the US cries hoarse that nations should drop nuclear programmes for military purposes, it has itself maintained a stockpile that can wreak global destruction, to say the least. Russia has also maintained such a deterrent and even recently tested a ground-fired cruise missile (SSC-8, also known as Novator 9M729) that it said was not in violation of the INF treaty. The acorns of fear the US had sown in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a bid to end the Second World War have grown into a massive fig and have put the world under a shadow of fear. Only the Dark Continent has apparently remained free of this scourge thanks to its relative poverty; however, it is already contending with unenviable problems that are keeping its peoples in perennial suffering. Not only that, the excessive Chinese intervention in affairs of African nations has made it certain that it will not be long before the continent is made prey by strong world powers. The immense riches it possesses cannot go long without a fresh wave of plundering. The development of nuclear programmes is proof that country after country is focusing less on the uplift of the common masses and more on development that does little for human betterment. This is a race where resources are getting concentrated and exploited to please the better off and to pleasure their whims and fancies than for the betterment of all. In India for instance, the installation of the Statue of Unity at a cost of a few thousand crores is an example of such misplaced notions of development that exist not only in India but in most poverty ridden countries worldwide. The leadership across the world today sells dreams that have little to do with the daily lives of the toiling masses and it is bullet trains or atom bombs that fascinate the idiots everywhere. The case of Saudi Arabia’s nuclear programme is bound to have its ripple effects just as the Statue of Unity has on the environment surrounding it. There is suspicion that China may have supported the Saudi effort to weaponise. If that is true, China’s greed for domination is bound to put the world in peril.