World politics and international relations are in a profound churn. 

Be it Trump tariffs, an echo of 21st century neo-mercantilism that seeks to bring back national power home, the ill-conceived hostility and war on the Islamic Republic of Iran, the dissipation of the QUAD, the return of China with Russia as a secondary great power, and so on, the post-Second Great War liberal world order and the regimes designed as a scaffolding for it are in their dying throes. 

In the main, these developments are sanguine. One significant aspect of the fraying and breakdown of the post-war order is the Nuclear Proliferation Regime (NPT). 

The NPT, designed to keep nuclear weapons development and possession restricted to a club, was observed mostly in the breach. This accrued from security and political reasons. Nukes offered a given state the ultimate security. They also amplified that state’s power and prestige. 

But the NPT remained, like other ossified regimes and international institutions such as the United Nations, the WTO, and so on. US President Donald Trump threw the proverbial spanner into the works of it all.

While the Iran war was a costly distraction for the US under Trump and the Trumpian agenda alarmed most, if not all, world powers that had developed a perverse stake in this order, it appears to be a harbinger of a new significant shift. 

The reference is to the US deal with Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear energy. Even though this is speculative, this deal leaves ajar the door for........

© Kashmir Observer