WMD and Nuclear Proliferation Questions and Answers

Answer: B

It is reversed by first strike.

Credible minimum deterrence, the basis of India's nuclear doctrine of 2003, means keeping the smallest arsenal that can survive an attack and retaliate with unacceptable damage. It is a retaliatory posture, paired with a pledge of no first use and a second-strike capability.

A first-strike posture, aiming to disarm the enemy by attacking first, demands large and highly accurate forces and turns the logic of minimum deterrence on its head. No first use and second strike are parts of the doctrine, and 'no strike' is not a strategy.

Answer: B

The keyed answer is nuclear deterrence.

A first-use policy reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first in self-defence, for example against an overwhelming conventional attack. Its rationale is deterrent: the threat that any aggression might be met with nuclear weapons is meant to stop an adversary from attacking at all, as NATO's posture in the Cold War was meant to deter a Soviet attack in Europe.

Mutual assured destruction describes two sides each able to destroy the other after absorbing a first strike. Trident is a submarine-launched missile system, and non-proliferation is about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

Answer: D

The one that is not an objective is To export and import the Nuclear technology.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, opened for signature in 1996, bans all nuclear explosions, for military or peaceful purposes, in every environment. To check compliance it sets up an International Monitoring System of seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide stations that can detect underground, underwater and atmospheric explosions.

Trade in nuclear technology is not the business of the CTBT. It is governed by bodies such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group and by safeguards agreements with the IAEA.

Answer: A

The South-East Asian treaty was opened for signature in 1995.

The Treaty on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, the Treaty of Bangkok, was signed by the ten ASEAN states in Bangkok on 15 December 1995 and entered into force in 1997.

The other years belong to other zones: 1967 is the Treaty of Tlatelolco for Latin America and the Caribbean, 1985 the Treaty of Rarotonga for the South Pacific, and 1996 the Treaty of Pelindaba for Africa.

Answer: A

Nuclear deterrence is held to be useful because it helps to avoid war between states.

Deterrence works by threat: a state that knows an attack would bring unacceptable nuclear retaliation has a strong reason not to attack. Its supporters credit it with preventing a direct war between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.

Avoiding war is not the same as establishing peace: deterrence keeps an armed and hostile relationship stable but does not remove the conflict, which is why option B is not the answer. Economic co-operation and living standards are outside what the theory claims to do.

Answer: A

India conducted its first peaceful nuclear explosion on 18 May 1974.

The test at Pokhran, code-named Smiling Buddha, was described by the government as a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE). India did not then declare itself a nuclear weapon state.

The second series of tests, Operation Shakti, took place on 11 and 13 May 1998, after which India declared itself a nuclear weapon state. The 1999 dates in the options are not dates of any Indian nuclear test.

Answer: C

Operation Shakti was conducted in 1998.

Operation Shakti was the series of five nuclear tests at Pokhran on 11 and 13 May 1998, including a thermonuclear device, after which India declared itself a nuclear weapon state.

1974 was the year of the first test, Smiling Buddha. 1971 and 1999 are the years of the Bangladesh war and the Kargil conflict, not of nuclear tests.

Answer: D

N.M.D. stands for National Missile Defence.

National Missile Defence was the United States programme, pursued especially under President Clinton and then George W. Bush, to defend the entire national territory against a limited ballistic missile attack. Pursuing it led the USA to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.

The other expansions are not established terms. NMD was distinguished from theatre missile defence (TMD), which protects deployed forces and allies.

Answer: D

SALT-I and II are examples of arms control.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the USA and the USSR produced SALT-I (1972: the ABM Treaty and an interim agreement freezing missile launchers) and SALT-II (1979, never ratified by the US Senate). They set ceilings on strategic arsenals rather than abolishing them.

That is arms control, which regulates and limits weapons, not disarmament, which reduces or eliminates them. They had nothing to do with arms trade, and they aimed to restrain proliferation of strategic weapons, not to promote it.

Answer: D

The first nation to give up all its nuclear weapons was South Africa.

South Africa secretly built six nuclear devices in the 1970s and 1980s, dismantled them in 1989-91, joined the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state in 1991, and announced the programme and its dismantling in 1993. It was the first country to build nuclear weapons and then voluntarily eliminate them.

Sweden and Switzerland had weapons research programmes that they abandoned before producing weapons, and Australia never built nuclear weapons, so none of them gave up an existing arsenal. Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan later gave up weapons they had inherited from the Soviet Union.