US President Barak Obama’s Prague speech in April 2009 on his vision of a nuclear weapon free world has established a new narrative for the nuclear disarmament discourse. While few doubt Obama’s own sincerity, there is a widespread concern that, on the road ahead, the traditional nuclear establishment in Washington and elsewhere—with their nonproliferation agenda and aversion to abolition of nuclear weapons—may subvert the process. India stands at the crossroads in its engagement with the international community on nuclear issues. It has recently come in from the cold after having been excluded from interactions on this issue with the international community for over thirty years.

India can now set behind it the ghosts of the past and situate itself in the mainstream. Alternatively, it could pursue a contrarian path involving a state of confrontation and tension with international mainstream thinking, in the process absorbing collateral damage in areas where international cooperation is essential for India’s development. Over the next year or two, it will have to make a number of clear headed choices based on the principles of nuclear deterrence and the ambiguities and uncertainties involved in the application of these principles for optimizing Indian national security in a nuclear world. The implications over time of making any wrong choices now would be costly.

The paper tries to analyse these issues. The conclusion that emerges is that promoting the concerted international movement towards minimum deterrence, supporting measures such as No First Use agreements, as also political and international legal norms to devalue and delegitimize the role of nuclear weapons would, at this juncture, be the best way for genuinely supporting the objective of a nuclear weapon free world, as well as for assuring the security of the nation.