The secret race to acquire nuclear weapons is a direct result of the nuclear apartheid system imposed by the five permanent members of the Security Council, a system that could be sustained as long as only a handful of advanced states were privy to the secrets of nuclear technology. That is clearly no longer the case. Indeed, even at the height of the Cold War, scientific espionage proved highly effective in penetrating the secret world of nuclear technology. One country that has always spoken out against the inequity of the nuclear apartheid system is India. It has also expressed its opposition more concretely by refusing to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, not because it supported proliferation but on the grounds that the ban should apply to all states without exception.
Opinions differ as to the reasons behind India's uncompromising stand.
Delhi has always maintained that it is a question of principle, but others suspect that the regional rationale is the key factor. For India cannot afford to play by the rules of a game which allows China to maintain a nuclear arsenal while depriving it of this prerogative, especially in the light of China's close ties with Pakistan. Whatever the real motivations behind a country's stand on the issue of , the fact remains that any state which believes its security to be threatened will actively strive to develop its nuclear capability, and that, moreover, it will feel perfectly justified to do so in view of the 'legitimacy' which Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal enjoys in the eyes of the self-appointed guardians of the present world order. It is no secret that one state which felt justified in developing a nuclear programme was Iraq, seeing this as legitimate self-defence in the face of Israel's nuclear arsenal. The system received another devastating blow when Congress refused to ratify the Non-Proliferation Treaty.