What the Infographic tells me is this:
1. All the pompous geopolitical and Geo-strategic punditry we hear and read these days from think-tanks and international-relations policy-experts about the world becoming “multipolar” is plain bunkum and politically correct eyewash meant to pull wool over the eyes of the rest of the world … make no mistake about it : USA and Russia have 90% of the all the nuclear missile warheads in the world . It’s still a bipolar powered world .
2. All the tall talk about China becoming a military hegemony in the world is deliberate fear-mongering by the USA . China’s stockpile of nuclear-tipped missiles is nothing compared to what the Russians possess. The Americans fear that even with all their fearsome inventory of missiles, if the missile arsenal of Russia and China were to combine against them in a geopolitical conflict, their own would be simply outnumbered. So, to keep Russia in check , the US reckons, it is important to keep drumming about the bogey of great Chinese hegemonic ambitions in the world … i.e. it’s all just hocus pocus to keep the Russians in a state of tizzy like the rest of the world , constantly guessing and getting more and more anxious about Chinese expansionism … The US intention is nothing but simple, time-worn but time-tested effective policy of “Divide and Rule” that sows confusion, fear and suspicion amongst adversaries.
3. All the braggadocio and bluster about India emerging sometime this century as a global Superpower, joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group, joining the high table at the UNSC and self-appointing itself as the unofficial naval policeman of the Indian Ocean is nothing but wishful thinking — a featherweight parvenu pugilist wanting to fight the heavyweight champions inside their ring and league .
4. Today’s total of world missile inventory of 13K is only a fifth of what it was at 70K at the height of the Cold War ….. but that’s no real comfort or consolation for the rest of the world, is it? That deadly stockpile is just as enough today as it was then during the Cold War to wipe out all of mankind clean from the face of planet earth .
5. So long as the world-powers, both de facto ones and the pretenders, keep spending on maintaining parity of their respective missile inventories, all in a show of strength and mutual, competitive one-upmanship, there’s never going to be enough material resources or political will left available to take on global Climate Change challenges in a spirit of international collaboration .
This world is still only lurching from one kind of madness to another as it has always been in modern history … from the deterrence of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) in the time of Cold War to present-day “Mutually Acknowledged Delusion”.
Sudarshan Madabushi