The end of imagination is an article by Arundhati Roy in which she criticises Indian government’s nuclear policies. Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and political activist who is best known for the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction-winning novel The God of Small Things and for her involvement in human rights and environmental causes. This article was published in 1998 in response to India’s testing of nuclear weapon in Pokhran, Rajasthan. This article is a must read for those who think nuclear weapons are necessary for nation’s ‘safety’. She explains very clearly and very passionately about the dangers of using nuclear weapons in a war. There may be people who disagrees with the author’s views in this article, but it makes everyone think. She also takes on the reasons why India decided to build its nuclear arsenal. And none of those she believes are good enough to take such a risky step.
The author speaks about nuclear tests as a hazardous process which may eventually bring disasters to the coming generations. She explains the difference between a ‘normal war’ which itself is dreadful concept, and that of a nuclear war. She says “if there is a nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth herself. The very elements - the sky, the air, the land, the wind and water - will all turn against us”. She describes the after effects of a nuclear war in an articulate way.
The much publicised idea of ‘deterrence’ has some fundamental flaws. We cannot assume what deters us will deter our enemies. Another flaw is that deterrence is premised on fear. The Theory of Deterrence cornered the credit for having prevented the Cold War from turning into a Third World War. But the theory of deterre...
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... turn everything we love - our earth, our skies, our mountains, our plains, our rivers, our cities and villages - to ash in an instant?” India's nuclear bomb is the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people.
Roy ends the article with two very strong sentences which would make every Indian think and speak out against the hypocrites who rule this nation. “The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. This world of ours is four thousand, six hundred million years old. It could end in an afternoon.” Nuclear bomb is man’s biggest challenge to himself and to God.
Overall ‘The End of Imagination’ is a thought provoking article which casts shadow of doubt on the readers that whether they are being played by their own government. I recommend this article for everyone to read.
The Cold War was a period of dark and melancholic times when the entire world lived in fear that the boiling pot may spill. The protectionist measures taken by Eisenhower kept the communists in check to suspend the progression of USSR’s radical ambitions and programs. From the suspenseful delirium from the Cold War, the United States often engaged in a dangerous policy of brinksmanship through the mid-1950s. Fortunately, these actions did not lead to a global nuclear disaster as both the US and USSR fully understood what the weapons of mass destruction were capable of.
The Impact of U.S. Foreign Policy on India: A Reaction to Arundhati Roy’s “Not again”
Most writers take sides, either for or against the atom bomb. Instead of taking sides, he challenges his readers to make their own opinions based on their personal meditations. One of the key questions we must ask ourselves is “Are actions intended to benefit the large majority, justified if it negatively impacts a minority?” The greatest atrocity our society could make is to make a mistake and not learn from it. It is important, as we progress as a society, to learn from our mistakes or suffer to watch as history repeats itself.
Scott D. Sagan, the author of chapter two of “More Will Be Worse”, looks back on the deep political hostilities, numerous crises, and a prolonged arms race in of the cold war, and questions “Why should we expect that the experience of future nuclear powers will be any different?” The author talks about counter arguments among scholars on the subject that the world is better off without nuclear weapons. In this chapter a scholar named Kenneth Waltz argues that “The further spread of nuclear weapons may well be a stabilizing factor in international relations.” He believes that the spread of nuclear weapons will have a positive implications in which the likely-hood of war decreases and deterrent and defensive capabilities increase. Although there
Imagine a society where everyone has a different opinion about dropping an atomic bomb to country that they are fighting with. What is an atomic bomb? An atomic bomb is a bomb which derives its destructive power from the rapid release of nuclear energy by fission of heavy atomic nuclei, causing damage through heat, blast, and radioactivity. The atomic bomb is a tremendously questionable topic. Nonetheless, these literary selections give comprehension on the decision about dropping the atomic bomb for military purposes. For example, the “Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists” by Robert Oppenheimer, argues that we should have drop the atomic bomb, “A Petition to the President of the United States” by 70 scientists, asks President
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a novel about how people’s pursuit of their own interests, influenced by the cultural and social contexts in which they live, ultimately determines their behavior. Through utilizing subthemes of self-preservation, the maintenance of social status/the status quo, and power, she portrays Velutha as the only wholly moral character in the story, who, because of his goodness, becomes the target of frequent deception. Roy argues that human nature is such that human beings will do whatever they feel is necessary to serve their own self-interests.
When one thinks about warfare, the average mental picture is usually a movie war scene with soldiers, and planes; very rarely do people think about about the average Joe, trimming his hedge. In the short story “Grace Period”, by Will Baker, there is a man trimming his hedge outside with an electric hedge trimmer when a nuclear bomb is dropped; his wife has gone to get the mail. In “an instant [he felt as] everything stretched just slightly, a few millimeters, then contracted again” (Baker, 1989, p. 7). Although the character does not know what is happening, the reader may realize that this description is a high altitude nuclear burst. The article “Nuclear Weapon Effects”, by John Pike, describes what a nuclear bomb’s effects are and what could happen if one was dropped. Based on clues in the story and the information from the article, the reader can determine what is happening to the man and what he can expect will happen to him.
In today’s society many countries and even citizens of the United States question the U.S. government’s decision to get in involved in nuclear warfare. These people deemed it unnecessary and state that the U.S. is a hypocrite that preaches peace, but causes destruction and death. Before and during World War II the U.S. was presented with a difficult decision on whether or not to develop and use the atomic bomb.
Although nuclear technology can be used for good, it can also be used for destruction. One example of this was the bombing of 2 Japanese cities using the a...
The main parties who is associated with the debate are governments, experts, and the country people. These people have given out their opinions regarding the effects of nuclear ene...
“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs.
The need for nuclear energy is more widespread today than it has been for decades. Drastic climate change and the rising prices of fossil fuels such as oil have made many scientists seek an alternative energy source. Although nuclear energy has been around for decades, the use of it has always been approached by pessimism. Because, the misuse of nuclear energy could spell disaster for any country involved in the process. Events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Japan’s Fukushima accident are reminders of how nuclear energy can go wrong. However, the continued use of fossils fuels can spell disaster for the international and domestic security of any country that is dependent on the energy source. Fossil fuel is a limited resource, meaning that the continued use of this energy source can run out one day and this could mean disaster to any country dependent on fossil fuels. Therefore, the continued use of such an energy source could spell disaster for a country's domestic and international security in the future. An alternative energy source is needed in order to control the world's consumption of fossil fuels, nuclear energy is that energy source. Although nuclear energy has been establish as a feasible energy source, it has not yet caught on due to certain nuclear events. Events like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island reinforce the belief of nuclear energy as a dangerous risk. But, we can see France as a perfect example of using nuclear energy without any nuclear disasters. Nuclear energy can be the energy source we need to be free from fossil fuels, and benefits outweigh the cons of nuclear energy.
In 1945, when the Americans bombed Hiroshima, Japan, approximately 140,000 men and women were instantly killed by the effects of American nuclear defense. With such extreme brutality and force how many people must die for one to finally realize the strengths of nuclear bombs and what damage they can cause. Nuclear weapons should be outlawed because they kill thousands of innocent humans at a time, destroy the environment, and inviolate human’s right to moral and personal freedoms.
The use of nuclear power in the mid-1980s was not a popular idea on account of all the fears that it had presented. The public seemed to have rejected it because of the fear of radiation. The Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union in April of 1986 reinforced the fears, and gave them an international dimension (Cohen 1). Nevertheless, the public has to come to terms that one of the major requirements for sustaining human progress is an adequate source of energy. The current largest sources of energy are the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. Fear of radiation may push nuclear power under the carpet but another fear of the unknown is how costly is this going to be? If we as the public have to overcome the fear of radiation and costly project, we first have to understand the details of nuclear energy. The known is a lot less scary then the unknown. If we could put away all the presumptions we have about this new energy source, then maybe we can understand that this would be a good decision for use in the near future.
Whenever world politics is mentioned, the state that appears to be at the apex of affairs is the United States of America, although some will argue that it isn’t. It is paramount we know that the international system is shaped by certain defining events that has lead to some significant changes, particularly those connected with different chapters of violence. Certainly, the world wars of the twentieth century and the more recent war on terror must be included as defining moments. The warning of brute force on a potentially large scale also highlights the vigorousness of the cold war period, which dominated world politics within an interval of four decades. The practice of international relations (IR) was introduced out of a need to discuss the causes of war and the different conditions for calm in the wake of the first world war, and it is relevant we know that this has remained a crucial focus ever since. However, violence is not the only factor capable of causing interruption in the international system. Economic elements also have a remarkable impact. The great depression that happened in the 1920s, and the global financial crises of the contemporary period can be used as examples. Another concurrent problem concerns the environment, with the human climate being one among different number of important concerns for the continuing future of humankind and the planet in general.