Table of Contents
Today’s brief reads three articles. Yoel Guzansky writes in Foreign Affairs on the nuclear agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Col KL Viswanathan asks in South Asia Monitor whether the coming order will be multipolar or a wolf world. Advitya Madan writes in The Hindu on the third phase of NATO, in which Europe is asked to carry its own conventional defence.
The American deal with Saudi Arabia leaves uranium enrichment open, and that is where the danger lies.
Yoel Guzansky writes on the nuclear agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia. It was announced on 22 July and runs for thirty years. American firms would build the nuclear industry of the kingdom. The agreement could also allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium on its own soil. Guzansky says the central question has changed. It is no longer whether Saudi Arabia will take the nuclear path. It is how that path can be managed without setting off an arms race in the region. His own answer is a regional fuel bank on Saudi soil, owned and managed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The record
- The agreement was announced on 22 July 2026. It runs for thirty years. It opens the way for American companies to develop the nuclear infrastructure of the kingdom. It is still under review in Congress.
- Experts fear that the deal weakens the American gold standard, which is the strict set of conditions Washington holds its nuclear partners to. Other states in the region may then ask for the same terms.
- A day after the announcement President Trump said the terms were subject to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords and opening normal relations with Israel. He also said there would be no enrichment. Neither condition was in the announcement itself.
- The deal does not require Saudi Arabia to accept the Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency. That protocol gives the agency wider powers of inspection and verification.
- Saudi Arabia is completing a low power research reactor of Argentine design. It has received bids to build two nuclear power plants from the National Nuclear Corporation of China, EDF of France, Rosatom of Russia and the Korea Electric Power Corporation of South Korea.
- In 2018 Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that if Iran went nuclear, Saudi Arabia would follow.
- In September 2025 Saudi Arabia entered a mutual defence agreement with Pakistan, which holds nuclear weapons. The agreement did not mention them.
- Under President Biden the United States considered building an enrichment plant on Saudi soil that Americans would own and run. Those talks were interrupted by the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 and produced no agreement.
- Guzansky argues for a regional nuclear fuel bank on Saudi soil, led by the United States and owned by the IAEA. It would serve every state in the region that is party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Iran.
- A bank of this kind already works. In Kazakhstan a fuel bank controlled by the IAEA supplies low enriched uranium for civilian use.
- If Saudi enrichment is allowed, other states may claim the same right. Guzansky writes that the United Arab Emirates might no longer hold itself bound by its earlier promises to the United States. He names Egypt and Turkey as the other states whose appetite a fuel bank would curb.
The argument
This is the live case for a question on nuclear proliferation. Saudi Arabia asks that its right to enrich be recognised. Guzansky says the kingdom treats enrichment as a matter of sovereignty and status and not only of energy. The American standard asked partners to give that right up. The deal shows how hard the standard is to hold when the partner has other suppliers waiting.
The paper also asks why India refused the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Saudi case is the same argument seen from the other side. A state that keeps the fuel cycle in its own hands keeps its choices open. Guzansky reads Saudi policy exactly that way.
Use the fuel bank as the answer to a question on how proliferation is contained. Ownership by the IAEA is the whole point of it. Enrichment then becomes a service under international control rather than a national right. The bank in Kazakhstan is the working example to name.
“The real choice is not between enrichment and no enrichment but between a proliferation-prone national enrichment program and a multilateral, IAEA-supervised fuel-cycle arrangement that minimizes regional incentives for a nuclear arms race.”
Yoel Guzansky
“In the larger strategic picture, nonproliferation is more important than normalization.”
Yoel Guzansky
What decides the coming order is how the great powers use power, not how many of them there are.
Col KL Viswanathan asks what follows the American moment. He sets out two ends. One is a multipolar order that holds its balance. The other is a wolf world, in which power beats principle and the law of the jungle replaces the rule of law. His answer is that the number of great powers will not decide which of the two arrives. What decides it is whether those powers still accept institutions, international law and practical cooperation.
The record
- The liberal international order was built after the Second World War and carried by the United States. Viswanathan gives it three pillars. The first is democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The second is free trade and open markets. The third is the multilateral institutions, which are the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and later the World Trade Organization.
- He separates the decline of American dominance from the decline of American power. The United States is still the single most powerful state in the system. What has fallen is its lead over everyone else.
- American doctrine once planned to fight and win two major wars at the same time, and three if needed. Washington now faces three theatres of contest. They are Russia in Europe, Iran in the Middle East and China in East Asia.
- American public debt is approaching 39 trillion dollars. Opposition at home to long wars abroad now cuts across the political spectrum and is not confined to one movement.
- Power is spread differently in different regions. Europe is bipolar, set by Russia against NATO. East Asia is shaped by the contest between the United States and China. The Middle East is multipolar. Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel each pursue their own interests there, and those interests often compete.
- Power is spread differently across sectors as well. Energy is becoming multipolar as states widen their sources and their technology. China is investing in renewable energy, electric mobility and small modular nuclear reactors.
- Finance is the exception. Sanctions pushed states to settle trade in their own currencies and to look for alternatives to payment systems such as SWIFT. None of this has shaken the dollar. No other currency matches it for liquidity, stability and institutional depth.
- Viswanathan calls the term middle power imprecise. Many states refuse the label. India sees itself as a leading power pursuing strategic autonomy rather than a middle power looking for a bloc.
- He borrows an analogy from physics. A system is in stable equilibrium when a push away from balance creates forces that push it back. Stability is not the absence of tension. It is the management of competing forces.
- Multi-alignment is his name for the mechanism. States will align differently in security, trade, technology, finance, energy, climate, supply chains and migration. The same two states may be partners in one domain and rivals in another. Those overlapping interests act as the restoring forces.
- The contradictions are already visible. Iran and Turkey stand together against Israel and on opposite sides in the South Caucasus. Turkey has been reluctant to cut its economic ties with Israel. China holds a close partnership with Russia and deep economic ties with the United States at the same time.
- India shows the same pattern. It is a member of the QUAD, of BRICS and of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. It works closely with the United States and continues its long defence cooperation with Russia.
The argument
This article answers the standard question on the emerging world order without the usual list of powers. Keep its three terms apart. Multipolarity describes how power is spread. Multi-alignment is the mechanism by which a multipolar system holds its balance. A wolf world is what follows when that mechanism fails.
It also gives you the correct way to write about American decline. American dominance has fallen while American power has not. Add the three theatres and the figure for the debt. That is a stronger answer than the claim that the United States is finished.
For India the article supplies the defence of multi-alignment. Membership of the QUAD, of BRICS and of the SCO looks inconsistent only if alignment has to be permanent. Viswanathan argues that ties which look contradictory create overlapping interests. Those interests keep a disagreement in one sector from overwhelming the whole relationship.
“Multipolarity merely describes the distribution of power; multi-alignment provides the mechanism through which competing forces can remain in equilibrium; a wolf world describes the failure of that mechanism, where power operates without restraint.”
Col KL Viswanathan
For the first time since 1949 Washington wants Europe to carry its own conventional defence.
Advitya Madan writes on what has changed inside NATO. The demand is no longer that Europe spend more. It is that Europe take primary responsibility for its own security. Madan reads this as the third phase of the alliance and not as American withdrawal. The United States stays as the nuclear guarantor and as the supplier of what Europe cannot yet build. Europe takes up the conventional burden. The hard part is not the money. It is replacing the American military system that Europe has depended on for decades.
The record
- The National Security Strategy of the United States of November 2025 keeps NATO as the principal transatlantic alliance. It also holds that the era of the United States as the chief security guarantor of Europe is drawing to a close. Prosperous European allies must defend their own continent.
- That strategy endorses defence spending of 5 per cent of GDP as the new measure of burden sharing. It leaves the United States as strategic enabler, nuclear guarantor and political convener rather than the sole military backbone of the alliance.
- American troop strength in Europe rose to about 1,00,000 after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. During 2025-26 Washington withdrew about 5,000 troops from Germany, cancelled a planned deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland and cut its Brigade Combat Teams in Europe from four to three. The presence is now about 75,000 to 80,000 troops, close to the level before the war.
- The 36th NATO Summit was held at Ankara in July 2026. It reaffirmed the commitment of the alliance to Article 5. Members pledged 70 billion euros of military assistance to Ukraine in 2026 and undertook to sustain comparable support in 2027. They also endorsed long range precision strike capabilities developed under European lead.
- The Hague Summit of 2025 set core defence spending of at least 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035, with progress to be reviewed in 2029. Germany has doubled its defence spending since 2023 and means to reach that level by 2029.
- Madan divides the alliance into three phases. NATO 1.0 ran from 1949 to 1991 and rested on American military and nuclear power. NATO 2.0 ran from 1991 to 2022, expanded to the east, took in former members of the Warsaw Pact and fought in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. The third phase opened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
- Europe still depends on the United States for intelligence, surveillance, satellite support, command and control systems, strategic airlift, missile defence, long range precision strike and above all the nuclear umbrella.
- Washington has also cut its rapid reaction assets. Madan lists bombers, fighter aircraft, air-refuelling tankers, warships, aircraft carriers and attack submarines. The deployment of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Germany has been deferred.
- Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO, described its purpose as keeping the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. Madan writes that the phase now opening keeps Russia deterred, America engaged and Europe prepared.
- Moscow has reorganised its own western military posture with new headquarters, new formations and new bases facing NATO.
- Madan cites the Foreign Minister of Poland. Europe does not have to match American military power. It has to be stronger than Russia.
- For India the change means American attention moving to the Indo-Pacific. Madan also expects a more capable Europe to become a partner in defence manufacturing, advanced technology, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, semiconductors and space.
The argument
The 2024 paper asked whether the United States uses NATO to keep its hegemony. This article gives you the reply. The alliance is not being dissolved. The burden inside it is being moved. Washington keeps the nuclear guarantee, the intelligence and the enabling capabilities. That is where control sits, and the dependence of Europe on it is the proof.
Use the figures. Troops down from about 1,00,000 to about 75,000, core defence spending set at 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035, and 70 billion euros for Ukraine in a single year. A question on burden sharing is answered with those numbers.
The paragraph on India is short and useful. A Europe that can defend itself frees American attention for the Indo-Pacific. Write that as the link between a question on NATO and a question on the balance of power in Asia.
“This is less a story of American disengagement than one of strategic redistribution.”
Advitya Madan
Where this belongs in your syllabus
Open the note and read the full topic.
The questions this feeds
Questions from earlier years that today’s reading speaks to. Where the answer is written, the red link opens it. The full set is in the PYQ Vault.
- PSIR Paper II · 2025 · 15mIndia maintains strong ties with countries that will assure a free and open Indo-Pacific and guarantee greater connectivity with rest of the world. Analyze.Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2024 · 15mCritically examine India's persistent refusal to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) despite being recognized as a de facto nuclear power.Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2024 · 10mThe changing global order and ongoing regional conflicts, with the global powers taking sides, have jeopardised the progress made towards disarmament in the past. Comment.Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2024 · 15mDo you agree with the view that the USA uses NATO as a traditional tool of strategy to perpetuate its hegemony in the world?Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2023 · 15mDiscuss the various constraints on American hegemony today. Which of these are likely to grow?Answer
- GS-2 · 2023"The expansion and strengthening of NATO and a stronger US-Europe strategic partnership works well in India." What is your opinion about this statement? Give reasons and examples to support your answer.