Sundeep Waslekar is a thought leader on global future. He has worked with sixty-five countries under the auspices of the Strategic Foresight Group, an international think tank he founded in 2002. He is a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflicts at Oxford University. He is a practitioner of Track Two diplomacy since the 1990s and has mediated in conflicts in South Asia, those between Western and Islamic countries on deconstructing terror, trans-boundary water conflicts, and is currently facilitating a nuclear risk reduction dialogue between permanent members of the UN Security Council. He was invited to address the United Nations Security Council Session 7818 on water, peace, and security. He has been quoted in more than 3,000 media articles from eighty countries. Waslekar read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford University from 1981 to 1983. He was conferred D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) of Symbiosis International University by the President of India in 2011.

KEY TAKE-AWAY
  • We live in the most dangerous epoch of our history because the risk of nuclear annihilation is real.
  • We could sleepwalk into a nuclear war by (1) accident, (2) incident or (3) intent.
  • The three greatest nuclear geopolitical hotspots: (1) Ukraine, (2) North Korea, (3) Taiwan. Iran is not yet one of them – the risk of a nuclear Iran will only materialize in a few years from now.
  • We must be aware of all this, otherwise we won’t take action to mitigate the risk.
  • There are broad solutions at different levels.
    • A reform and enlargement of the UN Security Council, from 15 to 18, and even 21. Large, systemically important countries like India and Brazil must be on it.
    • A civilizational crisis response mechanism which does not emanate from a sovereign nation point of view.
    • A political movement destined to promote global cooperation and tame the sin of nationalism.
    • A new global social contract that considers our mutual interdependencies.
  • A few words about India. It sees the world as “one big family” (“Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” – all living beings on the earth are a family whose members co-exist with each other). India’s current multi-alignment works like this: India is aligned with the West, the global south, Russia – but not with China.