A great time for a nuclear Pakistan

The chickens are coming home to roost as Pakistan is engulfed in political chaos, the Pakistani military seems unable and unwilling to deal with extremist forces, and the nation's nuclear weapons appear to be within reach of the 'wrong hands.'

Commentary by Harsh V Pant for ISN Security Watch (22/11/07)


A government unable to control large parts of its territory, a military in disarray, loss of control over nuclear assets, radical Islamists intent on acquiring WMDs – it is the stuff of nightmares.

And Pakistan's current turmoil is causing jitters around the world precisely because the nightmarish scenario evoked above might just come to pass as General Pervez Musharraf drags himself and his country to the brink of collapse.

For long, the US and the West have viewed nuclear weapons in South Asia with dread because of the possibility that a conventional war between India and Pakistan might escalate into a nuclear one. Former US president Bill Clinton called the Kashmir conflict "the most dangerous flashpoint on earth" precisely because of this fear of a nuclear holocaust in the Indian sub-continent.

Indian and Pakistani officials, on the other hand, have continued to argue that just as the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction resulted in a "hot peace" between the US and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, nuclear weapons in South Asia will also have a stabilizing impact. They point out the fact that despite several provocations, India and Pakistan have behaved "rationally" during various crises by keeping their conflicts limited and avoiding escalation.

But since 11 September 2001, the nature of the problem for the West has changed in so far as the threat is now more of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal being used against the West by radical Islamists if they can lay their hands on it.

There is little hope that the rational actor model on which classical nuclear deterrence theory is based would apply as much to militant Islamist groups as it would to the Pakistani government. In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks, there were suggestions that the US had explicitly sought guarantees from the Musharraf government that its nuclear arsenal was safe and had also assured India of its security.

The present turmoil in Pakistan has once again raised concerns about the safety, security and command and control of its nuclear stockpile. Though Pakistan's government was quick to dismiss media reports that its nuclear weapons were in danger of falling into the "wrong hands" as "inspired," and stressed that Pakistan provided the highest level of institutionalized protection to its strategic assets, the credibility of such claims remains open to question.

Instituted in 2000, Pakistan's nuclear command and control arrangements are centered on the National Command Authority, which comprises the Employment Control Committee, the Development Control Committee and the Strategic Plans Division. Only a small group of military officials apparently have access to the country's nuclear assets.

However, these command and control arrangements continue to be beset with some fundamental vulnerabilities that underline the reluctance of the Pakistani military to cede control over the nation's nuclear assets to civilian leaders.

It is instructive to note that of all the major nuclear states in world, Pakistan is the only country where the nuclear button is in the hands of the military. It is not at all comforting when former civilian leaders - including former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif - make it clear that even at the height of various crises, the Pakistani military kept the civilian authorities out of the decision-making loop on the crucial issue of nuclear weapons.

Moreover, senior civilian and military officials responsible for these weapons have a problematic track record in maintaining close control over them. A Q Khan was the head of the Pakistani nuclear program (and a veritable national hero), but was also instrumental in making Pakistan the center of the biggest nuclear proliferation network by leaking technology to states far and wide including Iran, North Korea and Libya. Pakistani nuclear scientists have even traveled to Afghanistan at the behest of Osama bin Laden.

While it is true that the Pakistani military remains very professional and perhaps the only the cohesive force in the country today, it is not clear if it would be able to continue to exert its control over the nation's nuclear assets if Musharraf were overthrown in the absence of institutionalized safeguards.

The military has also become deeply demoralized, reflected in the large number of soldiers preferring to surrender to the militants rather than fight. There are growing signs of fraying loyalties in the Pakistani army, underlining the danger to its cohesiveness.

The growing "Islamization" of the younger generation of Pakistani military officers is well-recorded. Given the close links between the Pakistani military and intelligence services and the militant groups fighting in Kashmir and the Taliban, it is not far-fetched to assume that there is a real danger of elements within Pakistan's military-intelligence complex colluding with radical Islamist groups.

Pakistan has accepted US help since 11 September in designing its system of controls for its nuclear arsenal and the prevention of theft. The US has reportedly spent about US$100 million in helping Pakistan secure its nuclear arsenal, and some reports have suggested that Pakistan has also received technical assistance from the US - though officials deny this.

The exact number of Pakistani nuclear weapons as well as the location of nuclear storage and deployment facilities remains a closely guarded secret. Pakistan has strongly resisted US attempts to garner more information about these facilities for fear that the US would not hesitate to target and/or physically remove them in case there emerged a real threat to Pakistan's nuclear assets.

It is believed that Pakistan relies on separating the fissile core from the weapon thus ensuring that a usable weapon does not fall easily into the wrong hands. But it would take little time for the command and control network to collapse if Pakistan slid toward anarchy. Should that happen, sympathizers of radical Islamists within the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies could very possibly assist militant groups in acquiring the wherewithal of a nuclear weapon.

Throughout the Cold War years, it was viewed as politically prudent in the West and especially in the US to ignore Pakistan's drive toward nuclear acquisition, as Pakistan was seen as an important ally of the west in countering the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Nuclear proliferation has never been a first order priority for the US when it comes to Pakistan. The Bush administration has gone easy on the Pakistani military, despite the fact that it has remained in control of the nation's nuclear program and has claimed that it had no knowledge of the Khan network. For the US, the role of the Pakistani military is critical in fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the Pakistani military seems unable and unwilling to take on the Islamist forces gathering momentum on Pakistani territory on the one hand; while on the other, the nation's nuclear weapons seem within reach of the extremist forces.

The US has suggested that there are contingency plans in place to deal with the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the hands of militant groups, but it remains far from clear as to what exactly the US would be able to do if such an eventuality arose.

The present turmoil in Pakistan and all its attendant consequences in the nuclear realm point to the long-term costs of short-sighted policies - the politics of proliferation - followed by the West in countering proliferation.





Harsh V Pant is a lecturer at King's College London. His research interests include WMD proliferation, US foreign policy and Asia-Pacific security issues. The views expressed are his own.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, not the International Relations and Security Network (ISN).