January 31, 2007--It's Pakistan Stupid

If we want to be concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which is a good idea, instead of focusing so exclusively on North Korea and obsessing about Iran, perhaps itching for a pretext to go to war with them, we should pay a lot more attention to Pakistan.

Because they already have nuclear weapons. Quiet a few of them. According to the best estimates from the Natural Resources Defense Council Pakistan has between 24 and 48 made from Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU).

We may think we do not have to worry about this because Pakistan is our ally in the War Against Terror. But, if that’s the case, we should probably do some thinking-again.

I wrote recently about how high level military and intelligence officials in Pakistan are actively and openly assisting the Taliban. How these services are deeply penetrated by Islamists. There is also growing opposition to President Mousharef and an increase in bombings in Islamabad and elsewhere, most likely by these radical opposition groups. (See linked NY Times article.)

While we are worrying about North Korea in a fit of madness launching nuclear-tipped missiles against Japan or selling its technology to extremists in the Middle East and while agonizing about what it will mean when Iran has atomic weapons of its own, what will happen when Mousharef passes from the scene, in one way or another, and his regime is potentially replaced by one that is aggressively Islamist? Won’t that new regime instantly have its hands on dozens of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them?

Pakistan began to develop atomic weapons way back in 1972 to counter the fact that India had a successful program of its own—they felt the need to be able to deter a preemptive strike by their larger neighbor over disputed borders.

Sort of fine—this mirrored what we were up to in regard to the Soviet threat. We didn’t like it, but it sounded familiar to us. Sort of a Sub-Continent version of our own MAD strategy: a standoff assured by the notion of Mutally-Assured-Distruction.

That was then but now there is a very different kind of threat—that these hideous weapons might very well fall into the hands of people who might preemptively use them against us.

So why don’t we hear anything about this from the Bush administration or Congress?

Postscript—While this threat is being ignored, even in the blogosphere there is more traffic about whether or not President Mousharef wears a toupee than about his weapons of mass destruction. I’m not making this up—Google Mousharef and see for yourself.