New form of Nuclear Blackmail? by Shireen M Mazari

(If mistrust between Pakistan and the US became as all pervasive as between Pakistan and India, there will be no peace in the world. The Americans think in terms of military victories under the spell of Indo-Zionists even though states have already shown impotence in dealing with resolute non-state fighters with a just cause. Pakistan has been destabilised because it is seen to have ‘betrayed’ the just cause of Afghans and Kashmiris fighting foreign occupation. As the realisation becomes more widespread, fundamental socio-political change would occur in Pakistan. The nuclear weapons play no part except to deter a nuclear holocaust. That is not understood in the USA as pointed out by Dr Shireen Mizari in her article below. +Usman Khalid+)

 

It seems that even when some Americans manage to understand Pakistan, their proclivity towards niggardliness destroys any advantage they may have gained through this insight. So it has always been with analyst Christine Fair, who knows Pakistan well in terms of being a frequent visitor and interacting with a varied number of Pakistanis. But at the end of the day she has been unable to rise above traditional American prejudices and suspicions about Pakistan. In her article in the Wall Street Journal she has recognised that “nuclear cooperation could deliver results where billions of American aid have failed”. But then she goes on to suggest that the US offer Pakistan “conditions-based” cooperation in the civilian nuclear field whereby Pakistan would get “fundamental recognition of its nuclear status and civilian assistance” but would have to meet two criteria”. This is where Fair stumbles back to traditional US misconceptions and suspicions about Pakistan. The first condition would be to provide the access and cooperation on nuclear issues sought by the Kerry-Lugar-Breman Act and the second condition would be for Pakistan to demonstrate “sustained and verifiable” commitment to combating “all terrorist groups on its soil” including “freedom fighters” - an obvious reference to Kashmiri Mujahideen.

Clearly Ms Fair has got it wrong yet again. Under these circumstances, it serves no purpose for Pakistan to get any form of civilian nuclear assistance from the US. The first question is, of course, does Pakistan really need this assistance from the Americans when it already has alternate sources plus its own well-developed nuclear infrastructure? Such conditional assistance would not deliver any results for the US because the conditions would continue to be unacceptable.

After all, if Pakistan found the nuclear conditions attached to the KLA unacceptable in their intrusiveness, why would it alter this perception simply because the US was dangling a questionable nuclear ‘carrot’ before us! The costs of the first condition far outweigh the benefits of conditional nuclear assistance. As for nuclear access, we have taken years to evolve a system that the US has been unable to penetrate in terms of our nuclear assets so why would we suddenly lay bare all our assets to the Americans?

The second condition reflects the continuing suspicions towards the Pakistan military especially, in terms of its commitment to fight terrorism. This reflects the level of mistrust that prevails and the US will not rid itself of this mistrust but is simply seeking another way of keeping Pakistan under pressure. Also, if there are groups of Kashmiris who are seen as freedom fighters, would we betray them for some nuclear assistance which would always be susceptible to being halted midstream if the US thought we were not doing their bidding on fighting terrorism? If we were to become so vulnerable to US pressure, it would not be a viable option to seeking nuclear assistance from them.

At a macro level, Fair is trying to evolve a framework of luring us with a nuclear bribe - or what one can correctly term a new form of nuclear blackmail garbed in a ‘friendly’ cover!

As for Fair’s claim that this deal would give Pakistan fundamental recognition of its nuclear programme, she seems to forget that we are quite comfortable with the fact that the world has to de facto accept our nuclear status and learn to live with it since it is not going to disappear.

What will such recognition do for Pakistan? Not much in the present circumstances, given that the IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers’ Group have already made country-specific exceptions for India on safeguards and transfer of sensitive dual-use technology so their stance on principle has been diluted. At the end of the day, US recognition of our nuclear programme is not a major policy issue for us nor are we desperate to seek a US pat on the back for our safety regulations and strong command and control mechanisms. We have fulfilled our obligations to the international community and that is sufficient for us.

So, this new seemingly positive, but in reality, rather negative in its consequences, suggestion should be put in the dustbin where it belongs. No Ms Fair, this new form of nuclear blackmail will also fail like all previous ones. ++

This article was published in the ‘The Nation’ of Lahore. The writer is the former head of the Institute of Strategic Studies of Pakistan and is now Foreign Affairs Spokesperson of Tehrik e Insaf