Pakistan’s Nuclear Role Shakes Up the Old Order

Pakistan’s announcement that it is now nuclear-capable had been expected for so long that it seemed anti-climactic. That is deceptive.

Although Pakistan has not trucked weapons through the streets of Islamabad, nor even exploded a “device” as India did in 1974, no one doubts President Zia ul-Haq’s assertion of nuclear capability. And no one can doubt that it will transform thinking about the spread of nuclear weapons.

Pakistan is the first nuclear state in which the government’s stability and staying power is highly questionable. That point is important in judging what might happen to the custody of nuclear weapons in the event of civil crisis or national dissolution.

From time to time, Pakistan has boasted of an “Islamic bomb,” with the obvious target being Israel. Yet the closer that Islamabad has come to a capability, the less emphasis that it has given to sharing the political or military benefits with other Islamic countries. Being Muslim but not Arab, it is also sufficiently remote from the Arab-Israeli conflict to resist pressures from Israel’s enemies to brandish the ultimate weapon--save, perhaps, to deter Israel from using it. But that is little comfort in view of the broader picture.

Shrewdly, India’s government has said little about Pakistan’s new status, while unofficial spokesmen have quietly depreciated it. They are whistling past the graveyard. Other officials and analysts are less sanguine, and have erected a new threshold: an actual Pakistani nuclear explosion. Should that happen, the general view in New Delhi is that India must respond, most likely by building a stockpile of weapons and the means of delivering them.

At that point, what had been a competition for prestige--aping the world’s big powers--will likely turn into an old-fashioned nuclear-arms race. The strategists, not lacking in either India or Pakistan, will elaborate theories of deterrence. The two countries’ balance in nuclear weapons will gain symbolic and substantive importance in their broader relationship. The nuclear factor will become critical in calculations of war and peace.

These developments are taking place against the background of Pakistan’s role in supporting U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan is following Jimmy Carter in pressing the Soviet Union to end its aggression--and to bleed in the process. Pakistan is key, both as conduit for weapons to the anti-Soviet moujahedeen and as object of Moscow’s efforts to settle the conflict on its terms. Unstated but obvious is the risk that, should the Soviets consolidate authority in Afghanistan, they would try turning Iran or Pakistan into the new buffer state, thus ensuring their access to the Arabian Sea.

In order to keep Pakistan in the game, the Reagan Administration has agreed to a $4.2-billion military-aid program, plus a six-year waiver of the Symington amendment. This requires a cutoff of U.S. aid to countries doing what Pakistan is doing in the nuclear field. Congressional leaders concerned with proliferation thus feel betrayed. They needn’t. There is little evidence that U.S. aid could have bribed or cajoled Pakistan into forswearing a nuclear capability, even though its government cleverly sought to convey that impression. After India last defeated Pakistan in 1971, the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said that his nation would “eat grass” if need be to gain the means to defend itself. Pakistan crossed the final threshold of decision three years later, when India made its mindless explosion-for-prestige.

In response to the American military-aid program, India is fulminating--with some justice--that Pakistan’s vulnerability along the Afghan frontier does not require ship-to-ship Harpoon missiles, an airborne early-warning system or top-of-the line M-1A1 tanks. New Delhi has thus embarked on its own armaments program--even though, militarily, it has little or nothing to fear from Pakistan.

This is an ugly environment in which to pursue nuclear capability. America’s vulnerability to Islamabad’s manipulation on arms aid makes matters worse. In its arrogance, India still refuses to accept the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which might inhibit Pakistan as well. And other incipient nuclear states in unstable regions have gained new encouragement.

If it is serious about preventing further spread of the bomb, the Administration must show more interest. It must not be so easily bluffed into believing that only an open-ended arms pipeline will make Pakistan follow its own self-interest in Afghanistan. Washington should begin direct talks with India about the latter’s concerns. And it should press both countries to agree formally not to be the first to fabricate a bomb. These are modest steps. But they are the first to take in what threatens to be a terrifying new world.