A Foolish, Deadly Game

Pakistan’s foolish action in setting off nuclear explosions Thursday to match India’s tests two weeks ago makes the world, not just South Asia, a more dangerous place.

The collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a decade ago reduced the chances of nuclear war. But now India and Pakistan have increased the threat and provided a dangerous example for other countries, such as Iran and North Korea, thought to be aiming for nuclear capability.

Pakistan believed the world had not sufficiently punished India. Islamabad wanted sanctions on New Delhi as tough as the ones imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War. That was never realistic, although most nations could indeed have tried harder to punish India, rather than merely condemn it.

At home, Pakistan’s government was pressed to match India. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, still hoping to regain power someday, demanded a preemptive military strike against India. Thankfully, Pakistan so far has had more sense than to carry out such an attack. India, for its part, needs to disavow a preemptive attack. Both nations must pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Pakistan has lost three wars to India in 50 years and never posed much of a conventional military threat. Now it presents a much greater danger, which the New Delhi government should have realized before it escalated the madness earlier this month.

The United States imposed sanctions on India after its tests; in 1990 it cut off most aid to Pakistan because of that country’s nuclear weapons program. But canceling World Bank and International Monetary Fund assistance to Pakistan now could reduce an already desperately poor nation to near beggar status.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif rejected an opportunity to win foreign economic help for his nation. The United States had sent a top-level team to Islamabad and President Clinton telephoned Sharif frequently to try to avert nuclear testing. Washington held out the possibility of lifting sanctions and providing economic aid.

Now Washington has to pressure both Islamabad and New Delhi not to take the next step of putting nuclear warheads on their missiles or building nuclear bombs for their airplanes. China, a longtime foe of India and believed to have been a major source in Pakistan’s nuclear program, should now exert positive influence on Islamabad. Britain, the former colonial ruler of India and Pakistan, also has a responsibility to apply leverage.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father and a onetime foreign minister and prime minister, once vowed that Pakistanis would “eat grass” if need be to match an Indian nuclear threat. Unfortunately, that sentiment still rules.

In 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the detonation of America’s first atomic weapon, which he helped build, and recalled the lines from the Hindu epic Bhagavad-Gita: “Now I have become Death, destroyer of worlds.” Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan unfortunately have moved their two nations, the region and the world back closer to a dreadful brink.