Pakistan’s Nuclear Wild Card

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has become a source of concern to U.S. officials as they consider launching a military campaign in Afghanistan that could send political shock waves through its troubled southern neighbor.

Though Pakistan’s small nuclear arsenal is believed to be under firm control of the army, some officials fear its security might be imperiled if a regional war involving an unpopular American force further polarizes a sharply divided country. A war could set off new civil upheaval that could allow dissidents to seize weapons, or it could usher in a new fundamentalist government, hostile to the United States, that might pass on nuclear know-how to Osama bin Laden or other U.S. enemies.

One official said that while the United States is confident in the status of the weapons now, “This is the kind of thing you’ve got to think about.”

Pakistan is generally thought to have about 30 tactical nuclear weapons that are somewhat larger than the one dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Though analysts’ opinions differ on whether the Pakistanis have actually prepared a weapon to be dropped from an airplane or fired on the tip of a missile, the country tested nuclear devices in May 1998 and is believed to be moving ahead with its weapons program.

While the nuclear program was conceived to protect Pakistan from the perceived nuclear threat from India, some groups in the region view its nuclear arsenal as the “Islamic bomb” that could be used to defend the broader interests of the Muslim world.

Many security experts have long predicted that if a nuclear war breaks out, it will be in South Asia. U.S. diplomats have sometimes described Pakistan, which is sinking deeper into poverty and fragmentation, as one of the world’s most volatile nuclear-armed nations.

The threat of a U.S. military assault on Afghanistan has thrust the weak government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf into an tenuous situation.

While the Pakistani government would like the financial and other benefits that a better relationship with the United States could bring, many Pakistanis violently oppose the idea of support for a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

An American military presence in the country could be the most controversial step, and would clearly be considered intolerable by many of the country’s 25 million citizens.

Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council aide, said the weapons offer a “nightmare scenario” that “deserves to be very high on the radar screen” of U.S. policymakers.

He said the issue of nuclear security is worrisome all over the world, but is especially so “in a country that’s as crisis-prone as this one.” He added that Pakistan is torn between U.S. pressure to come to its aid and its support for Afghanistan, a friendly neighboring Islamic country.

Analysts said the nuclear arsenal appears to be under tight control by Pakistan’s military. That control is strong in part because of the long-standing Pakistani concern that Indian commandos could attack the nuclear sites.

The Pakistani army is seen as generally pro-Western in its outlook, said Stephen P. Cohen, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. However, many military leaders are not pro-American, believing that the United States has “let Pakistan down time and again, and is in bed with the Indians,” Cohen said.

In the event of a civil crisis, the army could be sharply divided, he said. And the nuclear weapons would certainly be “an object of great desire.”

Analysts noted that the Pakistani devices apparently do not have some of the mechanical safeguards installed on Russian nuclear bombs--safeguards, for example, to keep them from being used by unauthorized persons.

Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, a think tank that advocates arms control, said concern about the seizure or disappearance of the Pakistani weapons is “what keeps me up at night.”

Blair said he is convinced that senior administration policymakers must have already thought through what action they might take if the weapons fell into the wrong hands. He said he believes they have already ordered increased intelligence-gathering on the nuclear arsenal, and may have assigned special forces teams to try to seize or disarm them if a civil upheaval put them at risk.

But one U.S. official, who asked to remain unidentified, denied that the United States would try to send a military force to eliminate the threat in a crisis. The Pakistani army is “huge” and would not permit such an intervention, he said.

The official said that while the Pakistani nuclear weapons raise serious issues, the risks should not be exaggerated.