Helping a rogue

It is a matter of serious concern that Pakistan is expanding its nuclear weapons capacity even as it is fighting a battle for survival in its north-western areas of the country with the Taliban. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who a fortnight ago had said that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are a strategic concern, has now admitted that the country is strengthening its nuclear arsenal. The revelation casts doubts on the sincerity of the Pakistan government’s recent statement that India is not its main enemy. Islamabad’s entire nuclear programme is directed at India and no one would say it is useful against the Taliban. There is also international concern about the safety of Islamabad’s nuclear weapons. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had termed Pakistan a mortal threat because of the combination of nuclear weapons and Taliban militancy in its territory. This threat can only grow. The ongoing work at Khushab is expected to take Pakistan’s nuclear power to a new level with plutonium as an important stream.

 The revelation comes in the context of ample evidence in the past that showed that Pakistan was using its internal resources to bolster is nuclear programme while seeking financial and military aid to shore up its economy and to fight the militants. A Congressional panel last week approved a three-fold increase in US aid to Pakistan after diluting some originally conceived conditionalities on its utilisation. When the Senate hearing on the aid was going on there were popular protests in Washington against propping up Pakistan’s war economy without any attaching any strings to the aid package. But the US administration’s position is that strict conditionalities would be counter-productive. This is the traditional US position which Pakistan has always exploited to divert the US aid for its nuclear programme and military build-up directed at India.
Hillary Clinton has said that the US policy towards Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s was incoherent. The present policy also does not show any greater coherence. The complexity of the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan calls for a nuanced policy. But the nuances have only been at the level of text and exposition and Pakistan has got away with its actions that took advantage of the grey area in the space between the lines of the fine print.