Sleepwalking With the Bomb by John C. Wohlstetter

Author:John C. Wohlstetter [Wohlstetter, John C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Europe, International Relations, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Nuclear Warfare, Arms Control, Political Science, Military, History
ISBN: 9781936599066
Google: ehlTLwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1936599066
Barnesnoble: 1936599066
Goodreads: 15815511
Publisher: Discovery Institute
Published: 2012-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

8.

PAKISTAN AND INDIA: WHO GUARDS THE GUARDIANS?

The second myth is that nuclear weapons are OK in the hands of ‘the good guys’ and not OK in the hands of ‘the bad guys.’ We need to have a system that is not based on subjective considerations.

MUHAMMAD EL-BARADEI, UNITED NATIONS CHIEF NUCLEAR INSPECTOR, 2006

FORTY YEARS AGO THERE WERE FIVE ACKNOWLEDGED NUCLEAR powers, all formally committed to evolving international nonproliferation legal norms: the U.S., the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China. A sixth, Israel, was already an undeclared nuclear club member. The 1970s were to begin extending nuclear weapons proliferation into the Third World, with two countries—India and Pakistan—eager to take President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program and produce Atoms for War (at minimum, to deter each other) as well. This chapter traces the acquisition of nuclear technology by India and Pakistan, and in so doing offers the Sixth Lesson of nuclear-age history: CIVILIAN NUCLEAR POWER INHERENTLY CONFERS MILITARY CAPABILITY.

What is historically significant are two facts. First, India and Pakistan crossed the nuclear weapon threshold by equivalent routes, via proximity of civilian nuclear power generation to military nuclear deployment. India had a program for 10 years for commercial use only, until it perceived that China had come to imperil India’s national security. Pakistan saw in India’s bomb a mortal threat to its security. Both began their nuclear power programs in 1955, the year that the U.S. declassified atomic data under Atoms for Peace. Coincidentally, it was also the year the historic conference of underdeveloped nations was held in Bandung, Indonesia, where India assumed a leading diplomatic role.

But then their paths sharply diverged. India has never aided nuclear proliferation anywhere. In contrast, Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist established a clandestine network aiding nuclear proliferation efforts in several rogue states.

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