Indian Defence Review

With China remaining Pakistans main support to acquire the bomb, even “˜tangible inducements were not enough.

Perhaps even more interesting than the WikiLeaks cables is a series of US documents published by the National Security Archives (NSA) of George Washington University on how Pakistan acquired the bomb in the 1970’s.

This period witnessed the military coup by General Zia-ul-Haq who imposed martial law on 5 July 1977. The documents show that though the Carter Administration was deeply upset with the Zia regime, the arrival of the Soviets in Afghanistan at the end of the seventies, made the US officials ‘forget’ that Pakistan had become nuclear. Later, it was too late to stop the nuclear train.

Already in the Seventies, the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme was a source of anxiety for US officials; especially when they discovered AQ Khan’s network. The Carter Administration would have been even more worried if they had known that Khan and his team were spreading nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea with the help of China, but that is another story.

The entire nuclear process had started after Pakistan’s defeat during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war. President Bhutto realised that Pakistan would never be able to defeat India in a conventional war. He decided to secretly go in for nuclear weapons. In 1973, Pakistan began negotiations to buy a nuclear reprocessing facility (used for producing plutonium) from a French firm.

In August 1974, US intelligence agencies estimated that Pakistan would not have nuclear weapons before 1980, even with ‘extensive foreign assistance’. But a year later, the CIA predicted that Pakistan could produce a plutonium-fuelled weapon as early as 1978, as long as it had access to a reprocessing source. They, therefore, thought that it was enough to stop the transfer of reprocessing plant to end the process. Unfortunately, the US intelligence agencies made some wrong assumptions.

The US documents also confirm that Zia’s main objective was the consolidation of the nuclear programme initiated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who had bragged “we are ready to eat grass” to possess the coveted weapon.

Thanks to Abdul Qadeer Khan, who managed to steal the blueprints for a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility, the Pakistani dream became a reality right under the eyes of the Americans who “wanted to maintain good relations with that country, a moderate state in an unstable region”.

Reading these historical documents, one realizes that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and his colleagues believed that ‘a package of tangible inducements’ would dissuade Pakistan from taking drastic steps. With China remaining Pakistan’s main support to acquire the bomb, even ‘tangible inducements’ were not enough. Though the Carter Administration worked hard on a non-proliferation policy, Pakistan still managed to build its nuclear arsenal. It certainly brought deep frustration to Carter and his team.

Another US document admits that during the 1980s, “the US was criticized for providing massive levels of aid to Pakistan, its military ally, despite laws barring assistance to any country that imported certain technology related to nuclear weapons. President Ronald Reagan waived the legislation, arguing that cutting off aid would harm US national interests”.

One moral of the story is that when a State is desperate to get nuclear technology, it is difficult to stop it, with either sticks or carrots. More than the growing rift between Pakistan and the US, what worries the US officials in Washington is the growing Chinese influence in Islamabad. Whenever there is a problem between the two ‘allies’, Beijing is not far away and always ready to ‘help’.

A piece of a chopper’s tail is a small reward for such support.