Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in South Asia after the Test Ban

PAKISTANI NUCLEAR POLICY 63
Since successive governments have been dismissed in militarysupported
or -directed constitutional coups since 1988, elected
governments have taken care to ensure that the military’s perceptions
and priorities continue to receive domestic acceptance, particularly in
the nuclear realm. Faced, however, with a less sympathetic international
environment after the end of the cold war, the dissolution of
the Soviet Union and a resumption of US pressure for an abandonment
of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, 21 there has been a shift in
official rhetoric and tactics in both external and internal forums.
Pakistani officials admit that Pakistan has achieved the capability to
produce fissile material and to manufacture nuclear weapons. 22 In an
unsuccessful bid first to prevent and then to remove the US embargo
on economic assistance and the supply of conventional arms,
Pakistani officials claim to have unilaterally capped production of
weapon-grade uranium. 23 The official admission that the Pakistani
nuclear programme is weapon-oriented is, however, accompanied by
reiterations of the programme’s ambiguous and defensive nature. It is
claimed that Pakistan would be willing to adopt international nonproliferation
norms but only in the event of a simultaneous Indian
accession to the international non-proliferation regime. 24 It is also
claimed that Pakistan has no intention of developing or maintaining a
nuclear arsenal since its nuclear capability is in itself an effective
deterrent against a potential Indian threat.
Much of Pakistan’s new official rhetoric has been aimed, albeit with
mixed results, at convincing external audiences of the need for a more
sympathetic response to Pakistan’s security imperatives without
21 The objective of the Clinton Administration’s declaratory policy is ‘first to cap, then
over time reduce, and finally eliminate the possession of weapons of mass destruction and
their means of delivery’. US Department of State, Report To Congress: Progress Toward
Regional Nonproliferation in South Asia, Released by the Bureau of South Asian Affairs,
7 May 1993.
22 In the first official disclosure of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability during a visit to
the USA in Feb. 1992, the Pakistani Foreign Secretary, Shaharyar Khan, stated that Pakistan
possessed ‘all the elements which, if put together, would become a [nuclear] device’. Smith,
R. J., ‘Pakistan can build one nuclear device, foreign official says’, Washington Post, 7 Feb.
1992.
23 According to the caretaker Prime Minister, Moin Qureshi, Pakistan had ‘halted’ its
nuclear programme. Quester, G. H., ‘Nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India’, Military Technology,
vol. 17, no. 10 (Oct. 1993), p. 67.
24 According to then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, ‘Pakistan cannot take unilateral measures
in the nuclear field but will work regionally and multilaterally on proliferation issues’.
Dawn, 1 Apr. 1996.