In the summer of 2021, the world learned that China was dramatically expanding its nuclear arsenal. Satellite imagery showed Beijing building as many as 300 new ballistic missile silos. The Pentagon now projects that China’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, which had for years rested in the low hundreds, could spike to 1,500 warheads by 2035, confirming suspicions that Beijing has decided to join Russia and the United States in the front rank of nuclear powers.
Security experts are only beginning to sort through the implications of China’s nuclear breakout. They would do well to consider Ashley Tellis’s new book, Striking Asymmetries, which assesses the implications of Beijing’s actions from the vantage point of the rivalries between South Asia’s three nuclear powers: China, India, and Pakistan.… Seguir leyendo »
Many profound ramifications of America’s exodus from Afghanistan are competing for attention. Among the top challenges, Pakistan’s future stands out. For decades, Islamabad has recklessly pursued nuclear weapons and aided Islamist terrorism — threats that U.S. policymakers have consistently underestimated or mishandled. With Kabul’s fall, the time for neglect or equivocation is over.
The Taliban’s takeover next door immediately poses the sharply higher risk that Pakistani extremists will increase their already sizable influence in Islamabad, threatening at some point to seize full control.
A description once applied to Prussia — where some states possess an army, the Prussian army possesses a state — is equally apt for Pakistan.… Seguir leyendo »
Pakistan is not just one of nine countries with nuclear weapons, it is also a hotbed of global jihadism, where the military and the intelligence services use terrorist networks to advance their regional goals. And even as Pakistani officials proclaim that their nuclear assets are secure, evidence, including internal Pakistani documents, suggests that they know better.
Having served in senior roles in Afghanistan’s intelligence services, I have good reason to be skeptical about Pakistan’s ability to keep its nuclear weapons safe from extremists.
The international community, working with the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency or the United Nations Security Council, must take action to prevent a global catastrophe before it is too late.… Seguir leyendo »
It's safe to say that India-Pakistan relations are nearly on a war footing.
Saber rattling has been near constant in recent weeks after terrorists -- from Pakistan, according to India -- stormed an Indian military base in India-controlled Kashmir and killed 18 soldiers. India's home minister denounced Pakistan as a "terrorist state." Pakistan's defense minister threatened nuclear war.
Then came Thursday, when India claimed to have carried out a "surgical strike" across the border into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The operation, according to the Indian government and military, targeted terrorist "launch pads" and killed several dozen militants. New Delhi's detailed (and perhaps exaggerated) account said the operation lasted four hours.… Seguir leyendo »
The first post-World War II employment of nuclear weapons will probably be launched by North Korea or Pakistan. Should circumstances actually turn out this way, the resultant harms would impact not only the aggressor state and its victims, but also selected strategic nuclear policies in certain other states. The most significant example of such an impact would likely be Israel.
Israel’s nuclear strategy remains “deliberately ambiguous.” This “opaque” posture has endured because Jerusalem has never yet had to worry about confronting enemy nuclear forces. This durability would almost certainly need to change, however, if Iran — the July 2015 Vienna pact notwithstanding — were sometime perceived to have already become “nearly-nuclear.”… Seguir leyendo »
Recientemente, salió a la luz que Estados Unidos estaba intentando negociar con Pakistán un acuerdo para restringir el programa de armas nucleares de rápido crecimiento de los paquistaníes. Suena a buena noticia: cualquier medida a favor de la no proliferación parece un paso positivo. Desafortunadamente, en este caso el esfuerzo ha tenido algunas consecuencias peligrosas no deseadas.
Todo comenzó el mes pasado, cuando los medios estadounidenses informaron que prácticamente ya se había alcanzado un acuerdo. Primero, David Ignatius de The Washington Post informó, en base a conversaciones con altos funcionarios de Estados Unidos, que ya se había llegado a un acuerdo sobre una cantidad de medidas que tomaría Pakistán para reducir su dependencia de las armas nucleares como elemento de disuasión.… Seguir leyendo »
The Pakistani Parliament, even while stating its commitment to protect the territory of Saudi Arabia, recently adopted a resolution not to join the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. Many Pakistanis are worn out by the Taliban insurgency at home and oppose intervention abroad, especially to fight an enemy whose name they are hearing for the first time and risk worsening relations with its backer, Iran.
The foreign affairs minister of the United Arab Emirates, Anwar Gargash, blasted the decision as “contradictory and dangerous and unexpected,” accusing Pakistan of advancing Iran’s interests rather than those of its own Persian Gulf allies.… Seguir leyendo »
The nonproliferation regime is in crisis with North Korea’s defiance and Iran’s continuation of its nuclear program despite opposition from the international community. Yet while a lot of discussion is happening about what can be done about these two states, no one seems willing to take on the elephant in the room: China.
Not only has China played a crucial role in the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, its nuclear engagement with Pakistan potentially remains the most destabilizing factor in the global management of nuclear weapons technology.
Last month Beijing confirmed its plans to sell a new 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor to Pakistan in a deal signed in February.… Seguir leyendo »
An Aesopian nuclear competition is under way between Pakistan and India. Pakistan, whose economy and domestic cohesion are steadily worsening, is the hare, racing to devote scarce resources to compete with a country whose economy is nine times as great. India is the tortoise: Its nuclear program is moving steadily forward without great exertion.
The tortoise will win this race, and could quicken its pace. But the hare continues to run fast, because nuclear weapons are a sign of strength amid domestic weaknesses and because it can’t keep up with the growth of India’s conventional military programs.
At present, there is rough nuclear parity between India and Pakistan, with Pakistan having a larger arsenal and India having more advanced air- and sea-based capabilities.… Seguir leyendo »
Afghanistan expects U.S. aid to flow without interruption for six more years following the final U.S. troop withdrawal at the end of 2014 - three years hence. By itself, the U.S.-trained and U.S.-fielded Afghan army will require $5 billion to $7 billion a year in U.S. support to field an army of 350,000 in a country the size of France. Nothing is less certain.
With major defense cuts now in the works, the Pentagon will have insufficient funds to maintain current force levels in the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. It certainly won't have the wherewithal to fight a two-front war as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan.… Seguir leyendo »
In 1947, a British lawyer with no experience in the region arrived in India to draw lines on a map. Within several weeks, Cyril Radcliffe had severed the future Pakistan from India, helping to create the conditions that have since resulted in three wars and the arming of both nations with nuclear weapons. People ask what America would do if Pakistan lost control of its nukes. Wrong question. Ask instead what India might do.
That country has as many as 100 nuclear weapons and the missiles, as well as the airplanes, submarines and surface ships, to launch them. Pakistan also has around 100 nuclear weapons but lacks India's extensive delivery systems.… Seguir leyendo »
Either Kim Jong Il or Pervez Musharraf is lying about whether Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove, Abdul Qadeer Khan, gave centrifuges to North Korea for uranium enrichment. Unless the truth can be established, the hitherto-promising denuclearization negotiations with Pyongyang are likely to collapse.
Khan has been shielded from foreign interrogators since his arrest three years ago for running a global nuclear Wal-Mart. Musharraf wrote in his memoir, "In the Line of Fire," that the former czar of Pakistan's nuclear program provided "nearly two dozen" prototype centrifuges suitable for uranium enrichment experiments to North Korea -- a charge flatly denied by Pyongyang.
Por Brahma Chellaney, profesor de Estudios Estratégicos en el Centro de Investigación Política, instituto privado de Nueva Delhi. Traducción: Juan Gabriel López Guix (LA VANGUARDIA, 11/09/06):
No hay mejor ilustración de la forma en que la política internacional moldea las cuestiones relativas a la proliferación nuclear que las respuestas opuestas dadas por el Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas a los dos últimos casos: un decreto excesivamente severo contra Irán para que deje de hacer lo que Teherán considera que tiene todo el derecho a hacer y el trato excepcionalmente indulgente otorgado a Pakistán, a pesar del descubrimiento en el mercado negro nuclear de una importante red dirigida por científicos, militares y funcionarios de los servicios de inteligencia de ese país.… Seguir leyendo »
Por Thérèse Delpech, directora de Asuntos Estratégicos en la Comisaría de Energía Atómica (LE MONDE, 03/09/05)
Con ocasión de la tradicional conferencia de Embajadores, el Presidente de la República ha indicado que, ante la situación creada por Irán al volver a convertir uranio, se corre el riesgo de no dejar otra opción que la intervención del Consejo de Seguridad.
No se trata aquí de un endurecimiento de la posición francesa, sino de su reafirmación. De hecho, lo que los europeos habían previsto en el caso de que se retomaran las actividades de la fábrica de Ispahán era una transferencia al Consejo de seguridad desde el mes de agosto, tras un segundo consejo de gobernadores de la Agencia Internacional d la Energía Atómica (AIEA) siguiendo los pasos del primero.… Seguir leyendo »
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