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WASHINGTON -- While the United States struggles to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, a more frightening nightmare is simmering right now in Pakistan, where a weak but nuclear-armed government is being buffeted by radical Islamist influences, terrorism and several bloody insurgencies.
Among all the perils the U.S. faces, "Pakistan is the most horrific and the hardest one to do anything about," said Charles D. Furguson, a senior nuclear proliferation expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a naval officer on a nuclear missile submarine.
The nation does not have enough troops to speedily and simultaneously "lock down" all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons sites if that became necessary because of civil strife, an attempted coup or a terrorist attack, officials and outside analysts said.
The president's only option might be nuclear -- a desperate attempt to destroy Pakistan's weapons rather than risk their falling into terrorists' hands and ultimately detonating in an American city.
"To date we don't have anything that can get there quickly, except for a nuclear weapon," Assistant Defense Secretary Peter C.W. Flory told a panel of the Senate Armed Services Committee March 29. He was speaking generally about targeting terrorists in possession of nuclear weapons, not about Pakistan in particular.
By "quickly," officials mean one to four hours. "For that small, highly important set of targets ... a goal we have set is to be able to address those targets in one hour anyplace" with ballistic missiles, Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, who commands all U.S. strategic missiles and bombers, told the senators.
Pakistan's loss of control over some or all of its nuclear weapons has been quietly discussed and war-gamed at senior levels in the Defense Department. But given the political sensitivity of discussing possible armed intervention in an allied country, Pentagon officials declined to answer questions. A spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh, said, "Unclassified answers do not exist."
Though Pakistan is considered a close ally in the war on terrorism, its military and secret intelligence service have worked closely with radical Islamist insurgents operating in Kashmir, and with al-Qaida and the Taliban in next-door Afghanistan prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Starting that fall, the United States began using Pakistan as a major base for the war in Afghanistan and demanded that Pakistan cut its ties with Islamist groups.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, has tried since 2001 to gingerly rein in domestic Islamists who are violently opposed to Pakistan's cooperation with the United States. Musharraf's dilemma, analysts said, is to respond to U.S. pressure without provoking an open revolt.
Last month Musharraf launched operations against jihadists along the Afghan border, where they have long operated openly; a few days later a terrorist suicide bomber detonated a bomb near the U.S. consulate in Karachi, killing American diplomat David Foy among others.
Pakistan announced in May 1998 that it had successfully conducted five nuclear tests. It is thought to have between 30 and 52 nuclear bombs and missile warheads, according to data compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.
Pakistan is not as unstable as it sounds, said Ashley J. Tellis, who recently directed strategic planning for South Asia in the White House and was a senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador to India. The Pakistani military has tight control over its nuclear weapons and it is "highly unlikely" that anything could crack that control, said Tellis, currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
But the risk must be considered, because failure would mean a "stealthy" terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, said John Gordon, a retired Army officer who is a strategic analyst at RAND Corp., a nonprofit think tank that works primarily for the Pentagon.
"If you fail to secure nuclear weapons in a country that may be torn by a civil war, coup attempt or insurgency, you fail massively," Gordon said.
There has been little public discussion of the issue, he said, because "it is painful to think through a problem like this. The nuclear thing is still in a really hard-to-do box."
According to analyses by operations experts, it would require tens of thousands of American troops to "kick in the door" and seize Pakistan's nuclear sites. The United States has neither the troops nor the airlift capacity to get to Pakistan within days, let alone the hours required in a crisis.
"We lack the military capability," said Bruce Nardulli, a specialist in ground warfare at RAND. "These sites would have to be brought down and secured, locked down, simultaneously, in the middle of a huge conflict and among a hostile population. You'd need an army much larger than what you have today."
The United States currently has 176,125 soldiers and Marines deployed in world hotspots, including 21,775 in Afghanistan and 131,350 assigned to Iraq, according to a recent count provided by the Army Operations Center at the Pentagon.
Army Col. Chris Hughes, director of the operations center, said there are "sufficient forces on alert" to handle any crisis. Those forces include a 6,000-man "ready brigade" of the 82nd Airborne Division designed to launch within 72 hours, said Maj. Tom Earnhardt, a division spokesman.
But some believe a Pakistan mission could demand more, faster.
Pakistan's nuclear weapons are believed to be kept, disassembled, at six separate missile and air bases. Other sites would have to be guarded in a crisis, including the nuclear reactor facility at Joharabad and the Kahuta uranium enrichment facility in northern Pakistan, which is believed to be producing plutonium.
Finding and securing such sites is a mission shared among the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Special Operations Command and the U.S. Strategic Command under Gen. Cartwright. It requires fresh and precise intelligence, something the United States lacked in Iraq and elsewhere, U.S. officials acknowledge.
"We've been surprised before," Flory said in his Senate testimony.
The U.S. Special Operations Command declined a request for interviews. But others think an operation to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons is beyond the reach of a few teams of commandos.
U.S. intervention could be complicated by opposition from elements of Pakistan's army, which is slightly larger than the U.S. Army. Pakistan's military is considered highly professional and well equipped, and has well developed air defenses that would make a U.S. air assault or paratroop landing risky.
"We'd be swallowed up in that country," said George Friedman, author of "America's Secret War" and founder of Strategic Forecasting Inc., a private intelligence firm.
"We'd have tremendous difficulty occupying it with speed, we'd have tremendous difficulty supplying our forces -- there are large cities and terrifically bad terrain, and we don't have enough troops," Friedman said.
"I can't think of a worse place to fight."
Problems like this never arose during the Cold War because both the United States and Soviet Union had secure nuclear forces and because each held the other in the thrall of mutual deterrence: If one side attacked, it would be vulnerable to a devastating nuclear retaliation.
But if Pakistan's nuclear weapons got loose, "deterrence" would be useless. Whom would the United States threaten with destruction?
If a nuclear bomb were detonated in Manhattan, "You'd have to know, did it happen with the approval of the (Pakistani) government, or was it a rogue within the government, or was it stolen?" Furguson said.
"Do you still bomb Islamabad in retaliation," he said, "especially if we don't have clear evidence they did it?"
[Mod Edit: Please provide a link, especially to thread starting articles]
Among all the perils the U.S. faces, "Pakistan is the most horrific and the hardest one to do anything about," said Charles D. Furguson, a senior nuclear proliferation expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a naval officer on a nuclear missile submarine.
The nation does not have enough troops to speedily and simultaneously "lock down" all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons sites if that became necessary because of civil strife, an attempted coup or a terrorist attack, officials and outside analysts said.
The president's only option might be nuclear -- a desperate attempt to destroy Pakistan's weapons rather than risk their falling into terrorists' hands and ultimately detonating in an American city.
"To date we don't have anything that can get there quickly, except for a nuclear weapon," Assistant Defense Secretary Peter C.W. Flory told a panel of the Senate Armed Services Committee March 29. He was speaking generally about targeting terrorists in possession of nuclear weapons, not about Pakistan in particular.
By "quickly," officials mean one to four hours. "For that small, highly important set of targets ... a goal we have set is to be able to address those targets in one hour anyplace" with ballistic missiles, Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, who commands all U.S. strategic missiles and bombers, told the senators.
Pakistan's loss of control over some or all of its nuclear weapons has been quietly discussed and war-gamed at senior levels in the Defense Department. But given the political sensitivity of discussing possible armed intervention in an allied country, Pentagon officials declined to answer questions. A spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh, said, "Unclassified answers do not exist."
Though Pakistan is considered a close ally in the war on terrorism, its military and secret intelligence service have worked closely with radical Islamist insurgents operating in Kashmir, and with al-Qaida and the Taliban in next-door Afghanistan prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Starting that fall, the United States began using Pakistan as a major base for the war in Afghanistan and demanded that Pakistan cut its ties with Islamist groups.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, has tried since 2001 to gingerly rein in domestic Islamists who are violently opposed to Pakistan's cooperation with the United States. Musharraf's dilemma, analysts said, is to respond to U.S. pressure without provoking an open revolt.
Last month Musharraf launched operations against jihadists along the Afghan border, where they have long operated openly; a few days later a terrorist suicide bomber detonated a bomb near the U.S. consulate in Karachi, killing American diplomat David Foy among others.
Pakistan announced in May 1998 that it had successfully conducted five nuclear tests. It is thought to have between 30 and 52 nuclear bombs and missile warheads, according to data compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.
Pakistan is not as unstable as it sounds, said Ashley J. Tellis, who recently directed strategic planning for South Asia in the White House and was a senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador to India. The Pakistani military has tight control over its nuclear weapons and it is "highly unlikely" that anything could crack that control, said Tellis, currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
But the risk must be considered, because failure would mean a "stealthy" terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, said John Gordon, a retired Army officer who is a strategic analyst at RAND Corp., a nonprofit think tank that works primarily for the Pentagon.
"If you fail to secure nuclear weapons in a country that may be torn by a civil war, coup attempt or insurgency, you fail massively," Gordon said.
There has been little public discussion of the issue, he said, because "it is painful to think through a problem like this. The nuclear thing is still in a really hard-to-do box."
According to analyses by operations experts, it would require tens of thousands of American troops to "kick in the door" and seize Pakistan's nuclear sites. The United States has neither the troops nor the airlift capacity to get to Pakistan within days, let alone the hours required in a crisis.
"We lack the military capability," said Bruce Nardulli, a specialist in ground warfare at RAND. "These sites would have to be brought down and secured, locked down, simultaneously, in the middle of a huge conflict and among a hostile population. You'd need an army much larger than what you have today."
The United States currently has 176,125 soldiers and Marines deployed in world hotspots, including 21,775 in Afghanistan and 131,350 assigned to Iraq, according to a recent count provided by the Army Operations Center at the Pentagon.
Army Col. Chris Hughes, director of the operations center, said there are "sufficient forces on alert" to handle any crisis. Those forces include a 6,000-man "ready brigade" of the 82nd Airborne Division designed to launch within 72 hours, said Maj. Tom Earnhardt, a division spokesman.
But some believe a Pakistan mission could demand more, faster.
Pakistan's nuclear weapons are believed to be kept, disassembled, at six separate missile and air bases. Other sites would have to be guarded in a crisis, including the nuclear reactor facility at Joharabad and the Kahuta uranium enrichment facility in northern Pakistan, which is believed to be producing plutonium.
Finding and securing such sites is a mission shared among the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Special Operations Command and the U.S. Strategic Command under Gen. Cartwright. It requires fresh and precise intelligence, something the United States lacked in Iraq and elsewhere, U.S. officials acknowledge.
"We've been surprised before," Flory said in his Senate testimony.
The U.S. Special Operations Command declined a request for interviews. But others think an operation to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons is beyond the reach of a few teams of commandos.
U.S. intervention could be complicated by opposition from elements of Pakistan's army, which is slightly larger than the U.S. Army. Pakistan's military is considered highly professional and well equipped, and has well developed air defenses that would make a U.S. air assault or paratroop landing risky.
"We'd be swallowed up in that country," said George Friedman, author of "America's Secret War" and founder of Strategic Forecasting Inc., a private intelligence firm.
"We'd have tremendous difficulty occupying it with speed, we'd have tremendous difficulty supplying our forces -- there are large cities and terrifically bad terrain, and we don't have enough troops," Friedman said.
"I can't think of a worse place to fight."
Problems like this never arose during the Cold War because both the United States and Soviet Union had secure nuclear forces and because each held the other in the thrall of mutual deterrence: If one side attacked, it would be vulnerable to a devastating nuclear retaliation.
But if Pakistan's nuclear weapons got loose, "deterrence" would be useless. Whom would the United States threaten with destruction?
If a nuclear bomb were detonated in Manhattan, "You'd have to know, did it happen with the approval of the (Pakistani) government, or was it a rogue within the government, or was it stolen?" Furguson said.
"Do you still bomb Islamabad in retaliation," he said, "especially if we don't have clear evidence they did it?"
[Mod Edit: Please provide a link, especially to thread starting articles]
