THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT AND PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM

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THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT AND PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM

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Mr. PRESSLER
Testimony of Senator John Glenn--U.S./Pakistan Nuclear Issues
THE PROMISE OF THE POLICY

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ORIGINS OF THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT
OTHER LAWS INFRINGED

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PAKISTAN AND IRAQ
NEXT STEPS AND REFORMS
U.S. Aid Policies and Pakistan's Bomb: What Were We Trying To Accomplish?

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From Myth to Reality: Evidence of Pakistan's `Nuclear Restraint'

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Are Pakistan's F-16's `Nuclear-Capable'? It Depends on Who You Ask
The Bomb vs. Butter: Pakistan's Ultimate Choice

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From the Herald Tribune, June 26, 1992
On Proliferation Law, a Disgraceful Failure




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Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, yesterday the Foreign Relations Committee held an extremely enlightening hearing on interpretation of the Pressler amendment.

During the hearing, it was my great pleasure to listen to the testimony of Senator John Glenn. My first experience with the senior Senator from Ohio occurred when I was a student at the University of South Dakota. I wrote him a letter congratulating him on being the first American to orbit the Earth on the Friendship 7 mission. I received a very kind response and am pleased to count Senator Glenn as one of my very good friends today.

Few Members of the Senate, indeed of Congress, understand the issue of nuclear nonproliferation better than Senator Glenn. At the Wehrkunde Conference in Munich last winter, which I attended, Senator Glenn gave an excellent speech on nonproliferation issues. He is the leading expert on nonproliferation in the U.S. Senate today. I was pleased he was with us yesterday to share his experience and knowledge on this subject. Senator Glenn's testimony was one of the most complete and best recitations of the history surrounding Pakistan's nuclear weapons program I have ever seen or heard. I commend Senator Glenn's comments to all Senators and will ask unanimous consent that Senator Glenn's testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee on July 30, 1992 be included in the Record immediately following my remarks.

Yesterday's Foreign Relations Committee hearing explored the State Department's view that the Pressler amendment allows for the continued licensing of private sales of arms and technology to Pakistan notwithstanding what many consider very clear statutory language prohibiting such sales. To quote from the amendment, `no assistance shall be furnished to Pakistan and no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan, pursuant to the authorities contained in this Act or any other Act. * * *'

The language is quite clear. By licensing the export of arms and military technology to the government of Pakistan under the terms of the Arms Export Control Act, it seems to this Senator that the administration is in violation of both the letter and spirit of the Pressler amendment.

Mr. President, my concern is not just that the State Department is misinterpreting a statute passed by Congress. I am also very concerned that the purpose of the Pressler amendment--to stop nuclear weapons proliferation and ensure U.S. taxpayers are not asked to subsidize indirectly

the building of a nuclear weapons program in Pakistan--is not being achieved because while we have penalized Pakistan by cutting off most assistance to that country, arms continue to flow through the back door of private sales.

I recently returned from a trip to nine former Soviet republics and Latvia. Just prior to that trip the Foreign Relations Committee considered the START Treaty and the full Senate passed the Freedom Support Act. Under the terms of the Lisbon protocol to the START Treaty, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine each agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as nonnuclear state parties.

I believe that such assurances would be equally valuable from the other nations emerging from the former Soviet Union that do not currently have a nuclear weapons capability. During this committee's hearings on START, I questioned administration witnesses regarding this issue and will continue to push this idea at every opportunity.

My point is that I came away from my recent trip convinced that we should apply the terms of the Pressler amendment to other developing nations which do not have a nuclear weapons capability, but which receive aid from the United States. We should use economic means to encourage nonnuclear countries to remain nonnuclear. We must make it clear that should they decide to pursue a nuclear weapons program, it will be without the help of the United States.

Mr. President, let me conclude by saying that I intend to continue working with Senator Glenn and others to ensure that at this unique time in world history--a time when the United States remains the world's sole superpower and, together with Russia, works to reduce the nuclear threat--developing nations follow that lead and resist the temptation to acquire their own nuclear weapons capability.

There being no objection, the testimony was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

Testimony of Senator John Glenn--U.S./Pakistan Nuclear Issues
(BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, U.S. SENATE, JULY 30, 1992)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to testify on U.S. responses to nuclear developments in Pakistan. I was tempted also to address my many concerns about India's large unsafeguarded nuclear program, but given time limitations and the focus of this hearing, I will address these concerns in another forum. Besides, your Committee has every reason to focus today on Pakistan. After all, American taxpayers shelled out billions of hard-earned tax dollars in aid that was explicitly justified as necessary to curb Pakistan's bomb program. This aid was provided only after repeated waivers of our nuclear nonproliferation laws. Congress has both the right and the duty to see what happened to these funds.

A review of this evidence will also encourage us to reexamine some old policy assumptions--like the faith some of our leaders have put in transfers of arms and high technology as tools of nuclear nonproliferation--and to appreciate the importance of some old fundamentals, like the duty of the Executive to `faithfully execute the laws,' the need for a working relationship between Congress and the Executive, and the public's right to know.

My testimony will address five questions: First, what were Congress and the American taxpayers told about the relationship between U.S. military aid and Pakistan's bomb? Second, how have these claims stood up over time? Third, why did Congress impose nuclear conditions on aid only to Pakistan? Fourth, did the Reagan and Bush administrations implement these conditions as Congress had intended? And finally, where do we go from here?

THE PROMISE OF THE POLICY

Between 1982 and 1990, America provided over $4 billion in assistance to Pakistan, about half of which was military. Some people think this aid was solely intended to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan, a goal we shared with Pakistan. My staff, however, has identified 20 official administration statements claiming since 1981 that military assistance would address Pakistan's security concerns and thereby keep Pakistan from acquiring the bomb. I will submit with my testimony some relevant excerpts. [Attachment]

Given these many claims, the answer to my first question is crystal clear: the military transfers and other assistance were explicitly justified to Congress as instruments of a nuclear nonproliferation policy. Yet since this aid was only provided following waiver upon waiver of our nuclear nonproliferation laws, the administration had a heavy burden of proof to demonstrate that the aid was producing the promised results.

Unfortunately, the much-heralded nonproliferation benefits never materialized, which simplifies the job of answering my second question about the effects of the policy. It is well known that Pakistan was acquiring a nuclear weapons capability throughout the 1980's. I will attach to my statement a table listing 50 events that show without a doubt that Pakistan was continuing and even accelerating its pursuit of the bomb despite all of our aid. [Attachment] Mr. Chairman, if you judge by the evidence and not by the promises, there was a direct--not an inverse--relationship between the level of our aid and Pakistan's progress toward the bomb.

This leads to the answer to my third question about why Congress decided to impose new conditions on aid provided only to Pakistan. In the face of sensational daily headlines from around the world attesting to the failure of the administration's arms-for-nuclear-restraint policy, Congress went to work in the mid-1980's to strengthen conditions on further aid to Pakistan. It was no more `discriminatory' for Congress to single out Pakistan for special aid conditions than it was for the Executive to issue waiver after waiver of our nonproliferation laws just on Pakistan's behalf.

ORIGINS OF THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT

On March 28, 1984, this Committee adopted an amendment offered by Sen. Cranston and myself providing that no assistance shall be furnished and `no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan' unless the President could first certify that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device, is not developing a nuclear device, and is not acquiring goods to make such a device. On April 3, 1984, the Committee narrowly voted to reconsider this amendment and adopted instead a substitute offered by Senator Pressler, Mathias and Percy, which tied the continuation of aid and military sales to two certification conditions: (1) that Pakistan not possess a nuclear explosive device; and (2) that new aid `will reduce significantly the risk' that Pakistan will possess such a device. This text, which was enacted on another bill in August 1985, has come to be called the `Pressler amendment.'

In summary, the amendment made binding what had been an official policy, namely that our aid would reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation. It also clarified--by its broad prohibition on all arms transfers under any U.S. law--that a failure to meet these standards would lead to a cutoff of not only assistance but of military sales as well.

Let me just add at this point that neither the legislative history nor the text of the amendment itself contains any written or implied exclusion of commercial arms sales from the scope of these sanctions. Indeed, it is useful to recall that in past testimony at least one State Department witness has also dismissed this peculiar argument for allowing commercial arms sales to continue in the event of a nuclear violation. At a hearing of this Committee on November 12, 1981, I asked Undersecretary of State James Buckley to describe how a nuclear detonation by Pakistan would affect our transfers of F-16 aircraft and he replied that such an event would, in his words:

* * * dramatically affect the relationship. The cash sales are part of that relationship. I cannot see drawing lines between the impact in the case of a direct cash sale versus a guaranteed or U.S.-financed sale.

Yet as the evidence kept flowing in about new Pakistan advances toward the bomb, new rationalizations kept flowing out from Foggy Bottom for continuing our transfers of arms and aid in the service of nonproliferation--which brings me to my fourth question addressing how the Pressler amendment and other relevant laws were implemented.

 

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IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT

I have long believed that continued arms experts to Pakistan was no way to halt its bomb program. But when you consider that of the 50 nuclear weapon-related events I cited in my submission to the Committee, three-quarters of them occurred after the Pressler amendment was enacted, it becomes glaringly apparent that the Reagan and Bush administrations willfully violated not only the Pressler amendment but several other nuclear nonproliferation laws as well. I believe that the Pressler amendment was violated almost immediately after it was enacted, when U.S. assistance and arms were transferred even though our government knew Pakistan was continuing its pursuit of the bomb.

There are three specific violations I would like to discuss today. First, I believe that the President's conclusion in October 1989 that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device conflicts with widely available information indicating that Pakistan was a de facto nuclear-weapon state. Indeed, Pakistan may well have attained that capability even before 1989, when would cast doubt on the accuracy of non-possession certifications by the Reagan administration as well.

Five years ago, a London newspaper published excerpts from an interview with no greater authority than Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's bomb; in Dr. Khan words, `what the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct.' Later, in February 1992, the Pakistan foreign secretary publicly conceded that his government had `inherited' a nuclear capability. He told a U.N. audience on February 7th that `there was a capability in 1989,' but he denied that the program was `moved forward' and maintained that `we froze the program.' In an interview reported in the Washington Post the same day, the foreign secretary state that Pakistan possesses `elements which, if put together, would become a device. He referred to specifically to weapons `cores.'

The foreign secretary's statements raise some thorny problems for both the administration and the Pakistani government:

1. If Pakistan possessed these `elements' back in 1989, then how could the President have certified that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device? By the State Department's own interpretation of the Pressler amendment, if Pakistan possessed the bomb in pieces, it possessed the bomb.

2. If Pakistan did not possess these `elements' back in 1989, but acquired them after President Bush made his certification of nonpossession in October 1989, then the foreign secretary's statement that the program was `frozen' when his government came to power in November 1990 is hardly reassuring. The foreign secretary is saying that Pakistan has frozen its status as a de factor nuclear weapon state. He is also admitting that Pakistan has violated its solemn commitment to the United States in 1984 that it would not enrich uranium beyond the 5% level needed for civilian uses.

The foreign secretary's candid remarks about the existence of a nuclear capability in 1989--combined with his remarks about weapons `cores' that he claims were produced before his government came to power--raises the real possibility of a violation of the non-possession standard in that year or even earlier.

The second violation also occurred in 1989--actually it was just a repeat of 4 prior violations by President Reagan--when President Bush certified that the provision of new assistance would `reduce significantly' the risk that Pakistan would possess a nuclear explosive device. In contrast to voluminous evidence indicating that Pakistan's program to develop nuclear weapons was advancing throughout the late 1980's, there were just no credible grounds for concluding that the provision of new foreign aid was reducing the risk of Pakistan possessing the bomb.

In fact, I believe there is considerable evidence that America's aid and high technology undoubtedly contributed to Pakistan's nuclear and missile capabilities. The F-16 aircraft we provided along with the dual-use goods we transferred to nuclear and missile facilities in Pakistan provide sufficient grounds for this conclusion.

The third violation--and I do indeed call this a violation--occurred in 1992, when it was officially confirmed that the United States government was continuing to license arms sales to Pakistan despite the clear requirement of the Pressler amendment that `no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan' if it has not received the required Presidential certifications.

Evidently, this is what we are now down to: elements of our bureaucracy are grasping at straws to perpetuate the myths that additional military transfers will buy us influence over Pakistan's bomb program, and that such transfers are perfectly legal. The rationale that our government is somehow justified in licensing sales of munitions to maintain current military capabilities (which the Pakistani foreign secretary now tells us includes nuclear weapons) flies in the face of the black-and-white words of the Pressler amendment.

Commercial arms sales do indeed contravene both the spirit and the letter of the Pressler amendment. All the more so, given that the equipment we are evidently continuing to supply includes spare parts for F-16 aircraft, a known delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons. Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit a list of official statements from the Reagan and Bush administrations taking mutually contradictory positions on the issue of whether the F-16 can be used by Pakistan to deliver nuclear weapons. Clearly somebody--and not just in Pakistan--has not been telling the truth to the people, which raises the possibility of yet another violation of the law.

In summary, the administration's position on commercial arms sales not only lacks a solid foundation in law, it seems almost contrived to subvert and frustrate the very purposes of sanctions, which are to impose a cost for noncompliance with legitimate nonproliferation standards, to offer an incentive to correct the policies to noncompliance, and to signal the priority of nuclear nonproliferation on America's foreign policy agenda.

 

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OTHER LAWS INFRINGED

I would like to add to this testimony that I believe at least four additional laws were either willfully misinterpreted or simply ignored by zealous Executive officials who were driven by a policy they could not admit was bankrupt. I believe this shady record applies not just to nonproliferation laws directed at Pakistan and my list is by no means exhaustive.

Under the Glenn/Symington amendment, U.S. aid is supposed to be halted to any nation that delivers unsafeguarded nuclear enrichment equipment, materials, or technology to any other country that does not have full-scope safeguards. In December 1981, I delivered a floor statement that cited an AP story claiming that the State Department believed Pakistan was receiving nuclear technology through Turkey. Turkish press reports through mid-1988 were commenting about U.S. concerns relating to such sales. Yet the aid ban was never invoked against Turkey and no waiver was sought.

Another law, Section 309c of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, requires special licensing controls over `all export items * * * which could be * * * of significance for nuclear explosive purposes.' The $2 billion in dual-use goods that were approved for sale to Pakistan and Iraq (including goods going to nuclear and missile facilities), coupled with the almost complete failure of our government to verify the ultimate end uses of our exports--suggest a serious breakdown in the implementation of this law.

A third law, Section 602 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act requires that three committees will be kept `fully and currently informed' about dangerous foreign nuclear activities and the work of our own federal agencies on behalf of nonproliferation goals. I do not believe that the standards of `fully,' `currently,' or `informed' were satisfied. We surely were not consulted about continuing commercial arms sales to Pakistan.

And finally, Section 601 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act requires the Executive to send an annual report to Congress on nuclear proliferation. The evidence reviewed in our Committee's newsletter, Proliferation Watch of November-December 1991 shows a clear pattern of noncompliance with that reporting requirement.

PAKISTAN AND IRAQ

Mr. Chairman, I am convinced that this dismal record has much in common with our past experiences in dealing with Iraq's bomb as well.

Let me start with high-tech trade: before Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, our policymakers sought to restrain Iraq by means that included licensing some $1.5 billion in commercial sales of U.S. high technology. Between 1985 and 1990, the Commerce Department also licensed just under $800 million in comparable goods to facilities in Pakistan, including certain destinations widely known to be associated with nuclear and missile programs. There are a lot better ways to redress our balance of trade than by peddling arms or dual-use goods to countries with lousy nonproliferation credentials. This policy did not work with Iraq. It is a continuing failure with respect to China. And it surely never worked with Pakistan.

Then there were the now infamous `Detonation symposiums.' The Reagan and Bush administrations did nothing to stop scientists from Pakistan, Iraq, and several other proliferation-sensitive countries from attending symposiums on `Detonation' hosted by our three nuclear weapon labs. Other scientists from these countries were also allowed to visit and to conduct research at these labs and to meet with some of our bomb designers. What kind of message does that send of our commitment to nuclear nonproliferation?

But there are other indicators of the second-class status of nonproliferation as a policy priority in the 1980's. Both Pakistan and Iraq sought to acquire nuclear weapons triggers. Both illicitly obtained centrifuges based on a European Urenco design. Both have produced or sought some 19 nuclear-related goods, as documented in a recent issue of the Governmental Affairs Committee's newsletter, Proliferation Watch. Both established elaborate secret procurement networks. Both claimed their nuclear programs were entirely peaceful. Yet in both cases, U.S. officials treated nonproliferation as a secondary goal of policy. I find these parallels too close for comfort.

Our Pakistan and Iraq policies have also soaked American taxpayers to the tune of some $2 billion in Iraq's defaulted loans that were guaranteed by Uncle Sam, and some $4 billion in total U.S. foreign aid to Pakistan throughout the 1980's that was supposed to entice Pakistan away from acquiring the bomb and enhance the welfare of Pakistan's citizens.

Also, administration spokesmen routinely opposed congressional efforts to impose sanctions against both Iraq and Pakistan. The imposition of sanctions would at least at least have clarified for the world where America stood on two key nonproliferation issues; at best, the sanctions may well have helped to impede both programs. What is known, however, is that the `aid-and-trade' and `waivers-for-favors' policies for restraining bomb programs in both Iraq and Pakistan were complete failures.

NEXT STEPS AND REFORMS

Mr. Chairman, I have covered a lot of ground today and would like to answer my final question with a few recommendations on where we should be going from here.

Congress cannot legislate away another nation's bomb program. However, America is under no obligation to make it any easier for a nation to acquire or enhance such a capability and, in fact, we have a moral and a legal duty to make such pursuits quite costly. If Pakistan ultimately decides that its bomb is worth the hardships of acquiring and possessing it, then that is Pakistan's choice to make and we must respond accordingly. For now, we need to firm up our sanctions policy.

First, we must halt all commercial arms exports to Pakistan. The time has come to turn out the lights of a policy that failed to deliver on its promises. The party is over.

Second, we must notify our friends and allies--particularly France and Russia because of their expressed interest in selling nuclear-capable aircraft to Pakistan--about this decision and urge them to support and not to undercut our sanctions policy. We should publicly expose all efforts to frustrate our nonproliferation diplomacy and advise all nations of additional consequences they will face if they continue to pursue such efforts.

Third, we must remind Pakistan's leaders that America expects Pakistan to comply with its pledge in 1984 that it would not enrich uranium over the 5% level needed for peaceful uses of nuclear energy. We can discuss resumption of aid when that promise has been kept and when Pakistan has satisfied our government that it is willing to bring its nuclear program fully into line with the Pakistani government's own peaceful policy statements.

And finally, we should notify Pakistan and that we intend to enforce our export licensing standards with respect to sales of dual-use goods. We should undertake a review of our licensing policy with respect to other nations as well that do not satisfy those licensing standards. We should also work closely with other countries that export dual-use
goods to ensure that they do not undercut our policies--and caution them of the consequences if our concerns are not heeded.

Mr. Chairman, although the administration is not without its accomplishments in developing international regimes, the record shows that much more needs to be done just to get our own government's house in order. I look forward to working with you--and with the new administration next year regardless of who wins the presidential election--to repair the damage that has been done over the last 10 years to our nuclear nonproliferation laws and policies.

In closing, I hope that as we evaluate our record, Pakistan--one of the world's poorest nations--will also evaluate the full implications of its bomb program for the welfare of its 100 million citizens. I will submit today a fact sheet describing Pakistan's economic and social conditions, and its lop-sided defense budget. The longer that Pakistan's bomb and huge military establishment drain off resources needed to meet these needs, the greater will be the real national security threat that Pakistan will face in the years ahead.

 

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U.S. Aid Policies and Pakistan's Bomb: What Were We Trying To Accomplish?

(MATERIALS COMPILED BY SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS)

Letters to Congress from Presidents Reagan & Bush, 1985-1989, required under sec. 620E(e) of Foreign Assistance Act (Pressler Amendment)--

`The proposed United States assistance program for Pakistan remains extremely important in reducing the risk that Pakistan will develop and ultimately possess such a device. I am convinced that our security relationship and assistance program are the most effective means available for us to dissuade Pakistan from acquiring nuclear explosive devices. Our assistance program is designed to help Pakistan address its substantial and legitimate security needs, thereby both reducing incentives and creating disincentives for Pakistani acquisition of nuclear explosives.'--President Bush, 10/5/89; President Ronald Reagan, 11/18/88; 12/17/87; 10/27/86; & 11/25/85.

President George Bush, letter to Congress (addressed to J. Danforth Quayle as President of the Senate), 12 April 1991, urging abandonment of Pressler certification requirement:

`* * * my intention is to send the strongest possible message to Pakistan and other potential proliferators that nonproliferation is among the highest priorities of my Administration's foreign policy, irrespective of whether such a policy is required by law.'

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Teresita Schaffer, testimony before House subcommittee, 2 August 1989:

`None of the F-16's Pakistan already owns or is about to purchase is configured for nuclear delivery * * * a Pakistan with a credible conventional deterrent will be less motivated to purchase a nuclear weapons capability.'

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Hughes, testimony before House subcommittee, 2 August 1989:

`Finally, we believe that past and continued American support for Pakistan's conventional defense reduces the likelihood that Pakistan will feel compelled to cross the nuclear threshold.'

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert Peck, testimony before House subcommittee, 17 February 1988:

`We believe that the improvements in Pakistan's conventional military forces made possible by U.S. assistance and the U.S. security commitment our aid program symbolizes have had a significant influence on Pakistan's decision to forego the acquisition of nuclear weapons.'

Special Ambassador at large Richard Kennedy, testimony before two House subcommittees, 22 October 1987:

`We have made it clear that Pakistan must show restraint in its nuclear program if it expects us to continue providing security assistance.'

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy, testimony before Senate subcommittee, 18 March 1987:

`Our assistance relationship is designed to advance both our non-proliferation and our strategic objectives relating to Afghanistan. Development of a close and reliable security partnership with Pakistan gives Pakistan an alternative to nuclear weapons to meet its legitimate security needs and strengthens our influence on Pakistan's nuclear decision making. Shifting to a policy of threats and public ultimata would in our view decrease, not increase our ability to continue to make a contribution to preventing a nuclear arms race in South Asia. Undermining the credibility of the security relationship with the U.S. would itself create incentives for Pakistan to ignore our concerns and push forward in the direction of nuclear weapons acquisition.'

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Howard Schaffer, testimony before House subcommittee 6 February 1984:

The assistance program also contributes to U.S. nuclear non-proliferation goals. We believe strongly that a program of support which enhances Pakistan's sense of security helps remove the principal underlying incentive for the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. The government of Pakistan understands our deep concern over this issue. We have made clear that the relationship between our two countries, and the program of military and economic assistance on which it rests, are ultimately inconsistent with Pakistan's development of a nuclear explosive device. President Zia has stated publicly that Pakistan will not manufacture a nuclear explosives device.'

Special Ambassador at large Richard Kennedy, testimony before two House subcommittees, 1 November 1983:

`By helping friendly nations to address legitimate security concerns, we seek to reduce incentives for the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The provision of security assistance and the sale of military equipment can be major components of efforts along these lines. Development of security ties to the U.S. can strengthen a country's confidence in its ability to defend itself without nuclear weapons. At the same time, the existence of such a relationship enhances our credibility when we seek to persuade that country to forego [sic] nuclear arms . . . We believe that strengthening Pakistan's conventional military capability serves a number of important U.S. interests, including non-proliferation. At the same time, we have made clear to the government of Pakistan that efforts to acquire nuclear explosives would jeopardize our security assistance program.'

Statement by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Harry Marshall, 12 September 1983, before International Nuclear Law Association, San Francisco:

`U.S. assistance has permitted Pakistan to strengthen its conventional defensive capability. This serves to bolster its stability and thus reduce its motivation for acquiring nuclear explosives.'

President Ronald Reagan, report to Congress pursuant to sec. 601 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (`601 report'), for calendar year 1982:

`Steps were taken to strengthen the U.S. security relationship with Pakistan with the objective of addressing that country's security needs and thereby reducing any motivation for acquiring nuclear explosives.'

President Ronald Reagan, report to Congress pursuant to sec. 601 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (`601 report'), for calendar year 1981:

`Military assistance by the United States and the establishment of a new security relationship with Pakistan should help to counteract its possible motivations toward acquiring nuclear weapons . . . Moreover, help from the United States in strengthening Pakistan's conventional military capabilities would offer the best available means for counteracting possible motivations toward acquiring nuclear weapons.'

Assistant Secretary of State James Malone, address before Atomic Industrial Forum, San Francisco, 1 December 1981:

`We believe that this assistance--which is in the strategic interest of the United States--will make a significant contribution to the well-being and security of Pakistan and that it will be recognized as such by that government. We also believe that, for this reason, it offers the best prospect of deterring the Pakistanis from proceeding with the testing or acquisition of nuclear explosives.

Undersecretary of State James Buckley, testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 12 November 1981:

`We believe that a program of support which provides Pakistan with a continuing relationship with a significant security partner and enhances its sense of security may help remove the principal underlying incentive for the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. With such a relationship in place we are hopeful that over time we will be able to persuade Pakistan that the pursuant of a weapons capability is neither necessary to its security nor in its broader interest as an important member of the world community.'

Testimony of Undersecretary of State James Buckley, in response to question from Sen. Glenn, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 12 November 1981, on Effects of a Nuclear Detonation on Continuation of Cash Sales of F-16's:

`[Sen. Glenn] * * * so if Pakistan detonates a nuclear device before completion of the F-16 sale, will the administration cut off future deliveries?

`[Buckley] Again, Senator, we have underscored the fact that this would dramatically affect the relationship. The cash sales are part of that relationship. I cannot see drawing lines between the impact in the case of a direct cash sale versus a guaranteed or U.S.-financed sale.'

Undersecretary of State James Buckley, Letter to NY Times, 25 July 1981:

`In place of the ineffective sanctions on Pakistan's nuclear program imposed by the past Administration, we hope to address through conventional means the sources of insecurity that prompt a nation like Pakistan to seek a nuclear capability in the first place.'

 

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From Myth to Reality: Evidence of Pakistan's `Nuclear Restraint'

Early 1980's--Multiple reports that Pakistan obtained a pre-tested, atomic bomb design from China.

Early 1980's--Multiple reports that Pakistan obtained bomb-grade enriched uranium from China.

1980--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: Reexport via Canada (components of inverters used in gas centrifuge enrichment activities).

1981--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: New York, zirconium (nuclear fuel cladding material).

1981--AP story cites contents of reported US State Department cable stating `We have strong reason to believe that Pakistan is seeking to develop a nuclear explosives capability * * * Pakistan is conducting a program for the design and development of a triggering package for nuclear explosive devices.'

1981--Publication of book, Islamic Bomb, citing recent Pakistani efforts to construct a nuclear test site.

1982/3--Several European press reports indicate that Pakistan was using Middle Eastern intermediaries to acquire bomb parts (13-inch `steel spheres' and `steel petal shapes').

1983--Recently declassified US government assessment concludes that `There is unambiguous evidence that Pakistan is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons development program * * * We believe the ultimate application of the enriched uranium produced at Kahuta, which is unsafeguarded, is clearly nuclear weapons.'

1984--President Zia states that Pakistan has acquired a `very modest' uranium enrichment capability for `nothing but peaceful purposes.'

1984--President Reagan reportedly warns Pakistan of `grave consequences' if it enriches uranium above 5%.

1985--ABC News reports that US believes Pakistan has `successfully tested' a `firing mechanism' of an atomic bomb by means of a non-nuclear explosion, and that US krytrons `have been acquired' by Pakistan.

1985--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: Texas, krytrons (nuclear weapon triggers).

1985--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: US cancelled license for export of flash x-ray camera to Pakistan (nuclear weapon diagnostic uses) because of proliferation concerns.

1985/6--Media cites production of highly enriched, bomb-grade uranium in violation of a commitment to the US.

1986--Bob Woodward article in Washington Post cites alleged DIA report saying Pakistan `detonated a high explosive test device between Sept. 18 and Sept. 21 as part of its continuing efforts to build an implosion-type nuclear weapon;' says Pakistan has produced uranium enriched to a 93.5% level.

1986--Press reports cite U.S. `Special National Intelligence Estimate' concluding that Pakistan had produced weapons-grade material.

1986--Commenting on Pakistan's nuclear capability, General Zia tells interviewer, `It is our right to obtain the technology. And when we acquire this technology, the Islamic world will possess it with us.'

1986--Recently declassified memo to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger states, `Despite strong U.S. concern, Pakistan continues to pursue a nuclear explosive capability * * * If operated at its nominal capacity, the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant could produce enough weapons-grade material to build several nuclear devices per year.'

1987--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: Pennsylvania, maraging steel & beryllium (used in centrifuge manufacture and bomb components).

1987--London Financial Times reports US spy satellites have observed construction of second uranium enrichment plant in Pakistan.

1987--Pakistan's leading nuclear scientist states in published interview that `what the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct.'

1987--West German official confirms that nuclear equipment recently seized on way to Pakistan was suitable for `at least 93% enrichment' of uranium; blueprints of uranium enrichment plant also seized in Switzerland.

1987--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: California, oscilloscopes, computer equipment (useful in nuclear weapon R&D).

1987--According to photocopy of a reported German foreign ministry memo published in Paris in 1990, UK government official tells German counterpart on European nonproliferation working group that he was `convinced that Pakistan had `a few small' nuclear weapons.'

1988--President Reagan waives an aid cutoff for Pakistan due to an export control violation; in his formal certification, he confirmed that `material, equipment, or technology covered by that provision was to be used by Pakistan in the manufacture of a nuclear explosive device.'

1988--Hedrick Smith article in New York Times reports US government sources believe Pakistan has produced enough highly enriched uranium for 4-6 bombs.

1988--President Zia tells Carnegie Endowment delegation in interview that Pakistan has attained a nuclear capability `that is good enough to create an impression of deterrence.'

1989--Multiple reports of Pakistan modifying US-supplied F-16 aircraft for nuclear delivery purposes; wind tunnel tests cited in document reportedly from West German intelligence service.

1989--Test launch of Hatf-2 missile: Payload (500 kilograms) and range (300 kilometers) meets `nuclear-capable' standard under Missile Technology Control Regime.

1989--CIA Director Webster tells Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that `Clearly Pakistan is engaged in developing a nuclear capability.'

1989--Media claims that Pakistan acquired tritium gas and tritium facility from West Germany in mid-1980's.

1989--ACDA unclassified report cites Chinese assistance to missile program in Pakistan.

1989--UK press cites nuclear cooperation between Pakistan and Iraq.

1989--Article in Nuclear Fuel states that the United States has issued `about 100 specific communiques to the West German Government related to planned exports to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and its affiliated organizations;' exports reportedly included tritium and a tritium recovery facility.

1989--Article in Defense & Foreign Affairs Weekly states `sources close to the Pakistani nuclear program have revealed that Pakistani scientists have now perfected detonation mechanisms for a nuclear device.'

1989--Reporting on a recent customs investigation, West German magazine Stern reports, `since the beginning of the eighties over 70 [West German] enterprises have supplied sensitive goods to enterprises which for years have been buying equipment for Pakistan's ambitious nuclear weapons program.'

1989--Gerard Smith, former US diplomat and senior arms control authority, claims US has turned a `blind eye' to proliferation developments Pakistan in and Israel.

1989--Senator Glenn delivers two lengthy statements addressing Pakistan's violations of its uranium enrichment commitment to the United States and the lack of progress on nonproliferation issues from Prime Minister Bhutto's democratically elected government after a year in office; Glenn concluded, `There simply must be a cost to non-compliance--when a solemn nuclear pledge is violated, the solution surely does not lie in voiding the pledge.'

1989-1990--reports of secret construction of unsafeguard nuclear research reactor; components from Europe.

1990--US News cites `western intelligence sources' claiming Pakistan recently `cold-tested' a nuclear device and is now building a plutonium production reactor; article says Pakistan is engaged in nuclear cooperation with Iran.

1990--French magazine publishes photo of West German government document citing claim by UK official that British government believes Pakistan already possesses `a few small' nuclear weapons; cites Ambassador Richard Kennedy claim to UK diplomat that Pakistan has broken its pledge to the US not to enrich uranium over 5%.

1990--London Sunday Times cites growing U.S. and Soviet concerns about Pakistani nuclear program; paper claims F-16 aircraft are being modified for nuclear delivery purposes; claims US spy satellites have observed `heavily armed convoys' leaving Pakistan uranium enrichment complex at Kahuta and heading for military airfields.

1990--Pakistani biography of top nuclear scientist (Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan and the Islamic Bomb), claims US showed `model' of Pakistani bomb to visiting Pakistani diplomat as part of unsuccessful nonproliferation effort.

1990--Defense & Foreign Affairs Weekly reports `US officials now believe that Pakistan has quite sufficient computing power in country to run all the modeling necessary to adequately verify the viability of the country's nuclear weapons technology.'

1990--Dr. A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's bomb, receives `Man of the Nation Award.'

1990--Washington Post documents 3 recent efforts by Pakistan to acquire special arc-melting furnaces with nuclear and missile applications.

1991--Wall Street Journal says Pakistan is buying nuclear-capable M-11 missile from China.

1991--Sen. Moynihan says in television interview, `Last July [1990] the Pakistanis machined 6 nuclear Pakistan warheads. And they've still got them.'

1991--Time quotes businessman, `BCCI is functioning as the owners' representative for Pakistan's nuclear-bomb project.'

1992--Pakistani foreign secretary publicly discusses Pakistan's possession of `cores' of nuclear devices.

 

[FreekiN]

By the end of Zardari's term, or his parties, we will no longer have nuclear weapons. That is my prediction however if someone steps up and kicks him off before more things like the 'Kerry-Lugar bill' are signed, then we might just have a chance.

 

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Are Pakistan's F-16's `Nuclear-Capable'? It Depends on Who You Ask

[Sen. Glenn]--`How about delivery systems? Is there any evidence that Pakistan converted F-16s for possible nuclear delivery use?

[Gates]--`We know that they are--or we have information that suggests that they're clearly interested in enhancing the ability of the F-16 to delivery weapons safely. But we don't really have--they don't require those changes, I don't think, to deliver a weapon. We could perhaps provide some additional detail in a classified manner.'

`Assessing ballistic missile proliferation and its control,' report of Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford University, November 1991:

`Pakistani F-16 aircraft could be effective nuclear-delivery vehicles even if Pakistan's nuclear warheads are large and heavy.'

`Western intelligence sources' cited in U.S. News & World Report, 12 February 1990:

`The sources say Pakistan, in violation of agreements with Washington, is busily converting U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter planes--60 more are scheduled to be sent this year--into potential nuclear-weapons carriers by outfitting them with special structures attached to the plane's underwing carriage. The structure allows the mounting of a dummy under one wing of the F-16 to balance the weight of the bomb under the other wing.'

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Hughes, testimony before House Subcommittee, 2 August 1989:

`In order to deliver a nuclear device with any reasonable degree of accuracy and safety, it first would be necessary to replace the entire wiring package in the aircraft. In addition to building a weapons carriage mount, one would also have to re-do the fire control computer, the stores management system, and mission computer software to allow the weapon to be dropped accurately and to redistribute weight and balance after release. We believe this capability far exceeds the state of the art in Pakistan and could only be accomplished with a major release of data and industrial equipment from the U.S.'

[Rep. Solarz]--Now, in your testimony, Mr. Hughes, I gather you've said that the F-16s which we have already sold them are not nuclear capable?

[Hughes]--That's right, sir.

[Rep. Solarz]--And the planes we're planning to sell will not be configured in such a way that they could deliver nuclear ordnance?

[Hughes]--That's right, Mr. Chairman.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Teresita Schaffer, testimony before House Subcommittee, 2 August 1989:

`None of the F-16s Pakistan already owns or is about to purchase is configured for nuclear delivery. Pakistan, moreover, will be obligated by contract not to modify its new acquisitions without the approval of the United States.'

Views attributed to German Intelligence Agency (BND), in Der Spiegel, 24 July 1989:

`The Pakistanis have secretly planned to use the fighter aircraft as a delivery system for their bomb. According to a report by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), relevant tests have already been successfully concluded. The BND has reported to the Chancellor's Office that, using an F-16 model, the Pakistanis have made wind tunnel tests and have designed the shell of the bomb in a way that allows them to install it underneath the wings. At the same time, the detonating mechanism has been improved, so that the weapon can now be used. According to the BND report, the Pakistanis long ago found out how to program the F-16 on-board computer to carry out the relevant flight maneuvers in dropping the bomb. According to the report from Pullach [BND headquarters], they also know how to make the electronic contact between the aircraft and the bomb.'

Sen. John Glenn, letter to President Ronald Reagan, 5 March 1987:

`And I believe we should continue to try to provide assistance to the Afghans. But if the price that must now be paid is acceptance of Pakistani nuclear weapons production along with the continued provision of a `made in the U.S.A.' delivery system (F-16s), a combination certain to ultimately erode the national security of the United States and some of its closest allies, then the price is too high.'

Undersecretary of State James Buckley, testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 12 November 1981:

[Sen. Hayakawa]--`Do the F-16's provide Pakistan with a delivery system for nuclear device?'

[Bukcley]--`Yes they would. But by the same token, that is not the only aircraft that would have that capability. My understanding is that the Mirage III currently possessed by Pakistan, would have the capability of delivering a small nuclear device.'

E.F. Von Marbod, Director of Defense Security Assistance Agency, testimony before two House subcommittees, 16 September 1981:

[Solarz]--`I gather the F-16's are technically capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Will the F-16's supplied Pakistan be able to carry nuclear weapons?'

[Von Marbod]--`Mr. Solarz, all nuclear capabilities will be deleted from these F-16's. All wiring to the pylons, all computer software programs that manage the hardware stores and all cockpit controls that are nuclear-related.'

 

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The Bomb vs. Butter: Pakistan's Ultimate Choice


From the New Book of World Rankings, third edition, 1991:

`Pakistan displays all the negative characteristics of an underdeveloped economy: a rigid, highly stratified and largely illiterate society; overdependence on agriculture; and limited infrastructure and natural resources.'

Some basic facts from the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 1992:

Pakistan is listed as only 120th out of 160 nations in terms of human development. The nation's Human Development Index is only 0.305 (out of 1).

Pakistan's GNP per capita was a mere $370 in U.S. dollars. 30%, or 36.7 million Pakistanis live below the U.N. poverty line.

Life expectancy at birth is a mere 57.7 years.

Out of 1000 Pakistani infants born, 104 of them (over 10%) will die within a year; 6 out of 1000 mothers will die in childbirth. 158 out of 1000 Pakistani children (over 15%) will die before they are 5 years of age--860,000 in the past year alone. 12,000,000 children (52% of all Pakistani children) are malnourished; 42% of the children are malnourished badly enough to cause stunted growth.

55 million Pakistanis (45%), have no access to either health services or safe drinking water. Over 100 million Pakistanis (82%) have no access to sanitation.

[Page: S11070]

43.5 million Pakistani adults (65%) are illiterate. Divided by sexes, 53% of Pakistani males (17.2 million) are illiterate; 79% of Pakistani females (26.3 million) are illiterate. The average Pakistani receives only 1.9 years of schooling; males receive an average of 3 years, while females receive only 0.7 years of schooling. The latter figure is the same amount of schooling received by women in Ethiopia.

Some basic rankings from the New Book of World Rankings, third edition, 1991:

Pakistan ranks only 144th out of 170 nations on the Physical Quality of Life Index, below nations such as Bangladesh and Haiti.

Pakistan ranks 148th among nations in terms of literacy.

The country is 14th from the bottom in terms of access to sanitation.

The nation is currently 8th from the bottom in terms of primary school enrollment, and 18th from the bottom in school population-teacher ratios.

Pakistan's spending priorities, as reported by the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 1992:

Pakistan spends a mere 0.2% of its GNP on health care and public health programs.

Pakistan spends a mere 2.6% of its GNP on education.

6.7% of Pakistan's GNP is devoted to the military. Overall, national military expenditure is 2.4 times that of health and education expenditures combined. In 1990 alone, Pakistan imported $2.693 billion worth of arms; more than 19 times that of `social development' imports. Pakistani soldiers outnumber teachers by 1.5 to 1; they outnumber physicians by 10 to 1.

World rankings of these priorities, as reported by the New Book of World Rankings, third edition, 1991;

Pakistan's public health expenditures per capita are the eighth lowest in the world (an `astoundingly low' $0.70 per person annually).

Pakistan ranks only 126th in terms of educational spending per capita (a mere $7 per person).

Recent trends in defense expenditures according to Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz, press conference covered by Agence France Press, 17 May 1992:

In 1992, Pakistan has raised its defense budget by 8.4% to 82 billion rupees ($3.44 billion).

In 1992, Pakistan's defense spending amounts to 8% of GDP and nearly 27% of total federal government expenditure, according to official figures.

Minister Aziz: `I would be the first man to ask for reducing defence expenditure and diverting funds to the neglected social sectors.'

 

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From the Herald Tribune, June 26, 1992
[FROM THE HERALD TRIBUNE, JUNE 26, 1992]
On Proliferation Law, a Disgraceful Failure

(BY JOHN GLENN)




Washington.--It is no secret that I have been at odds with the Reagan and Bush administrations over their record in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

I have stated publicly my dismay over the direction taken first by President Ronald Reagan and then by President George Bush in providing aid and arms to Pakistan without requiring concrete actions to stop the Pakistani bomb program, and in building up Saddam Hussein's ability to mount a nuclear and missile threat.

But an examination of the record suggests that there is more than a political or policy dimension to our disagreement. I now believe that actions taken and not taken by the Reagan and Bush administrations in the area of nuclear nonproliferation amount to a pattern of willful misinterpretation of U.S. laws.

Some years ago, Senator Stuart Symington and I amended the Foreign Assistance Act to require a cutoff of economic and military assistance to any country that, after 1977, imported or exported unsafeguarded nuclear enrichment or reprocessing materials, equipment or technology.

Since then only one nation, Pakistan, has been found by a U.S. president to be in violation of this law. America first cut off aid to Pakistan in September 1977, for a reprocessing-related violation. It did so again in April 1979 for a violation of the enrichment provision.

But after the Reagan administration took office in 1981, the law was changed to permit the flow of assistance to Pakistan during the war between the Soviet Union and the Afghan rebels. Over the next decade, aid to Pakistan amounted to more than $4 billion, including the delivery of 40 F-16 fighter planes--an excellent nuclear weapons delivery system--with no assurances that Pakistan would end or reverse its nuclear weapons program.

Indeed, the Reagan administration at one point, publicly parroting the Pakistanis' claim that their nuclear program was peaceful, pressured Congress to change the law--in effect, simply to repeal it--so that aid could be provided to Pakistan. Congress refused, instead moving to suspend the law for a limited time while drawing a new line (no nuclear testing) that Pakistan could not cross without suffering an aid cutoff.

In 1985, following reports that the Pakistani program was progressing, Congress drew a tighter line, the Pressler amendment, that required the president to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device and that the provision of U.S. aid would reduce significantly the risk of its getting one. The Pressler amendment also stated that such a cutoff would mean `no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan.'

What does the record show about the Bush and Reagan commitment to nonproliferation in this case?

In 1981, when U.S. aid began to flow, Pakistan had not produced bomb-grade nuclear material, nor had it manufactured bomb components or repeatedly violated U.S. nuclear export control laws and those of U.S allies. All these provocations occurred at the time of maximum U.S. assistance and continued after enactment of the Pressler amendment.

Did Pakistan suffer an aid cutoff as required by the amendment? No. The deliveries of F-16s and other equipment continued. President Reagan continued to certify annually that Pakistan did not `possess' a nuclear device and (despite all the evidence to the contrary) that continued U.S. assistance would reduce the risk of such possession--this although India had concluded by 1987 that Pakistan had the ability to assemble such a device easily and quickly.

Four years ago, reports were circulating that high-level analysts in U.S. intelligence agencies could not support another presidential certification of aid for Pakistan. Yet in October 1989, President Bush again certified that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device and that U.S. aid was `reducing incentives and creating disincentives' for acquisition of nuclear explosives.

This disgraceful policy failure appeared to have ended in October 1990, when Mr. Bush finally admitted what had become evident: The president could not certify that the Pakistanis did not have the bomb, and that was tantamount to saying they had it. And nine years of U.S. assistance had helped Pakistan release funds for its nuclear weapons program and given it the means for delivering the weapons.

Shockingly, testimony by Secretary of State James Baker this year revealed that the administration has continued to allow Pakistan to purchase munitions through commercial transactions, despite the explicit, unambiguous intent of Congress that `no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan.' These sales may have included spare parts for F-16 aircraft.

These facts alone would be enough to destroy any credibility possessed by this administration and the previous one on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation. Unfortunately, there is more (the details are beyond the scope of this article), including a failure to apply the Glenn-Symington amendment to Turkey despite that country's involvement in helping Pakistan acquire sensitive equipment for enriching uranium.

The Reagan and Bush administrations have practiced a nuclear nonproliferation policy bordering on lawlessness. They have undermined the respect of other countries for U.S. law and have done great damage to the nuclear nonproliferation effort.

Keep this in mind the next time someone in the administration extols the need for military action to deal with some power-hungry dictator seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT AND PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM (Senate - July 31, 1992)

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Pakistan Nuclear Weapons

Pakistan's Atomic Energy commission was founded some 15 years after the Indian program. In 1965, President Ayub Khan took some initial steps in response to the emerging of Indian nuclear threat. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the founder of Pakistan's Nuclear Program, initially as Minister for Fuel, Power and Natural Resources, and later as President and Prime Minister. Pakistan's nuclear program was launched in earnest shortly after the loss of East Pakistan in the 1971 war with India, when Bhutto initiated a program to develop nuclear weapons with a meeting of physicists and engineers at Multan in January 1972. In 1974 India successfully tested a nuclear "device." Bhutto reacted strongly to this test and said Pakistan must develop its own "Islamic bomb."

Pakistan lacks an extensive civil nuclear power infrastructure, and its weapons program is not as broad as India's. Much of its nuclear program is focused on weapons applications.

Initially, Pakistan focused on the plutonium path for building a nuclear weapon. Plutonium can be obtained from fuel that has been reprocessed from nuclear power plants, and in October 1974 Pakistan signed a contract with France for the design of a reprocessing facility for the fuel from its power plant at Karachi and other planned facilities. However, over the next two years Pakistan's international nuclear collaborators withdrew as Pakistan's nuclear ambitions became more apparent. The French were among the last to withdraw at the end of 1976, following sustained pressure from the United States.

A major advance jump to Pakistan's nuclear program was the arrival of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan in 1975, who brought with him the plans for uranium enrichment centrifuges, and lists of sources of the necessary technology. On this basis, Pakistan initially focused its development efforts on highly enriched uranium (HEU), and exploited an extensive clandestine procurement network to support these efforts. A.Q. Khan evidently persuaded Pakistan to work with Uranium (as compared to Plutonium) because Plutonium involves more arduous and hazardous procedures and cumbersome and expensive processes. Pakistan's activities were initially centered in a few facilities. A.Q. Khan founded the Engineering Research Laboratories at Kahuta in 1976, which later to became the Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories (KRL).

In March 2005 Benazir Bhutto said Pakistan may have had a nuclear weapon long before that. She said her father, former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had told her from his prison cell that preparations for a nuclear test had been made in 1977. "... he expected Pakistan to have its first nuclear test in ... in August 1977. I was in his conduit to the person who was actually running the nuclear program who is no longer alive now. His name was Mr. Munir and he was chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He told us that the nuclear test had been delayed to December 1977, and then he told us the nuclear test had been indefinitely delayed." It is unlikely that this would have been a test with appreciable nuclear yield, since at that time Pakistan would not have had an appreciable inventory of fissile material.

Dr. Samar Mubarik Mand, member Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, has said that the team of Atomic Energy Commission developed the design of atomic bomb in 1978 and had successfully conducted a cold test after developing the first atomic bomb in 1983.

A number of United States laws, amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, applied to Pakistan and its program of nuclear weapons development. The 1976 Symington Amendment stipulated that economic assistance be terminated to any country that imported uranium enrichment technology. The Glenn Amendment of 1977 similarly called for an end to aid to countries that imported reprocessing technology--Pakistan had from France. United States economic assistance, except for food aid, was terminated under the Symington Amendment in April 1979.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made Pakistan a country of paramount geostrategic importance. In a matter of days, the United States declared Pakistan a "frontline state" against Soviet aggression and offered to reopen aid and military assistance deliveries. When the Reagan administration took office in January 1981, the level of assistance increased substantially. Presidential waivers for several of the amendments were required. The initial package from the United States was for US$3.2 billion over six years, equally divided between economic and military assistance. A separate arrangement was made for the purchase of forty F-16 fighter aircraft.

Aside from Afghanistan, the most problematic element in Pakistan's security policy was the nuclear question. President Zia had inherited a pledge that for domestic reasons he could not discard, and he continued the nuclear development program. Zia inherited an ambitious program from Bhutto and continued to develop it out of the realization that, despite Pakistan's newly acquired weaponry, it could never match India's conventional power and that India either had, or shortly could develop, its own nuclear weapons.

In 1985 the Solarz Amendment was added to prohibit aid to countries that attempt to import nuclear commodities from the United States. In the same year, the Pressler Amendment was passed; referring specifically to Pakistan, it said that if that nation possessed a nuclear device, aid would be suspended. Many of these amendments could be waived if the president declared that it was in the national interests of the United States to continue assistance.

Even after the invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan almost exhausted United States tolerance, including bungled attempts to illegally acquire United States nuclear- relevant technology and a virtual public admission in 1987 by the head of Pakistan's nuclear program that the country had developed a weapon. As long as Pakistan remained vital to United States interests in Afghanistan, however, no action was taken to cut off United States support. For the remainder of Zia's tenure, the United States generally ignored Pakistan's developing nuclear program. But the issue that after Zia's death led to another cutoff of aid was Pakistan's persistent drive toward nuclear development.

Initial Pakistani attempts to handle the bilateral nuclear relationship with India led nowhere, but a significant step was a nonformalized 1985 agreement that neither India nor Pakistan would attack the other's nuclear facilities. Zia asked India to agree to several steps to end the potential nuclear arms race on the subcontinent. One of these measures was the simultaneous signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The second step was a joint agreement for inspection of all nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pakistan also proposed a pact between the two countries to allow for mutual inspection of sites. And, finally, Pakistan proposed a South Asian nuclear-free zone. It appeared that Zia was looking for a way to terminate the costly Pakistani program. But in order to sell this idea in Pakistan, he required some concessions from India. Termination would also get him out of difficulties the program was causing with the United States, including the curtailment of aid in 1979.

These proposals were still on the table in the early 1990s, and were supplemented by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's call for a roundtable discussion among Pakistan, India, the United States, Russia, and China on nuclear weapons in South Asia.

Pakistan's dependence on China grew as Western export controls and enforcement mechanisms have grown more stringent. China's nuclear assistance predates the 1986 Sino-Pakistani atomic cooperation agreement, with some of the most critical transfers occurring from 1980 through 1985. China is reported to have provided Pakistan with the design of one of its warheads, as well as sufficient HEU for a few weapons. The 25-kiloton design was the one used in China's fourth nuclear test, which was an atmospheric test using a ballistic missile launch. This configuration is said to be a fairly sophisticated design, with each warhead weighing considerably less than the unwieldy, first-generation US and Soviet weapons which weighed several thousand kilograms. As of 1989 it was suggested that Pakistan had a workable bomb weighing only 400 pounds. Pakistan Foreign Minister Yakub Khan was present at the Chinese Lop Nor test site to witness the test of a small nuclear device in May 1983, giving rise to speculation that a Pakistani-assembled device was detonated in this test.

Evidently the jump-start provided by A.Q. Khan's trove of documents was an insufficient basis for a dependable Uranium program. Chinese assistance in the development of gas centrifuges at Kahuta was indicated by the presence of Chinese technicians at the facility in the early 1980s. The uranium enrichment facility began operating in the early 1980s, but suffered serious start up problems. In early 1996 it was reported that the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratory had received 5,000 ring magnets, which can be used in gas centrifuges, from a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation.

Perhaps in response to the persistent problems with the Uranium program, around the time of the signing of the 1986 Sino-Pakistani atomic cooperation agreement, Pakistan evidently embarked on a parallel Plutonium program. Built with Chinese assistance, the heavy water reactor at Khushab is the central element of Pakistan's program for production of plutonium and tritium for advanced compact warheads. The Khushab facility, like that at Kahuta, is not subject to IAEA inspections. Khushab, with a capacity variously reported at between 40 and 70 MWT, was completed in the mid-1990s, with the start of construction dating to the mid-1980s.

In March 2005 Benazir Bhutto said her government had a nuclear capability when she came into office the first time in 1988, ten years before Pakistan's first nuclear test. Ms. Bhutto said Pakistan had all the components for nuclear weapons, but never assembled them until India set off several tests in 1998. "When I became Prime Minister I was told we had not put together the bomb. We had the components of the bomb. So, when is a chicken a chicken? Is it a chicken when you have it in separate parts but you don't put it together? Or is it a chicken when you actually put it together? And although we had the components of a nuclear weapon, we took the conscious decision not to put together a nuclear weapon, which is why when India detonated it took us some time to put together the weapon and actually have our own tests."

The Pakistan Peoples Party [PPP] government evolved the Benazir Nuclear Doctrine in April 1989. This was done to protect Pakistan's nuclear assets and to give confidence to the world community which was deeply concerned about the nuclear program. Under this doctrine, Islamabad undertook not to put together the components of a nuclear device unless its security was threatened and also not to export nuclear technology to any third country. This doctrine followed discussions between Islamabad and Washington in 1988 and 1989. It was announced during the Benazir Bhutto state visit to Washington at the invitation of the first President Bush in April 1989. Later Washington had certain issues in this regard which it wished to discuss with Prime Minister Bhutto in the summer of 1990. This discussion with the special envoy of the Bush administration could not take place because the Foreign Office was unable to coordinate the meeting. At the time, the Prime Minister was travelling to different countries mustering support for the Kashmir dispute for a scheduled Foreign Ministers meeting of the Organisation of Islamic countries. Once the PPP government was sacked on August 6, 1990, Washington cancelled the four and a half billion dollar assistance package as well as the sale of sixty F-16s which the Benazir government had negotiated.

In 1993, when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto formed the second PPP government, she consulted the armed forces officials with regard to what had happened in the summer of 1990 to raise concerns in Washington. The PPP government wanted to ensure that there would be no slippages which could pose a threat to the nuclear policy or the nuclear assets. Following this concern, the armed forces came up with a plan to protect the command and control system and prevent any individualistic action. An officer of the armed forces was made in charge of the command and control system and reported to the army chief who in turn reported to the Prime Minister.

On 28 May and 30 May 1998 Pakistan conducted at least two nuclear weapons tests. These tests came slightly more than 2 weeks after India carried out 5 nuclear tests of its own, and after many warnings by Pakistani officials that they would respond to India (the two countries have fought 3 wars). In addition, Pakistan's President Rafiq Tarar declared a state of emergency, citing "threat by external aggression to the security of Pakistan." The United States had been attempting to persuade Pakistan not to test (and to head off a potential nuclear arms race in South Asia) by offering potential economic and military benefits, but this effort did not succeed. Pakistan already had been subject to limited U.S. sanctions since 1990 under the Pressler Amendment, when $650 million in military and humanitarian aid had been cut off as a result of an inability by the President to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear device.

As was the case following India's nuclear tests, President Clinton, as required by law (including the Glenn Amendment, part of the Arms Export Control Act) announced that the United States would impose sanctions on Pakistan. These sanctions, among other things, could stem the flow of financial assistance into Pakistan, potentially causing severe harm to the Pakistani economy. With $37 billion in foreign debt (more than half of the country's total Gross Domestic Product, or GDP), a monthly trade deficit of $150 million, foreign exchange reserves of only $1.3 billion, and interest payments of $200-$500 million due each month, Pakistan can ill afford any suspension or cutoff in international assistance. Overall, Pakistan is considered far more vulnerable to economic sanctions than India.

In October 1997, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had agreed to lend Pakistan $1.52 billion -- including $935 million under an enhanced, low-interest-rate, enhanced structural adjustment facility (ESAF) -- over three years as part of an economic reform program. (The first $208 million tranche was released in October 1997.) The IMF money was considered important not only on its own account but also because it facilitates Pakistan's ability to borrow from commercial sources by increasing the country's financial credibility. Without the IMF, some economists believed foreign lenders could call in their loans, leading to a crisis of confidence in Pakistan's economy and a run on the country's freely-convertible currency, the rupee. Pakistan also receives money from other international lending organizations, including the World Bank.

President Bush formally lifted sanctions against India and Pakistan 22 September 2001 in a special memorandum to Secretary of State Colin Powell. The sanctions were imposed in response to the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons programs and testing. Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" September 23 that lifting these sanctions, which had been under consideration for some time, sends an important signal that "we will stand by our friends who stand by us."

In March 2003 President Bush lifted sanctions against Pakistan that were imposed following the 1999 bloodless coup that brought President Pervez Musharraf to power. A White House statement said President Bush decided to lift the sanctions because it will "facilitate the transition to democratic rule in Pakistan" and help in efforts to fight international terrorism. Pakistani cooperation was key to US military action against the Taleban government in neighboring Afghanistan and al-Qaida terrorists thought responsible for the September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

By December 2003 Pakistani government had launched an investigation into whether figures in Pakistan's nuclear program may have provided nuclear-weapons technology to Iran or other countries. The US State Department said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf assured the United States more than a year earlier that any such activity had ceased. Officials were reluctant to speak about what nuclear-export activity the United States believes Pakistan was engaged in before the Bush administration took office. But officials at both the State Department and White House said the United States continued to accept at face value an assurance made in 2003 by President Musharraf that Pakistan was no longer involved in such proliferation. The assurance was conveyed during what he said was a "very specific" conversation between Mr. Musharraf and Secretary of State Colin Powell on the proliferation issue in October 2002. That telephone talk had followed a flurry of press reports, denied at the time by Pakistan, that that country had been secretly aiding North Korea's nuclear program. In December 2003 The United States welcomed the Pakistani government's investigation and debriefing of prominent nuclear scientists about alleged technology exports. Those questioned are said to include aides to Abdul Qadeer Khan, who's considered the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. I information Iran has provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, in recent weeks has strengthened suspicions that Pakistan sold Iran key nuclear secrets, including how to build uranium-enrichment centrifuges. A 10 November 2003 report by IAEA Director-General Mohammed El-Baradei on Iran's nuclear program stated that Tehran had received nuclear assistance from "several external sources."

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Robert Gates, Pakistan & The Pressler Amendment

by Hugh Fitzgerald (September 2009)


The Pressler Amendment was passed in 1985. It was intended to ensure that the enormous amount of aid that was being given to Pakistan would not be used to further Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, but would be used, as the State Department and successive administrations kept assuring Congress and the American public, in order to make Pakistan feel secure, so that it would not develop nuclear weapons.

Among those who had been most astute and most critical of the policy of continued ceaseless appeasement of Pakistan was Senator John Glenn of Ohio. It would be useful, I suspect, to remind people who have not been in government about that Pressler Amendment by quoting at length from what Senator Glenn said in Congress:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to testify on U.S. responses to nuclear developments in Pakistan. I was tempted also to address my many concerns about India's large unsafeguarded nuclear program, but given time limitations and the focus of this hearing, I will address these concerns in another forum. Besides, your Committee has every reason to focus today on Pakistan. After all, American taxpayers shelled out billions of hard-earned tax dollars in aid that was explicitly justified as necessary to curb Pakistan's bomb program. This aid was provided only after repeated waivers of our nuclear nonproliferation laws. Congress has both the right and the duty to see what happened to these funds.

A review of this evidence will also encourage us to reexamine some old policy assumptions--like the faith some of our leaders have put in transfers of arms and high technology as tools of nuclear nonproliferation--and to appreciate the importance of some old fundamentals, like the duty of the Executive to `faithfully execute the laws,' the need for a working relationship between Congress and the Executive, and the public's right to know.

My testimony will address five questions: First, what were Congress and the American taxpayers told about the relationship between U.S. military aid and Pakistan's bomb? Second, how have these claims stood up over time? Third, why did Congress impose nuclear conditions on aid only to Pakistan? Fourth, did the Reagan and Bush administrations implement these conditions as Congress had intended? And finally, where do we go from here?

THE PROMISE OF THE POLICY

Between 1982 and 1990, America provided over $4 billion in assistance to Pakistan, about half of which was military. Some people think this aid was solely intended to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan, a goal we shared with Pakistan. My staff, however, has identified 20 official administration statements claiming since 1981 that military assistance would address Pakistan's security concerns and thereby keep Pakistan from acquiring the bomb. I will submit with my testimony some relevant excerpts.
[Attachment]

Given these many claims, the answer to my first question is crystal clear: the military transfers and other assistance were explicitly justified to Congress as instruments of a nuclear nonproliferation policy. Yet since this aid was only provided following waiver upon waiver of our nuclear nonproliferation laws, the administration had a heavy burden of proof to demonstrate that the aid was producing the promised results.

Unfortunately, the much-heralded nonproliferation benefits never materialized, which simplifies the job of answering my second question about the effects of the policy. It is well known that Pakistan was acquiring a nuclear weapons capability throughout the 1980's. I will attach to my statement a table listing 50 events that show without a doubt that Pakistan was continuing and even accelerating its pursuit of the bomb despite all of our aid. [Attachment] Mr. Chairman, if you judge by the evidence and not by the promises, there was a direct--not an inverse--relationship between the level of our aid and Pakistan's progress toward the bomb.

This leads to the answer to my third question about why Congress decided to impose new conditions on aid provided only to Pakistan. In the face of sensational daily headlines from around the world attesting to the failure of the administration's arms-for-nuclear-restraint policy, Congress went to work in the mid-1980's to strengthen conditions on further aid to Pakistan. It was no more `discriminatory' for Congress to single out Pakistan for special aid conditions than it was for the Executive to issue waiver after waiver of our nonproliferation laws just on Pakistan's behalf.
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ORIGINS OF THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT

On March 28, 1984, this Committee adopted an amendment offered by Sen. Cranston and myself providing that no assistance shall be furnished and `no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan' unless the President could first certify that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device, is not developing a nuclear device, and is not acquiring goods to make such a device. On April 3, 1984, the Committee narrowly voted to reconsider this amendment and adopted instead a substitute offered by Senator Pressler, Mathias and Percy, which tied the continuation of aid and military sales to two certification conditions: (1) that Pakistan not possess a nuclear explosive device; and (2) that new aid `will reduce significantly the risk' that Pakistan will possess such a device. This text, which was enacted on another bill in August 1985, has come to be called the `Pressler amendment.'

In summary, the amendment made binding what had been an official policy, namely that our aid would reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation. It also clarified--by its broad prohibition on all arms transfers under any U.S. law--that a failure to meet these standards would lead to a cutoff of not only assistance but of military sales as well.

Let me just add at this point that neither the legislative history nor the text of the amendment itself contains any written or implied exclusion of commercial arms sales from the scope of these sanctions. Indeed, it is useful to recall that in past testimony at least one State Department witness has also dismissed this peculiar argument for allowing commercial arms sales to continue in the event of a nuclear violation. At a hearing of this Committee on November 12, 1981, I asked Undersecretary of State James Buckley to describe how a nuclear detonation by Pakistan would affect our transfers of F-16 aircraft and he replied that such an event would, in his words:

* * * dramatically affect the relationship. The cash sales are part of that relationship. I cannot see drawing lines between the impact in the case of a direct cash sale versus a guaranteed or U.S.-financed sale.

Yet as the evidence kept flowing in about new Pakistan advances toward the bomb, new rationalizations kept flowing out from Foggy Bottom for continuing our transfers of arms and aid in the service of nonproliferation--which brings me to my fourth question addressing how the Pressler amendment and other relevant laws were implemented.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT

I have long believed that continued arms experts to Pakistan was no way to halt its bomb program. But when you consider that of the 50 nuclear weapon-related events I cited in my submission to the Committee, three-quarters of them occurred after the Pressler amendment was enacted, it becomes glaringly apparent that the Reagan and Bush administrations willfully violated not only the Pressler amendment but several other nuclear nonproliferation laws as well. I believe that the Pressler amendment was violated almost immediately after it was enacted, when U.S. assistance and arms were transferred even though our government knew Pakistan was continuing its pursuit of the bomb.

There are three specific violations I would like to discuss today. First, I believe that the President's conclusion in October 1989 that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device conflicts with widely available information indicating that Pakistan was a de facto nuclear-weapon state. Indeed, Pakistan may well have attained that capability even before 1989, when would cast doubt on the accuracy of non-possession certifications by the Reagan administration as well.

Five years ago, a London newspaper published excerpts from an interview with no greater authority than Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's bomb; in Dr. Khan words, `what the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct.' Later, in February 1992, the Pakistan foreign secretary publicly conceded that his government had `inherited' a nuclear capability. He told a U.N. audience on February 7th that `there was a capability in 1989,' but he denied that the program was `moved forward' and maintained that `we froze the program.' In an interview reported in the Washington Post the same day, the foreign secretary state that Pakistan possesses `elements which, if put together, would become a device. He referred to specifically to weapons `cores.'

The foreign secretary's statements raise some thorny problems for both the administration and the Pakistani government:

1. If Pakistan possessed these `elements' back in 1989, then how could the President have certified that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device? By the State Department's own interpretation of the Pressler amendment, if Pakistan possessed the bomb in pieces, it possessed the bomb.

2. If Pakistan did not possess these 'elements' back in 1989, but acquired them after President Bush made his certification of nonpossession in October 1989, then the foreign secretary's statement that the program was `frozen' when his government came to power in November 1990 is hardly reassuring. The foreign secretary is saying that Pakistan has frozen its status as a de factor nuclear weapon state. He is also admitting that Pakistan has violated its solemn commitment to the United States in 1984 that it would not enrich uranium beyond the 5% level needed for civilian uses.
The foreign secretary's candid remarks about the existence of a nuclear capability in 1989--combined with his remarks about weapons `cores' that he claims were produced before his government came to power--raises the real possibility of a violation of the non-possession standard in that year or even earlier.

The second violation also occurred in 1989--actually it was just a repeat of 4 prior violations by President Reagan--when President Bush certified that the provision of new assistance would `reduce significantly' the risk that Pakistan would possess a nuclear explosive device. In contrast to voluminous evidence indicating that Pakistan's program to develop nuclear weapons was advancing throughout the late 1980's, there were just no credible grounds for concluding that the provision of new foreign aid was reducing the risk of Pakistan possessing the bomb.

In fact, I believe there is considerable evidence that America's aid and high technology undoubtedly contributed to Pakistan's nuclear and missile capabilities. The F-16 aircraft we provided along with the dual-use goods we transferred to nuclear and missile facilities in Pakistan provide sufficient grounds for this conclusion.

The third violation--and I do indeed call this a violation--occurred in 1992, when it was officially confirmed that the United States government was continuing to license arms sales to Pakistan despite the clear requirement of the Pressler amendment that `no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan' if it has not received the required Presidential certifications.
Evidently, this is what we are now down to: elements of our bureaucracy are grasping at straws to perpetuate the myths that additional military transfers will buy us influence over Pakistan's bomb program, and that such transfers are perfectly legal.

The rationale that our government is somehow justified in licensing sales of munitions to maintain current military capabilities (which the Pakistani foreign secretary now tells us includes nuclear weapons) flies in the face of the black-and-white words of the Pressler amendment.

Commercial arms sales do indeed contravene both the spirit and the letter of the Pressler amendment. All the more so, given that the equipment we are evidently continuing to supply includes spare parts for F-16 aircraft, a known delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons. Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit a list of official statements from the Reagan and Bush administrations taking mutually contradictory positions on the issue of whether the F-16 can be used by Pakistan to deliver nuclear weapons. Clearly somebody--and not just in Pakistan--has not been telling the truth to the people, which raises the possibility of yet another violation of the law.

In summary, the administration's position on commercial arms sales not only lacks a solid foundation in law, it seems almost contrived to subvert and frustrate the very purposes of sanctions, which are to impose a cost for noncompliance with legitimate nonproliferation standards, to offer an incentive to correct the policies to noncompliance, and to signal the priority of nuclear nonproliferation on America's foreign policy agenda.

If you are under forty, you might not remember the brouhaha over the behavior of Pakistan that led to the Pressler Amendment, and then led to the expression of great Congressional unhappiness with the way the Executive Branch chose to “interpret” the Pressler Amendment. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is not under forty. He’s close to seventy. He has spent most of his life in the government, intimately connected to matters of high policy. But he apparently has a great deal of trouble remembering exactly how the government of the United States was betrayed, and betrayed again, by Pakistan, led by the nose, and led by the nose before, and then after, the Pressler Amendment was passed. His statement of August 13th about Pakistan having good reasons to “mistrust” the United States because America “walked away from them twice” -- the sheer utter idiocy of it all, the rewriting not of ancient history but of recent history -- simply amazes. The Pressler Amendment was passed because members of Congress were fed up with the behavior of Pakistan. The long discussion by Senator Glenn that took place at hearings held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1992, some seven years after the Pressler Amendment were passed, were prompted by a realization, and disgust, that the American government had not been diligent in enforcing the letter, or being vigilant about the spirit, of the Pressler Amendment.

We did not “walk away” from Pakistan. The government, that is, the military who essentially have always held power in Pakistan, took and took whatever aid they could cajole out of the Americans, and then always came back for more. They took whatever economic aid they could as well, and that economic aid allowed the “failed state” -- always on the brink of bankruptcy -- of Pakistan to nonetheless not only quietly arrange for stealing nuclear secrets from the West, but pay the enormous costs of the nuclear weapons program that led to the building not of one but of dozens of “Islamic bombs,” as they were proudly called, and not only in Pakistan.

The United States did not “walk away” from Pakistan once the Soviet army had left Afghanistan. The country of Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, who were formed by, trained by, supported by, the government of Pakistan. Pakistan also helped the Taliban get back to Afghanistan and seize power once the Soviets had left, and to make that country a hell for its citizens, or for all but those who were the most fanatical Muslims, and to make it a haven for “the Arabs” who arrived, and set up their Al Qaeda camps, and treated the local Afghanis with such contumely. There was no reason at all for the Americans not to “walk away” from Pakistan, for Pakistan completely betrayed the Americans and its own solemn undertakings to them in this case, and then in the case of the long-term betrayal of promise after promise made to the Americans.

Those broken promises led to the Pressler Amendment, and then to renewed outrage from Congress once it was clear that Pakistan was being allowed, with the State Department’s connivance, to keep fooling the Americans -- that is, the American people, though not the group of apologists for Pakistan who continued to reign, as apologists for other Muslim states still reign and call far too many of the shots in the State Department and elsewhere in our government.

And while the Bush Administration wasted so many men, so much money, so much matériel, in Iraq, Robert Gates was for much of that time the Secretary of Defense. And now that the Obama Administration has come in, with Obama in Cairo not only seeing but raising Bush’s poker-faced nonsense about Islam as a “religion of peace,” but at least abandoning the messianic sentimentalism of Bush when it came to thinking that the Americans could bring “freedom” to “ordinary moms and dads in the Middle East,” Robert Gates is still there, and he still has not thought it necessary, apparently, to rethink the whole business. He has not started to think about Islam in Western Europe, for example, and not merely to take the same idiotic strategy -- winning hearts, winning minds, extending “prosperity” (which means tens of billions of American dollars), and keeping polities “unified” (which means the Americans have to somehow get the various ethnic and sectarian factions to lie down, like so many lions with so many lambs). He is simply moving the whole business from Iraq to Afghanistan, and with help -- help! -- expected from the meretricious government of Pakistan.

Pakistan has always been the spoiled child of American foreign policy. It began way back, with the Dulles brothers, when among the group of fierce but essentially stupid anti-Communists there was a belief that Islam should be regarded only as a "bulwark against Communism." That meant that the Al-Saud were much better than Nasser, because the former were completely Muslim, while Nasser had secular tendencies.

In the subcontinent, Pakistan had a series of fly-whisking terry-thomas moustachioed generals who were past masters at winning the trust of American counterparts in the Pentagon. Those ramrod-straight (Sandhurst posture always being a sure sign of inward rectitude) generals invited comparison with those dangerous, bandung-conferencing, Fabian Society Indian leaders -- haughty untouchable Brahmin Nehru (who had also dared to have a liaison with the wife of Lord Mountbatten) and his fellow member of the Victor Gollancz's New Left Book Club, the even more dangerous, because more marxisant (so it was felt in official Washington) Krishna Menon.

And thus it was that Pakistan -- meretricious Muslim Pakistan (meretricious, in this case, precisely because it was Muslim) was made a member of that ill-fated because ill-conceived military pact known as CENTO, in which the United States and Great Britain were to supply all the money and all the arms and all the training, while the Muslim members -- Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan -- were to be the beneficiaries of the money, the arms, the training, but were to supply the men. The whole farcical thing fell apart in 1958 with the coup by A. Q. Qassem, in which the "pro-Western" Nuri al-Said, always described as the "strongman" of Iraq, was seized and murdered, his mutilated body dragged through the streets of Baghdad.

But while CENTO collapsed, the Pakistani generals' love affair with the Pentagon continued. The Americans continued to supply those generals with all kinds of things, and that did not stop when the out-and-out fanatical Muslim Zia ul-Haq came to power. Anglophone Pakistanis of the upper classes like to claim, in talking to Westerners, that there was nothing wrong with Pakistan until Zia ul-Haq with his "extremism" came along. This is nonsense. Pakistan's "extremism" was always there among its primitive masses -- the masses who, unlike Benazir Bhutto, do not have millions of dollars, are not the children of zamindars, and cannot attend Harvard and Oxford and become, superficially westernized and hence offer the outward veneer of something that seemed familiar and trustworthy.

Far from being ill-treated by the United States, Pakistan continued to receive all kinds of money and all kinds of weapons. It was even promised F-16s. And that American money later came in handy when A. Q. Khan, a metallurgist skilled at thievery, managed while working in Western laboratories in the Netherlands and Germany to win sufficient trust to be given access to certain nuclear secrets. He stole those secrets and brought them back to Pakistan where the I.S.I., still living largely on the financial aid that the Americans supplied, used that aid to help finance Pakistan's nuclear project.

Pakistan not only diverted American aid to build what was called "the Islamic bomb," but A. Q. Khan was permitted by I.S.I., the Pakistan army's intelligence service, to offer to share nuclear secrets with other countries, and apparently he did so in the cases of both Iraq and North Korea.

The government of Pakistan continues, of course, to prevent the Americans even from interviewing A. Q. Khan to try to find out exactly what he gave to whom. That is not exactly the behavior of an ally, or a friend. It is the behavior, more accurately, of an enemy, one willing to take whatever aid, financial and military, it can wheedle out of the Americans, but not willing -- or able-- ever to be a real ally or friend.

During the Musharraf years, with the billions from America now pouring in, the government and military in Pakistan continued to string the Americans along. There were occasional half-hearted largely feigning attacks, by the Pakistan military, on Al Qaeda or the Taliban, but mainly the Pakistan government and press did everything it could to deny that Al Qaeda was either in Pakistan or being aided by a great many Pakistanis.

It was only when the American military was becoming absolutely fed up, and when, too, the local Taliban leaders decided a bit too prematurely to take on the rich zamindars in the parts of Pakistan -- e.g. the Swat Valley -- that they conquered, that the ruling class in both the Pakistani government and military realized that the Taliban were a threat to them. They then turned on the Taliban, not as a favor to the Americans, but in order to preserve the position of themselves and of those like them. That did not make them the friends of the Americans, or of the Indians, or of any other Infidel group. They remain Muslims, in a country almost entirely Muslim, where non-Muslims can be harassed, persecuted, even murdered at will. It was more than twenty years ago that Bishop John Joseph immolated himself in order to bring attention to the murderous persecution of Christians in Pakistan -- that persecution did not start yesterday, and it hardly was the result only of what the Taliban prompted. The persecution of Christians and Hindus is carried out by many and supported by even more. It is, in fact, not at all deplored in Pakistan, save by a handful of the morally most advanced.

Gates -- according to the news report about his August 13th performance -- “described as disturbing, but not surprising, the results of a survey that only 9 percent of Pakistanis saw the United States as a partner while 64 percent looked at it as an enemy.”

So Gates thinks this widespread hostility -- expressed in the survey that found that “64 percent” of Pakistanis see the U.S. as an enemy -- is “disturbing, but not surprising.” He is right: it isn’t “surprising.” But what is “surprising” -- or perhaps, alas, not “surprising” -- is that Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, seems to think it is not “surprising” not because of what Muslims are taught in the Qur’an, in the Hadith, and through the example of Muhammad -- uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil -- in the Sira. In those sources Muslims are taught to be mistrustful of Infidels (to be especially wary when they seem, those Infidels, to be nice, to be generous, for they are of course in league with Shaytan, trying to woo Muslims from the Path of Allah, fi sabil Allah). Muslims are taught that between them and non-Muslims, that is between Believers and Infidels, a state of permanent hostility or war (though not necessarily open warfare) must exist, and that they have a duty to make sure that Infidels do not continue to cling to their own ways, to continue to throw up obstacles (Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Conscience are such obstacles) to the spread and then the certain, the right, the just dominance of Islam, all over the world. Apparently Robert Gates hasn’t even begun to figure out what effect Islam has on the minds of its adherents. He hasn’t begun to grasp how very different Islam is -- as a Total Belief-System that offers a Complete Regulation of Life and a Complete Explanation of the Universe -- from other faiths, because Islam contains a clear politics and geopolitics which he has a duty to learn about, and did have such a duty the minute he assumed the post of Secretary of Defense. Like many others in official Washington, it is a duty he apparently thinks he has no obligation to fulfill. He’s quite wrong.

And Robert Gates has been the man in charge of vast expenditures (by the United States, what have turned out to be squanderings of men, money, matériel, and military morale, all in the misguided attempt to keep Iraq together, to keep Iraq “nonviolent,” to make Iraq “prosperous” -- all in the hope that Iraq would become what it will never become. This hope was never quite spelled out, never quite explained to us who are the citizens watching helplessly at the folly of this policy, first in Iraq and now, with apparently no lessons learned, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A coherent and cunning and even ruthless policy should long ago have been crafted, one devoid of sentimentalism, one recognizing that the most important theatre of war was not in Iraq, nor in Afghanistan, nor in Pakistan but, rather, right now, in the imperiled states of Western Europe, where the growth of Muslim populations threatens to change the tenor of life, the quality of life, and the orientation toward the United States, of those countries that constitute the historic heart of the West, and that without Europe the United States would lose its civilizational ancestry. It would see its legacy taken over, and destroyed, as were, everywhere that Muslims conquered, over the past 1350 years, the artifacts of whatever pre-Islamic civilization had once existed. The conquered non-Muslims were made to turn away from, to forget, even to despise, their culture, wherever Islamization, and then arabization, fully triumphed. It did not, in Iran, for complicated reasons, and the fact that Iranians still have the consciousness of their pre-Islamic identity may turn out to be important in helping Iranians today move away from the Islamic Republic, to constrain Islam, or even to jettison Islam altogether (perhaps by rediscovering an alternative identity – say, Zoroastrianism), in numbers significant enough to transform state and society in Iran.

In order to formulate policies that make sense -- and the war in Iraq, and the wars as currently conducted in Afghanistan and Pakistan are hideously draining on our military, and as policy are senseless -- one has to first recognize, despite all the official blather, that the United States has a stake in preventing the dangerous encroachments of Islam in Western Europe. Islam is not mainly or merely a “religion.” It is a Politics. It is a Geopolitics. It is important for Robert Gates, and all those who presume to protect us, to find out about Islam -- really find out, and not rely on the army of apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who have so methodically hired and promoted one another in our colleges and universities, and who have been hired by the naïve and the simpletons to “advise” us. They have been hired even within our military academies, even within our security services. Gates needs to learn the truth about Islam itself, and about those hundreds of millions of Muslims who actively support the goals of Jihad, even if many prefer other instruments of Jihad to terrorism and combat (qitaal), for reasons not of morality but of expediency. Those other instruments include deployment of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da’wa, and demographic conquest.

Intelligent Americans and Europeans realize that there is something uniquely disturbing about Islam. They are perfectly aware that many immigrant groups have come to North America and Europe -- Hindus, Chinese, Buddhists from Vietnam, Andean Indians, sub-Saharan and Caribbean blacks -- and many of these groups have language problems, or come bearing an alien creed. But only Muslim immigrants come bearing an alien and a hostile creed, one that makes claims on every aspect of life. It would be idiotic to ignore the fact that no other immigrant group, in France or Great Britain or in Spain or in Germany or even in those two tiny countries that have made a virtual state religion out of Tolerance And Diversity, Denmark and the Netherlands, has given the kind of trouble, has been impossible to integrate, and that makes endless demands. Those demands keep coming and do not stop. Muslims want changes in their host countries, in the laws, and the customs, and the understandings, above all in the freedoms, that have been the slow-won achievement, and some would describe as the glory and justification, of the Western world. These freedoms help to explain the West’s political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral advances, even as Islam explains the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim peoples and polities. The cause of those failures, the very failures of the societies and states they wish to escape by coming to Europe and to North America, instead follows them, is brought by them, is contained in the mental baggage that they bring, undeclared, and then unpack, to the great harm of the Infidels among whom they have come to live, and whose societies those Muslim immigrants -- to the precise extent that they take Islam to heart -- intend to change, slowly, steadily, inexorably.

They must not be allowed to do so, and the threat they represent has to be recognized by those who are in charge, as it is, more and more, by those people who have been sickened by the nonsense and lies, not only of those in charge of immigration policy, but by all those, among our political and media elites, who know far less about Islam, who still know almost nothing about Islam, eight years after the fatidic date which marks, or should have marked, an end to ignorance about Islam. Many people have -- almost unwillingly, hoping not to discover what they have discovered, hoping it can’t really be true -- engaged in intensive self-study of Islam. And in studying Islam, its texts, its tenets, its attitudes, its atmospherics, in reading the works of the great Western scholars of Islam, those who lived in the century, roughly, from 1860 to 1960, and in reading, as well, the works of those who, having been born and raised within Islam, and then having moved to the West and enjoyed its mental freedom and freedom from physical fear (a fear that keeps questioning people in Muslim lands permanently quiet about whatever doubts they may have about Islam), have testified so eloquently. See Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Sina, and many thousands of others whose names are as yet unknown, sometimes by design, to the Great World.

It all seems to be taking place below the radar of Our Great And Powerful Men in Washington, who construct policies that make no sense, and spend trillions of what is our money, and expend the lives of those who are our relatives or our friends or our fellow citizens, and who use up vast amounts of war matériel. And incidentally, that matériel is used up not only in combat, or blown up by the enemy, but is also being transferred to Muslim soldiers, to the armies we have idiotically built up in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and with still more tens of billions being transferred to Pakistan. How many thousands of very expensive vehicles, capable of withstanding I.E.D. attacks, will be left with the Iraqi army and police? With the Afghanis? Possibly given to Pakistan? How much other expensive equipment is being crazily lavished on Muslims? How much training is being given, which our military appears to believe will be used only against other Muslims, that is, against the so-called “extremists” who are supposed to be so very different from the other Muslims, the “good” Muslims, whom we are so eagerly training and outfitting?

Between the army and the police, in Iraq the Americans have trained, outfitted, supplied with advanced weaponry of every kind, more than half-a-million Iraqis. Our friends and allies, forever? Do you think so? On what basis do you think so? And there are another several hundred thousand men under arms -- army and police -- in Afghanistan, Muslims all of course, who have been trained, outfitted, given all kinds of equipment. Is this an achievement? Eight years after the 9/11/2001 attack, the leading Infidel military power can claim as its greatest achievement that it has built up two very large armies of Muslims. In doing so, it has also spent nearly three trillion dollars, money spent or committed (including life-time care for tens of thousands of severely wounded American soldiers and Marines) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan.
What might we have done with that three trillion dollars, in, for example, energy projects to deprive Muslims of their Money Weapon? What kind of health care problems would we have had we not spent three trillion dollars in the last eight years in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, and on aid to practically any Muslim state that did not have oil -- Egypt, Jordan, even the “Palestinians” who are merely the carefully-renamed local Arabs who are the shock troops of the Jihad, that has no end, being waged against Israel?

No, none of this is the kind of thing of which Robert Gates shows any awareness. His speech last Thursday was an amazing performance, one that should give pause to all those who think that those who run the Pentagon have a grasp of history and of the ideology of Islam. He, Gates, has no idea of Pakistan’s consistent record of grasping, calculated meretriciousness over the past fifty years. And he appears to have forgotten -- if he ever knew -- how constantly, and characteristically, generous, as well as far too trusting, the American government has been with Pakistan, endlessly treacherous Pakistan.

Perhaps there are others in the corridors of power who can enlighten Gates, or work around him, or somehow get policies accepted that are based on something very like reality. It’s not much to ask.

If, during the Cold War, the Americans had thought for a bit, and read, for example, the Manual on Jihad written by a Pakistani general (Malik), and if they had been more willing to come to grips with Islam, they might have decided that the ruthlessness of the Soviet forces in suppressing Islam in Central Asia, in the “stans” of the Soviet Union, was not a thing to be deplored but to be welcomed, and that government by those who, in the Afghani context, called themselves “Communists” (a word which sometimes merely signaled “secularist&#8221 would not be enough of a victory to give the dying Soviet Union a reprieve from its fate, but at least would not help, and might hinder, the renewal of Muslim power in parts of Central Asia. Sometimes an enemy’s behavior should be recognized as, objectively, furthering one’s own goals. But the Americans in dealing with Afghanistan thought only about defeating the Soviets, and not about what that defeat, and the victory of the muhajideen, might mean.

This inability to think ahead has always been a problem. Had the American government in 1945, just as the war was ending, immediately stopped thinking about the Soviet Union as a necessary “ally” (as it was during World War II), and instantly recognized the malevolent designs on Eastern and Central Europe by Joseph Stalin, and had the Americans moved troops in or at a time of the American nuclear monopoly made other threats, a great deal of anguish, lasting nearly a half-century, might have been spared all the Central and Eastern European countries that came under Soviet domination after World War II. It is just possible that the Soviet Union itself might have collapsed earlier than it did.

It is the same with Islam. The mind-set of American policy-makers has been that of the Cold War, and in the Cold War various Muslim countries, and Islam itself, were seen, not quite accurately in the former case and completely misleadingly in the latter case, as enemies of totalitarianism, Communist division.

Robert Gates is a child of that Cold War. And so are many others in the Administration who did not, in the eight years that have followed 9/11/2009, taken even a month, even a week off, to try to learn about Islam. Washington is full of people who remain confused about the subject, and determined to rely on Muslim advisers, or on the repetition of soothing phrases such as “we must win the confidence of Muslims” or “we must win Muslim minds and hearts.” They do not find out whether or not such goals are either possible or worthwhile, given the kinds of violence we might have to do to our own ideals, and to our alliances, and to our own understanding of what the Western world is, and to the rights of other, but less powerful, Infidel lands. Those less powerful Infidel lands are often deemed expendable by some of the false “realists” who want us to win those unwinnable hearts and minds, or to curry favor with Muslims by paying them in the coin of the security of other Infidels (in Western Europe, or Israel, or India, or Thailand, or elsewhere).

For our own leaders, civilian and military, are willfully ignorant and unable, or incapable, of learning enough about Islam to cease to be taken in by the what should be seen as the most transparent kind of Muslim blague, designed to separate us from ever more of our money and war matériel, and to keep getting American and European concessions, in all kinds of ways, in order that the will-o’-the-wisp of Muslim cooperation and “appreciation” can be (impossibly) obtained.

And watch out for “Charm” as a weapon of Jihad. Most people, alas, often make judgments about large matters on the basis of the most trivial anecdotal evidence, or personal experience that, if analyzed correctly, would be seen in the nature of things to be deceptive. I am thinking in particular of the Pakistani ambassador in Washington, Husain Haqqani, and his helpmeet, in every sense, one of the very attractive Ispahani girls (the Ispahani family being one of the richest in Pakistan), all of whom have gone to excellent American schools. So use your imagination, with these smooth Anglophones, well-versed in the conversational arts of Georgetown and McLean, with the wife being so able to fit into her jeans (which allows us all to forget about the hundreds of millions of women forced to wear burqas or chadors or even the niqab), and who can allude to a picnic at Lake Waban (Wellesley!). All this can make conversationalists forget all about Muslim strictures on the education of women (enforced violently in Afghanistan), and of a host of legal and social disabilities that Muslimahs must endure, not because of “cultural practices” but because of Islam itself, which clearly assigns an inferior place to women, and spells out the reasons in Qur’an and Hadith, with details from the Sira, the Life of Muhammad, offering illustrative, and illuminating, examples.

Georgetown must get beyond mere “charm.” Then Husain Haqqani et ux. can be enjoyed the way Trollope might have enjoyed them, by engaging with them in outwardly affable social intercourse but at the same time casting a cold unswerving novelist’s eye on how they operate, and what they are attempting to achieve. And that is not money, or social status, as with Trollopean protagonists. Rather, they are attempting to win billions more in aid and military equipment, and above all continued political indulgence, for Pakistan.

I can imagine the two of them at Georgetown parties, seated next to, say, Teresa Heinz Kerry and her morganatic-marriage-in-reverse husband, artfully displaying their Western-educated ways, and in that very display, helping their dinner partners, Americans and other non-Muslims, to forget or not to inquire too deeply into the nature of Islam, and even to forego, later on, trying to find out more about Islam. For Husain Haqqani and his charming wife are there to ‘splain it all, night after night after night.

Robert Gates, and Richard Holbrooke, and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, and a few hundred others in Official Washington, must start hitting the books instead of relying on the likes of those ambassadors who truly do put into practice what the old definition of a diplomat describes: “someone who is sent abroad to lie for his country.” The formula would be more accurate if instead of “country” the word were “his faith.” Because what Ambassador Haqqani does is only what all the Muslim ambassadors do, though since Prince Bandar ruled the diplomatic roost (even showing up at the Pentagon for top-secret gatherings, apparently), it has not been quite the same.

It is difficult to believe that Robert Gates is as ignorant of American-Pakistani relations over the past half-century, and of the nature of Islam, as he appears from this speech, and many others, to be. Let us cling to the hope that this is all an act, that in the privacy of the inner sanctums of power he reveals that he understands things quite differently, much more accurately, and speaks more truthfully.

Let that hope not turn out to be a forlorn hope.

Robert Gates, Pakistan & The Pressler Amendment - New English Review

 

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Robert Gates, Pakistan & The Pressler Amendment

by Hugh Fitzgerald (September 2009)


The Pressler Amendment was passed in 1985. It was intended to ensure that the enormous amount of aid that was being given to Pakistan would not be used to further Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, but would be used, as the State Department and successive administrations kept assuring Congress and the American public, in order to make Pakistan feel secure, so that it would not develop nuclear weapons.

Among those who had been most astute and most critical of the policy of continued ceaseless appeasement of Pakistan was Senator John Glenn of Ohio. It would be useful, I suspect, to remind people who have not been in government about that Pressler Amendment by quoting at length from what Senator Glenn said in Congress:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to testify on U.S. responses to nuclear developments in Pakistan. I was tempted also to address my many concerns about India's large unsafeguarded nuclear program, but given time limitations and the focus of this hearing, I will address these concerns in another forum. Besides, your Committee has every reason to focus today on Pakistan. After all, American taxpayers shelled out billions of hard-earned tax dollars in aid that was explicitly justified as necessary to curb Pakistan's bomb program. This aid was provided only after repeated waivers of our nuclear nonproliferation laws. Congress has both the right and the duty to see what happened to these funds.

A review of this evidence will also encourage us to reexamine some old policy assumptions--like the faith some of our leaders have put in transfers of arms and high technology as tools of nuclear nonproliferation--and to appreciate the importance of some old fundamentals, like the duty of the Executive to `faithfully execute the laws,' the need for a working relationship between Congress and the Executive, and the public's right to know.

My testimony will address five questions: First, what were Congress and the American taxpayers told about the relationship between U.S. military aid and Pakistan's bomb? Second, how have these claims stood up over time? Third, why did Congress impose nuclear conditions on aid only to Pakistan? Fourth, did the Reagan and Bush administrations implement these conditions as Congress had intended? And finally, where do we go from here?

THE PROMISE OF THE POLICY

Between 1982 and 1990, America provided over $4 billion in assistance to Pakistan, about half of which was military. Some people think this aid was solely intended to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan, a goal we shared with Pakistan. My staff, however, has identified 20 official administration statements claiming since 1981 that military assistance would address Pakistan's security concerns and thereby keep Pakistan from acquiring the bomb. I will submit with my testimony some relevant excerpts.
[Attachment]

Given these many claims, the answer to my first question is crystal clear: the military transfers and other assistance were explicitly justified to Congress as instruments of a nuclear nonproliferation policy. Yet since this aid was only provided following waiver upon waiver of our nuclear nonproliferation laws, the administration had a heavy burden of proof to demonstrate that the aid was producing the promised results.

Unfortunately, the much-heralded nonproliferation benefits never materialized, which simplifies the job of answering my second question about the effects of the policy. It is well known that Pakistan was acquiring a nuclear weapons capability throughout the 1980's. I will attach to my statement a table listing 50 events that show without a doubt that Pakistan was continuing and even accelerating its pursuit of the bomb despite all of our aid. [Attachment] Mr. Chairman, if you judge by the evidence and not by the promises, there was a direct--not an inverse--relationship between the level of our aid and Pakistan's progress toward the bomb.

This leads to the answer to my third question about why Congress decided to impose new conditions on aid provided only to Pakistan. In the face of sensational daily headlines from around the world attesting to the failure of the administration's arms-for-nuclear-restraint policy, Congress went to work in the mid-1980's to strengthen conditions on further aid to Pakistan. It was no more `discriminatory' for Congress to single out Pakistan for special aid conditions than it was for the Executive to issue waiver after waiver of our nonproliferation laws just on Pakistan's behalf.
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ORIGINS OF THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT

On March 28, 1984, this Committee adopted an amendment offered by Sen. Cranston and myself providing that no assistance shall be furnished and `no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan' unless the President could first certify that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device, is not developing a nuclear device, and is not acquiring goods to make such a device. On April 3, 1984, the Committee narrowly voted to reconsider this amendment and adopted instead a substitute offered by Senator Pressler, Mathias and Percy, which tied the continuation of aid and military sales to two certification conditions: (1) that Pakistan not possess a nuclear explosive device; and (2) that new aid `will reduce significantly the risk' that Pakistan will possess such a device. This text, which was enacted on another bill in August 1985, has come to be called the `Pressler amendment.'

In summary, the amendment made binding what had been an official policy, namely that our aid would reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation. It also clarified--by its broad prohibition on all arms transfers under any U.S. law--that a failure to meet these standards would lead to a cutoff of not only assistance but of military sales as well.

Let me just add at this point that neither the legislative history nor the text of the amendment itself contains any written or implied exclusion of commercial arms sales from the scope of these sanctions. Indeed, it is useful to recall that in past testimony at least one State Department witness has also dismissed this peculiar argument for allowing commercial arms sales to continue in the event of a nuclear violation. At a hearing of this Committee on November 12, 1981, I asked Undersecretary of State James Buckley to describe how a nuclear detonation by Pakistan would affect our transfers of F-16 aircraft and he replied that such an event would, in his words:

* * * dramatically affect the relationship. The cash sales are part of that relationship. I cannot see drawing lines between the impact in the case of a direct cash sale versus a guaranteed or U.S.-financed sale.

Yet as the evidence kept flowing in about new Pakistan advances toward the bomb, new rationalizations kept flowing out from Foggy Bottom for continuing our transfers of arms and aid in the service of nonproliferation--which brings me to my fourth question addressing how the Pressler amendment and other relevant laws were implemented.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT

I have long believed that continued arms experts to Pakistan was no way to halt its bomb program. But when you consider that of the 50 nuclear weapon-related events I cited in my submission to the Committee, three-quarters of them occurred after the Pressler amendment was enacted, it becomes glaringly apparent that the Reagan and Bush administrations willfully violated not only the Pressler amendment but several other nuclear nonproliferation laws as well. I believe that the Pressler amendment was violated almost immediately after it was enacted, when U.S. assistance and arms were transferred even though our government knew Pakistan was continuing its pursuit of the bomb.

There are three specific violations I would like to discuss today. First, I believe that the President's conclusion in October 1989 that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device conflicts with widely available information indicating that Pakistan was a de facto nuclear-weapon state. Indeed, Pakistan may well have attained that capability even before 1989, when would cast doubt on the accuracy of non-possession certifications by the Reagan administration as well.

Five years ago, a London newspaper published excerpts from an interview with no greater authority than Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's bomb; in Dr. Khan words, `what the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct.' Later, in February 1992, the Pakistan foreign secretary publicly conceded that his government had `inherited' a nuclear capability. He told a U.N. audience on February 7th that `there was a capability in 1989,' but he denied that the program was `moved forward' and maintained that `we froze the program.' In an interview reported in the Washington Post the same day, the foreign secretary state that Pakistan possesses `elements which, if put together, would become a device. He referred to specifically to weapons `cores.'

The foreign secretary's statements raise some thorny problems for both the administration and the Pakistani government:

1. If Pakistan possessed these `elements' back in 1989, then how could the President have certified that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device? By the State Department's own interpretation of the Pressler amendment, if Pakistan possessed the bomb in pieces, it possessed the bomb.

2. If Pakistan did not possess these 'elements' back in 1989, but acquired them after President Bush made his certification of nonpossession in October 1989, then the foreign secretary's statement that the program was `frozen' when his government came to power in November 1990 is hardly reassuring. The foreign secretary is saying that Pakistan has frozen its status as a de factor nuclear weapon state. He is also admitting that Pakistan has violated its solemn commitment to the United States in 1984 that it would not enrich uranium beyond the 5% level needed for civilian uses.
The foreign secretary's candid remarks about the existence of a nuclear capability in 1989--combined with his remarks about weapons `cores' that he claims were produced before his government came to power--raises the real possibility of a violation of the non-possession standard in that year or even earlier.

The second violation also occurred in 1989--actually it was just a repeat of 4 prior violations by President Reagan--when President Bush certified that the provision of new assistance would `reduce significantly' the risk that Pakistan would possess a nuclear explosive device. In contrast to voluminous evidence indicating that Pakistan's program to develop nuclear weapons was advancing throughout the late 1980's, there were just no credible grounds for concluding that the provision of new foreign aid was reducing the risk of Pakistan possessing the bomb.

In fact, I believe there is considerable evidence that America's aid and high technology undoubtedly contributed to Pakistan's nuclear and missile capabilities. The F-16 aircraft we provided along with the dual-use goods we transferred to nuclear and missile facilities in Pakistan provide sufficient grounds for this conclusion.

The third violation--and I do indeed call this a violation--occurred in 1992, when it was officially confirmed that the United States government was continuing to license arms sales to Pakistan despite the clear requirement of the Pressler amendment that `no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan' if it has not received the required Presidential certifications.
Evidently, this is what we are now down to: elements of our bureaucracy are grasping at straws to perpetuate the myths that additional military transfers will buy us influence over Pakistan's bomb program, and that such transfers are perfectly legal.

The rationale that our government is somehow justified in licensing sales of munitions to maintain current military capabilities (which the Pakistani foreign secretary now tells us includes nuclear weapons) flies in the face of the black-and-white words of the Pressler amendment.

Commercial arms sales do indeed contravene both the spirit and the letter of the Pressler amendment. All the more so, given that the equipment we are evidently continuing to supply includes spare parts for F-16 aircraft, a known delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons. Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit a list of official statements from the Reagan and Bush administrations taking mutually contradictory positions on the issue of whether the F-16 can be used by Pakistan to deliver nuclear weapons. Clearly somebody--and not just in Pakistan--has not been telling the truth to the people, which raises the possibility of yet another violation of the law.

In summary, the administration's position on commercial arms sales not only lacks a solid foundation in law, it seems almost contrived to subvert and frustrate the very purposes of sanctions, which are to impose a cost for noncompliance with legitimate nonproliferation standards, to offer an incentive to correct the policies to noncompliance, and to signal the priority of nuclear nonproliferation on America's foreign policy agenda.

If you are under forty, you might not remember the brouhaha over the behavior of Pakistan that led to the Pressler Amendment, and then led to the expression of great Congressional unhappiness with the way the Executive Branch chose to “interpret” the Pressler Amendment. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is not under forty. He’s close to seventy. He has spent most of his life in the government, intimately connected to matters of high policy. But he apparently has a great deal of trouble remembering exactly how the government of the United States was betrayed, and betrayed again, by Pakistan, led by the nose, and led by the nose before, and then after, the Pressler Amendment was passed. His statement of August 13th about Pakistan having good reasons to “mistrust” the United States because America “walked away from them twice” -- the sheer utter idiocy of it all, the rewriting not of ancient history but of recent history -- simply amazes. The Pressler Amendment was passed because members of Congress were fed up with the behavior of Pakistan. The long discussion by Senator Glenn that took place at hearings held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1992, some seven years after the Pressler Amendment were passed, were prompted by a realization, and disgust, that the American government had not been diligent in enforcing the letter, or being vigilant about the spirit, of the Pressler Amendment.

We did not “walk away” from Pakistan. The government, that is, the military who essentially have always held power in Pakistan, took and took whatever aid they could cajole out of the Americans, and then always came back for more. They took whatever economic aid they could as well, and that economic aid allowed the “failed state” -- always on the brink of bankruptcy -- of Pakistan to nonetheless not only quietly arrange for stealing nuclear secrets from the West, but pay the enormous costs of the nuclear weapons program that led to the building not of one but of dozens of “Islamic bombs,” as they were proudly called, and not only in Pakistan.

The United States did not “walk away” from Pakistan once the Soviet army had left Afghanistan. The country of Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, who were formed by, trained by, supported by, the government of Pakistan. Pakistan also helped the Taliban get back to Afghanistan and seize power once the Soviets had left, and to make that country a hell for its citizens, or for all but those who were the most fanatical Muslims, and to make it a haven for “the Arabs” who arrived, and set up their Al Qaeda camps, and treated the local Afghanis with such contumely. There was no reason at all for the Americans not to “walk away” from Pakistan, for Pakistan completely betrayed the Americans and its own solemn undertakings to them in this case, and then in the case of the long-term betrayal of promise after promise made to the Americans.

Those broken promises led to the Pressler Amendment, and then to renewed outrage from Congress once it was clear that Pakistan was being allowed, with the State Department’s connivance, to keep fooling the Americans -- that is, the American people, though not the group of apologists for Pakistan who continued to reign, as apologists for other Muslim states still reign and call far too many of the shots in the State Department and elsewhere in our government.

And while the Bush Administration wasted so many men, so much money, so much matériel, in Iraq, Robert Gates was for much of that time the Secretary of Defense. And now that the Obama Administration has come in, with Obama in Cairo not only seeing but raising Bush’s poker-faced nonsense about Islam as a “religion of peace,” but at least abandoning the messianic sentimentalism of Bush when it came to thinking that the Americans could bring “freedom” to “ordinary moms and dads in the Middle East,” Robert Gates is still there, and he still has not thought it necessary, apparently, to rethink the whole business. He has not started to think about Islam in Western Europe, for example, and not merely to take the same idiotic strategy -- winning hearts, winning minds, extending “prosperity” (which means tens of billions of American dollars), and keeping polities “unified” (which means the Americans have to somehow get the various ethnic and sectarian factions to lie down, like so many lions with so many lambs). He is simply moving the whole business from Iraq to Afghanistan, and with help -- help! -- expected from the meretricious government of Pakistan.

Pakistan has always been the spoiled child of American foreign policy. It began way back, with the Dulles brothers, when among the group of fierce but essentially stupid anti-Communists there was a belief that Islam should be regarded only as a "bulwark against Communism." That meant that the Al-Saud were much better than Nasser, because the former were completely Muslim, while Nasser had secular tendencies.

In the subcontinent, Pakistan had a series of fly-whisking terry-thomas moustachioed generals who were past masters at winning the trust of American counterparts in the Pentagon. Those ramrod-straight (Sandhurst posture always being a sure sign of inward rectitude) generals invited comparison with those dangerous, bandung-conferencing, Fabian Society Indian leaders -- haughty untouchable Brahmin Nehru (who had also dared to have a liaison with the wife of Lord Mountbatten) and his fellow member of the Victor Gollancz's New Left Book Club, the even more dangerous, because more marxisant (so it was felt in official Washington) Krishna Menon.

And thus it was that Pakistan -- meretricious Muslim Pakistan (meretricious, in this case, precisely because it was Muslim) was made a member of that ill-fated because ill-conceived military pact known as CENTO, in which the United States and Great Britain were to supply all the money and all the arms and all the training, while the Muslim members -- Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan -- were to be the beneficiaries of the money, the arms, the training, but were to supply the men. The whole farcical thing fell apart in 1958 with the coup by A. Q. Qassem, in which the "pro-Western" Nuri al-Said, always described as the "strongman" of Iraq, was seized and murdered, his mutilated body dragged through the streets of Baghdad.

But while CENTO collapsed, the Pakistani generals' love affair with the Pentagon continued. The Americans continued to supply those generals with all kinds of things, and that did not stop when the out-and-out fanatical Muslim Zia ul-Haq came to power. Anglophone Pakistanis of the upper classes like to claim, in talking to Westerners, that there was nothing wrong with Pakistan until Zia ul-Haq with his "extremism" came along. This is nonsense. Pakistan's "extremism" was always there among its primitive masses -- the masses who, unlike Benazir Bhutto, do not have millions of dollars, are not the children of zamindars, and cannot attend Harvard and Oxford and become, superficially westernized and hence offer the outward veneer of something that seemed familiar and trustworthy.

Far from being ill-treated by the United States, Pakistan continued to receive all kinds of money and all kinds of weapons. It was even promised F-16s. And that American money later came in handy when A. Q. Khan, a metallurgist skilled at thievery, managed while working in Western laboratories in the Netherlands and Germany to win sufficient trust to be given access to certain nuclear secrets. He stole those secrets and brought them back to Pakistan where the I.S.I., still living largely on the financial aid that the Americans supplied, used that aid to help finance Pakistan's nuclear project.

Pakistan not only diverted American aid to build what was called "the Islamic bomb," but A. Q. Khan was permitted by I.S.I., the Pakistan army's intelligence service, to offer to share nuclear secrets with other countries, and apparently he did so in the cases of both Iraq and North Korea.

The government of Pakistan continues, of course, to prevent the Americans even from interviewing A. Q. Khan to try to find out exactly what he gave to whom. That is not exactly the behavior of an ally, or a friend. It is the behavior, more accurately, of an enemy, one willing to take whatever aid, financial and military, it can wheedle out of the Americans, but not willing -- or able-- ever to be a real ally or friend.

During the Musharraf years, with the billions from America now pouring in, the government and military in Pakistan continued to string the Americans along. There were occasional half-hearted largely feigning attacks, by the Pakistan military, on Al Qaeda or the Taliban, but mainly the Pakistan government and press did everything it could to deny that Al Qaeda was either in Pakistan or being aided by a great many Pakistanis.

It was only when the American military was becoming absolutely fed up, and when, too, the local Taliban leaders decided a bit too prematurely to take on the rich zamindars in the parts of Pakistan -- e.g. the Swat Valley -- that they conquered, that the ruling class in both the Pakistani government and military realized that the Taliban were a threat to them. They then turned on the Taliban, not as a favor to the Americans, but in order to preserve the position of themselves and of those like them. That did not make them the friends of the Americans, or of the Indians, or of any other Infidel group. They remain Muslims, in a country almost entirely Muslim, where non-Muslims can be harassed, persecuted, even murdered at will. It was more than twenty years ago that Bishop John Joseph immolated himself in order to bring attention to the murderous persecution of Christians in Pakistan -- that persecution did not start yesterday, and it hardly was the result only of what the Taliban prompted. The persecution of Christians and Hindus is carried out by many and supported by even more. It is, in fact, not at all deplored in Pakistan, save by a handful of the morally most advanced.

Gates -- according to the news report about his August 13th performance -- “described as disturbing, but not surprising, the results of a survey that only 9 percent of Pakistanis saw the United States as a partner while 64 percent looked at it as an enemy.”

So Gates thinks this widespread hostility -- expressed in the survey that found that “64 percent” of Pakistanis see the U.S. as an enemy -- is “disturbing, but not surprising.” He is right: it isn’t “surprising.” But what is “surprising” -- or perhaps, alas, not “surprising” -- is that Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, seems to think it is not “surprising” not because of what Muslims are taught in the Qur’an, in the Hadith, and through the example of Muhammad -- uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil -- in the Sira. In those sources Muslims are taught to be mistrustful of Infidels (to be especially wary when they seem, those Infidels, to be nice, to be generous, for they are of course in league with Shaytan, trying to woo Muslims from the Path of Allah, fi sabil Allah). Muslims are taught that between them and non-Muslims, that is between Believers and Infidels, a state of permanent hostility or war (though not necessarily open warfare) must exist, and that they have a duty to make sure that Infidels do not continue to cling to their own ways, to continue to throw up obstacles (Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Conscience are such obstacles) to the spread and then the certain, the right, the just dominance of Islam, all over the world. Apparently Robert Gates hasn’t even begun to figure out what effect Islam has on the minds of its adherents. He hasn’t begun to grasp how very different Islam is -- as a Total Belief-System that offers a Complete Regulation of Life and a Complete Explanation of the Universe -- from other faiths, because Islam contains a clear politics and geopolitics which he has a duty to learn about, and did have such a duty the minute he assumed the post of Secretary of Defense. Like many others in official Washington, it is a duty he apparently thinks he has no obligation to fulfill. He’s quite wrong.

And Robert Gates has been the man in charge of vast expenditures (by the United States, what have turned out to be squanderings of men, money, matériel, and military morale, all in the misguided attempt to keep Iraq together, to keep Iraq “nonviolent,” to make Iraq “prosperous” -- all in the hope that Iraq would become what it will never become. This hope was never quite spelled out, never quite explained to us who are the citizens watching helplessly at the folly of this policy, first in Iraq and now, with apparently no lessons learned, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A coherent and cunning and even ruthless policy should long ago have been crafted, one devoid of sentimentalism, one recognizing that the most important theatre of war was not in Iraq, nor in Afghanistan, nor in Pakistan but, rather, right now, in the imperiled states of Western Europe, where the growth of Muslim populations threatens to change the tenor of life, the quality of life, and the orientation toward the United States, of those countries that constitute the historic heart of the West, and that without Europe the United States would lose its civilizational ancestry. It would see its legacy taken over, and destroyed, as were, everywhere that Muslims conquered, over the past 1350 years, the artifacts of whatever pre-Islamic civilization had once existed. The conquered non-Muslims were made to turn away from, to forget, even to despise, their culture, wherever Islamization, and then arabization, fully triumphed. It did not, in Iran, for complicated reasons, and the fact that Iranians still have the consciousness of their pre-Islamic identity may turn out to be important in helping Iranians today move away from the Islamic Republic, to constrain Islam, or even to jettison Islam altogether (perhaps by rediscovering an alternative identity – say, Zoroastrianism), in numbers significant enough to transform state and society in Iran.

In order to formulate policies that make sense -- and the war in Iraq, and the wars as currently conducted in Afghanistan and Pakistan are hideously draining on our military, and as policy are senseless -- one has to first recognize, despite all the official blather, that the United States has a stake in preventing the dangerous encroachments of Islam in Western Europe. Islam is not mainly or merely a “religion.” It is a Politics. It is a Geopolitics. It is important for Robert Gates, and all those who presume to protect us, to find out about Islam -- really find out, and not rely on the army of apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who have so methodically hired and promoted one another in our colleges and universities, and who have been hired by the naïve and the simpletons to “advise” us. They have been hired even within our military academies, even within our security services. Gates needs to learn the truth about Islam itself, and about those hundreds of millions of Muslims who actively support the goals of Jihad, even if many prefer other instruments of Jihad to terrorism and combat (qitaal), for reasons not of morality but of expediency. Those other instruments include deployment of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da’wa, and demographic conquest.

Intelligent Americans and Europeans realize that there is something uniquely disturbing about Islam. They are perfectly aware that many immigrant groups have come to North America and Europe -- Hindus, Chinese, Buddhists from Vietnam, Andean Indians, sub-Saharan and Caribbean blacks -- and many of these groups have language problems, or come bearing an alien creed. But only Muslim immigrants come bearing an alien and a hostile creed, one that makes claims on every aspect of life. It would be idiotic to ignore the fact that no other immigrant group, in France or Great Britain or in Spain or in Germany or even in those two tiny countries that have made a virtual state religion out of Tolerance And Diversity, Denmark and the Netherlands, has given the kind of trouble, has been impossible to integrate, and that makes endless demands. Those demands keep coming and do not stop. Muslims want changes in their host countries, in the laws, and the customs, and the understandings, above all in the freedoms, that have been the slow-won achievement, and some would describe as the glory and justification, of the Western world. These freedoms help to explain the West’s political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral advances, even as Islam explains the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim peoples and polities. The cause of those failures, the very failures of the societies and states they wish to escape by coming to Europe and to North America, instead follows them, is brought by them, is contained in the mental baggage that they bring, undeclared, and then unpack, to the great harm of the Infidels among whom they have come to live, and whose societies those Muslim immigrants -- to the precise extent that they take Islam to heart -- intend to change, slowly, steadily, inexorably.

They must not be allowed to do so, and the threat they represent has to be recognized by those who are in charge, as it is, more and more, by those people who have been sickened by the nonsense and lies, not only of those in charge of immigration policy, but by all those, among our political and media elites, who know far less about Islam, who still know almost nothing about Islam, eight years after the fatidic date which marks, or should have marked, an end to ignorance about Islam. Many people have -- almost unwillingly, hoping not to discover what they have discovered, hoping it can’t really be true -- engaged in intensive self-study of Islam. And in studying Islam, its texts, its tenets, its attitudes, its atmospherics, in reading the works of the great Western scholars of Islam, those who lived in the century, roughly, from 1860 to 1960, and in reading, as well, the works of those who, having been born and raised within Islam, and then having moved to the West and enjoyed its mental freedom and freedom from physical fear (a fear that keeps questioning people in Muslim lands permanently quiet about whatever doubts they may have about Islam), have testified so eloquently. See Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Sina, and many thousands of others whose names are as yet unknown, sometimes by design, to the Great World.

It all seems to be taking place below the radar of Our Great And Powerful Men in Washington, who construct policies that make no sense, and spend trillions of what is our money, and expend the lives of those who are our relatives or our friends or our fellow citizens, and who use up vast amounts of war matériel. And incidentally, that matériel is used up not only in combat, or blown up by the enemy, but is also being transferred to Muslim soldiers, to the armies we have idiotically built up in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and with still more tens of billions being transferred to Pakistan. How many thousands of very expensive vehicles, capable of withstanding I.E.D. attacks, will be left with the Iraqi army and police? With the Afghanis? Possibly given to Pakistan? How much other expensive equipment is being crazily lavished on Muslims? How much training is being given, which our military appears to believe will be used only against other Muslims, that is, against the so-called “extremists” who are supposed to be so very different from the other Muslims, the “good” Muslims, whom we are so eagerly training and outfitting?

Between the army and the police, in Iraq the Americans have trained, outfitted, supplied with advanced weaponry of every kind, more than half-a-million Iraqis. Our friends and allies, forever? Do you think so? On what basis do you think so? And there are another several hundred thousand men under arms -- army and police -- in Afghanistan, Muslims all of course, who have been trained, outfitted, given all kinds of equipment. Is this an achievement? Eight years after the 9/11/2001 attack, the leading Infidel military power can claim as its greatest achievement that it has built up two very large armies of Muslims. In doing so, it has also spent nearly three trillion dollars, money spent or committed (including life-time care for tens of thousands of severely wounded American soldiers and Marines) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan.
What might we have done with that three trillion dollars, in, for example, energy projects to deprive Muslims of their Money Weapon? What kind of health care problems would we have had we not spent three trillion dollars in the last eight years in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, and on aid to practically any Muslim state that did not have oil -- Egypt, Jordan, even the “Palestinians” who are merely the carefully-renamed local Arabs who are the shock troops of the Jihad, that has no end, being waged against Israel?

No, none of this is the kind of thing of which Robert Gates shows any awareness. His speech last Thursday was an amazing performance, one that should give pause to all those who think that those who run the Pentagon have a grasp of history and of the ideology of Islam. He, Gates, has no idea of Pakistan’s consistent record of grasping, calculated meretriciousness over the past fifty years. And he appears to have forgotten -- if he ever knew -- how constantly, and characteristically, generous, as well as far too trusting, the American government has been with Pakistan, endlessly treacherous Pakistan.

Perhaps there are others in the corridors of power who can enlighten Gates, or work around him, or somehow get policies accepted that are based on something very like reality. It’s not much to ask.

If, during the Cold War, the Americans had thought for a bit, and read, for example, the Manual on Jihad written by a Pakistani general (Malik), and if they had been more willing to come to grips with Islam, they might have decided that the ruthlessness of the Soviet forces in suppressing Islam in Central Asia, in the “stans” of the Soviet Union, was not a thing to be deplored but to be welcomed, and that government by those who, in the Afghani context, called themselves “Communists” (a word which sometimes merely signaled “secularist&#8221 would not be enough of a victory to give the dying Soviet Union a reprieve from its fate, but at least would not help, and might hinder, the renewal of Muslim power in parts of Central Asia. Sometimes an enemy’s behavior should be recognized as, objectively, furthering one’s own goals. But the Americans in dealing with Afghanistan thought only about defeating the Soviets, and not about what that defeat, and the victory of the muhajideen, might mean.

This inability to think ahead has always been a problem. Had the American government in 1945, just as the war was ending, immediately stopped thinking about the Soviet Union as a necessary “ally” (as it was during World War II), and instantly recognized the malevolent designs on Eastern and Central Europe by Joseph Stalin, and had the Americans moved troops in or at a time of the American nuclear monopoly made other threats, a great deal of anguish, lasting nearly a half-century, might have been spared all the Central and Eastern European countries that came under Soviet domination after World War II. It is just possible that the Soviet Union itself might have collapsed earlier than it did.

It is the same with Islam. The mind-set of American policy-makers has been that of the Cold War, and in the Cold War various Muslim countries, and Islam itself, were seen, not quite accurately in the former case and completely misleadingly in the latter case, as enemies of totalitarianism, Communist division.

Robert Gates is a child of that Cold War. And so are many others in the Administration who did not, in the eight years that have followed 9/11/2009, taken even a month, even a week off, to try to learn about Islam. Washington is full of people who remain confused about the subject, and determined to rely on Muslim advisers, or on the repetition of soothing phrases such as “we must win the confidence of Muslims” or “we must win Muslim minds and hearts.” They do not find out whether or not such goals are either possible or worthwhile, given the kinds of violence we might have to do to our own ideals, and to our alliances, and to our own understanding of what the Western world is, and to the rights of other, but less powerful, Infidel lands. Those less powerful Infidel lands are often deemed expendable by some of the false “realists” who want us to win those unwinnable hearts and minds, or to curry favor with Muslims by paying them in the coin of the security of other Infidels (in Western Europe, or Israel, or India, or Thailand, or elsewhere).

For our own leaders, civilian and military, are willfully ignorant and unable, or incapable, of learning enough about Islam to cease to be taken in by the what should be seen as the most transparent kind of Muslim blague, designed to separate us from ever more of our money and war matériel, and to keep getting American and European concessions, in all kinds of ways, in order that the will-o’-the-wisp of Muslim cooperation and “appreciation” can be (impossibly) obtained.

And watch out for “Charm” as a weapon of Jihad. Most people, alas, often make judgments about large matters on the basis of the most trivial anecdotal evidence, or personal experience that, if analyzed correctly, would be seen in the nature of things to be deceptive. I am thinking in particular of the Pakistani ambassador in Washington, Husain Haqqani, and his helpmeet, in every sense, one of the very attractive Ispahani girls (the Ispahani family being one of the richest in Pakistan), all of whom have gone to excellent American schools. So use your imagination, with these smooth Anglophones, well-versed in the conversational arts of Georgetown and McLean, with the wife being so able to fit into her jeans (which allows us all to forget about the hundreds of millions of women forced to wear burqas or chadors or even the niqab), and who can allude to a picnic at Lake Waban (Wellesley!). All this can make conversationalists forget all about Muslim strictures on the education of women (enforced violently in Afghanistan), and of a host of legal and social disabilities that Muslimahs must endure, not because of “cultural practices” but because of Islam itself, which clearly assigns an inferior place to women, and spells out the reasons in Qur’an and Hadith, with details from the Sira, the Life of Muhammad, offering illustrative, and illuminating, examples.

Georgetown must get beyond mere “charm.” Then Husain Haqqani et ux. can be enjoyed the way Trollope might have enjoyed them, by engaging with them in outwardly affable social intercourse but at the same time casting a cold unswerving novelist’s eye on how they operate, and what they are attempting to achieve. And that is not money, or social status, as with Trollopean protagonists. Rather, they are attempting to win billions more in aid and military equipment, and above all continued political indulgence, for Pakistan.

I can imagine the two of them at Georgetown parties, seated next to, say, Teresa Heinz Kerry and her morganatic-marriage-in-reverse husband, artfully displaying their Western-educated ways, and in that very display, helping their dinner partners, Americans and other non-Muslims, to forget or not to inquire too deeply into the nature of Islam, and even to forego, later on, trying to find out more about Islam. For Husain Haqqani and his charming wife are there to ‘splain it all, night after night after night.

Robert Gates, and Richard Holbrooke, and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, and a few hundred others in Official Washington, must start hitting the books instead of relying on the likes of those ambassadors who truly do put into practice what the old definition of a diplomat describes: “someone who is sent abroad to lie for his country.” The formula would be more accurate if instead of “country” the word were “his faith.” Because what Ambassador Haqqani does is only what all the Muslim ambassadors do, though since Prince Bandar ruled the diplomatic roost (even showing up at the Pentagon for top-secret gatherings, apparently), it has not been quite the same.

It is difficult to believe that Robert Gates is as ignorant of American-Pakistani relations over the past half-century, and of the nature of Islam, as he appears from this speech, and many others, to be. Let us cling to the hope that this is all an act, that in the privacy of the inner sanctums of power he reveals that he understands things quite differently, much more accurately, and speaks more truthfully.

Let that hope not turn out to be a forlorn hope.

Robert Gates, Pakistan & The Pressler Amendment - New English Review

 

[pak-yes]

Brother isn't it toooooo much to read.A summary will do good.

 

[illuminatus]

The Bomb vs. Butter: Pakistan's Ultimate Choice

@H2O3C4Nitrogen Thanks for showing the other ugly side of Pakistan. No doubt that until these issues are resolved Pakistan will remain as it is. The Pakistani elite are a cancerous disease that have hijacked a nation of 170 million. The situation is bad, very bad for the common man.

 

[PlanetWarrior]

Too much info to digest