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US threat to nukes
Published: December 17, 2009
US Vice President Biden has finally made it clear that Pakistan's nuclear weapons should be the prime focus of US policy in this region. In an interview to MSNBC, on Tuesday, he declared, "our focus should be Pakistan and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Pakistan's nuclear weapons." Now that the US leadership itself has admitted targeting our nuclear assets, surely it is time to do a serious rethink about our cooperation with the US, especially in military/security terms? After all, if the end game for the US in this region is to take out our nuclear capability, how can any Pakistani state organisation be party to this agenda? If some blinkered persons in the Establishment and government still fail to understand the anti-Pakistan US agenda, what do they think of Mullen's statement in Islamabad that the Indo-US nuclear strategy is for this entire region? This is the first time we are hearing of a joint "Indo-US" nuclear strategy. What exactly is it? The Indian nuclear doctrine, which sees a first strike against "any WMD threat" from "anywhere", encompasses a highly aggressive nuclear war-fighting strategy. Is this now going to be a joint Indo-US strategy for this region and beyond? If so, then this directly threatens Pakistan. It is plausible that the US subscribes to the Indian designs in this region, given how the two sides are cooperating on missile defence also - which translated into simple strategic language means rationalisation of nuclear war-fighting rather than mere deterrence. Also, if the US has now adopted a joint nuclear doctrine with India, then it is violating its international law obligations under the Non Proliferation Treaty, which forbids it to have any form of nuclear cooperation with a non-signatory to this Treaty - let alone military cooperation. Given the joint nuclear agenda of India and the US, it is now clearer why the US, both at the official and media levels, has failed to move on India's proliferation activities which have been well-documented by many sources including US think tanks.
For Pakistan the threat from the US is now abundantly clear. It lies in the US attempting to take out our nuclear capability one way or another. They cannot do it through military means, so they are seeking to identify the locations on the one hand, and use the UNSC on the other with Al-Qaeda as the pretext. If we thought our main security threat was only from extremist militancy, we need to think again. The US threat to our very existence is becoming as critical - not only in the form of threatened drone attacks in Balochistan but also in the form of targeting our nuclear assets. That there is also an unholy and growing linkage between militancy and its external backers is why we need to delink from the US and devise our own holistic strategies for combating our multiple-level threats.
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Editorials/17-Dec-2009/US-threat-to-nukes
Published: December 17, 2009
US Vice President Biden has finally made it clear that Pakistan's nuclear weapons should be the prime focus of US policy in this region. In an interview to MSNBC, on Tuesday, he declared, "our focus should be Pakistan and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Pakistan's nuclear weapons." Now that the US leadership itself has admitted targeting our nuclear assets, surely it is time to do a serious rethink about our cooperation with the US, especially in military/security terms? After all, if the end game for the US in this region is to take out our nuclear capability, how can any Pakistani state organisation be party to this agenda? If some blinkered persons in the Establishment and government still fail to understand the anti-Pakistan US agenda, what do they think of Mullen's statement in Islamabad that the Indo-US nuclear strategy is for this entire region? This is the first time we are hearing of a joint "Indo-US" nuclear strategy. What exactly is it? The Indian nuclear doctrine, which sees a first strike against "any WMD threat" from "anywhere", encompasses a highly aggressive nuclear war-fighting strategy. Is this now going to be a joint Indo-US strategy for this region and beyond? If so, then this directly threatens Pakistan. It is plausible that the US subscribes to the Indian designs in this region, given how the two sides are cooperating on missile defence also - which translated into simple strategic language means rationalisation of nuclear war-fighting rather than mere deterrence. Also, if the US has now adopted a joint nuclear doctrine with India, then it is violating its international law obligations under the Non Proliferation Treaty, which forbids it to have any form of nuclear cooperation with a non-signatory to this Treaty - let alone military cooperation. Given the joint nuclear agenda of India and the US, it is now clearer why the US, both at the official and media levels, has failed to move on India's proliferation activities which have been well-documented by many sources including US think tanks.
For Pakistan the threat from the US is now abundantly clear. It lies in the US attempting to take out our nuclear capability one way or another. They cannot do it through military means, so they are seeking to identify the locations on the one hand, and use the UNSC on the other with Al-Qaeda as the pretext. If we thought our main security threat was only from extremist militancy, we need to think again. The US threat to our very existence is becoming as critical - not only in the form of threatened drone attacks in Balochistan but also in the form of targeting our nuclear assets. That there is also an unholy and growing linkage between militancy and its external backers is why we need to delink from the US and devise our own holistic strategies for combating our multiple-level threats.
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Editorials/17-Dec-2009/US-threat-to-nukes
