Nukes Endanger Asia’s Future

Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2003

A Nuclear crisis is forming in the most volatile region on Earth.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has demanded that Iran give a full and final accounting of its nuclear activities by Oct. 31, or risk action by the U.N. Security Council. Iran’s eastern neighbor, Pakistan, and Pakistan’s traditional rival, India, have already tested nuclear weapons. India’s neighbor and rival, China, has been a nuclear power for many years. Next door to China, the insular, unpredictable and even maniacal regime in North Korea is reportedly assembling components for nuclear bombs. If Tehran pursues nuclear arms, then, for the first time since the advent of nuclear weapons, several volatile, contiguous states would possess them. Unless Iran and North Korea are stopped, and Pakistan and India engage in nuclear arms-control negotiations, we could be headed for a nuclear showdown.

The most immediate challenge comes from Iran. Earlier this month, the country’s chief delegate to the IAEA stormed out of a meeting with agency officials and denounced the agency as part of Washington’s drive for “confrontation and war.” The IAEA’s recently circulated report on Iran concluded that Tehran had a large, sophisticated program for developing nuclear weapons within the decade. In February, Tehran publicly declared its intention to become a “self-sufficient” nuclear state but claimed that its program was for peaceful purposes. Pakistan had also made similar promises before testing a nuclear device in 1998, soon after India publicly joined the nuclear club.

Iran is even more likely to break its nonproliferation promises. Just as Pakistan’s pursuit of the atomic bomb was driven by its insecurity vis-a-vis India, Iran’s leaders feel that their country must achieve nuclear parity with Israel, Pakistan and India.

According to the IAEA report, Iran began enriching uranium in mid-August at 10 of the 160 centrifuges it has built at a pilot facility in Natanz. It is also constructing two huge underground facilities to house 50,000 centrifuges. Iranian officials say they are simply enriching uranium for reactor fuel, but the same machines and technologies can produce weapons-grade uranium. When completed later this year, the pilot plant could produce enough fissionable material to make one bomb a year. Planned larger-scale facilities, when completed in 2005, could create enough fuel to construct 15 to 20 nuclear weapons a year.

The most difficult part of building nuclear weapons is producing the enriched uranium or plutonium that goes in them. If Iran can solve this financially and technically demanding part of the equation, the design and construction of nuclear devices should not pose a significant problem.

The IAEA report documents the conflicting stories that Iranian officials repeatedly gave agency inspectors. They claimed, for instance, that they had built the centrifuges without any outside help, and that the officials had not tested the devices with uranium before scores of them had been built. This way, Iran would not violate its treaty obligation to declare the existence of such facilities before introducing nuclear materials into them. But when agency swipes detected the presence of uranium, and IAEA experts concluded that the technology was far too sophisticated to have been developed solely from open-source information and computer simulations, as the Iranians claimed, Iran changed its story. Tehran then said it had bought the centrifuges and that the original suppliers must have contaminated the equipment.

That explanation raises a troubling question: Who sold Iran the centrifuges? Several reports have pointed the finger at Pakistan. Islamabad denies any link to Iran’s nuclear program. It claims that freelance scientists from the former Soviet Union assisted the Iranians. But U.S. intelligence sources and even official Pakistani statements have suggested that Pakistan has not always adhered to its commitment to not share its nuclear know-how.

Despite its denials, Islamabad reportedly swapped nuclear technology with North Korea, which helped Pakistan develop its ballistic missile program. Because Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism, Washington has tended to overlook Islamabad’s possible nuclear misconduct. It’s worth remembering that Pakistan was able to develop a nuclear program because Washington wanted to use the country as a staging ground for the moujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But we can’t continue to ignore nuclear proliferation out of fear that allies will be offended or upset. Each nation in the new nuclear arc represents serious policy problems for the United States. Iran’s clerical regime has consistently sought preeminence in the world of Islam, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia. Pakistan remains an unstable state and spawning ground for terrorists. Its confrontation with India has led to three wars and several military stand-offs. India seeks recognition as an international power, possibly with a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, and has often bullied its weaker neighbors.

The experience of India and Pakistan further teaches us that once a country acquires nuclear weapons, crisis management becomes more difficult. Nuclear weapons have not created the “stability” of deterrence in South Asia. Rather, they have increased the chances for low-level conflicts that could escalate into nuclear confrontation.

The addition of Iran to the region’s nuclear club would heighten instability and the risk of conflict in a region abutting the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and China.

The U.S. administration rightly retreated from its original demand that the Security Council sanction Iran, which paved the way for a unanimous IAEA resolution that Tehran comply with all its treaty obligations. But there’s no sign that the Bush administration knows what to do next. Nor does it have a clear policy for the other countries in the nuclear arc.

Here’s what the Bush administration needs to do:

• Free up its diplomatic resources to focus on the coming nuclear crisis. It cannot let disputes over Iraq split the U.S. from its allies and monopolize high-level attention.

• Convince Iran that its future would be far better without nuclear weapons. This should include efforts to forge a new, more positive relationship with Tehran. Sanctions without continued engagement failed to deter Pakistan and India from becoming nuclear powers and may prove to be of equally limited value against Iran. In interviews with U.S. journalists last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi offered to work with Washington on a range of issues, including Iran’s nuclear activities. The administration should aggressively pursue his offer.

• Consider Pakistan not just as an ally in the war on terrorism but also as a serious problem in the struggle to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Anti-terror concerns should not trump antinuclear ones. The U.S. should help Pakistan overcome its security anxieties about India. But it should not allow Pakistan’s military leaders to feel they are free to resist democracy and develop their nuclear arsenal as long as they chase down members of Al Qaeda.

There is nothing inevitable about nuclear proliferation. Weapons programs have been successfully blocked in several nations. Stopping the spread of these deadly arsenals, however, requires the United States to put its diplomatic muscle behind its policy pronouncements.

Time is running out.

Asia’s Nuclear Arc

By Joseph Cirincione and Husain Haqqani

Publisher: Carnegie

Proliferation Brief, Volume 6, Number 16

A nuclear crisis is forming in the most volatile region on Earth.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has demanded that Iran give a full and final accounting of its nuclear activities by Oct. 31, or risk action by the U.N. Security Council. Iran’s eastern neighbor, Pakistan, and Pakistan’s traditional rival, India, have already tested nuclear weapons. India’s neighbor and rival, China, has been a nuclear power for many years. Next door to China, the insular, unpredictable and even maniacal regime in North Korea is reportedly assembling components for nuclear bombs. If Tehran pursues nuclear arms, then, for the first time since the advent of nuclear weapons, several volatile, contiguous states would possess them. Unless Iran and North Korea are stopped, and Pakistan and India engage in nuclear arms-control negotiations, Asia will become a nuclear tinderbox.

Iran’s Program
The most immediate challenge comes from Iran. Last month, the country’s chief delegate to the IAEA stormed out of a meeting with agency officials and denounced the agency as part of Washington’s drive for “confrontation and war.” The IAEA’s recently circulated report on Iran showed that Tehran had a large, sophisticated program capable of developing nuclear weapons within the decade. In February, Tehran publicly declared its intention to become a “self-sufficient” nuclear state but claimed that its program was for peaceful purposes. Pakistan had also made similar promises before testing a nuclear device in 1998, soon after India publicly joined the nuclear club.

Iran is even more likely to break its nonproliferation promises. Just as Pakistan’s pursuit of the atomic bomb was driven by its insecurity vis-a-vis India, Iran’s leaders feel that their country must achieve nuclear parity with Israel, Pakistan and India.

According to the IAEA report, Iran began enriching uranium in mid-August at 10 of the 160 centrifuges it has built at a pilot facility in Natanz. It is also constructing two huge underground facilities to house 50,000 centrifuges. Iranian officials say they are simply enriching uranium for reactor fuel, but the same machines and technologies can produce weapons-grade uranium. When completed later this year, the pilot plant could produce enough fissionable material to make one bomb a year. Planned larger-scale facilities, when completed in 2005, could create enough fuel to construct 15 to 20 nuclear weapons a year.

The most difficult part of building nuclear weapons is producing the enriched uranium or plutonium that goes in them. If Iran can solve this financially and technically demanding part of the equation, the design and construction of nuclear devices should not pose a significant problem.

The IAEA report documents the conflicting stories that Iranian officials repeatedly gave agency inspectors. They claimed, for instance, that they had built the centrifuges without any outside help, and that the officials had not tested the devices with uranium before scores of them had been built. This way, Iran would not violate its treaty obligation to declare the existence of such facilities before introducing nuclear materials into them. But agency swipes detected the presence of uranium, and IAEA experts concluded that the technology was far too sophisticated to have been developed solely from open-source information and computer simulations, as the Iranians claimed. Iran changed its story. Tehran then said it had bought the centrifuges and that the original suppliers must have contaminated the equipment.

Trick or Treat
That explanation raises a troubling question: Who sold Iran the centrifuges? Several reports have pointed the finger at Pakistan. Islamabad denies any link to Iran’s nuclear program. It claims that freelance scientists from the former Soviet Union assisted the Iranians. But U.S. intelligence sources and even official Pakistani statements have suggested that Pakistan has not always adhered to its commitment to not share its nuclear know-how.

Despite its denials, Islamabad reportedly swapped nuclear technology with North Korea, which helped Pakistan develop its ballistic missile program. Because Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism, Washington has tended to overlook Islamabad’s possible nuclear misconduct. It’s worth remembering that Pakistan was able to develop a nuclear program because Washington wanted to use the country as a staging ground for the moujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But we can’t continue to ignore nuclear proliferation out of fear that allies will be offended or upset. Each nation in the new nuclear arc represents serious policy problems for the United States. Iran’s clerical regime has consistently sought preeminence in the world of Islam, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia. Pakistan remains an unstable state and spawning ground for terrorists. Its confrontation with India has led to three wars and several military stand-offs. India seeks recognition as an international power, possibly with a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, and has often bullied its weaker neighbors.

The experience of India and Pakistan further teaches us that once a country acquires nuclear weapons, crisis management becomes more difficult. Nuclear weapons have not created the “stability” of deterrence in South Asia. Rather, they have increased the chances for low-level conflicts that could escalate into nuclear confrontation.

The addition of Iran to the region’s nuclear club would heighten instability and the risk of conflict in a region abutting the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and China.

The U.S. administration rightly retreated from its original demand that the Security Council sanction Iran, which paved the way for a unanimous IAEA resolution that Tehran comply with all its treaty obligations. But there’s no sign that the Bush administration knows what to do next. Nor does it have a clear policy for the other countries in the nuclear arc.

Action Agenda
Here’s what the Bush administration needs to do:

  • Free up its diplomatic resources to focus on the coming nuclear crisis. It cannot let disputes over Iraq split the U.S. from its allies and monopolize high-level attention.
  • Convince Iran that its future would be far better without nuclear weapons. This should include efforts to forge a new, more positive relationship with Tehran. Sanctions without continued engagement failed to deter Pakistan and India from becoming nuclear powers and may prove to be of equally limited value against Iran. In interviews with U.S. journalists last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi offered to work with Washington on a range of issues, including Iran’s nuclear activities. The administration should aggressively pursue his offer.
  • Consider Pakistan not just as an ally in the war on terrorism but also as a serious problem in the struggle to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Anti-terror concerns should not trump antinuclear ones. The U.S. should help Pakistan overcome its security anxieties about India. But it should not allow Pakistan’s military leaders to feel they are free to resist democracy and develop their nuclear arsenal as long as they chase down members of Al Qaeda.

There is nothing inevitable about nuclear proliferation. Weapons programs have been successfully blocked in several nations. Stopping the spread of these deadly arsenals, however, requires the United States to put its diplomatic muscle behind its policy pronouncements.

Time is running out.

This opinion piece by Joseph Cirincione and Husain Haqqani first appeared in the Los Angeles Times on September 28, 2003. Joseph Cirincione is a senior associate and director of the Non-Proliferation Project and Husain Haqqani is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The World Alleges and Pakistan Denies It

Indian Express, September 3, 2003

Pakistan faces, once again, a barrage of allegations ranging from charges of covert support of terrorists to accusations about illegally exporting components for other nations’ nuclear and missile programmes.

The Los Angeles Times ran a detailed story that blamed Pakistan for helping Iran in acquiring nuclear weapons capability. This follows similar allegations about exchanges of nuclear technology with the rogue state of North Korea.

Jane Mayer, writing in the New Yorker recently, insinuated that Osama bin Laden was hiding along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, virtually protected by Pakistani tribesmen with a wink and a nod from Pakistani officials. The Guardian, too, ran a similar story. Now the New Yorker has come up with charges of collaboration between Pakistan’s secret service and the international jehadi network, identified with Al Qaeda.

India’s statements that Pakistan continues to support militants (or terrorists) operating in Indian-controlled Kashmir as well as elsewhere in India also continue to be believed by large segments of international public opinion, Pakistan’s contradictions and denials notwithstanding. The recent bomb attacks in Mumbai are the latest instigation for a new round of negative comments around the world about Pakistan.

Islamabad has repeatedly and vehemently denied each of the various charges levelled against it. But Pakistani officials’ statements that the country is not involved in training or arming terrorists, that it is not an exporter of nuclear contraband and that it does not run covert operations against India or Afghanistan simply do not have any impact.

Initially, after General Musharraf became a US ally, American officials were a bit more supportive of Pakistan’s position. Until a few months ago, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice could be expected to weigh in and say that Pakistan was in the process of change and whatever may have happened in the past, it was not happening any more.

But Washington is no longer offering even such qualified clearance of late. Pakistani sympathy for jehadis, especially those in Afghanistan and Kashmir, is well known but officials of the Musharraf regime argue that sympathy is not the same thing as active support.

Allegations about covert weapons programmes are always based on intelligence leaks and there can be no independent evidence either way about the charges relating to Pakistan’s exchange of technology with regimes in Iran and North Korea.

Officially Pakistan seeks to dismiss all allegations against its conduct as ‘‘propaganda.’’ Ordinary Pakistanis are also outraged over the charges that their country periodically faces, leading to the discussion in Pakistan’s media over the country’s ‘‘image problem’’. But Pakistan’s problem is not just that of image. The country is governed in a secretive manner, with its intelligence services and military running the show in several spheres including areas of international concern.

Even when the civilians are in charge of government, security policy remains largely in the military’s hands, with key elements of decision-making hidden from public view. Pakistani history is replete with examples of government changes through palace coups, stolen elections, and manipulated judicial decisions.

Vehemently denied but widely known covert operations of the past encourage speculation about similar goings on in the present. Lack of transparency in decision-making has bred suspicion and doubt about Pakistan, which no amount of image makeovers can eliminate. Instead of looking for ways to make its denials more convincing, what Pakistan really needs is to make its process of governance more transparent. A substantive change in policy rather than another expensive lobbying or media campaign would be the better way of protecting Pakistan from periodic allegations of rogue-like behaviour.

Pakistan has not had a lawfully constituted elected civilian government for some time. The 2002 election set the stage for a dichotomy of power in Pakistan. Musharraf and the all-powerful military wields effective power while an ineffective parliament and a weak Prime Minister are available once more to share blame though not the power to make critical decisions of war and peace.

A similar situation occurred during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Under the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, a close US ally, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons to keep up with India’s nuclear weapons capability. To secure US aid and by-pass American non-proliferation laws, Pakistani officials routinely denied nuclear weapons ambitions while clearly pursuing them. By the time Washington was ready to impose sanctions on Pakistan in 1990, Islamabad had a civilian government that got the blame for losing US aid though in fact it was simply the scapegoat, with the military retaining behind-the-scenes power.

Every state maintains a permanent national security establishment and occasional deception and cover-ups are part of national security requirements. But in normally functioning states most matters affecting the lives of their citizens are in the transparent realm, leaving only a handful of issues subject to secrecy.

In Pakistan, however, the very process of governance has been rendered mysterious. From the doling out of plots of land to generals as part of their service compensation to the frequent amendments to the law, nothing is truly open. Intelligence services do not simply seek to deal with threats to national security. They play a role in everything, from selection of parliamentary candidates to decisions about civil service appointments.

As a result there is little reason for the politically minded citizen to trust the state establishment. On the international stage, too, the world finds it difficult to believe that a government run through non-transparent means is telling the truth. From the international community’s perspective, if successive Pakistani leaders could be economical with the truth on matters of national security in the past, what reason is there to believe their denials about Kashmiri militants and the Taliban now?

It is inconceivable for a civilian government in Pakistan to redefine relations with India or review policies relating to nuclear and missile programmes. The United States takes a benign view of the Pakistani military’s covert operations when Pakistan’s strategic cooperation is important to the US, as was the case during the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance and the current war against Al Qaeda. But nuclear and missile proliferation and relations with India become sticking points in the US-Pakistan relationship when Islamabad’s strategic cooperation becomes less significant.

The charges about Pakistan’s support for Afghanistan’s Taliban, exchanging nuclear know-how for ballistic missiles with North Korea and Iran, and Pakistani sponsorship of jehadi militants opposing India surface in the international media sometimes without comment from the US government. But once the indispensability of Pakistan to Washington wanes, these very accusations could become the basis for sanctions against a less compliant Pakistan. The way to break this cycle would be for Pakistan to become an open democracy, with a constitutionally defined power structure. Then it would be easy to pin responsibility for actions such as training militants or buying and selling technology for weapons of mass destruction.

Pakistanis often wonder why Israel and India are not suspected of leaking nuclear know-how while Pakistan is constantly under suspicion. The international community also takes Islamabad’s periodic accusations of Indian covert support for insurgents in Pakistan a lot less seriously than Indian charges about Pakistan’s backing for the jehadis.

The reason for these divergent responses might lie in the difference of systems of governance. Western opinion is pre-disposed to trusting democracies. There is a presumption (however dubiously based) that a country with an open political system, an honest judiciary and periodic alternation in governments is less likely to have dark secrets than one that operates in secrecy.