Posted on 11/13/2007 9:36:43 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
US has no option in a Pakistan nuclear “nightmare” (AFP)
14 November 2007
WASHINGTON - The US armed forces are virtually powerless to prevent Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from falling into Islamist hands if the political crisis in Islamabad spins out of control, analysts warned.
Instead, they said, Washington can do little but help to resolve the crisis and preserve its strong ties with Pakistan’s pro-Western military elite, whether or not General Pervez Musharraf stays in power.
“There’s no good military option at all,” Daniel Markey, a former US government policy planner for South Asia, told AFP on Tuesday in Washington.
It would be an “incredibly ugly scenario,” he said, for US forces to try to find and secure the nuclear sites in the event of an Islamist takeover because they lack the intelligence needed to do so in such a large country.
“Having some certainty of finding them is just, I think, out of the realm of reality,” said Markey, a former State Department official who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.
Averting such a “nightmare scenario,” he added, “means having a good working relationship” with the army, as has been the case for years.
“We shouldn’t kid ourselves that we can work with Pakistan without working with their army and that doesn’t mean we have to back a dictator.”
If the US government decides to drop Musharraf, he warned, it will have to be careful to avoid burning ties with the institution he heads. “That’s the difficult balancing act.”
Musharraf’s deputy in the army, General Ashfaq Kiyani, would be his obvious successor but the analyst said it is not certain that such a transition would go smoothly, even though he has reasonably good ties with Washington.
Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 bloodless coup and who became a frontline US ally in the war on terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks, insists there is nothing to worry about.
In an interview Tuesday with Fox News radio, Musharraf said Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are under “total custodial controls,” citing security measures in place since 2000.
“We created a strategic planning division and we have a national command authority which is overall organization institution into development and employment of strategic assets,” he said.
Pakistan has amassed an estimated 50 nuclear weapons since detonating its first atomic devices in May 1998.
Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, doubted there was much of a military option.
“The idea that somehow we’re going to step in, I think that’s a very remote possibility,” Spector said from his office in Washington.
And for now, he said, the US government is probably seeking reassurance from Musharraf that his chain of command is in order or that it endures if there is an orderly transfer of power.
“Only if there’s a complete breakdown in society, would there be an issue. Even then, I think you’ll find a cadre, a very loyal military who protect the assets because it’s the patrimony of the country,” he said.
Andrew Koch, a defense and security analyst with the consulting firm Scribe Strategies and Advisors, said Pakistan’s atomic weapons are for now in the hards of a “very professional, pro-Western elite” operating a secure network.
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda, which are making inroads in northwestern Pakistan, would have trouble seizing materiel in a raid because the fissile weapons cores are held separate from the weapons, he said.
“You’d have to knock down two facilities to get both parts,” he added.
The military personnel involved in the nuclear program are also closely vetted for sympathies with the Islamists, he added.
However, he said some scientists associated with the nuclear program are suspected of harboring extremist sentiments and could leak secrets to terrorists or anti-Western regimes, even if they do not smuggle out weapons.
Such a risk would increase the longer political instability lasts, he said.
The reputation of Pakistan, the world’s only known nuclear-armed Muslim country, has been tarnished with the sale of atomic secrets on a global black market headed by its disgraced chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Khan confessed in 2004 to passing atomic secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He was pardoned by Musharraf but remains under virtual house arrest in Islamabad.
In the longer term, Koch feared that Pakistan’s professional military class could be compromised if the country becomes increasingly pro-Taliban and anti-Western.
In the ultimate “doomsday” or “nightmare” scenario, he feared that the Pakistani military would see its loyalities split if the government falls and Islamists and other factions struggle to fill the void.
He said “there’s always the ultimate option of trying some sort of raid to snatch the weapons” but this would be difficult because ”we don’t have absolute certainty we know where all of Pakistan’s weapons are kept.”
The Chinese most probably designed Paki-nuke codes.If anyone has Paki-codes,it will the PRC & Islamabad jointly controlling it despite the wetdreams of others.
You rave on as if that might happen without China taking hits as well. Maybe you need medications to connect you to reality. Get help.
Whose Air Defense is Pak running under? Russian?
Hits from whom??You are the one who needs to wake up & smell the coffee rather than resorting to insults.
Mainly Chinese built-with a few American & French fighters thrown in.& Chinese bases are not very far from Pakistan’s Northern borders.
Thinning of the herd? A win win proposition for both countries.
Is that report reliable? And I’m not talking about the potential Israeli-Indian joint action. After all, Israel knocked out the Iraq nuke facility before Hussein could develop his weapons, why not Pakistan too? Makes, and made, total sense to preempt Pakistan developing them too. Too bad it didn’t happen.
There have been numerous reports over the years of either India or both India-Israel planning to take out Pakistan’s nukes-those same reports said that Uncle Sam was not very cooeperative in that regard & supposedly tipped off the Pakis while shooing the Joos & yindoos away.Israeli aircraft would certainly need basing from India given the distances involved,unlike Iraq.
Are you trying to run up oil before your contract expires Friday morning?
There's a reason they don't make a move without our approval.
Do they ask for US approval for things like
Like arming & providing sanctuary for terrorists against India & Afghanistan??
Buying scores of warplanes from China & developing a deepwater port near their coastline with Iran??
Or inviting North Korean scientists to witness missile tests & visit Pakistani N-research centers,while sending C-130s with N-goodies to North Korea??
This is why if one Paki nuke gets in the wrong hands and goes off somewhere it shouldn’t, the a full nuclear response is generated, with the added bonus that OBL and his ilk will be collateral damage. Depending when and where it went off, the US, India, Israel, or GB...well you figure at least one of them to respond with said nukage.
OH, and after that, China would do nothing. They would be pissing themselves.
China won’t need to do much if a city in India or the US gets vaporised-whether we care to accept it or not-All rational governments(which are usually elected by the people) will go to any extent to protect their cities.Which in most cases means appeasing the bad guys.Do you seriously see any point in vaporising the whole of Pakistan,Afghanistan or anywhere else AFTER an American city has been finished.The aim which most pople here don’t seem to be bothered about,is to ensure that the AFTER part doesn’t come about.
Multiple bogies.....engage......
Sukhoi-30mki - just by the screen name, I can tell you are a commie! :)
j/k, ok?
You said in your post, "...another nuke going off on Diego Garcia & another one going off......."........"What the US or anyone else does afterwards is meaningless."
KP_83, yes, I fully understood the context of what was posted, MAN! And I heard you the first time! Welcome to FR, btw.
Kind of obvious that the US can't do much, shall I call you Captain 'O'?, after the weapons go off, now is there?
India and Pak have had a 'thing' for a long time now. Not news.
The 'news' would be dropping a weapon on DG.
Sukhoi (papers, please...) seems to think that that there is nothing we could do about that, or that what our reaction would be.....is meaningless.
"What the US or anyone else does afterwards is meaningless."
I very much beg to differ on the speculation as to what we would do in response.....
What we would do (or not do) would be huge....penzon if we have a "real" Pres or not.
Which ever way we decide to respond, rest assured, it will not be "meaningless".
Pakistan,China & everyone else have been blackmailing the US with that very threat-frankly,there is little that can be done now rather than opt for a course correction & hope for the best.And that hasn’t happened,yet.
Man, these people need a re-education on how things work down south....Asia.
Musharraf, the founder of the most brutal terrorist movement in 90s, sold himself as a “counter terrorist” expert to the Americans. And Americans think he is “moderate” because he wears a tie and a suit and not a “pathan suit”. He is promising action against “al-qaeda” while ably aiding and abetting terrorist groups against India. His history is filled with battle cries, masterminding the rise of a very cruel organization called Talibaan and being responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians and soldiers (and sometimes their family members) across the border.
Americans explain it away by saying “well, as long as he is not killing us or western europeans, we are fine.”
That could at least be logically sound if it werent based on a big myth among American people and ruling junta: that the Kashmir insurgents are different from Al-Qaeda Cadres.
Americans need to realize that the structural foundations of Al-qaeda are quite flexible. Kashmiri Mujahideen are the cadres of Al-Qaeda. The same people who fight against India are doing bin laden’s dirty work against the west.
Maulana Masood Azhar is a prime example. Countless others including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were all Kashmiri terrorists.
Anyway, Mushy seems to enjoy a high level of support as if his past isnt worthy for him to be shunned. The action of US govt itself is morally grey and seems immoral to sustain this guy with a horrendous background as the only savior of Pakistan, but we have seen the whole thing before after WW-II.
All the cruel nazi and Unit-731 japanese docs who performed live vivisections on humans and injected plague, small pox into healthy humans just to create live cultures, were suitably rewarded for their knowledge by the west. Not one of them was ever prosecuted just because their research was too valuable.
The only message posterity gets from the way evil and wickedness gets rewarded in the world - whether its Musharraf or a Unit-731 doc - one should never be half-way cruel or half-way evil, its better to go all the way and you will eventually be ensured of your welfare.
Ok,so why doesn’t the US finish off North Korea now-or is it waiting for the day that North Korea gets to nuke 2 US cities & then go for the full deal??Get my point-any civilised nation will seek to ensure that it get’s out with the least damage & nukes going off doesn’t help.
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