Posted on 09/22/2011 10:17:11 AM PDT by ravager
India and the US should prepare a plan for exigencies in Pakistan if there is a collapse of the state structure and a threat to the safety of its nuclear weapons, which could fall into the hands of terrorists.
"The US and India should begin classified exchanges on multiple Pakistan contingencies, including the collapse of the Pakistan state and the specter of the Pakistan military losing control of its nuclear arsenal," a report jointly brought out by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Aspen Institute has recommend.
"The obvious point that the United States and India have vital national interests in the future of nuclear weapons and material in Pakistan, which is the largest producer of fissile material in the world today, and which is moving toward a nuclear doctrine of battlefield capability," former US envoy to India Robert Blackwill said at a panel discussion here.
The report says that Pakistan may well be in secular decline, and that the US strategy followed by the last two administrations has failed to bring Pakistan to act against the terrorist groups that kill Indians and Americans in Afghanistan.
It calls for a new strategy and part of that new strategy should be a heavy condition on all future arms transfers to Pakistan and the its military moving against terrorist groups.
The growth of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, its possible greater dispersion in conjunction with battlefield roles, and the systemic stresses on the Pakistani state all could negatively affect over time the arsenal's safety and security.
These vital national interests make this the primary concern of the United States and India regarding Pakistan, says the report that runs into more than 60 pages.
One of the prescriptions in the report recommends that India continue to reassure Islamabad that it has no interest in the destabilisation of Pakistan.
"Given where the report starts, which is a preoccupation with Pakistan nuclear weapons, you could see why logically India and the US would not like to see a destabilising Pakistan, given the effects of that, as the analysis of the report suggests, on the safety and security of nuclear weapons," Blackwill said.
The report states that Pakistan's intelligence agencies support terrorist groups that target India, Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition forces, killing and injuring not merely foreign civilians and soldiers, but also causing considerable damage to Pakistani society.
In particular, terrorism has been used by Islamabad since the early 1990s as an instrument of "low-intensity conflict" to press New Delhi into "concessions on Kashmir."
Ping.
PAK is Afghanistan with better roads and nukes.
bump.
Pakistan is where the rubber meets the road for the US, India and Russia. As much as our leaders would let to retreat into the safety of the cold war, Pakistan reminds them everyday that the cold war is over and the new war has just begun.
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