Features > September 22, 2006
Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass (cont’d)
The Bush administration’s greatest success thus far has come in the area of nonproliferation. Despite Musharraf’s refusal to turn over A. Q. Khan—who was arrested two years ago for supplying nuclear materials and know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea—analysts like Levi say that the United States has been “fairly successful” in securing the Pakistani nuclear program. But the details of the arrangement remain secret. “I think the U.S.•Pakistan cooperation in nuclear related issues is much closer than what is publicly known—primarily due to the U.S. concerns about the safety of Pakistani nuclear assets,” Abbas says. “This aspect is not discussed openly because [such] cooperation will be interpreted in Pakistan as compromising [their sovereignty].”
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In fact, very little is transparent about the nature of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, or the kind of agreements it entails. As Levi points out, most of what is publicly reported is based more on speculation than fact. The secrecy is both worrying and ironic given Bush’s perspective on Iran: “A non-transparent society that is the world’s premier state sponsor of terror cannot be allowed to possess the world’s most dangerous weapons,” he says.
More important, as Abbas argues, the Bush administration is investing heavily in a dictator who is increasingly unable to rein in the very extremists he needs to secure his political future. Not only have groups like the JUI and the jihadis in Kashmir become increasingly independent, but the regime no longer has control over critical regions such as Waziristan and Baluchistan. “This is a very dangerous strategy,” Abbas says. “There is no doubt there is going to be blowback.”
While the Bush White House’s Pakistan policy is undoubtedly flawed, it is also strikingly out of character. An administration best known for its ideological rigidity has been surprisingly pragmatic and subtle in its dealings with Islamabad. The same George W. Bush who is unable to differentiate between Hamas or Hezbollah in the Middle East has been willing in Pakistan to narrowly define terrorism to exclude groups who do not directly threaten U.S. interests—even though many of them have close links to al-Qaeda.
The Bush administration has also been far more willing to deal with the reality of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb than Iran’s desire to build one in the distant future. “Pakistan already has the bomb. You can’t do anything about that,” Levi says. “Once the horse has fled, there are a lot more useful things you can do other than shut the barn door.”
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Critics of the Bush administration’s confrontation with Iran have often pointed to Pakistan as an example of its double standard. As Bill Maher told Larry King, “And could we at least have a debate on whether this is an impossibility, that Iran be allowed the nuclear weapon before we invade them? I mean, Pakistan is a Muslim country full of people who want to kill us. And they have a nuclear bomb. Somehow that’s OK.”
But to accuse George Bush of hypocrisy is to miss the significance of the distinction his administration makes between the two regions. Unlike its heavy-handed Middle East policy, the Bush strategy in South Asia is a tightrope act that balances competing foreign policy objectives: prevent Islamic extremists from gaining control of Pakistan and, more important, its nuclear arsenal; bolster India as a counter-force to Chinese power; and use U.S. influence with Pakistan as a bargaining chip with India.
This policy tells us that the administration is willing to use the kind of diplomatic engagement it pretends to disdain to further its goals, which—as U.S. concerns about India and China suggest—are not limited to battling terrorism. What’s more, it suggests that the reasons for the Bush administration’s military adventurism in the Middle East have little to do with a morally righteous crusade against Islamic terrorists.
In the September/October, 2002, issue of Foreign Affairs, John Ikenberry, the director of the Princeton Project on National Security, argued that those looking for the real motivation for the so-called “war on terror” should look to a 1992 “Defense Policy Guidance” draft penned by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby. In it, they laid out a “grand strategy” to promote and maintain U.S. global dominance based on military preemption, unilateralism and, most importantly, control of the Middle East: “In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil.”
As Michael Klare, author of Blood and Oil, told Mother Jones, in this “grand strategy,” oil is important not so much as fuel but as the source of global power: “Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan and China. It’s having our hand on the spigot.”
Control over the Middle East in turn requires eliminating any regime hostile to the United States and its closest ally, Israel. Iran is the enemy not because it is led by Islamist supporters of terrorism with plans to develop a nuclear bomb, but because it is a significant regional power opposed to the Bush administration’s plan to “restructure” the Middle East to suit its global ambitions. In contrast, not only has Pakistan allied itself entirely with the Bush administration’s war on terror, but Musharraf is now moving toward reinstating diplomatic ties with Israel.
The Bush double standard reveals a foreign policy that is less ideological than imperial. In this, the administration is different from its predecessors only by degrees of its ambition and ruthlessness. As Cirincione reminded NPR listeners, “The Shah wanted to build 20 nuclear reactors—that’s what the government says they want to build now—we OK’d it. In fact, we wanted to sell them those reactors. Even when the CIA discovered in the ’70s that the Shah was secretly working on a nuclear program, we still OK’d Iran’s plans then to open a uranium enrichment facility and a plutonium reprocessing facility. We still went ahead because we said ‘It’s OK because he’s our guy.’”
If the Bush administration succeeds in its outlandish plans for “regime change” in Iran, it may well be every bit as lenient with our new guy in Tehran. Just ask Pervez Musharraf.
More information about Lakshmi Chaudhry
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