Are existing Nucleur Weapons less Dangerous? 

For decades the US looked the other way while Pakistan both developed its own weapons program and created the most extensive clandestine proliferation network ever known. Now with the pact with General Musharraf unraveling, we are assured that Pakistan’s weapons and nuclear materials will remain safe, whoever rises to power.

It would seem that nuclear weapons that do exist are less dangerous than those that can be imagined.

There's a new book Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark which tell a shocking story.

It charges Bush of perpetuating deceit in an elaborate American charade that forgave Pakistan for its nuclear transgressions as a price for keeping it from becoming an even more dangerous proposition.

“American officials knew that Musharraf had known about the nuclear trade all along. And Washington had itself not only turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear bomb project for decades but had covered it up for imperative geopolitical reasons, even when Islamabad began trading its secret technology.”

The authors credit then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage of conceiving the drama in which Musharraf would promise to shut down Pakistan’s nuclear black market in return for winning continued US support for his unelected regime.

However, in a worrying new claim for Washington’s non-proliferation pundits, who have spent the last two decades chasing WMD phantoms in all the wrong places, Pakistan’s proliferation has not stopped even now.

They say new intelligence reports show that Pakistan is procuring a range of materials and components that “clearly exceeds” what Islamabad needed for its domestic nuclear program.

Most alarming, say the authors, was the finding that hundreds of thousands of components including canisters with radioactive material, had vanished.

This means Pakistan has continued to sell nuclear weapons technology even as Musharraf denies it - “which means either that the sales are being carried out with his secret blessing or that he is no more in control of Pakistan’s nuclear program than he is of the bands of jihadis in his country.”

The book then quotes Robert Gallucci, a former US diplomat who tracked Islamabad’s nuclear program from inception in 1972, as describing Pakistan as “the number one threat to the world at this moment.”

“If it all goes off, a nuclear bomb in a US or European city, I’m sure we will find ourselves looking in Pakistan’s direction,” says Gallucci.

Such observations, and other disclosures in the book, hasn’t made the slightest impression on Washington, which continues a decades-long wink-wink policy that has made Pakistan’s into what experts are increasingly
describing as the world’s most dangerous country.

The Bush administration continues to back Musharraf but this is turning into a big embarrasement as the military dictator has just declared emergency in Pakistan and dealt a big blow to the fragle democracy. 

If we are to believe all the assurances, nuclear weapons in Pakistan are in safe hands.  But for how long ? 

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