Déjà vu! Cynical Commentary on Pakistan’s Nuclear Program is Like Old (and discredited) Wine in a New Bottle

Pakistan’s nuclear program has often been the subject of cynical commentary from various quarters. During the development phase, Pakistan’s motives for pursuing nuclear weapons were questioned despite obvious security rationale. Following the country’s nuclear tests in 1998, concerns are time and again raised about the safety and security of Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Inauspiciously for Pakistan, the country’s declaration as a nuclear-armed state coincided with the beginning of the US-led war on terror, which Pakistan chose to join as a frontline state. Since the war on terror was being fought in Pakistan’s immediate neighborhood, and the country ended up becoming a battlefield itself, the safety and security of Pakistan’s nuclear assets came under tight scrutiny.

Retrospectively considered, the scrutiny proved to be a boon for Pakistan and, supplemented by the country’s commitment to adopt best practices, led to mammoth manpower, financial, and institutional investments to meet the highest standards of nuclear safety and security. As a result, Pakistan took gigantic strides in improving the safety and security of its nuclear program, receiving acknowledgments from organizations such as International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), which categorized Pakistan as the “most improved” country in its 2020 annual report, raising its overall score by 7 points. NTI’s 2023 report noted a further improvement in Pakistan’s score by 3 points and ranked it in 19^th place, above India, North Korea, and Iran.

Despite the perceptible improvements and international acknowledgments regarding Pakistan’s nuclear safety and security, the cynical commentary does not stop and, more often than not, is peddled by certain quarters, presumably to serve some vested agenda. Unsurprisingly, a common element in all of these cynical commentaries has been cherry-picking of isolated or irrelevant events to draw exaggerated and extrapolated inferences while failing to objectively and meticulously dissect the facts in their actual context and take account of the overall picture.

The most recent case of cynical commentaries is a piece by a former Indian Army officer, which, in the context of Pakistan’s economic challenges, political flux, and recent incidents of terrorism, seeks to raise questions about the security and sustainability of Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Even perfunctorily skimmed, the piece fails to make a compelling case or even leave an impression, but for someone with even the basic knowledge and understanding of Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure and institutional mechanisms, most of the claims made in the piece are hyperbolically exaggerated and ludicrous, while the rest are self-defeating and laughable. For a person who has followed the previous cynical commentary on Pakistan’s nuclear program, the piece readily evokes déjà vu: have been there, already dealt with it. Alternatively stated, the piece is essentially the presentation of old (and discredited) wine in a new bottle and is nothing more than the continuation of the smear campaign against Pakistan’s nuclear program.

The claims made in the article about Pakistan’s economic challenges and political volatility are hyperbolically exaggerated to paint a duly false and clumsily-concocted impression of something tantamount to an institutional collapse. It is worth mentioning that Pakistan has previously been through even more challenging periods of political volatility and economic hardships. Not only has the country endured these political upheavals and economic turmoil, but also the institutions responsible for Pakistan’s strategic program remained insulated from the societal upheavals and thus were termed as “island of excellence” in an otherwise under-performing country.

During its almost two-decade-long participation in the US-led war on terror, Pakistan endured through far worse waves of terrorism. In 2009, after the Taliban briefly seized the town of Buner, the media was rife with reportage that the Taliban were now 60 miles from Islamabad, and similar questions were raised about the viability of the Pakistani state. Nevertheless, within months, by employing kinetic military force, Pakistan not only routed the Taliban from Buner and adjacent areas but around 2016-17, even the last terrorist bastion in unforgiving and inhospitable tribal districts had been reclaimed to establish the writ of the state.

The terrorist attacks against military installations referred to in the piece date back to the height of Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, and all have been meticulously dissected by Christopher Clary. While remaining suspicious about whether the attacked military sites host any part of Pakistan’s nuclear program and terming extreme secrecy surrounding Pakistan’s nuclear sites as the “most important bulwark against attacks”, Clary infers that in all of these attacks either soft targets, such as buses, away from militarily bases were targeted or the attacks occurred beyond the outer security perimeters. In comparison, the current wave. of terrorism is largely limited to northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces and is primarily the fallout of the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Kabul.

If Pakistan can resiliently battle its way through to claim victory in the previous far more intense wave of terrorism, the recent incidents, though concerning, could in no way be regarded as mounting an equivalent or even closer challenge to the state of Pakistan.

Most importantly, the piece by a retired two-star officer is a question mark on the professionalism and intellectual standards of the Indian Army. There is a plethora of literature available on Pakistan’s nuclear safety and security mechanisms. Apart from the above-referred monograph by Christopher Clary, written for India’s premier defense think tank, Kenneth N. Luongo and Naeem Salik authored a couple of authoritative pieces for Arms Control Today on Pakistan’s nuclear safety and security infrastructure and mechanisms. Later works include an all-inclusive chapter by Naeem Salik in his book titled Learning to Live with the Bomb, Pakistan: 1998-2016 and another chapter by the same author in the edited volume titled Nuclear Pakistan: Seeking Security and Stability published in 2018. In addition, Pakistan also officially publishes an inclusive overview of its nuclear security regime.

A simple Google search (which should not be a problem for a two-star Indian Army officer) could have easily led to these aforementioned sources, which comprehensively cover all aspects of nuclear safety and security in Pakistan. Not only might it have made the piece more informed and perhaps a bit objective, but it would have certainly conveyed the impression that Indian Army officers do read and carry out the basic research before embarking to write on some topic. The piece, however, suggests otherwise.

Lastly, while the Indian analysts and former officials appear so keen to raise questions about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, a simple Google search regarding India’s nuclear safety and security record would also lead them to a sequence of recurring events pointing toward serious gaps and lapses in India’s nuclear safety and security mechanisms and institutional oversights. Arguably, the reported lapses are only those intercepted by Indian authorities, while the actual scale and size of the nuclear black-market operating in India could be many times bigger, which does pose grave nuclear risks, imperiling the security of the whole of South Asia and beyond.