On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Ulhas Joklekar wrote:
> I have not compared the US nukes related policies towards India and
> Pakistan. I have compared the US policies towards Iraq and Pakistan.
Right. And the story is that, during the 80s, the US laid the heaviest sanctions on Pakistan that we laid on any country in the world for trying to develop a bomb. We not only withheld aid, we actually took money from them. (They paid for F-16s which we not only refused deliver, we refused to give them their $250 mln back -- no small thing for a country as poor as Pakistan.)
Conversely, during the 80s, the US had the most lenient attitude towards Iraq of any country in the world when it came to prohibited weapons -- we actually supplied them with chemical weapons and protected them from UN sanction when they used them (for the blunt reason that if Iraq hadn't used them, Iran would have conquered it).
And yet Pakistan ended up with a bomb and Iraq didn't. If policy mattered, you'd have gotten the opposite result.
And Iraq didn't get a bomb not because of our policy, because of accidents that had nothing to do with our policy, and because of Israel's intervention at Osirak. (It was also the Israeli assasination of Gerald Bull that prevented Iraq from getting the supergun which, in conjuction with chemcial shell, might also have changed the strategic balance.)
> Surely Iraqis have been harshly dealt with while Israel and Pakistan
> have got away with their nukes?
You're mixing time periods here. Iraq was harshly dealt with after its nuke program was already destroyed by the war -- a war that came about for reasons that had nothing to do with sanctioning them for nukes. There was less friction between the US and Iraq on the eve of the invasion of Kuwait than any time since the nationalization of oil in 1960.
The initial breakthrough work on Israel and India's nuclear programs were created in an earlier era where things were thought about very differently -- when we were actually pushing reactors on third world countries under the "atoms for peace" program, and when people were still contemplating "peaceful nuclear explosions" for engineering purposes. That's why India was never sanctioned for the 1974 explosion -- it said it was peaceful, which back then was a category.
Pakistan, on the other hand, only got its program going seriously after thinking had drastically changed and was sanctioned accordingly. The US and the rest of the world made a real effort to stop them. In vain.
> What caused this extreme policy failure, Michael?
To tell you the truth, Ulhas, if Pakistan had not been able to produce a bomb, it would have been remarkable. The real thing that hitherto stopped countries from building bombs is that, if no one who already has a bomb helps you with shortcuts, the cost involved is so enormous that no one will go all the way through with it unless (a) they are one of the richest countries in the world, or (b) they have to. And when do you have to? When your arch-enemy has one. That's basically the only thing you can do with a bomb: keep your arch-enemy from contemplating dropping a bomb on you. So Russia and China had to, and then India had to, and then Pakistan had to. Brazil didn't have to, so when push came to shove it wasn't willing to spend that much money; it would take one if a lot of it fell into its hands, and the non-proliferation regime prevented that from happening.
The whole non-proliferation regime was based on keeping countries that had bombs from sharing the secrets with countries that didn't -- because that would lower the cost barrier so much that everyone would want one just out of prestige. It largely worked except for Israel (who was given/allowed to steal secrets by France) and South Africa.
Part of why thinking changed in the mid 1970s and controls tightened up was precisely because the 1973 oil price hike seemed to create countries that might have enough money to be able to be to do it without hitting the wall. And whose arch-enemy had one.
The US thought they could raise the cost of entry even higher through much tighter control over the nuclear fuel cycle in cooperation with China and Russia so that no one got plutonium; and close surveillance over all key dual use items. Plus sanctions that cut off aid to anyone who tried.
It did raise the price. But what Pakistan essentially proved that it didn't raise it high enough. And that our surveillience of key parts was much easier to evade than we thought. Especially by a double-blind organization like Khan's that a government supported but didn't oversee so that we couldn't penetrate it.
And worst of all, they have shown there's a way to get around the shortage of money problem too. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually comes out that Khan made these deals not primarily to make himself rich, but because it was a way to fund the program -- the same reason we let the contras sell cocaine.
And now, on top of all that, we have an entirely new context: suddenly every country has a real reason to have a bomb because every country has a reasonable fear of invasion by the US. And once any of them get one, their neighbors will be in the "need to have" category. So a stable, non-proliferative environment could swing into the opposite, a chaotic, accelerating proliferation zone.
We are still on the cusp where we can stop that. Iran and North Korea really want grand bargains along the line of Libya's. And a foresaking of pre-emptive war -- and the reconstruction of a whole new UN and rule of international law -- closer to the original idea, before the cold war destroyed the possibility of it -- could remove the incentive for the rest. Essentially you want to univeralize the key condition of the grand bargains: security guarantees for everyone country that gives them up, couple with inspections which, with new equipment, would be definitive.
(And then if you still want to be able to exercise coercion against human rights abusers, you'll need that reconstructed UN, where the General Assembly is legislature, and the Security Council the executive -- rather than what you have now, which is an international junta ruling by decree.)
As for Israel, its bombs do nothing for it and it would be better off without them. It didn't it stop it from being attacked in 1967 or 1973. The reason no one has invaded them since not because of their bombs but because Camp David took Egypt out of the equation. That plus their conventional superiority.
So the underlying strategic realities plus the much much greater possibilities of surveillance now compared to 40 years ago could make a non-proliferation regime possible. But clearly the distance between the present reality and that goal is large. We need a leap historical of consciousness. And we're heading in the exactly wrong direction.
One more reason to get rid of the madmen.
Michael