No, it’s not Iran. It’s our putative ally in Bush’s War on Terror, and the country that helped spread nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya (and who knows who else), Pakistan. Incredibly, the nation that is filled with many of the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists, the likely haven of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the nation that is one assassin’s bullet away from being the next Islamic Republic, is building a reactor to produce plutonium, enough to make as many as 40 to 50 nuclear weapons per year, according to the front page of today’s Washington Post:
Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region’s arms race.
Satellite photos of Pakistan’s Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan’s current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.
“South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material,” the institute’s David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the technical assessment, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.
The assessment’s key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed the commercially available satellite images, provided by Digital Globe, and supporting data. In Pakistan, officials would not confirm or deny the report, but a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a nuclear expansion was underway.
If independent experts are aware of this development, you can be assured that the Bush administration and the CIA are, as well. Yet, we have heard little if anything, from our government about what I consider to be the most dangerous development to occur in the entire world over the past several years. Far more dangerous than the violence in Iraq or Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, and light year’s more dangerous than Iran’s miniscule nuclear program.
(cont.)
There was no immediate reaction to the report from the Bush administration. Albright said he shared his data with government nuclear analysts, who did not dispute his conclusions and appeared to already know about the new reactor.
“If there’s an increasing risk of an arms race in South Asia, why hasn’t this already been introduced into the debate?” Albright asked. He said the Pakistani development adds urgency to calls for a treaty halting the production of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
“The United States needs to push more aggressively for a fissile material cut-off treaty, and so far it has not,” he said.
I don’t know the reason why the Bush administration has completely dropped the ball on this issue, but I do know what the result of their failure to lessen the risk of nuclear proliferation in Pakistan and India will lead to. It will spark an arms race in Southwest Asia, not only between India and Pakistan, but likely also Iran (which being Shia has much to fear from a Sunni dominated Pakistan), and even possibly Saudi Arabia. It highlights the complete failure of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, one of many legacies of the Bush administration’s deeply misguided policies. Instead of strengthening enforcement of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, we have enabled India and Pakistan to open the door to a massive build-up in nuclear arms and fissile material, with all of the heightened danger for nuclear confrontation that that entails.
Not only that, we have greatly expanded the possibility that Islamic terrorist organizations may obtain a nuclear device for use against either Israel or America. Pakistan is awash in extremist Sunni madrassahs. These schools fuel radical fundamentalists sentiment throughout the citizenry of Pakistan. Supporters include many members of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services, individuals who have no particular love of General Musharraf, the dictator and strongman who grasp on power is increasingly threatened by his pro-American policies. Should Musharraf’s regimen fall, the likely replacement would be a group of fundamentalist Islamic reformers and military officers who would sympathize with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and might not be averse to holding America hostage to their demands with threats of providing nuclear material and/or weapons over to terrorist organizations.
In short, Bush and his war on terror has obscured our focus on one of the most significant dangers to our national interest in the region: nuclear proliferation in an unstable and increasingly radical Islamic state, Pakistan. We and our children will be paying the price of that failure for generations to come.
