Posted on 11/20/2007 10:26:50 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
WASHINGTON: Pakistan's nuclear weapons are already under American control even as analysts are working themselves into a lather on the subject, a well-regarded intelligence journal has said.
In a stunning disclosure certain to stir up things in Washington's (and in Islamabad and New Delhi's) strategic community, the journal Stratfor reported on Monday that the "United States delivered a very clear ultimatum to Musharraf in the wake of 9/11: Unless Pakistan allowed US forces to take control of Pakistani nuclear facilities, the United States would be left with no choice but to destroy those facilities, possibly with India's help."
"This was a fait accompli that Musharraf, for credibility reasons, had every reason to cover up and pretend never happened, and Washington was fully willing to keep things quiet," the journal, which is widely read among the intelligence community, said.
The Stratfor commentary came in response to an earlier New York Times story that reported that the Bush administration had spent around $100 million to help Pakistan safeguard its nuclear weapons, but left it unclear if Washington has a handle on the arsenal.
Over the past fortnight, even since the crisis in Pakistan broke and eclipsed every other geopolitical story, including Iraq, US officials and analysts have been speaking in different voices on the subject of a jihadi takeover of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
Some officials have expressed deep concern at the possibility and suggested US is ready with contingency plans to defang Pakistan of its nuclear weapons, while others have tried to assuage Islamabad by saying they believe the country's military rulers have good custodial control over their crown jewels.
On Monday, a State Department official once again addressed the issue and hinted that Washington was in control of the situation.
"... ultimately, the major responsibility for that falls with the Pakistani government. They have made public comments to the effect that the arsenal is secure, that they have taken a number of different steps to ensure that," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"We ourselves see no indication to indicate to the contrary. It is secure. We obviously have an interest in seeing that it is secure," McCormack added.
Stratfor, too, appears confident that the Bush administration has a handle on Pak's nukes.
Not everyone is so sanguine. In a separate commentary over the weekend that had some US and Pakistani analysts blowing their gasket, two prominent Washington commentators detailed a US military action plan inside Pakistan, possibly with the cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces, to seize the nuclear arsenal if there was imminent danger of an extremist takeover.
"As the government of Pakistan totters, we must face a fact: the United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss," proposed Frederick Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon, analysts at two Washington DC think-tanks. "One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the limited goal of preventing Pakistan's nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hands."
Pakistan's own leaders have spoken about the subject -- of nuclear weapons falling into extremist hands --with different emphasis and objectives.
General Pervez Musharraf has suggested continued Western support to his military regime is the best way to prevent the nukes from falling into extremist hands, an "after-me-the-deluge" argument that some analysts see as unabashed blackmail.
The country's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has also invoked the loose nukes scenario to urge US to abandon the military regime, which she says has given rise to growing extremism and fissiparous tendencies that increase the danger of the nuclear arsenal going awry.
Officially though, Islamabad is touchy about any commentary on its nuclear arsenal, and goes into transports of hysteria to assert that it is a responsible country with good command and control over its crown jewels.
In the latest outburst, the country's out-going foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri asserted that Pakistan is fully capable of securing its nuclear assets and some Western lobbies are busy in creating confusion taking the advantage of ongoing conditions in Pakistan.
The multi-layer security structure of the nuclear assets has a strong command and control system in place and there is no need for anyone at home or abroad to worry about the security of these assets, he insisted.
But judging by the volume of worried commentary and analysis the subject is now getting, there aren't many takers for such assurances and the last word on the matter hasn't been said or written.
Pinging...
Wow...
Damned good news if true.
One can only hope this is true.
Pinging...
If so and for how long?
I’d prefer to be skeptical about this-for one,the supposed ultimatum talks about “nuclear” facilities” which can mean a range of things.Second,if the US does have any control-what is the means by which it exercised???Some of which would easily have been open to detection.
Thirdly,AQ.Khan was put on display only in early 2004 if I remember,which is almost 2 1/2 years after this ultimatum?So if the US did have any overriding control in that period-it was of little effect.
I don’t buy it ping
Exactly.The other part which sounds weird is that about possible Indian help-what help does India need to offer if the US only plans to clean up Paki nuke facilities-the US has all the assets to do that itself.
& the article says nothing about what Pakistan’s oldest pal,China would say or do about all this.
The most one can realistically hope for is that US forced Pakistan to implement failsafe procedures & technology for it’s N-installations & possibly give coordinates of it’s N-storage facilities.Which in the long-term still gives them room for actionKnowing a bit of the Pakistani army’s history,I don’t expect them to part with more than that.
Does anybody have a link to the original StratFor article referenced? I’d like to see their story without the Indian spin.
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=298542&selected=Analyses
Geopolitical Diary: The Pakistani Army’s Scattered Signs of Dissent
Their analysis includes only as much as is written about in the TOI article & is actually about the Pakistani army,not it’s nukes.
Why, when the Soviet Union feel we did the same and to this day pay all the salaries of the scientist and military involved in their care. Look it up, congress said it was easier for the American tax pay to pay to protect them to let them get in others hands.
Honestly, I believe this one. I was raised in a military family. Three brothers were in the military, one of which was a document courier. Both my father and grandfather were in the military. I’ve been in and out of the military and government circles and I can tell you that behind the scenes, we have more more balls than you would ever dream of. Of course you’d never hear about it unless the government wants you to know. Don’t think for a second that the above scenario is not possible or we don’t have the brass to do it. You’d be wrong.
I find this hard to believe too. Did we give them technology? Most likely. Special Forces to seize warheads, some already mounted on missiles? The stuff of late-night movies, perhaps.
If this were true, I find it hard to believe Washington would be talking so badly about Mushy seizing control.
But watch out for those fissiparous tendencies.
The right to overfly their territory...or even to refuel in India, if needed. And the right to use Indian bases as staging areas for any ground or paratroop actions.
US bases in the M.E & Diego Garcia are more than adequate for bombers & then there are the USN carrier groups.Sure,Indian logistical assistance would be certain in any case,even if it were not visible.I am specifically referring to any overt Indian action.
About ground based actions,well the problem with that is you would be better off launching an all-out invasion than hope for pin-prick success.Pakistan’s N-assets are dispersed through out the country.& the fact remains,that both India and & the US would think twice before invading a nuclear power which is Beijing’s oldest ally & one which also shares a border with it.
At the risk of sounding boastful, I speculated this exact scenario a few years ago in the aftermath of a particularly bizarre series of events in the news involving India, Pakistan, and the U.S. Some folks here on FR might remember the discussions we had about it.
I suspect the U.S. included an assurance that any military strike against Pakistan by India would be met with serious U.S. retaliation. That sounds like the kind of price the U.S. would have to pay for Pakistan’s cooperation of this magnitude.
Whether we believe the reports or not, the story has actually been out there for quite a while. Several of us on the forum discussed it almost four years ago when this bit of news (which obviously is still out there on the site) came out:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/09/wpak109.xml
I'm not so sure about that. Back in the '70s, Pakistan was far more valuable to the US than it is now, considering that the Soviets were at the peak of their power, and when India severed Pakistan in half, there was nothing America could do about it. The USS Enterprise sailed into the Bay of Bengal with a threatening posture, but that did nothing to stop India from liberating East Pakistan (the present-day Bangladesh).
Considering that many of Pakistan's present-day rulers lived through, and still remember this time, it would have had to be a near-impossible effort on the part of the US to make Pakistan believe that the US would attack India, if the latter invaded Pakistan. For Pakistan to be persuaded would be akin to them failing their most important history exam.
Can this Administration keep it’s mouth shut about anything?
Umm,don’t worry-the Chinese have given such an assurance to Pakistan to be their all-weather guardian angel & the harsh fact is that Pakistan’s generals trust Beijing far more than Washington.
If the US did secure such an assurance,why is it cosying up to India??The Indians are nowhere as desperate as the Pakis were/are.Your scenario is invalid as long as it does not take into account China’s role in all this.
The truth is being stretched to cover some wild ideas.
God Bless Bush.
I've been ripping Bush on amnesty for illegals, going soft on the Palis, and for being a very poor comminicator. However, if the above quote is true, he's a true badass American hero.
Put me down on the “not everyone is so sanguine” list.
IOW - Is Pakistan allowed a nuclear retaliation in the event that India initiates an attack on Pakistan?
If NOT: then what is the advantage of having nukes at all?
If SO: then the United States would be (in effect) blessing a retalitory move on India.
My suspicions about the close U.S. involvement in Pakistani military affairs dates back to the summer of 2002. If you remember, that was a period when tensions were high between Pakistan and India and it appeared the two countries were on the brink of war.
Donald Rumsfeld was sent on a diplomatic mission to the two countries back then in an attempt to ease the tension -- a story that didn’t get much attention in the news. My first thought was that it was extremely bizarre for the U.S. Secretary of Defense to be going on a “diplomatic mission” anywhere in the world (as opposed to an ambassador or the Secretary of State). When the tensions between India and Pakistan came to an abrupt end almost immediately afterward, I figured something really, really big must have happened over there with Rumsfeld. In that part of the world, "really, really big" automatically raises the issue of one or both nuclear arsenals (India and Pakistan).
bmflr
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Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1926032/posts
Posted on 11/15/2007 3:43:17 AM PST by Kevmo
The problem as I understood it (and this may no longer be the case today) was that both countries had nuclear arsenals comprised primarily of bombs, not missiles -- which introduced a major dilemma: (1) it seriously compromised their ability to launch these weapons quickly in a retaliatory strike, and (2) it provided an incentive to use these nuclear weapons first in order to prevent them from being incapacitated in a conventional military campaign (by having bombs and/or bombers destroyed on a tarmac or in a hangar somewhere, for example).
Tensions fizzled out because neither side wanted war.Rumsfeld was not the only high level visitor to the region at the time.If you remember there were two bouts of tension-one in Dec/Jan & another in May/June-the Indian armsbuildup which you noticed in June started in January because the Indian parliament was attacked.After that initial buildup Collin Powell,Richard Armitage & even Tony Blair(who preponed his visit to India) did the rounds.
The summer tensions you refer to were started by an attack on an Indian army camp by Pakistani terrorists in early May.By the time Rumsfeld arrived(a month later),the monsoons in India had set in so any Indian armoured action along the Plains/Desert would have been difficult & the whole military buildup would have become meaningless,unless it was implemented immediately i.e. early May itself.
So lets not read too much into Rummy’s visit.
Wrong again-Pakistan has an N-arsenal based around missiles.Either brought directly or codeveloped from the Chicoms or North Korea.Pakistan had a range of ballistic missiles which could reach upto Central India by 2000.
Pakistan needs to rely on missiles for the simple fact that it’s aircraft(the F-16/French Mirage-3/Chinese J-7) have barely enough range to get to Delhi & they will be tasked with air-defense & interdiction roles.India never needed missiles to deal with Pakistan-it’s IRBMs were/are aimed at China.
Who knew?
fis·sip·a·rous (fĭ-sĭp'ər-əs)
adj.
1. Reproducing by biological fission.
2. Tending to break up into parts or break away from a main body; factious.
If you seriously think that the US has such a serious say in Pakistan’s military affairs-how do you explain this???
1.Since 2002,there have been frequent reports of North Korean technicians visiting Pakistani nuclear & missile facilities.In 2002 itself,US spysats picked up Pakistani C-130s in Pyongyang.
2.Why has the US been unable to yank out more intelligence about Iran’s N-programme from Pakistan??
3.Why has the Sino-Pakistani military & strategic relationship grown in the period where the US supposedly “controlled” Pakistan’s nukes??
4.Not to mention mediocre cooperation on terrorism.
GW told the Pakis that if they didn’t turn control of their nukes to America.
GW would put Obama in charge of our Military for 48 hours.
Mushie agreed to turn over the Nukie Keys.
This must be the kind of experience Mrs. Clinton was talking about having so much of. /sarc
The thing to remember is the Pakistan extremist schools, Pakistan was churning out blowbots faster than any other country - it was even in Reader’s Digest. I think they had 10,000 of these Saudi funded schools at one time. IN the wake of 911 that fact would have given the US a huge stick to use to convince Pak of doing exactly what we wanted or suffer consequences.
So who benifits from putting this out in the ether?
All Musharraf would have had to do to counter a US ultimatum would have been to threaten to strike Israel, India or the Gulf Nations — all are within range of his missiles. This is essentially the same target set that Iran is threatening.
I think you’re right: this story is bogus.
I can’t see why India would want to get involved either.
I’d love for this to be true but I just don’t see it.
BFL
Very Odd - we have spent $100mil to secure Paki’s nukes and “are ready to defang Pakistan’s nuclear weapons” if needed - and yet everyone stands by and watches Iran develope nukes.
My bet is that this is untrue.
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