In the first he flatly declared that Pakistan had "laid to rest" all the concerns held regarding the security of the country's nuclear arsenal and program. In the second Gilani said, "It is time for the world to recognize Pakistan as a dejure nuclear power with equal rights and responsibilities."
Don't you love the ambiguity of the PM's use of the phrase "equal rights and responsibilities?" Is it Mr Gilani's intent to assert that Pakistan's possession of nukes gives the country "rights and responsibilities" which are "equal" to those appertaining to other, longer established members of the Official Nuclear Club--the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China? Or does he mean that as a "dejure" nuclear power (whatever that might mean) Pakistan has "responsibilities" which exist equally with its "rights?"
Then there are are a couple of other, more basic questions which scream for answers buried in Gilani's adventure in declaratory policy: What "rights" accrue to a state as a consequence of its owning some nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them? The second is that of just what "responsibilities" can Pakistan be trusted to shoulder?
It is all well and good for Mr Gilani to urge, "There is now a need for the world to move on beyond safety and security concerns." It is something else all together to provide a sound, credible basis for the world to believe the accuracy and relevance of his assertion.
It requires a vast willingness to suspend disbelief to accept the Pakistani PM's contentions. To swallow unquestioningly his view that Pakistan can be counted upon to exercise its "responsibilities" as a nuclear power would necessitate taking a very potent reality altering drug.
The primary responsibility of a country possessing a nuclear capability no matter how small--or large--is to act consistently in its foreign policy so as to be both a force for stability and a predictable actor on the global and regional stages. A closely related responsibility is that of forming a political and military strategy as well as supporting doctrine which serves to decouple crises or uses of force generally with the potential for vertical escalation across the nuclear threshold.
Undergirding both of these exercises in responsibility is the prime requirement that a government be in full and effective control of its country. This duty includes demonstrating both the will and capacity to thwart any group working from an extreme ideological base in its attempts to gain access to the nuclear capacity.
It is not necessary to adopt an unduly jaundiced view of Pakistan's history or current dynamics to conclude that Pakistan fails on each and every of the four points adumbrated. With specific regard to the second two areas of responsibility, the observer need not be overly skeptical to conclude that the government of Pakistan is not in control of its own territory and that it lacks the inherent capacity to prevent Islamist and jihadist groups from accessing its nuclear capacities.
There is no need to resort to overstatement to allege that Pakistan is the epicenter of transnational terrorism conducted by True Believers in political Islam--Islamists. Nor is it mere rodomontade to contend that Islamists exist within the Pakistani government, military, and intelligence service.
The lack of structural integrity so evident in Pakistan is evident not only in the ongoing, daily requirement for their army and our Predators to carry the war against Islamists to the hills, villages, and towns of the FATA. The holes in the hull of the Pakistani ship of state are also demonstrated in the reality that the vast majority of transnational terror operations can be tracked back to Pakistan.
Americans were reminded in a most dramatic way of the role served by Pakistan in the terror business with the failed Times Square vehicle bomb. Leaving aside all the apologetic quacking seeking to explain (and justify) the action of Faisal Shahzad, one important fact remains: The guy went to Pakistan and received training in the fine art of bomb making.
Even if Shahzad was self-recruited to the jihadist mission, there is no way of ignoring that he knew where to go, who to see in order to get both instruction and resources to carry off his attack. Shahzad was no wannabe martyr. He had no intention of dying while he killed. He was expected both to live and return to the hills of Pakistan.
The obvious fact that Shahzad not only intended to live but to return to the people who had underwritten his effort puts his case in a different league all together from that of the Underware Bomber or others of the martyrdom brigade. Inferentially at the least, Shahad's controllers in Pakistan wanted him to come back alive so the knowledge base of penetrating American security could be enhanced. Perhaps the controllers even anticipated Shahzad coming through so clean that he could be used again. Experienced assets with valid US passports are thin on the soil of Pakistan (it can be hoped.)
It is true that Pakistani authorities have made a great show of activity in the days since the smoking Pathfinder attracted unwanted attention. They have made arrests. A good number of arrests. Beyond that they have made promises to the US. A very great number of promises.
But then, the Pakistanis have made any number of promises to the US over quite a few years. On occasion they have even delivered on the promises. These times have occurred when immediate and pressing Pakistani national interests are involved. (Recall that the Army got serious about operation in Swat and portions of South Waziristan only after the Islamists showed a very real, quite immediate capacity to fatally destabilize the regime.)
Even when the Islamists present threats which border on the existential, the government, military, and intelligence service of Pakistan show remarkable reluctance to act with rapidity, overwhelming force, and palpable determination. No amount of American provided mood music regarding Pakistani efforts and sacrifices can change that.
Nor can the honeyed words and soothing music change the reason which most probably underlies the slow, hesitant, and anything-but-resolute actions taken by Islamabad to extend its uncontested authority over all of the geography constituting Pakistan. The real deal of motive is simply that many senior members of government, military, intelligence service, and nuclear weapons program are in basic agreement with the goals of the Islamists.
When ground truths are reached in Pakistan, it is evident that the Islamist agenda, even the jihadist actions, are not actually existential in nature. The structures of the government, the army, the intelligence service, are not threatened in the slightest by the Islamists. Even if the Taliban and its ilk were to come to power, it would not change business as usual for any of these features of state.
The emergence of Taliban from the mountainside caves would mean the faces at the top would change. It would mean more beards, more garbage sacks covering more women, more amputations, more casting of stones, and a whale of lot more regional, even global instability.
It would not mean, however, any fundamental alteration in the government, the army, the intelligence service, or the nuclear weapons program. The agendas of the army, the intelligence service, the nuclear weaponeers, even the bureaucracy, mesh almost seamlessly with the goals and agendas of the Islamists. Both the history of Pakistan from its creation and the current dynamics of the place underscore this melancholy reality.
None of these unpleasant truths mean, necessarily, that Prime Minister Gilani was intentionally dissembling when he made his remarks to a collection of Army officers giddy with the most recent test of missiles capable of planting mushrooms on New Delhi. But, they do mean that the US along with much of the rest of the world should--even must--expend as much anxiety over the nuclear status of Pakistan as is demonstrated over the still under development Iranian bomb project.
More, President Obama must disabuse himself of any specious notion holding Pakistan to be an "ally" of the US in a joint war against the Islamists. At best Pakistan is a semi-hostile neutral in the war. At worst it is in semi-covert league with the enemy.
In any event Pakistan is not capable of exercising the "responsibilities" of being a nuclear power. Thus the time has not yet come when the "world can move beyond safety and security" as such obtains to the defacto nuclear status of Pakistan.
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