As long as Pakistan feels threatened by India’s superior conventional forces it will likely continue its nuclear build-up. What can the West do?
One of the biggest challenges that the Obama administration faces over its Afghan-Pakistan withdrawal strategy is to decrease tensions between India and Pakistan. It is, of course, a complex issue. But the most dangerous element is almost certainly the nuclear arms racing between the two countries. What can the United States realistically do?
Efforts to negotiate direct limits on the two countries’ nuclear forces are probably premature, so the United States and other countries have instead tried to constrain the racing indirectly, by limiting the amount of fissile material they manufacture.
Fissile material, typically in the form of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium separated from the spent reactor fuel, is used to power a nuclear chain reaction explosion. Most of the established nuclear weapons states have excess fissile material left over from their Cold War build-ups. For this reason, their governments, supported by the international arms control community, have been trying to negotiate a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) at the UN Conference of Disarmament in Geneva. This would end the manufacture of fissile material, at least for the purposes of making nuclear warheads (although some FMCT variants would permit the continued use of highly enriched uranium for submarine fuel, medical purposes, or other uses).
Problems of definition and verification complicate these efforts, but the complexities of the India-Pakistan nuclear arms racing also play their part. To match India’s nuclear forces and compensate for India’s superior conventional military capacities, Pakistan is improving the quality, and expanding the quantity, of its nuclear weapons.
The best estimates of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal are that the country has about a hundred warheads, and has already produced sufficient fissile material to manufacture another hundred. Pakistan is also building new nuclear facilities and delivery systems, including ballistic missiles, and expanding its output of fissile material.
As part of the latter process, Pakistan is building three more heavy-water power reactors at its Khushab nuclear complex to generate additional weapons-grade plutonium. Pakistan’s two existing reactors already manufacture about two dozen kilograms of plutonium annually, which Pakistani technicians use to make as many as four nuclear weapons each year. Pakistan wants to produce more advanced miniaturized warheads, which are easier to move and fire at more distant targets. Smaller, more sophisticated nuclear warheads require the use of plutonium rather than highly-enriched uranium.
With new reactors and a reprocessing facility under (re)construction, Pakistan’s rate of production is considered the highest in the world. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has doubled to approximately 70 to 120 warheads over the last four years, with the capacity to produce an additional 7 to 14 weapons annually. The construction of the three additional heavy-water reactors, which will manufacture weapons-grade plutonium for decades, should propel Pakistan past India and make Islamabad the fourth or fifth largest possessor of nuclear weapons. Russia, the United States, and China will have more nuclear weapons than Pakistan, but Pakistan’s nuclear weapons total should surpass that of the major European nuclear powers of Britain and France as well as that of India.
Although the primary purpose of Pakistan’s nuclear arms build-up is to counter India, suspicions also exist that Islamabad wants to pressure Washington not to ignore it, move too close to India, or take other actions that Islamabad opposes. Another objective is to continue to receive US financial and other assistance despite their bilateral disputes over Afghanistan or terrorism.
Photo Credit: Agência Brasil
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Pradeep Vanam
The irony of India-Pakistan relations, is that had India simply given Pakistan Kashmir in 1947 or granted it independence , Pakistan and India would have no enmity, and the two countries would have re-united by now. Didn’t Jinnah himself say he was looking for a divorce before getting married? I firmly believe in a future where our two countries unite. Until we can normalize relations, we will never be a super-power.
Major Lowen Gil Marquez, Phil Army
The history of Pakistan capability to produce nuclear warhead it started to the underground personal idealistic movement of Dr.Abdul Qadeer Khan in URENCO in Amsterdam where he steal the nuclear blueprint thereat and bring it to pakistan and it lead to Dr Khan from Idealist to Nuclear Jihadist that he prolifirate such nuclear warhead to Middle East without the knowledge of the west, that include Khans network to China and Communist Korea including a communication to Khadaffy, there is none new if we think of relationship of China and Pakistan regarding Nuclear communication exchange of Ideas. . . We should not trust the Extremist Islam because they were dangerous.. as saying goes, do not trust the smiling CAT. .
deepan gill
Nature has to tak its course, Pakistan needs to find its identity, India needs to act like a economic power and counter China. It is amazing that for all these years post 1974 strategists and think-tankers always thought Pakistan was the main rival of India. India is concered with China.
Pakistan very well knows if India is no longer the enemy, then there is no logical reason for Pakistan’s existence, India has to be there for Pakistan to exist, so you will see peace between Jews and Arabs, but India will remain Pakistan’s main enemy
Seshadri
I guess it takes an entirely new generation of people growing up in knowledge era and modernity who can see the ill-wills of the past as things of history and make a fresh start. As one Indian diplomat put it to this very kind of question, just keep the talks going and hope the new generation will sort it out on a win-win basis.
Roy
Pakistan and China are not friends. A relationship of friendship doesnt require consideration.
Both china and pakistan feel each-other’s need. And you know why.
In short, they are not just ‘friends’, rather ‘friends in need’.