Book Description

With any attempt to assess security threats, there is a natural tendency to focus first on the worst. Consider the most recent appraisals of Pakistan's nuclear program. Normally, the risk of war between Pakistan and India and possible nuclear escalation would be bad enough. Now, however, most American security experts are riveted on the frightening possibility of Pakistani nuclear weapons capabilities falling into the hands of terrorists' intent on attacking the United States. Presented with the horrific implications of such an attack, the American public and media increasingly have come to view nearly all Pakistani security issues through this lens. Public airing of these fears, in turn, appear now to be influencing terrorist operations in Pakistan. Unfortunately, a nuclear terrorist act is only one- and hardly the most probable-of several frightening security threats Pakistan now faces or poses. We know that traditional acts of terrorism and conventional military crises in South West Asia have nearly escalated into wars and, more recently, even threatened Indian and Pakistani nuclear use. Certainly, the war jitters that attended the recent terrorist attacks against Mumbai highlighted the nexus between conventional terrorism and war. For several weeks, the key worry in Washington was that India and Pakistan might not be able to avoid war. Similar concerns were raised during the Kargil crisis in 1999 and the Indo-Pakistani conventional military tensions that arose in 2001 and 2002-crises that most analysts (including those who contributed to this volume) believe could have escalated into nuclear conflicts. This book is meant to take as long a look at these threats as possible. Its companion volume, Worries Beyond War, published last year, focused on the challenges of Pakistani nuclear terrorism. These analyses offer a window into what is possible and why Pakistani nuclear terrorism is best seen as a lesser included threat to war, and terrorism more generally. Could the United States do more with Pakistan to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons holdings against possible seizure? It is unclear. News reports indicate that the United States has already spent $100 million toward this end. What this money has bought, however, has only been intimated. We know that permissive action link (PAL) technology that could severely complicate unauthorized use of existing Pakistani weapons (and would require Pakistan to reveal critical weapons design specifics to the United States that might conceivably allow the United States to remotely "kill" Pakistani weapons) was not shared. Security surveillance cameras and related training, on the other hand, probably were. Meanwhile, the Pakistani military-anxious to ward off possible preemptive attacks against its nuclear weapons assets remains deeply suspicious of the United States or any other foreign power trying to learn more about the number, location, and physical security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons holdings. Conducting secret, bilateral workshops to discuss nuclear force vulnerabilities and how best to manage different terrorist and insider threat scenarios has been proposed. It seems unlikely, however, that the Pakistanis would be willing to share much. Destroying or retrieving Pakistani nuclear assets is another option that might prevent terrorists seizing them in a crisis. But the United States would have extreme difficulty succeeding at either mission even assuming the Pakistani government invited U.S. troops into their Territory.