Being an 80's child I've been contaminated with a deep fear of nuclear weapons. Having Hiroshima remembered each year on your birthday doesn't help either.

But how did all the 'rogue states' get their hands on their own atomic bomb?

Well, a man called Abdul Khan worked in a dutch nuclear plant in the 70's and there he spied for Pakistan. He was the father of the Pakistani nuclear program. And he has admitted to selling his knowledge to Libia, North Korea and Iran....

How stupid was that of the Dutch? Or at least that was what I thought upto now...

Now mr Ruud Lubbers (yes, the known ass pincher of the UNHCR, but other than that a well respected politician and 12 year prime minister of Holland) has told a different story....

In 1975 and 1986 the Dutch government wanted to arrest mr Khan, but let him go "because we were instructed to do so by the CIA. The CIA wanted to follow Khan and see where he lead them, instead of taking him out."

Apparently they followed him a little too long.....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9717.htm
https://www4.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/320732.html
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_articl...+Lubbers+claims

The CIA and the real people who run pakistan the military and its secret police ISI (inter service intelligence) have a very good friendship. if they wanted pakistan not to have the bomb, they would not have it.

http://www.observerindia.com/analysis/A346.htm

Ick, this is probably the only time I'll ever say this in my life, but Lee Harvey Oswald was right. Oooooh I feel dirty even writing that.

Nonetheless, it is true, if the US didn't want Pakistan to have the bomb, they wouldn't have it.

Absolutely, Left and Lee. You are 100 percent correct. Because it's GREAT for the US that Pakistan has the bomb. See, the way it works is, if Pakistan and India get really pissed off at each other, they blow each other to smithereens causing nuclear winter the world over -- BUT the US will be in its big nuclear-free protective bubble, and its citizens will continue to eat McDonalds and frolic at Disneyworld while the rest of you lose your hair and gradually die of radiation poisoning, a slow and vicious process, I'm afraid. Because the US gets absolutely no produce or supplies from the rest of the world, and is, essentially, a fully self-sustaining nation, it will get along fine without anything from the rest of the world while this happens. Afterwards it plans to build a great big amusement park where Australia was, while Europe will be a giant 'Heritage Zone'. That's 100,000 years down the line, though, so we don't want to get ahead of ourselves here. The US is planning to use the radiation mutants as slave labor.

I have no idea how you discovered our plans. You must be fiendishly clever.

I understand the delight you take in constructing strawmen, but please don't do so on my behalf.

I understand Mata is not to overjoyed with conspiracy theories, neither am I, but I do believe the CIA let mr Khan walk free to create the bomb for Pakistan. They just wanted to see where he led them, but didn't intervene in time to stop him.

But of course our prime minister could be lying through his teeth, that could be it too...

My understanding of the Kahn situation is generally limited, but what I do know is that the Pakistani government absolutely insisted that he not be arrested, they protected and hid him, they covered for him intensely. He's seen as the father of the Pakistani nuclear program, and for reasons that are utterly unclear to me, the nuclear programs in Pakistan and India are intrinsically tied in with national pride. It's like, 'I'm proud to Pakistani and have the bomb!' I don't understand it, I don't want to understand, don't explain it to me, it's horrible.

But it's clear that this (getting Pakistan to admit how Khan worked and who he was selling/donating the info to) was an intensely diplomatic effort -- particularly as it happened in the midst of the US's ill-fated effort to 'revise' shall we say, the Middle East in its own image.

According to a documentary I watched last night on BBC2, much the same thing is happening in Iran now. Again, nuclear weaponry is intertwined with the nations sense of self-worth -- apparently they won't have arrived until they have nuclear missile capable of hitting Jerusalem.

It is very, very depressing.

Still, I don't think, with the greatest of respect to all involved in this conversation, that the CIA can be blamed for the fact that Pakistan got the bomb. Except that it fucked up and didn't manage to stop it by hook or by crook -- mostly crook. And it will never talk India or Pakistan into giving up the technology now. They have faux nuclear missiles in their holiday parades. They've gone radiation crazy.

Still, conspiracy theories are more fun than reality, I admit. Reality is so complex and multi-layered and there are many more antagonists than protagonists. So, I'm sure the CIA screwed up enough to deserve to be blamed if you choose. It's completely rubbish, you know, the CIA. Nothing like it's image. The FBI is much better, I think. If only they were allowed to work externally, rather than only internally.

Fact is though, that Khan could've been arrested and tried for being a spy in 1976. Lord knows if he had enough information leaked by then for pakistan to create a bomb, or given that info already to the other "rogue states", but he wasn't arrested and that was a big big mistake.
I'm sure if it wasn't for Khan, there would've been others, but as it stands Khan is considered the creator of the Pakistani bomb, and he wasn't stopped when they could have.

Well, when you go back to the '70s, you're well beyond my knowledge, I'm afraid. Anything is possible, but for every crime you need a motive -- what would the motive have been for the US to allow Pakistan to attain the technology to build a nuclear bomb in the 1970s? In other words, what did it stand to gain?

Isn't it contradictory to say that the Americans are at fault for not stopping Pakistan get the bomb, and then complain when they want to take measures to prevent Iran Getting the bomb?.

I am another one who is largely ignorant about what happened in the seventies, but I can think of not a single scenario in which the Americans would have thought it expedient to allow Pakistan to get the bomb.

I'm NOT saying the US wanted Pakistan to have the bomb. They just made a terrible mistake in continuing to 'shadow' mr Khan, instead of arresting him. According agian to the dutch prime minister, they wanted Khan to walk because they wanted to follow him and see where he led them. Too far obviously.

Well, that's entirely possible -- hindsight is always 20/20 -- but I must say that, even for the CIA, shadowing somebody for 30 years seems a bit long. What evidence did he have that this is what actually occurred? I'm not trying to be critical, it's just that this is the first I've heard of it.

And, not, again, to be critical, but wasn't anybody else watching him too? Any international nuclear regulatory agency, for example? Or perhaps other secret services? Why is it entirely the US' responsibility, I wonder?

Was he in the US at the time? If so, there's definitely an issue there. If not, I suppose it could have assassinated him. But that doesn't seem very nice. Kidnapping him -- again, possible, but the world would have thrown a fit. Economic sanctions against Pakistan? It's an awfully poor country, though.

Leontien, what did the provider of this information think should have happened, in light of what he thinks he knows now?

1970's nuclear policy was based on belief in Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). Policymakers in the US at that time believed that the most successfull deterent to the use of nuclear weapons was that the use of even one would cause an "all-in" situation which was so unpalatable to all parties involved that no one would be willing to launch the first one. If you buy into this philosophy (I don't) the spread of nuclear weapons actually benefits stability.

Mata: the dutch government wanted to arrest Khan. He learned all he needed to know in our country, so you could say holland gave pakistan the bomb. But when they found out and wanted to arrest him, the CIA intervened and asked our government to let him walk.
About 6 years later same thing: Holland wanted him arrested but the CIA asked to let him go.

I don't think that's true. In fact, I believe the entire mutual assure destruction philosophy worked only if few countries had the bomb -- and best of all if only two had the bomb. In essence, they controlled each other. If everybody had the bomb, the philosophy goes out the window, as they cannot control everybody. In fact, that's what all the fuss is about now. The old philosophy no longer applies.

And, one more thing, why the heck did Holland need a nuclear weaponry technology in the first place? What was it going to do, bomb Luxembourg?

good question, but we don't have the bomb, well, we have some nuclear missiles, but they are still owned by the US.
It was the technology to 'enrich uranium' in a centrefuge (? don't ask), that he stole. I think it is used for normal powerstations too, and we have one very small factory that did (does? don't know really) that.

Although bombing Luxembourg is appealing...

No bombing Luxembourg! They're virtually the only country left in Europe where Americans are still widely liked. See, now, SOME Europeans have long memories....

Plus it has pretty castles.

we like americans too... Luxembourg is great, but the people...

I don't believe Robert McNamara, architect of the original MAD policy (according to him it was one of a number of policy options) placed this limitation on it. In what I have read, he cast MAD in terms of nations (plural) having either first- or second-strike capability. He characterized second strike capability as a nations promise that it could respond to a nuclear attack with enough force to make such a first attack highly undesirable.

I could be wrong as to whether this was the reason that the US allowed Pakistan to have the bomb, but you asked for a possible motive, and I gave you one. I could probably come up with others if you'd like.

Yes please. I don't think the first one really hangs together, to be honest. The basic tenet of mutually assured destruction was that the nuclear arsenals of two nations were roughly equal, and were overwhelming, which could hardly be said of Pakistan. It hinged on the first-strike/second-strike theory -- that a first strike would not wipe out the opponent nation's nuclear arsenal, so that the damaged nation would be able to strike back, making the risk of being the first-strike nation (likely to be hit hard in return) unacceptable. This would not be the case with Pakistan, or with any nation that had a limited, basic nuclear arsenal. Since, at the time the theory was created only the US and Russia had nuclear arsenals, everything written about Mutually Assured Destruction is about those two nations, clearly McNamara was thinking about those two nations (it's a Cold War doctrine), so to attempt to spread it out to the current situation seems stretching it a bit.

Frankly, even if someone believed it had some validity in the 1960s, it surely doesn't now.

Well, given the record of the Cold War MAD was a sucessfull policy as neither the US nor the USSR ever went to the brink (aside from the Cuban Missle Crisis) due to it.

The Paklstan nuclear capabilty could be seen a Cold War context, too, as India was somewhat aligned with the USSR, so Pakistan as a countervailing force in the subcontinent could be seen as the geopolitical response, sort of a mini-cold-war with Pakistian acting as US proxy vis a vis India (and recognizing the local flashpoint of Kashmir as sort of a conflict source independent of Cold War rivalries and proxy alliances).

Being an 80's child I've been contaminated with a deep fear of nuclear weapons.

Im older, so recall the Nike Sites...these where anti-missile sites ringing larger US cities in the 1960s to protect against nuclear attack. There where a few outside of Chicago, one was right in the city, though, on Lake Michigan at Montrose Beach...after swimming we used to walk by the site, watching the radars go around, and peeking in at the missle silos.

Another site was set in the middle of the western suburbs....missle silos, radar, and a big geodesic dome, surrounded by 1960s-era split level and ranch house suburbia...

And, every Wednsday noon like clockwork, they tested the air-raid sirens. You could set your watch to it....

Hmm, I don't think that holds up well either. Pakistan has never been a particularly strong or faithful ally -- certainly not stable enough that the US would want it to have a nuclear weapon. I would say it's been not an ally more often than it's been an ally over the last 25 years. I mean, Mexico is sort of an ally too, but you wouldn't exactly want it to have its own nuclear missile program. And if India allied itself with the USSR strongly, that's news to me. It's certainly long been viewed as another weak US ally, and is certainly a strong UK ally, as it's a member of the British commonwealth.

So, I certainly don't see how this would be a strong enough argument for anybody to justify looking the other way while either country set up a nuclear weapons program. Precisely the opposite, in fact.

Fair enough that you'd like another possible reason, however, I was merely giving you McNamara's thoughts on MAD. Your understanding of it may be better.

Here is a second reason: The US has an interest in maintaining the balance of power on the Indian subcontinent. In particular because India has not been one of the strogest allies of the US (or England for that matter). The US may have felt that India's deployment of nuclear weapons would shift the balance of power in that area of the world decidely to India and set the stage for increasing border disputes with Pakistan underwhich India would then have the upper hand. To counter this, US policymakers may have felt that a nuclear-armed Pakistan would be seen as a more credible foil to Indian expansion efforts.

That sounds completely insane to me. Why on earth would they have thought an unstable third-world country run by a two-bit general with a bad toupee, and containing a large and uncontrollable muslim extremist element would bring stability to the region if it had nuclear missiles??

Where did you get this information? Can you give me a source?

Let me take a quick step back... It seems that there are a couple of possibilities (there may be more) regarding Kahn providing necessary nuclear technology to Pakistan: 1) either the US intelligence committed a major blunder in not intercepting Kahn in making his connections within Pakistan, or 2) there may have been another motive for allowing Kahn to assist in the establishment of Pakistan's nuclear program.

I find it hard to believe that possibility 1) is true given the monitoring of Kahn by US intelligence (as alluded to in the articles in the first post of this thread) and because I believe the US knowledge of and ties to Pakistan are of significant influence to monitor and if necessary dismantle a nuclear program within Pakistan (I have provided evidence of this below).

In my opinion, possibility 2) is more probable which is what I stated. You then asked, "what would the motive have been for the US to allow Pakistan to attain the technology to build a nuclear bomb in the 1970s? In other words, what did it stand to gain?".

I only attempted to give you some possibilities. I obviously do not have access to the internal intelligence debates used to formulate nuclear policy. However, it is clear from this document ( http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB6/ipn20_1.htm ) unearthed by George Washington University's National Security Archive's project under the Freedom of Information act that the US recognized that India’s nuclear test gave Pakistan the incentive to produce a nuclear weapon, and that it could do so “with less world condemnation than might otherwise be expected.”

You will also find at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB6/ipn22_3.htm that the US recognized many of the struggles Pakistan faced in developing their nuclear program. As you will note from that declassified document, the US knew Pakistan primarily faced equipment and material supply issues.

I would then note that in June 1981, President Ronald Reagan announced an agreement to provide Pakistan with $3.2 billion in economic and military aid over the next six years. And, in December 1981, Congress approved the aid package and granted Pakistan a six-year exemption from Symington amendment sanctions. The Symington amendment was a US law passed in 1976 that required the US to suspend economic and military aid to non-signatories of the Nuclear Non-proliferation that engage in uranium enrichment

Based on this, I would conclude that US policymakers knew quite well the status of Pakistan's nuclear program and recognized the material and equipment supply issues they faced. I would note that despite this understanding, US policy makers waived the law banning the supply of materials necessary to develop a nuclear program to Pakistan during the 1980s, knowing this would likely result in the program's development.

So, if that isn't the smoking gun of complicity you require, I believe it is certainly a strong suggestion that my initial sentiment that Pakistan has nuclear weapons with the tacit approval of the US is reasonable.

It's all very interesting, but it's all also completely conjecture. If this then that then that, based on your own political perspective.

The underlying problem I have with all of that is that much closer allies to the US than Pakistan (which has been, for significant chunks of the last 25 years, not an ally at all, and arguably an enemy of the US) have not been encouraged to have nuclear weapons programs. This would have been completely out of character for the US's approach to international nuclear development, and would involve an enormous shift in the US's long-standing nuclear policies… for Pakistan? Why on earth would it do that?

Answer: it really wouldn't.

More likely situation -- CIA fucked up somehow, couldn't stop it somehow, underestimated him -- I mean, hell, do you think the US wanted Libya to get a nuclear programme? It was just around the corner from having it when Iraq happened and they mea culpa'd and chickened out. What about Iran? It's inches away. How about North Korea? By the same logic, they looked the other way while those fine nations set about arming themselves with radiation spewing missiles.

It is possible for third-world nations that we might all like to stay out of the nuclear Pandora's box to acquire nuclear technology. The US has excellent technical universities, and if you've got money for tuition you can major in nuclear engineering and then wander off back to Uzbekistan and start trying to get some plutonium. Which is more or less what a lot of these guys did. What is it going to do? How do you stop that?

I have no idea.

But I am fairly confident that Pakistan and India having nuclear missiles pointing at each other is a scenario that even the CIA is smart enough not to want, really. I mean, even CIA agents love their kids.

I gave you some possible reasons. You keep dismissing them despite my evidence of why they might be possible.


Yet, you offer no evidence of this.


I'd like to think you are correct here, but the declassified documents I provided in my previous post and the corresponding policy of providing military aid suggest otherwise.

I still think bombing luxembourg is a good idea.

Leontien, think of the pretty castles!



Sorry. Of course that's possible, in the grand scheme of things. But what I am saying is that, based on recent political history, it is more unlikely that what you are conjecturing occurred than what I am conjecturing occurred. In my opinion.



Well, actually, I have as much evidence as you do. So, I disagree.




I find them much more vague than that, actually. They seem to suggest less than the evidence we have now about Iran's nuclear programme. I think you are reading a lot into them in hindsight, which is perfectly understandable. But I don't think they actually prove anything.

Fair enough. I can leave it at that.

Nice...

It looks like Bush has given his approval to India's nuclear weapons program, despite the fact they are non-signatories to the Nonproliferation Treaty. Nice to see someone call him on it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...ack=1&cset=true

From the article...

Two weeks after signing a controversial nuclear cooperation agreement with India, President Bush had a surprise encounter Wednesday with one of the original negotiators of the very anti-nuclear treaty that critics say is threatened by the deal.

The exchange capped an afternoon of unusually confrontational questions posed to Bush by a public audience — a change for a White House that has frequently organized friendly crowds to show Bush in a positive light.

The India challenge came from Lawrence Weiler, 85, a resident at the Washington-area retirement center that was the venue for the Wednesday event, intended to promote the president's new Medicare prescription drug program.

When Bush opened the floor to questions, and one man stood to thank the president for making U.S. civil nuclear technology available to India, Weiler could not contain himself.

"Mr. President, there are some — and I guess I would include myself — who have different views about the Indian agreement, because they're concerned about the effect that the agreement will have on the capacity of India to stimulate its own production of nuclear weapons," he said.

Weiler told Bush that he was one of the few surviving negotiators of the 1970 Nonproliferation Treaty, which was ratified by the world's major nuclear powers and more than 180 other nations to limit the spread of nuclear weapons.

My comment...

What would Weiler know anyway? He only negotiated the Treaty. Bush on the other hand probably received a full-15 minute briefing with three written bullet points on the Treaty. So obviously Bush knows what he is talking about.

From the article...

India never signed the treaty, and critics charge that Bush's plan to let U.S. firms begin sharing civil nuclear technology with India would help that country expand its weapons program and invigorate a nuclear arms race by inspiring other nations to ignore the treaty.

My comment...

Well, why would we want to do that?

From the article...

The agreement is also backed by nuclear technology firms that stand to make billions of dollars by selling to India.

My comment...

Oh yeah, that's right!!

Why bother with Congress?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6072400995.html

From the article:

The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it had long known about Pakistan's plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor...

The reactor, which reportedly will be capable of producing enough plutonium for as many as 50 bombs each year, was brought to light on Sunday by independent analysts who spotted the partially completed plant in commercial-satellite photos. Snow said the administration had "known of these plans for some time."

The acknowledgment came as arms-control experts and some in Congress expressed alarm about a possible escalation of South Asia's arms race. Some also sharply criticized the administration for failing to disclose the existence of a facility that could influence an upcoming congressional debate over U.S. nuclear policy toward India and Pakistan.

My comment:

Who needs Congress anyway? Checks and balances are for democracies. Not the kind of governmental structure that we have in the U.S. Oh, wait...

From the article:

"If either India or Pakistan starts increasing its nuclear arsenal, the other side will respond in kind," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-chairman of a House bipartisan task force on nonproliferation. "The Bush administration's proposed nuclear deal with India is making that much more likely."

That proposal would allow the United States to share civilian nuclear technology with India.

My comment:

And why would we want to share nuclear technology with India again? If I may be so bold as to quote from the post above: