US-educated Pakistani physicist and political observer presses compatriots on the bomb
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0204
Following two high-visibility commentaries reported here earlier , Pervez Hoodbhoy—an MIT-educated physicist, Pakistani public intellectual, and friend of America’s physics community—continued a prolific January, adding three commentaries about world nuclear tensions. Again these opinion articles appeared in an affiliate of the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times, the Express Tribune , which says it “caters to the modern face of Pakistan” with the mission to defend “liberal values and egalitarian traditions.”
In “Iran’s bomb and Pakistan,” Hoodbhoy explains that “Pakistan’s real dilemma” is knowing “that if Iran chooses to cross the nuclear threshold, the Saudis would seek to follow suit,” forcing Pakistan “to choose sides between a Shia neighbour and a Sunni state that has been its benefactor.” For Americans, part of Hoodbhoy’s analysis requires quoting:
America’s moral position—and the tactics it uses to dissuade Iran—are morally indefensible. The US has given the green light to Israel’s campaign of secret assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, injection of the Stuxnet virus, and periodically threatens to bomb Iran. While Iran has not attacked any other country in centuries, the United States overthrew Iran’s democracy in 1953 and installed a dictator who ensured that American corporations would have a near monopoly over Iranian oil. It supplied weapons to Saddam Hussain in his war against Iran, put Iran on the “axis of evil”, falsely blamed it for 9/11, flies drones over Iran, imposed sanctions, and provocatively sends its aircraft carriers up and down the Persian Gulf.
Hoodbhoy believes that Iran “will likely become the world’s 10th nuclear state over the next few years"—a development that he calls “bad” but that “could be managed.” However, he declares, “an Israeli attack—whether aided or not by the US—would be truly terrible,” making the Middle East “a permanent war zone.” This first of Hoodbhoy’s latest three pieces closes this way:
So what happens if Iran goes nuclear and Saudi Arabia wants to follow? What could be the Saudi path and what role is Pakistan likely to play? This shall be taken up next week.
The next week brought “The bomb: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan,” which traces the souring of Pakistan’s formerly close alliance with Iran, predicts that the “rifts are likely to widen as the US prepares for its withdrawal from Afghanistan,” and notes that “Saudi Arabia’s footprint in Pakistan has grown steadily since the early 1970s.” Hoodbhoy foresees that if Iran goes nuclear and Saudi Arabia wants to follow, Saudi Arabia will lack the technical and scientific base to create a nuclear infrastructure, and will have to turn to Pakistan.
“Good sense,” writes Hoodbhoy in summary, “dictates that Iran stops its pursuit of the Bomb. But whether it does or not, Pakistan should stay out of the Iran-Saudi nuclear rivalry. Over and above all this, Israel and the United States must stop threatening to bomb Iran.”
On 30 January, “Pakistan’s rush for more bombs—why?” appeared. There Hoodbhoy first explains and then condemns growth in Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. He observes that for “three years, Pakistan has single-handedly—and successfully—blocked the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva from discussing an effort that would reduce nuclear weapons globally.” Though Pakistan’s official rationale focuses on the perceived threat from India, he writes, “Pakistan’s rush for more bombs has as much to do with its changing relationship with the United States” and “reflects a paradigm shift within Pakistan’s military establishment, where feelings against the US have steadily hardened over many years.” He adds, “Post-bin Laden, the change is starkly visible. In the military’s mind, the Americans are now a threat, equal to or larger than India.”
Hoodbhoy sees two motivations for Pakistan’s enlarging of its nuclear arsenal. First is a redundancy deemed desirable by those who see Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as threatened by America—a perception he says is reinforced by US press and military attention. Second, unstated but real, Hoodbhoy believes, is a conviction that “nukes act as insurance against things going too far wrong. Like North Korea, Pakistan knows that, no matter what, international financial donors will feel compelled to keep pumping in funds. Else a collapsing system may be unable to prevent some of its hundred-plus Hiroshima-sized nukes from disappearing into the darkness.”
Hoodbhoy closes with the kind of unsparing assessment of his country’s present condition that he has emphasized before:
This insurance could become increasingly important as Pakistan moves deeper into political isolation and economic difficulties mount. Even today, load-shedding and fuel shortages routinely shut down industries and transport for long stretches, imports far exceed exports, inflation is at the double-digit level, foreign direct investment is negligible because of concerns over physical security, tax collection remains minimal, and corruption remains unchecked. An African country like Somalia or Congo would have sunk under this weight long ago.
To conclude: throwing a spanner in the works at the CD (Geneva) may well be popular as an act of defiance. Indeed, many in Pakistan—like Hamid Gul and Imran Khan—derive delicious satisfaction from spiting the world in such ways. But this is not wise for a state that perpetually hovers at the edge of bankruptcy, and which derives most of its worker remittances and export earnings from the very countries it delights in mocking.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.