By Seth Oldmixon
Two troubled countries. Two similar strategies.
Two important and unsettling events took place earlier this month: North Korea claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb, and India’s Pathankot airbase was the victim of an attack by Pakistan-based militants. While seemingly unrelated, the two events have more in common than readily apparent: Each fits a long established pattern of behavior intended to extort international concessions by exploiting global anxiety about nuclear terrorism.
The most immediate connection between these two events is the provenance of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program: Pakistani metallurgist A.Q. Khan, the man who stole nuclear secrets from his employer in Holland and passed them on to Pakistan’s military. In the 1990s, Pakistan sold nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, as well as Iran, Libya and possibly other states. A.Q. Khan was briefly held under house arrest until he received a full pardon from Pakistan’s military dictator and president Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Yet, there is another commonality between North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and a fidayeen attack on an Indian airbase: strategy.
Read the full story at The Diplomat