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| Image: Flickr User - U.S. Department of State |
By Daniel Markey
A nuclear deal with Pakistan is simply not worth the effort for the United States.
David Ignatius’ Washington Post column of October 6 broke the story that senior U.S. policymakers were discussing a “blockbuster” nuclear deal with their Pakistani counterparts. Since then, the idea has received far more attention in Pakistan than in Washington, but with this week’s arrival of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif the story will generate buzz here too. Bottom line: a “deal” of the sort being discussed with Pakistan is less than meets the eye, poorly timed, and likely to prove counterproductive in the near term.
In the abstract, a nuclear deal with Pakistan is not a bad idea. Pakistan’s nuclear program is what vaults the troubled state into a tiny handful of nearly impossible policy challenges that keep policymakers and intelligence analysts worried even when other issues like Russia and ISIS crowd newspaper headlines. Diligent and creative American diplomats are right to explore options for securing and limiting the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
A recent proposal advanced by scholars at two D.C.-based think tanks to “normalize” Pakistan captures the underlying rationale of the deal under discussion. They argue that Pakistan’s leaders should recognize that their nuclear arsenal is already big enough to deter India, and that since deterrence has always been Pakistan’s goal, now is the time to voluntarily slow the costly program and reconsider Pakistan’s participation in several international arms control agreements—including the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
By taking these steps, the report’s authors go on to suggest that the United States and the rest of the world are more likely to sympathize with Pakistan’s deep desire to be mainstreamed into the international nuclear order, just as India has been. Because nearly all U.S. analysts fear that Pakistan and India are on their way to a spiraling nuclear competition that will soon take to the seas in the form of nuclear-armed submarines, heading off a nuclear arms race in South Asia would be a major accomplishment.
Read the full story at The Diplomat