Pakistan, The Taliban and Those Pesky Nukes - A Calm Analysis
I'm not sure what the US Government and their stenographers in the media actually want. The seem determined to drive Pakistan from a democratic, civilian government with an active political opposition and a small, militant insurgency to a full-blown civil war. They don't seem to be willing to allow the Pakistanis to work out their political and ideological differences through a negotiated political process, but instead seem to be frothing for bloodshed. It never seems to get mentioned in any of the American discussions, but a nation that is at war with it's citizens, attacking it's own towns and creating desperate refugees has failed at it's primary purpose.The Pakistanis were understandably resistant to going to war against their fellow Pakistanis, so the US and the Obama administration just kept ratcheting up the pressure and offering more in the way of rewards until the Zardari government and the Army under General Kayani made a craven calculation that it was in the short-term interests of the governing elite (yes, that does include the military and ISI) to kill a few thousand of their citizens in order to keep American aid flowing. It is nothing short of appalling that apparently neither the Obama nor the Zardari administrations can see beyond the next fiscal quarter. That future is grim, but precisely NOT for the reasons the American hype machine keeps shrieking.
Let's be clear. Assertions are regularly made in the American press about the state of Pakistan, her government, her military and her nuclear weapons. In parallel, further assertions are made about the Talilban, their goals, their support and the type of threat they impose on the Pakistani nation. They are almost entirely and uniformly false, and yet the truth so seldom finds it's way into the conversation that one must reach the conclusion that the truth is, to borrow a phrase from Al Gore, inconvenient.
Let's start with the real bogeyman here. The nuclear weapons held by the Pakistani military. And make no mistake, the civilian government has NO access to them, nor the ability to order their release. The military retains the strategic options, both because they don't have faith in the willingness of the civilian government to unleash them, but also, and perhaps more importantly, they don't have faith in the institutions of democracy that might place someone who's ideology is at odds with the Generals in a position of power. The American press loves to describe a frightening scenario where a Pakistani nuclear warhead "falls into the hands" of the Taliban or al Quaeda and is smuggled into an American city and detonated with hundreds of thousands or millions of casualties. Is that reasonable? Should that be the primary concern that drives American South Asia policy? Let's think about it for a minute.
Does anyone else hear that "ticking time bomb" from the torture "debate"? For this scenario to come to pass would require a set of circumstances, decisions, operations and opportunities so far fetched as to be the same kind of science fiction as that legendary time bomb of the hate-driven fever dreams of authoritarians in and out of government. But with America's cultural predisposition to the expedient, our love of action-adventure stories and our utter lack of understanding of Islamic cultures, we have no second thoughts in believing these terrifying stories. And yet...
A nuclear warhead is a large, heavy, incredibly high precision device that is easy to conceptualize, somewhat harder to design and very difficult to engineer. And any loss of precision results in something less than a mushroom cloud. And we've seen too many movies with "suitcase nukes". While a few, highly advanced nuclear weapons programs (the US, Russia, perhaps China, Great Britain and France) have developed the technology for reducing the size and weight of an atomic weapon, those are NOT the weapons we are talking about in Pakistan. That nobody ever bothers to make the distinction, but rather avoids the discussion in order to allow American imaginations to run wild is telling in and of itself. A Pakistani warhead is a large, cumbersome piece of single-purpose technology, designed to be delivered by short or medium range missile against Indian targets. It is heavy, not designed to be portable and requires a great deal of gentle care if it is to be expected to release it's nuclear energy on target. And even then, it's a dirty little secret that the reason a nuclear power wants so many warheads is that many of them can be expected to fail to "deliver significant yield" and it is doctrine to plan to deliver multiple weapons to ensure a single detonation.
But OK. For now, let's assume that Taliban, with Osama bin Laden's evil minions assisting, have commandeered a 300 kiloton Pakistani warhead, perhaps with significant assistance from the ISI. They have the engineers they need to to load it into a 40 foot shipping container and brace it so it is not damaged in transit. They now have a nuclear warhead ready to transport, in an international standard shipping container, in a remote Pakistani nuclear development facility. Has no one noticed? Is there not SOME part of the Pakistani Government, or the Pakistani military, who is concerned, and would prefer this did not happen? After all, even with all the support in the world, this weapon was NOT designed to be delivered in this way. It took time, innovative thinking and creative engineering to get this far. The Pakistanis would have known where the facility was, and they would have known that it was compromised. Even assuming their F16s and helicopter gunships somehow fail to remove the threat at the source, their special operations teams can't find a way to stop this? OK, let's say they can't
Now the time has come for the Taliban and their al Quaeda henchmen to move this weapon to a port. They load the container on a truck and, what, just drive to Karachi? Whereupon they innocently load this container on a container ship bound for Savannah, pay their money and sign the bill of lading? Do the Pakistanis not KNOW their nuclear facility has been compromised and a weapon stolen? Do the Americans not know? This happened in complete secrecy, without having to kill a guard, blow a gate, coerce a manager or trigger a safeguard? Wow, these guys are good. In fact, the whole world would realize that there were rogue nukes on the loose and among other obvious countermeasures, container traffic would be anything but business as usual.
Then there's the matter of device security. What we call PALs, or permissive action links. See, everybody figured out about fifty years ago that, with forward deployed nuclear weapons, the enemy or a rogue ally could seize control of one or several of them and, well, at that point anything's possible. So from combination padlocks to advanced digital security, the weapons have been protected by security devices and tamper proof housings. Do the Pakistanis employ this level of security? We do have to admit we don't know, but they would have the same motivation as the US or Russia or any other nuclear state - to make certain that the weapons didn't end up destroying their own interests. I think it's VERY likely that the way the Pakistani military maintains control of the nuclear weapons is to control the release codes. There is very likely no one, or a very limited number of people anywhere near the development/maintenance facility, who actually have the knowledge to make the bomb go boom. The science of encryption and one-way cyphers is well known, and the Pakistanis have plenty of mathematicians. This would not be a significant challenge to them, and they would be madmen to have no controls on these weapons at all. They are not.
Which brings us to an important cultural discussion. Here in the west, we like to make all sorts of determinations that Islamic extremists are "fanatics", that they have no interest in living, that in order to carry out their nefarious plots they would happily die, even along with their family, their tribe, their mosque and their nation. They are just not like us, you see. We want to live. They WANT to die. And yet, look around for evidence of this. Attempt to demonstrate a case where anyone, Islamic extremist or other, who was willing to see his entire group, the very same group that suffered the grievances he's attempting to redress through violence, utterly destroyed. An individual, traumatized and indoctrinated, carrying out a suicide bombing does not rise to this level. I frequently hear this charge leveled with a particular kind of smug self-certainty at Iran. But yet, with all their power, they seem to be highly circumspect in attacking their enemies, be they Israel or Saudi Arabia. It's almost as if they aren't willing to absorb the certain retaliation that would come from starting a war. As if they actually WERE like us. Human beings, with families and hopes for the future.
Our government and our press regularly tells us things that are not true. It is up to us to think about the claims they are making, and to evaluate them based on facts we know or can logically assume to be in play. The people attempting to shape the discussion, the groups that want to frame the debate, have an agenda. And while your hopes, dreams and desires may coincide with that agenda, they very likely do not. You must take the time to think about what you are being told, and to insist it pass a very basic smell test. You will commonly find you are being manipulated, to your detriment, and that is something you should very much want to avoid.
posted by mikey @ 4:31 PM
4 Comments:
Although a bit confusing, this posting is a fresh air among the alarmist voices of the Jack Bauers-like. I would worry about how the Pakistani military will use the increased financial help and whether they will continue to increase their nuclear arsenal and less about the unlikely scenario of the Taliban getting their hands on the Pakistani nukes.
Pakistan uses the threat of its nuclear arsenal falling into taliban hands to extort the west. the pakistani nukes will not fall into the hands of the taliban unless the pakistani army hands them over. While i dont agree with seeing them (the islamists) as people very different from us, i have to say they are not like us either.
The motivating factor in an islamist society is religion. a hard, unforgiving all controling and partisan religion. A religion that makes clear distincction between the beliver and the kafir (non believer). Islam controls all aspects of a muslim's life - from how he washes his hands to how he would behave in bed with his wife. It is a totaltarian religion that leaves no scope for independent thought.
If a fanatic follower of this religion got hold of a nuke or even some fissile material he would not hesitate to use it on the kafirs. he would not worry about the consequenses. becuse my friend, if he did he would not be a fanatic.
SO threat of paki nule is very real. but i give you that its not to the level that the media decribes it to be.
Mikey - You DO know that you're far too sane to be taken seriously, don't you?
Yeah, I've come to that conclusion. Seeing the world as the world IS disqualifies one from seriously commenting on the world.
But I continue to bay at the moon, shout at the madness and call attention to the lies, if for no other reason then to remind myself that the funhouse explanations do not reflect the reality of the world, and do not take into account the way the world actually functions.
I don't, actually, have a great deal of hope that this will change anything...
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