PALS in Pakistan Part Ten: International Signalling
By: Teve Torbes
There are several reasons to discount the logic behind this argument. First, any credibility that the United States held in this area would already be gone given that we lifted sanctions imposed on Pakistan and India for nuclear testing to gain support for our campaign in Afghanistan. Both countries openly violated international non-proliferation norms and suffered only a few years of sanctions for their actions.
Second, cooperation on the safety of nuclear weapons that have already been developed is not inconsistent with attempts to prevent states from acquiring these weapons in the first place. We have already basically resigned ourselves to the fact that Pakistan and India are nuclear states, and the additional level of cooperation on security issues wouldn’t change the international perception of this fact.
Third, most of the countries that we consider to be on the verge of proliferation are unlikely to give in to U.S. diplomatic pressure anyway. Iraq, North Korea, and other “rogue states” are likely to ignore U.S. posturing no matter what our policies are towards other countries and will continue with their efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Fourth, focusing on diplomatic efforts to prevent proliferation by states should not come at the expense of efforts to prevent access to nuclear weapons by terrorist groups or factions who are more likely to actually use the weapons than a state would be.
If PALS increase the difficulty of stealing and using a Pakistani nuclear device, then that concern should hold precedence over preventing other states from acquiring nuclear weapons. States can be deterred by traditional methods and tend to be more rational actors than terrorist groups, and their proliferation should be a lower concern than the risk of unauthorized use of existing weapons.
Allowing the transfer of PALS gains a tangible increase in the security of Pakistan’s arsenal, which should trump vague and un-quantifiable fears about our international diplomacy.
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