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Pakistan won't play by rules for civil Nuclear-deal with US: Experts
Highlights
Strongly of the view that Pakistan must restrain the development of its growing nuclear arsenal, eminent experts at top American think-tanks believe that given the country\'s past record it is unlikely to \"play by any rules\" to agree to a civil nuclear deal with the US.
Strongly of the view that Pakistan must restrain the development of its growing nuclear arsenal, eminent experts at top American think-tanks believe that given the country's past record it is unlikely to "play by any rules" to agree to a civil nuclear deal with the US.
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"I simply don't believe that Pakistan will be willing to play by any rules or with any transparency on nuclear issues, since it has not done so to date," Alyssa Ayres of American think tank Council on Foreign Relations said.
"Count me among the pessimists about any civil nuclear deal that has been the subject of a couple press reports," the top American expert said.
Ayres, however, said it would be in "everyone's interest to see Pakistan restrain the development of its nuclear weapons."
C Christine Fair, Associate Professor at the Georgetown University, said some years ago she had proposed a civilian nuclear deal that also dealt with Pakistan's use of terrorists as a tool of its foreign policy. "My argument then was that Pakistan would benefit from such a deal (far more limited than that received by India) only when it met all of the (conditions). I had no illusion it would never meet those conditions while noting that any marginal improvement would be good," Fair said.
"However, by putting this on the table publicly the US would have to acknowledge that if Pakistan is unwilling to give up these behaviours, there is nothing else the US government can do and would have to prepare for a more coercive strategy to manage Pakistan's rogue behaviours, which include nuclear coercion and terrorism as central features of its foreign policy," she said.
Fair said after proposing this concept, she learned that her proposal was raised in Pakistan. "I was told by a senior Pakistani official that the concept was floated by (former Director General ISI Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja) Pasha and he rejected it. Unfortunately, this has not been made public. So I have complete confidence that Pakistan will never make satisfactory progress on the brackets," Fair said.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is scheduled to visit the US from October 20, and hold talks with President Barack Obama during which the two leaders are expected to discuss the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
It is in this context that multiple media reports in the US have said that the two countries are headed for a civilian nuclear deal. The White House has ruled out any such deal. Lisa Curtis from The Heritage Foundation, another top American think-tank, agreed with Fair.
"It would be a mistake for the Obama administration to separate the nuclear and counterterrorism issues in its discussions with Pakistan," she said.
Curtis said: "This is especially true since Pakistan continues to support terrorist proxies in the region under the protection of its 'nuclear umbrella' in order to keep both Afghanistan and India off balance."
She said that there is also concern that Islamist extremists may exploit their links to Pakistan security establishment to gain access to nuclear weapons technology.
These inherent risks associated with Pakistan's nuclear programme make it imperative that the US insist that Pakistan make a strategic shift with regard to its reliance on terrorist proxies before the US considers conferring a degree of legitimacy on Pakistan's nuclear programme, she said.
"Elevating discussions about a nuclear deal without linking it to US counter-terrorism concerns in Pakistan would be, at best, a waste of time, and at worst, facilitation of Pakistan's risky regional strategy of harbouring terrorists under a nuclear shield," Curtis said.
Michael Kugelman, from Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, feel a civil nuclear deal is not unfathomable, but it is still highly unlikely, given the legacy of AQ Khan, the 'disgraced' Pakistani nuclear scientist.
"I say this for four reasons. First, there is so much anti-Pakistan sentiment on Capitol Hill, where the deal would need to be approved, that I don't think you could get the political buy-in from the US side," he said.
"Second, in Washington everyone knows the name AQ Khan, and his legacy looms over all of this. I can't imagine the US agreeing to a civil nuclear deal with the country that produced AQ Khan," he noted.
"Third, the US is serious about deepening its relationship with India, and I don't think Washington would want to jeopardise the current strong momentum in bilateral relations. Fourth, and perhaps most consequentially, there's no reason to think that the Pakistanis would agree to the conditions imposed by a deal," he said.
"Think of it this way: The civil nuclear deal with India nearly didn't pass because of political opposition in both countries. That opposition would be even stronger in the case of one with Pakistan," Kugelman said.
Dhruva Jaishankar, from German Marshal Fund, has argued in in op-ed in Foreign Policy that dangling the offer of "nuclear mainstreaming" - as described by the advocates of the policy - is an awful idea.
"Forget for a moment that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism, or that such a deal risks incentivizing bad behaviour. The deal also continues the long track record of the US raising Pakistani expectations and then not delivering, a history of disappointment that has long fanned anti-Americanism in the country," he said.
"A nuclear agreement of this kind will face resistance from within the US government, not to mention Congress, given Pakistan's history of duplicitous nuclear proliferation. Even then, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the powerful 48-nation international nuclear cartel of which the US is a member, will almost certainly veto it," Jaishankar said.
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