The Bush doctrine of unilateral action. Does it only apply to countries with oil such as Iraq and Iran? You decide.
atimes.com
Bush's Pakistan contradiction
By Seema Sirohi
WASHINGTON - After the long, riveting drama by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's nuclear hero-turned high stakes proliferator, played to a packed world audience, the Bush administration could do little more than wring its hands in frustration because of the competing compulsions on US policy towards Islamabad.
In short, Pakistan policy is a puzzle, a big knot.
Washington was obliged to watch the choreography of Khan's "confession" and "pardon" without as much as a word of censure. There was only praise and support for President General Pervez Musharraf, who has made himself indispensable to US policy as the supreme frontier man in the "war against terror", even as he forgave Khan and vowed never to allow international inspections of his leaky nuclear program.
The Bush administration swallowed hard but gave Musharraf a pass. Demanding punishment for Khan would have meant forcing Musharraf to do the difficult job of prosecuting a "national hero" who is perhaps the only scientist in the world lionized for making the bomb. Rallies are held and placards carried in his honor because he made it happen - whether by begging, borrowing or stealing, it didn't matter. So once again Washington looked the other way, clenched its teeth and asked for the least difficult option - information to shut down the nuclear smuggling network.
While the US media raged and fumed with a series of devastating articles about Khan's greed and propensity to sell nuclear technology, official spokesman in Washington gave tortured explanations. They said that pardoning Khan was an internal matter to be decided by Pakistan. The daily grilling of Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, brought forth long-winded explanations about how the two countries have regularly been discussing proliferation. Boucher repeatedly expressed the administration's confidence in the ability of Musharraf to do the right thing.
But the media dubbed Khan a "nuclear Ali Baba" who ran the "nuclear Wal-Mart", selling his wares to Iran, Libya and North Korea through a shadowy network of companies and middlemen stretching from Europe to Asia. The Washington Post wrote two tough back-to-back editorials demanding action and reminding President George W Bush that his first mission is "to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists" and rogue regimes and that his national security doctrine advocates a preemptive strike in such cases. "The general and his government have been lying for years about the illegal traffic. Now that their cover has been blown, they are attempting to pin all the blame on a single scientist while stonewalling any international investigation," the Post thundered.
Far from any military action, Boucher maintained that there was no need even for US sanctions. As for the future - if there is a future as America's leading satirical news anchor Jon Stewart noted - Pakistan will decide the course of action. "What penalties, sanctions, controls or steps are used to prevent it from happening again, those are up for individual governments to decide. It is up to the Pakistani government to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again," Boucher said. But the US administration has demanded and got intrusive international inspections for Libya and Iran, two of the countries to which Khan supplied nuclear technology and blueprints. By accepting the official Pakistani line that the military wasn't involved in Khan's dangerous adventures, Washington avoided having to face tough questions about how to deal with Pakistan - recognized by the chattering classes as the toughest challenge for US policy makers. If the Khan scandal had come to light before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, American policy might have been tougher.
On Wednesday, Bush delivered a speech outlining his plan to limit the spread of nuclear weapons by cracking down on the nuclear black market, tightening loopholes in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, expanding his 11-nation Proliferation Security Initiative, restricting the sale of nuclear technology and strengthening export control laws. "We must act on every lead. We will find the middlemen, the suppliers and the buyers. Our message to proliferators must be consistent and it must be clear: We will find you, and we're not going to rest until you are stopped," he declared. He recounted the Khan story in great detail, but never held anyone responsible in the Pakistani establishment for what happened. The story was cited as a great success of US intelligence by Bush at a time when he is faced with tough questions about the veracity of intelligence claims about the elusive Iraqi stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
George Perkovich, a proliferation expert and author of a book on India's nuclear weapons program, said that it is better to focus on the future instead of demanding punishment. "First and foremost, the US should demand complete details of Khan's interrogation and push the Pakistanis to pursue every lead. Every node of this network must be investigated," Perkovich said in an interview. "People have to be grown up about it. In criminal prosecution, you have a plea bargain which allows you to get information on other people."
Perkovich termed Khan's network the "most serious case of proliferation in history". But he also added that Pakistan has never shared the West's ethos of non-proliferation because many other objectives were more important to Pakistan than the spread of nuclear technology. "Their view is that these rules were created by the United States and Israel. Why should we abide by their rules? The challenge is to make Pakistan believe in responsible stewardship of their nuclear arsenal."
Michael Krepon, founding president of the Henry Stimson Center, a think-tank that studies proliferation, said that there are some disturbing "morals" in the Khan story - if you plan to hawk nuclear secrets, don't get caught. The other moral for future proliferators - "be an indispensable ally to the United States in the global war on terror". Krepon said that if Khan had resided in another country, or if Pakistan were led by the religious leaders who are eager to unseat Musharraf, the Bush administration's response would have been different.
However, Musharraf's record on proliferation is far from satisfactory despite his "400 percent" assurances to Secretary of State Colin Powell to stop all illegal activities. In the past he has flatly denied any nuclear technology leaking out, just as he denied that Pakistan served as a base for terrorists operating against India, even though US officials raised red flags around Khan at least three years ago. At least two transactions took place on Musharraf's watch - a US-supplied Pakistani military plane was spotted in the fall of 2002 in North Korea with suspicious cargo and last year a ship was seized at an Italian port carrying nuclear equipment for Libya. Khan has since confessed to many such acts.
Analysts say that Washington is once again using double standards, adding that history will repeat itself as Washington repeats its mistakes. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration gave Pakistan US$3.2 billion in military aid as a quid pro quo for allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to funnel weapons to the Afghan mujahideen who were fighting the Soviets. But there was a condition - Pakistan would not make the bomb. Former Pakistani military ruler General Zia ul-Haq, a deft politician just like Musharraf, collected both American money and technology for a nuclear weapons program through a clandestine network. The greater American compulsion then was defeating the Soviets, and Pakistan's activities were accepted as the "price" Washington had to pay for the larger good. Today, the compulsion is to find Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding somewhere around the Pakistan-Afghan border. Pakistan is critical to achieving American goals, and once again reality is being shaded. |
