Across the border, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s call for IAEA supervision of Pakistan’s nuclear arm assets may be considered preposterous. This is, however, not a novel suggestion. It had been aired before with Russia and the US suggesting this. How secure are Pakistan’s nukes regarding their inevitable use as a deterrent rather than a war weapon is a question that has long bothered the world.
Given its history of consorting with terror elements, whether as lackeys of the West during Soviet presence in Afghanistan when Pakistan said it had to nurture terrorists to meddle with Russians or in sponsoring terrorists in the last three decades to take aim at India and disrupt its economic progress, particularly in Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan’s possession of 170 nuclear warheads (India too has as many) has been sufficient to induce sleepless nights.
The great fear has been that Pakistan’s nuclear assets could fall into the wrong hands. And it doesn’t help that Pakistan’s favourite line during every flare-up with India is “we have nukes”. Such a threat has been heard of, and recently, with Russia often threatening the use of strategic nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine.
But those who brandish the threat of nuclear warfare know that Armageddon is the only possible result. For the concept of nuclear weapons to succeed just as deterrence, there must be no use of them by accident, terrorists, computer malfunctions, hackers or unstable leaders.
Considering the history of its rogue scientists selling atomic secrets to other nations, or politicians threatening to sell them to groups to make “dirty” bombs, as the description goes when militant groups are sold parts of N-bomb-making equipment, Pakistan has often gone on to erode nuclear deterrence by talking about it or convening a meeting of its National Command authority as its Prime Minister tried to during Operation Sindoor.
However brittle sanity may appear to be in today’s conflicted world in which Russia and Israel continue to bomb Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, respectively, there is always the hope that nuclear weapons would remain unused in war as they have been since August 6 and 9, 1945.
