Counter Terrorism Committee
Nuclear Proliferation to Terrorists
"Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up." —United States President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009
The proliferation of nuclear weapons is especially prominent in the neighboring countries of Pakistan and India. Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was established in 1972 by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who founded the program while he was Minister for Fuel, Power and Natural Resources, and later became President and Prime Minister. Shortly after the loss of East Pakistan in the 1971 war with India, Bhutto initiated the program with a meeting of physicists and engineers at Multan in January 1972. Today, Pakistani authorities claim that their nuclear weapons are not assembled. In a 2001 report, the Defense Department contends that "Islamabad's nuclear weapons are probably stored in component form" and that "Pakistan probably could assemble the weapons fairly quickly." However, no one has been able to ascertain the validity of Pakistan's assurances about their nuclear weapons security. In the past, China played a major role in the development of Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure, especially when increasingly stringent export controls in Western countries made it difficult for Pakistan to acquire materials and technology elsewhere. China has supplied Pakistan with nuclear materials and expertise and has provided critical assistance in the construction of Pakistan's nuclear facilities.
Several sources maintain that Pakistan's motive for pursuing a nuclear weapons program is to counter the threat posed by its principal rival, India, which has superior conventional forces and nuclear weapons. Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Pakistan does not abide by a no-first-use doctrine, as evidenced by President Pervez Musharraf's statements in May, 2002. Musharraf said that Pakistan did not want a conflict with India but that if it came to war between the nuclear-armed rivals, he would "respond with full might." These statements were interpreted to mean that if pressed by an overwhelming conventional attack from India, which has superior conventional forces, Pakistan might use its nuclear weapons. Though this in and of itself is a situation to avoid, the larger menace is the threat of these components falling into the hands of terrorists or other extremists. There is a large Taliban and Al-Qaeda presence in Pakistan, made all so clear by the brazen militant attack of the heavily armed Pakistani military headquarters. This is the fear of many foreign powers.
On the other hand, nations such as North Korea and Iran pose an even greater threat with these weapons of mass destruction. North Korea which has always had bad or non-existent relations with their neighbors South Korea and Japan may be tempted to either use these weapons against these nations or provide them to organizations who target these countries as well as other western powers. With the case of Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made frequent public threats to Israel, going so far as to call for the nation to be “wiped of the face of the earth.” Neither of these nations has a track record for being open or diplomatic, so it is of the upmost importance to make sure that these nation's “alleged” weapons, along with the weapons of other nuclear powers never fall into the hands of terrorists and other extremists.