12/15/09 Andrew Cockburn: U.S. Support for Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
I'm happy to welcome Andrew Coburn back to the show.
It's been a little while.
He is the author of Rumsfeld, His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy.
And I'm looking at a great article that he wrote last June at counterpunch.org called How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program from Day One.
Welcome back to the show, Andrew.
How are you?
Good to be with you.
I appreciate you joining us on the show today.
So let's talk about, well, when was day one?
Let's start there.
When was day one of Pakistan's nuclear program and how did American support for it start?
If indeed such support is really the story.
Well, it was a long time ago.
And it's really, you know, it's a not untypical story.
Well, there's always, you know, we play a lip service to the great cause of non-proliferation.
And now it's more important than anything else to stop nuclear weapons spreading around the world.
And yet, at every turn, when there's someone, an ally of ours or someone we want, you know, we have a use for is developing a nuclear weapon, we always look the other way.
I mean, Israel is one notable example, of course.
But the Pakistan, I think people are more surprised to hear.
We really, if you go back to, well, you go back to the time of mid-70s when Mr. Khan, the father of the, what turned out to be the father of the Israeli, of the Pakistani bomb, was studying in Holland, was working in Holland as a nuclear enrichment concern.
And he was determined, he was actually filching designs for uranium enrichment and sending them home.
And the Dutch security people got onto this and they said, Hey, this guy is stealing nuclear secrets that could help his country make a bomb and would send them home.
And they checked with the CIA and the CIA said, Oh, no, leave him alone.
We want to know, you know, find out more about the network.
So he continued his work unmolested.
And so, you know, then the Blueprints went home.
Then Pakistan went on working on its bomb.
And we get to 1979, 1980, when we start, you know, Pakistan and the U.S. together start the great jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
And the Pakistanis by this time were working hard on their bomb.
We knew all about it.
But it was more important to fight the godless communists in Afghanistan than, you know, whether Pakistan was, stop Pakistan building a bomb.
When Ronald Reagan was asked, well, what about the Pakistanis?
You know, should we do anything to stop the Pakistanis building a bomb?
And he said, I think it's none of our business.
The story continues.
Well, actually, let me stop you there.
Was that necessary?
I mean, was it the case that the Pakistanis wouldn't cooperate with American support for the jihad against the Russians in Afghanistan unless we turn a blind eye to their nuclear program?
Of course not.
It was much more important to them to the jihad and the money they were making out of it and everything else.
Well, do you think that the Reagan administration thought that that was the deal or they had another reason for turning a blind eye to this other than just they wanted to work with the Pakistanis in the war in Afghanistan?
Well, I think they did.
They have another reason.
I think I think if you said, you know, is it very important for us to have Pakistan to have the bomb?
Well, there are a number of like, you know, Pakistan, among other things, sits on the Iranian border.
And Iran has just emerged, you know, as a big enemy.
And, you know, we well, this is really, you know, fast forwarding in the story.
Allies, you know, if an ally of ours has nuclear weapons like or like Israel or like, you know, like all the European countries, it is an instrument of control for the US.
I mean, the US, it's very important part of US control of NATO allies like the US, like the UK, sorry, and France, in particular, the European nuclear nations.
But, you know, the US helps them a lot and sells them components, things like that.
By that measure, they are rather dependent on the US.
And that was certainly true of the French for a long time when they were allegedly, you know, completely separate.
In fact, they depended on the US to help them keep their nuclear force up and running.
So there may have been that thought too.
I see.
Well, now, I'm trying to think the timing here in the Cold War.
This is after the, you know, Nixon went and shook hands with Mao and the Sino-Soviet split and all that.
Is it correct my understanding, my pseudo understanding here that basically Pakistan and China are sort of allies in the containment of India from their point of view?
Absolutely.
And then India was more in the Soviet camp.
And so China and Pakistan were considered the American camp as versus the Soviets back in the 1980s.
Is that right?
That's right.
That's right.
And in fact, like a huge proportion of the arms we bought for the Afghan Mujahideen who are now, you know, the people we're fighting, a huge proportion of that was bought from China.
I mean, like AK-47s and so forth.
Hundreds of billions of billions of dollars worth of weapons.
Yes, they were deniable because they were AKs, not M-16s, right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
Did the same thing with Egypt and so forth.
Well, I'm sorry, because I was diverting you.
You're kind of going through the chronology here.
And I kind of stopped you about the motivation for the blind eye Reagan turn.
But I think you were going in a different direction there.
Well, it's okay.
Things carried on.
I mean, the two themes, I would say, musically were interesting.
And on the one hand, you know, we were turning a blind eye.
On the other hand, we, of course, continually said that, you know, nonproliferation is a sacred cause.
And, you know, we will leave no stone unturned to stop the, you know, stop nuclear weapons spreading around the world.
And as is always often happens in these cases, there were some people in the bureaucracy didn't get the real message.
So, for instance, there was, you know, people in the CIA and in the Defense Department who thought that nonproliferation was, you know, they were in the nonproliferation, you know, department and they thought they should do their job.
And there was a guy called Barlow, for example, who was, you know, was studying the Pakistani Illicit Components Network.
You know, there were six buying components from around the world and he was trying to close it down.
And at one point, he and the customs had organized a sting for a major Pakistani illicit nuclear components, you know, buying operation.
And it didn't work because the State Department tipped off the Pakistanis that this was coming.
You know, we were that sort of schizophrenic about our policy.
And one of the lead people sort of for making sure of making the world safe for the Pakistani bomb at that time was in the late 80s, early 90s, was the Secretary of Defense, one Richard B. Cheney.
Well, you know, it's kind of crazy here.
And this is how your article, again, it's here at counterpunch.org.
It's from last June, but might as well be from last week.
You have the American War Party talking about, oh, my God, Pakistan is kind of falling apart.
And there's a danger that these crazy people could take control of the nuclear weapons.
So maybe we need to take control of them.
And yet, as you say in here, American money is going to finance the advancement of Pakistani nuclear weapons to this day, not just even in the Bush years, but since January, too.
That's exactly right.
And the logic of that is that, you know, oh, well, the Pakistanis need to make Pakistani weapons more secure.
So we're going to, you know, we have all sorts of fancy technology for, first of all, making sure it doesn't go off if you drop it or something like that.
And, you know, which is our way of sort of getting into the Pakistani program and getting them to cooperate with us and learning more about it.
But in the process, you're making the Pakistani weapon more operationally useful.
Because the more secure it is, the more you can afford to, like, have it in one place.
I mean, the moment the Pakistanis keep it in bits, partly, you know, to stop people stealing it, but also to, you know, because it's inherently unsafe.
It's not, you know, the phrase is in the industry is one point safe.
People talk about a weapon being one point safe, which means that there's only one chance in a million that will go off accidentally.
Well, Pakistani weapons have not been one point safe, but we are helping to make them so, which means the Pakistanis will feel more confident about, you know, maybe keeping them in warheads, keeping the warheads on the missiles or whatever.
And we are financing that.
Right, where right now they keep them in pieces.
We're making them better technology so they can go ahead and keep them ready to go.
Right, which makes the Indians more nervous.
But the Indians are moving to be more operationally ready.
And, you know, we're closer to the hair trigger, which is really tough.
Well, no problem.
We'll just help them with their nuclear weapons program as well.
Right.
Well, I wouldn't be surprised.
I wouldn't be surprised.
Well, we are.
We just did this huge deal to allow them to violate, you know, to despite them not signing the non-proliferation treaty, we sold them billions of dollars worth of nuclear technology, which is, you know, not meant to happen under the treaty.
So we are, yeah, we're back to our old game of arming both sides.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's interesting.
It's interesting to me that at the same time that we're beating the Iranians over the head with the non-proliferation treaty, as though they're not within it, you know, kind of just pretending that they're not like they're Saddam Hussein or something.
We actually here we are helping the nuclear weapons technology of India and Pakistan, who are both armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, who have gone to war, what, four times since the division in 49, who have a longstanding feud that continues in Kashmir.
And we're helping both of them with their nuclear weapons.
I mean, tell me I'm confused.
This can't be right.
America, the land of the free and peace and brave and all that stuff, I mean.
Well, we've done it before.
You know, in 1970, no, 1986, during the Iran-Iraq war, there was a, in January 1986, there was a, the Iran, the Iraqis attacked the, had an offensive against the Iranians in the Fow Peninsula.
Both sides were operating with satellite intelligence, satellite intelligence maps supplied by us.
And here they are, they're like Israel, it's just India, Pakistan and Israel that are, that have nuclear weapons but are not members of the non-proliferation treaty, right?
Correct.
Here we are beating Iran over the head with it while we completely violate it.
Well, I'm not so thrilled with Iran joining that club, but still, I agree, agree, it's an element of hypocrisy.
Well, I should say, I have to leave you in a second because I'm thinking about where I have to get to.
Oh, I see, no problem.
Well, I'll let you go, but I hope I can have you back here because I wanted to ask you some things about Iran and some other stuff too.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your time today, Andrew.
You're welcome.
All right, everybody, that's Andrew Coburn.
He is the author of Rumsfeld, His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy and writes at counterpunch.org.