Nuclear Weapons 250 - Dangers Of Pakistan Move To Tactical Nuclear Weapons
I have blogged about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and nuclear policies before. Pakistan has over a hundred nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them. They are in a tense relationship with their neighbor India which also has over a hundred nuclear warheads and multiple delivery systems.
Pakistan has a big stockpile of weapons grade uranium and is busy building more warheads. In the last ten years, many of the warheads constructed were low-yield tactical warheads. While Pakistan has tightly controlled their nuclear arsenal up to this point, they are now in the process of deploying tactical nuclear weapons to their border with India. They intend to use them if India invades with their much bigger army.
Pakistan is a hotbed of Islamic jihadists and major attacks have been carried out against defense installations, including bases where nuclear weapons were stored. In some cases, there is evidence that the attacks were carried out with help from inside the Pakistani defense establishment. The distribution of Pakistani tactical nuclear weapons to border bases increases the possibility that jihadists might be able to get their hand on one or more of these tactical weapons.
India has concluded that recent terrorist attacks from Pakistan have been condoned and facilitated by members of the Pakistani intelligence service. India is thought to have a "Cold Start" policy with respect to future terrorist attacks from across the border with Pakistan. If terrorists attack and then return across the border to Pakistan, India has plans to send the Indian army across the border in pursuit of the terrorists. Fear of this sort of attack is the reason that Pakistan is sending tactical nukes to the border bases. Pakistan feels that if they used tactical nukes on the battlefield inside Pakistan, the Indian invasion would be stopped but India would not respond with a full-scale nuclear retaliation as they would if Pakistan nuked Indian cities.
With Pakistani tactical nukes at border bases under the control of local commanders and in a "ready to go at any moment" state, in a chaotic conflict situation, a local commander might decide on his own to deploy tactical nuclear weapons against an Indian invasion with unforeseen consequences following.
If a terrorist group obtained a tactical nuclear weapon from a border base and detonated it inside India, it is likely the conflict would rapidly escalate into a full-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan. This is a fear that many other nations have when confronted with the political instability and jihadist activity inside Pakistan.
With the ongoing radicalization of the Pakistani army in the past few decades, there is a great danger of elements inside the army joining with jihadist to steal tactical nuclear weapons. Pakistan insists that it has excellent nuclear security but its secrecy with respect to the protection of its nuclear arsenal leaves the rest of the world wondering just how safe Pakistani nuclear weapons are. The U.S. military has contingency plans for entering Pakistan in case of the collapse of the government to secure Pakistani nukes. However, the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to the border with India will make any such mission much more difficult.
Pakistani National Command Authority emblem:
