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Pakistan-North Korea: A rational
connection
By Ehsan Ahrari
The news that Pakistan has supplied North Korea
its highly coveted nuclear know-how created new doubts
in Washington about its assessment of Pakistan as a
responsible nuclear power. The modalities of the United
States response will not be known in the immediate
future, but one wonders about the rationality of such a
move on the part of a country whose safety of nuclear
weapons has remained a source of major concern in the
international arena.
Who has made the decision
in Pakistan to cooperate with North Korea? What is the
significance of this cooperation in the context of the
current "balance of terror" (a phrase that denotes a
delicate and arguable balance of power based on the
terror associated with the awesome consequences related
to the potential use of nuclear weapons) in South Asia?
Finally, how would it affect the dynamics of the
US-Pakistan friendship that has been revived since
October 2001?
Undoubtedly, the inner sanctum of
Pakistani decision-making knows only too well that US
spy satellites have been focused on North Korea so
intently for the past two or more years that no movement
of military aircraft in and out of that country will go
unnoticed. In addition, there are too many
super-sensitive sensors that Washington has in its
repertoire to get credible readings on what goes in and
out of North Korea. Then who decided to proceed with
supplying such a sensitive technology to North Korea? A
good educated guess is that this was the decision made
at the Pakistani National Security Council level in
which President General Pervez Musharraf, major military
brass and the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI)
participated. So, there is no room for anyone in
Pakistan to deny culpability. But why? For an answer,
one has to examine the current balance of terror in
South Asia.
This balance clearly favors India in
the sense that its economy is growing at an average of
approximately 5 percent annually. That means that
India's capabilities to bankroll its ambitious military
modernization will remain unhampered for the next five
years (conservatively speaking), or even longer. In
addition, India's indigenous scientific base is becoming
increasingly sophisticated with the passage of time, so
much so that it is emerging as a world-class center of
software technology. The recent visit to India by
American Microsoft guru Bill Gates was a testament to
that reality. In an era when warfare is in the process
of becoming increasingly high-tech, the preceding
developments promise to facilitate India's emergence as
a world-class military.
Pakistan is fully
cognizant of these developments. Perhaps because of such
awareness, Islamabad has had to focus on sustaining
whatever technological advantages it can. This is where
the role of North Korea becomes highly crucial for
Pakistan. In an era when the US-sponsored
nonproliferation regimes - such as the missile transfer
control regime, the Zangger Committee (of 1971) and the
Nuclear Suppliers Group, which reviews and amends the
list of items subject to export control - have
foreclosed all legitimate avenues of transfer of missile
and nuclear technology for Pakistan, its reliance on
China and North Korea becomes even more crucial than
ever.
Of the two, China has to lay low because
it is undergoing a process of leadership transition
whose outcome might not become clear for at least
another year, if not longer. In the interim, Beijing is
not interested in creating frictions with the US by
becoming a highly visible conduit for the transfer of
nuclear technology. Besides, the post-Mao Chinese
leadership is palpably ambivalent about the prospects of
a nuclear North Korea. The South Koreans have only been
pressured by the US about not pursuing the nuclear
option. However, if South and North Korea were to become
one country - as a result of implosion of the North -
then the latter's nuclear weapons would likely become
Korean nuclear weapons. That sounds like a wild
proposition. But, given the fact that the Stalinist
North Korea is an economic basket case, its potential
implosion cannot be ruled out. Thus, one can understand
the Chinese ambivalence about it.
Pakistan has
no ambivalence toward the North Korean nuclear option.
Apparently, Pakistan does not feel that, despite its
resuscitated friendship with the US, it should allow the
latter's self-interested concerns over for nuclear
nonproliferation to veto Pakistan's own primacy security
concern. And exchange of missile technology for nuclear
technology appears to be a reasonable quid pro quo.
From the Pakistani perspective, its friendship
with the US has always been one-sided, and was driven
primarily on the basis of American security concerns at
a given time. During the Cold War years, the US came
armed with millions of dollars and shiploads of arms to
Pakistan to use it as a conduit to bring about the
ouster of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. However,
once that objective was accomplished in 1989, the US
departed the region without paying any heed to the
consequences of such a major regional conflict for
Pakistan's security.
Similarly, in the aftermath
of September 11, when it wanted to conduct a military
operation in Afghanistan against the Taliban-al-Qaeda
nexus, the US decided to revive its friendship with
Pakistan, and only for the sake of using Pakistan once
again to fulfill its security interests. From the
Pakistani viewpoint, there is virtually no guarantee
that the US will be there to defend Pakistan's vital
security interests that stem from the continued
militarization of India in conventional and nuclear
realms. Thus, Pakistan must unequivocally pursue its
security interests from whatever sources that are still
available. And at the present time, North Korea remains
the only such source, given the fact that the future
modalities of China's foreign policy toward Pakistan are
in a state of flux because of the leadership transition.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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policies.)
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