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Pakistan: U.S. Offers Nuclear Safety Assistance to Pakistan Members of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit are prepared to move into Pakistan in the event of a crisis to safeguard the country’s nuclear arsenal, according to the Nov. 12 issue of Newsweek. The marines’ public task is to evacuate Americans if the current Pakistani government collapsed (John Barry, Newsweek, Nov. 12). Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is generally safe during times of relative stability, but “fallout” from Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in the conflict with Afghanistan could “severely test Pakistan’s security system,” said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security. “Instability in Pakistan could make its nuclear weapons and stocks of nuclear explosive material dangerously vulnerable to theft. If domestic instability leads to the downfall of the current Pakistani government, nuclear weapons and the means to make them could fall into the hands of a government hostile to the United States and its allies … Pakistan is believed to maintain tight control over its nuclear assets, and it may have instituted special steps to deal with the current situation. Nonetheless, the U.S. government and the international community should work to improve security over Pakistan’s nuclear assets, both in the short and long term,” Albright wrote in a recent report (ISIS release, Oct. 2001). Experts have discussed several forms of assistance to Pakistan since Sept. 11. Some Bush administration officials have considered providing permissive action links (PALs), devices in warheads that prevent arming the warhead without authorization from several people with secret codes (Mufson, Washington Post, Nov. 4). The United States should not provide PALs, however, according to Albright. The devices are integrally incorporated in the design of a nuclear weapon. He said the United States should avoid providing assistance that would improve nuclear weapons or grant U.S. access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon sites, which the Pakistanis would be unlikely to accept. The United States should also avoid providing assistance prohibited under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Albright said, adding that improving security at nuclear facilities would be permissible, providing assistance to improve the safety of a nuclear warhead itself could improve the country’s ability to deploy a warhead on a missile and would be prohibited under the treaty. “U.S. assistance should be based on the guiding principle that Pakistan will continue to store its nuclear weapons in a disassembled state,” Albright said. U.S. assistance could include physical protection, unclassified handbooks on nuclear weapons safety, theoretical exercises, surveillance equipment, material accounting equipment and devices to improve the security of a weapon against unauthorized use as long as it is not intrinsic to the design of the weapon, Albright said. Also, removing nuclear weapons would not solve the problem of Pakistani nuclear capability. “A new government would inherit the facilities to make nuclear weapons. Extensive bombing would thus be required at several nuclear sites … These types of attacks risk the release of a large amount of radiation if they are to ensure that the facility is not relatively quickly restored to operation,” Albright said, adding the United States should focus on preventing the opportunity for radical forces to gain control (ISIS release, Oct. 2001).
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