Author: Jim Hoagland
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: January 8, 2004
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63752-2004Jan7.html
As if to emphasize that new years
bring new hopes, Libya, Iran, North Korea and Pakistan have in recent weeks
altered their defiant or deceitful behavior on nuclear weapons. Pushing
these four atomic miscreants to clean up their acts should be a top American
priority in 2004.
It is too early to proclaim that
things are spinning into control on the nonproliferation front. But visible
progress has been made through international pressure that relies on both
multilateral diplomacy and the shadow of U.S. power abroad. It would be
a mistake to underestimate the force of either of those factors in what
has happened and in what is still to come.
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq seems
to have sobered up some states that had concluded they could, without risk,
secretly acquire nuclear weapons in defiance of international agreements.
Unilateralists will trumpet that undeniable development.
But the clandestine drive toward
nuclear weapons has also been slowed and shaped by global nonproliferation
accords, U.N. inspections, world opinion and the kind of neighborly pressure
that China has recently exerted on North Korea.
Imperfect as these outside influences
are, they are important in denying legitimacy and protection to a state
that covets a nuclear arsenal as an attribute of sovereignty or for other
purposes. These guardrails should be strengthened, not abandoned, as part
of a new balance in the efforts to halt the spread of nuclear and other
unconventional weapons.
Exposure is important. Key to the
recent progress has been a new official U.S. willingness to identify, publicize
and deal with Pakistan as the world's most determined proliferator of illegal
nuclear weapons technology and design. Pakistani help has been instrumental
to the ambitions of Libya and Iran to acquire such weapons and in North
Korea's development of them.
Washington has long known this but
has been reluctant to confront Islamabad. When I wrote in 1995 about the
evidence that U.S. intelligence had gathered of Pakistan's help to Iran,
a State Department spokesman denied that account. As recently as a few
months ago, Pakistani spokesmen were denouncing columns here spotlighting
the North Korean connection. The blanket denials have stopped, and U.S.
officials speaking on background are now spelling out details of Pakistan's
involvement in Iran, North Korea and Libya.
President Pervez Musharraf's regime
has reluctantly begun an "investigation" into whether Pakistani scientists
did what Musharraf has always denied happened. This "rogue scientist" version
ignores the official help that the nuclear transfers needed and received
from Pakistan's military and intelligence services. The Bush administration
must not buy into a new coverup from Islamabad out of a misplaced sense
of loyalty to Musharraf.
Pakistan continues to be the most
dangerous place on Earth because of its mix of nuclear weapons, unstable
politics, religious fanaticism and the involvement of senior military and
intelligence officials in terrorist networks, including al Qaeda and the
Taliban. Two recent assassination attempts against Musharraf underline
the fragility of his rule.
It is unclear whether Musharraf
is acting out of a sense of internal strength or weakness in moving to
account for Pakistan's terrible record on proliferation and to improve
relations with India by promising to stop terrorism in Kashmir, as he did
this week. If he pursues these efforts seriously, he will provoke the showdown
at home that he has long sought to avoid but that must come if Pakistan
is to cease its international criminality.
In this quartet of infamy only Libya
seems to have decided to come clean and make a fresh start without weapons
of mass destruction. North Korea and Iran, while holding out promises of
nuclear reprocessing freezes, leave the impression of buying time until
attention turns elsewhere and they can get on with developing nuclear arsenals.
Past interviews with Libya's erratic
ruler, Moammar Gaddafi, suggest to me that we are unlikely ever to know
fully why he decided to reveal at this moment that he was much closer to
a nuclear weapon than the world's intelligence and inspection agencies
realized. The colonel did not strike me as a linear thinker or talker.
British-U.S. diplomacy and Operation
Iraqi Freedom were no doubt factors in Gaddafi's announced decision to
defang himself through verifiable and intrusive inspections. I would guess
that his desire to pass on power to his son in the next few years -- and
the need to obtain international support for that succession -- also played
a role.
Wars change the strategic landscape.
It is then up to the politicians and diplomats to seize opportunities.
They have made a good start in Libya, and will have their hands full in
Pakistan in this brand new year.
jimhoagland@washpost.com
