Prepared Testimony by
Ashley J. Tellis
Senior Associate
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
to the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on the Middle East and South
Asia
Subject:
U.S.-Pakistan Relations: Assassination, Instability and the Future of U.S. Policy
January 16, 2008
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and
Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for your invitation to testify on the
emerging problems facing the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and their consequences
for the United States.
As requested by the chairman in his letter of invitation, I will focus my
remarks on four issues: (i) the prospect for a free and fair election in
Pakistan and the consequences of its absence for stability; (ii) the
willingness of the new government to vigorously pursue counterterrorism
operations; (iii) the wisdom of reorienting U.S. assistance to Pakistan; and, (iv)
the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the context of the current crisis.
I respectfully request that my statement be entered into the record.
(I) Free and Fair Elections in Pakistan
The tragic assassination of
Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, capped a year of great institutional
turmoil in Pakistani politics. It also complicated President Musharraf’s hopes
for an undisturbed validation of his own reelection as president. And, it
undermined the administration’s efforts to broker a marriage of convenience
between Musharraf and Bhutto that would produce a governing dispensation that is
civilian in appearance; accept Musharraf’s continuance in office because of his
importance to U.S. interests;
and strengthen the elements of moderation in Pakistan. Bhutto’s violent death instantaneously
frustrated these three goals and inaugurated an interregnum of uncertainty.
The critical question now for Pakistan and for the United
States as well is whether the forthcoming elections to
the National Assembly in Pakistan
scheduled for February 18, 2008, will be free and fair. This is an issue of
some importance because, after eight years of military rule, the political
“market” in Pakistan
has been sufficiently distorted to the point where it is simply not evident
what the authentic preferences of the nation actually are. If nothing else,
therefore, a free and fair election in Pakistan is finally necessary so
that both Pakistanis and the outside world can assess the yearnings of the
electorate in regard to a variety of issues ranging from the desirable form of
governance to the commitment of the Pakistani people to combating extremism.
The quality of the forthcoming
elections is also important for another critical reason—determining President
Musharraf’s future—and it is this quandary that has the greatest bearing on
whether the February 2008 polls will in fact be a genuine exercise of
participatory democracy. Understanding the conundrum here is critical to
assessing whether the forthcoming elections can be free and fair as demanded by
the administration, the Congress of the United States and the international
community.
President Musharraf secured his reelection
as president for another five years on October 6, 2007, through the consent of
the outgoing National Assembly. This body happened to be dominated by his
supporters, which included the alliance of Islamist parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), as a result of the flawed political process leading up to the elections
of October 2002. Musharraf has promised, however, that this reelection would be
submitted for validation by the incoming National Assembly, which means that, at
the very least, he needs an outcome in the February elections that would not
cause him to renege on that commitment. Further, Musharraf cannot afford to
find himself in a situation where the new National Assembly begins to reconsider
or emend the constitutional distortions that he has ordained during his past
tenure in office, particularly insofar as these affect the prospect of his
continued rule. And, finally, he cannot countenance any elected government that
would attempt to remedy his dismissal of the former Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and his
associates or resuscitate an independent Supreme Court either through direct
legislative action or through the protection of writ petitions aimed expressly
at securing this end.
Musharraf’s survival as president for an extended term, accordingly,
depends on securing a favorable outcome in the National Assembly, where parties
that benefit from his unchallenged continuance in office win the election
decisively enough to prevent any future challenges to his rule emanating from
the legislature. In practice, this means
that Musharraf’s first preference would be that the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q)
dominate the new government because it is led by individuals who detest his
most fervent political antagonist—Nawaz Sharif
and the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N)—perhaps only slightly less than
he does. Given the PML-Q’s rather narrow electoral base, however, it is
unlikely that the party would secure an absolute majority without large-scale
rigging that would discredit the election entirely. Musharraf’s next most
favorable outcome, therefore, would be a coalition of friendly parties, similar
to the kind of arrangement seen in the outgoing National Assembly. In this
context, it is possible to imagine a post-electoral outcome that involves
Musharraf striking a bargain with Asif Zardari and the Pakistan People’s Party
(PPP), whereby the latter—if it does well at the polls—is enticed to join (or
lead) a coalition that is permitted a certain latitude in governance so long as
it does not direct or support any fundamental challenge to Musharraf’s
continuation in office.
The worst outcome from Musharraf’s perspective would be a strong electoral performance
by Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N: the bitterness between these two leaders would
inevitably produce a political collision that would undermine the president’s
interests and possibly threaten his hope for an unchallenged tenure. Somewhat
less challenging would be a coalition between principally Sharif’s PML-N and
Zardari’s PPP: although Sharif has certainly made overtures towards to the PPP
suggesting such an arrangement, in part to benefit from the sympathy vote that
many expect will aid the latter in the forthcoming polls, it is not clear today
whether such a coalition is viable and who its other constituents might be. Musharraf’s
relations with Sharif at any rate are so poisonous that he is likely to respond
to the threat of any PML-N presence in the government by attempting to isolate the
party politically.
This discussion about electoral outcomes is pertinent only because it
highlights a central point about the forthcoming election: President Musharraf
needs to be assured of a favorable
electoral outcome a priori, if he is to avoid a raft of political challenges to
his desire to stay in office. Or else he will be forced to engineer an outcome
after the election results are tallied in order to produce a ruling coalition
that will not defy his continued presence as president. It is most likely that
he will settle for the latter course only if his efforts prior to the election
do not succeed in producing a victory for his preferred partners who are both
comfortable with his continuation in office and undisturbed by any of the past
mutilations inflicted on the country’s constitution and its mode of governance.
Given these realities, it is unlikely that the forthcoming elections in Pakistan will
be truly “free and fair,” that is, remain an adequately neutral process which
permits the electorate to convey its political preferences effectively. There
are two kinds of impediments to such a free and fair election. The first and
most obvious kind of obstacle relates to violations of “process”: these include
the ever-present threat of manipulation of the electoral rolls, intimidation of
voters, especially in the rural areas, and the dangers of rigging, usually
effectuated by “adding” the votes required to secure the desirable results
before the tallying centers are permitted to announce the official
results. While such “process” violations
are commonplace in Pakistani elections and can be mitigated somewhat by the
presence of election monitors, the major hazards this time around arise from
violations of “structure,” that is, from the deliberate maintenance of an
irregular playing field designed to illegitimately advantage certain favored
parties in the election. Examples of such structural violations include the Musharraf
government’s refusal to suspend the nazims (mayors) who orchestrate the local
misdeeds required to produce the desired outcomes at the polls; the failure to
fill the slots allocated to the North West Frontier Province and the Sindh on
the Election Commission; the regime’s refusal to allow exit polling as a means
of mitigating, however partially, the threat of rigging; the continued
restrictions on the media; the blatant use of official and state machinery in
support of certain political favorites; and most problematic of all, the
manifest partiality of the president and the provincial governors along with
the caretaker and local governments. Not surprisingly, then, one
watchdog group of eminent Pakistanis, the Citizens Group on Electoral Process (CGEP), has assessed the pre-poll
electoral process in Pakistan to be highly unfair, giving it a score of only 26
on a scale of 100 in respect to the overall fairness of the polling environment
in a period spanning 12 months.
Despite these efforts, however,
it is not clear whether Musharraf’s preferred partners will be able to win the
election. If this is the case, and if Musharraf is unable to cobble together a
coalition that would acquiesce to his continuation in office, the stage would
be set for a serious constitutional crisis in Pakistan. Given the failure of the political
“market” in Pakistan referred to earlier, it is possible—perhaps even
likely—that any election result, even if fair, will be challenged vociferously
by the losers. And the lack of reasonable prior information about the
preferences of Pakistan’s electorate makes it difficult to judge whether such
complaints are in fact justified or whether they simply understandable but
nonetheless illegitimate protests provoked by political defeat. In any event,
if such dissatisfaction results in violence that leads to a breakdown in law
and order requiring the Pakistan Army to be deployed for policing operations, this
diversion to internal security duties would not only distract from the counterterrorism
operations currently underway in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)
but also would strain the comity currently existing between President Musharraf
and the Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Kiyani. Depending on how such a
crisis unfolds, a major meltdown in domestic order that results in significant
fatalities as a result of military action could be one important driver (among
others) that compels the leadership of the Pakistan Army to force Musharraf’s
exit as president. The potential for civil unrest and instability emerging from
a flawed election in Pakistan,
therefore, ought to remain the most problematic contingency from the viewpoint
of the Bush administration.
Attempting to avert just this
prospect and to further the cause of a genuinely free election in Pakistan, many
critics of the administration have argued in Joshua Kurlantzick’s words, that “the U[nited] S[tates] needs to abandon Musharraf today.”
While that sentiment is understandable, the prescription is premature. It is
also among the more risky responses that could be adopted by the United States
right now. The Bush administration almost certainly will reject it—until it is
confronted with no other choice. There is no need, moreover, to embark on such
a drastic course of action at the present moment. After all, it is possible
that the forthcoming election could produce a result—either through pre- or post-election
negotiations between Musharraf and the political parties—that is compatible
with his desire to remain in office. What is, therefore, important from the
viewpoint of U.S.
interests is that no premature decision with respect to supporting or abandoning
Musharraf be made right away. Rather, U.S. policymakers and the Congress
ought to focus on prevailing upon Musharraf to oversee a fair election that
reflects certain standards of legitimacy by remedying the structural and
process irregularities that currently threaten to vitiate the electoral process
and thereby distort the desire of the Pakistani people to express themselves
clearly. If this can be achieved, it would be a considerable accomplishment
that would help to provide the important missing information about Pakistan’s political preferences, clarify
Musharraf’s own future options and, by implication, delineate the reasonable
alternatives facing the United
States.
If this
cannot be achieved at the end of the day, the administration will be confronted
with difficult choices. Irrespective of how it is inclined to respond to such a
contingency, three considerations ought to be borne in mind.
First,
the Pakistani people today are tired of both President Musharraf and continued
military rule and, given the political crisis that has been underway in
Pakistan almost uninterruptedly since March 2007, are unlikely to give
Musharraf the benefit of the doubt if the February election is marked by gross
irregularities.
Second,
the administration would be unwise to put itself in a position of diametric
opposition to the will of the Pakistani people, whose inclinations will become
more and more evident through both the character of the electoral process
and—if fair—its result. In this context, the administration ought to avoid
pretending to be neutral as structural violations of the electoral process by
Musharraf continue merely because that might help to avoid an unfavorable electoral
outcome that either increases domestic instability in Pakistan or compels the
United States to make some hard choices. Such an approach, however appealing it
may appear in the short term, will only exacerbate the problems in Pakistan, not
eliminate them. The administration also ought to focus less on playing midwife
in delivering certain political outcomes in the forthcoming election and more
on assuring a responsive, credible, and legitimate electoral process.
Third, the ongoing political transition in Pakistan—including the growing
national clamor for a return to democracy centered on an abiding rule of law—can
no longer remain isolated from the larger war on terrorism. Although the
legitimacy of Musharraf’s rule and the character of Pakistan’s
apex governing arrangements were initially not central to either U.S. counterterrorism interests or Islamabad’s counterterrorism performance, both these
variables have now become important to Pakistan’s ability to win the
struggle against Islamist extremism. A continuing constriction of democracy could,
if it leads to social disorder, distract the Pakistan Army even as it widens
the opportunity for the more radical elements in Pakistani society to dominate
their nation’s political space to the long-term detriment of both Pakistan and the United states.
(II) Pursuing Counterterrorism Operations
Even if a reasonably fair election were to be completed and a legitimate
civilian authority arrives in office, it would be too much to expect that
Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations would be dramatically transformed either
in motivation or effectiveness. Appreciating this fact requires understanding
the nature of the terrorist groups within Pakistan
and the character of Islamabad’s
counterterrorism strategy vis-à-vis these groups.
As things stand today, it is possible to identify five distinct extremist
groups that ought to be the legitimate target of Pakistani law enforcement and
military operations:
(i)
Sectarian
groups, such as the Sunni
Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Shia Tehrik-e-Jafria, which are engaged in violence within Pakistan;
(ii)
Anti-Indian
terrorist groups that operate with Pakistani military and ISID support, such as
the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and the Harkat ul-Mujahideen (HuM);
(iii)
The
Pakistani “Taliban” groups, consisting of the extremist outfits in the FATA, led
by individuals such as Baitullah
Mahsud, the chieftain of the Mahsud tribe in South Waziristan, Maulana Faqir
Muhammad and Maulana Qazi Fazlullah of the Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammad,
and Mangal Bagh Afridi of the Lashkar-e-Islami in the Khyber Agency;
(iv)
The
original Taliban movement and especially its Kandahari leadership centered
around Mullah Mohammad Omar and believed to be now resident in Quetta; and,
finally,
(v)
al-Qaeda
and its affiliates, meaning the non-South Asian terrorists currently ensconced
in the FATA region of the North West Frontier Province
in Pakistan.
Since
September 2001, President Musharraf has pursued a highly differentiated counterterrorism
policy that has involved treating each of these targets differently. He
systematically suppressed mainly those domestic terrorist groups like the Sunni
Sipah-e-Sahaba and the
Shia Tehrik-e-Jafria that had engaged in bloody internal sectarian violence
but, more importantly, had subverted critical state objectives. By contrast, he
largely ignored the terrorist outfits operating against India in Kashmir and elsewhere: although he has
controlled their infiltration
into Kashmir in recent years, this restraint has not extended to either abandoning
or eliminating them in the manner witnessed, for example, in the case of the
more virulent anti-national sectarian entities operating within Pakistan. Fearful
of Washington’s
disfavor, Musharraf has attacked al-Qaeda resolutely, if not always effectively.
Although the Pakistani Taliban did not exist as realistic threats in 2001, Musharraf
has also combated them vigorously and as best he can, though in all instances where active
counterterrorism operations are underway, Pakistani military effectiveness remains
hobbled by real limitations in capacity. Musharraf has approached the original
Taliban in a manner more akin to the Kashmiri terrorists and has avoided
targeting them comprehensively; he has especially overlooked their leadership
now resident in and around Quetta.
A summary assessment of Musharraf’s counterterrorism operations against
extremist groups, therefore, must conclude that they are at the very least “segmented”
and that this discordance can be accounted principally by how important the
exempted groups are to Pakistan’s
national interests. Because the original Taliban and especially its Kandahari
leadership is critical to the attainment of Islamabad’s objectives vis-à-vis
Afghanistan, just as the Kashmiri terrorist groups are vis-à-vis India, the
Pakistani state has refrained from attacking them in any significant or
decisive way. Although
this discriminative approach to fighting terrorism was shaped and implemented
by General Musharraf in his dual capacity as president and previously chief of
army staff, it would be erroneous to conclude, however, that this prevailing
strategy is owed simply to the whim of one man. This is particularly relevant
today when Musharraf’s hold on power has become progressively weaker and the
future of his political status and effectiveness increasingly clouded. Rather,
Musharraf’s decisions in regard to counterterrorism strategy since 2001,
although publicly perceived as personal dicta, invariably reflected the
consensus among the corps commanders of the Pakistan Army and, hence, represent
the preferences of Pakistan’s military-dominated state.
In other words, even if Musharraf were to suddenly exit the
Pakistani political scene at some point, Islamabad’s
currently discordant counterterrorism strategy would still survive so long as
the men on horseback continue to be the principal guardians of national
security policymaking in Islamabad.
Because it is unreasonable to expect that the uniformed military will give up
its privileges in this regard anytime soon—even if a civilian regime were to
return to the helm in the future—the internally segmented counterterrorism
policy currently pursued by Pakistan will likely persist for some time to come.
Even if it could be imagined that a civilian dispensation could
wrest some control of Pakistan’s
national security policy from the military, it is not at all certain that the
current strategic direction would change dramatically. A civilian regime would
probably have greater incentives to combat all sectarian terrorist groups more
evenhandedly, but that too is uncertain. Whether they would do better in
regards to anti-Indian terrorist groups is also unclear: after all, both the
principal Pakistani civilian political parties historically permitted their
military and intelligence services to aid, abet, and arm the terrorist groups
operating in Kashmir and elsewhere in India, sometimes because they were simply
powerless to prevent it but at other times with their full knowledge and
consent. Both the principal civilian political alternatives in Pakistan would
likely continue to prosecute the current antiterrorism operations against both al-Qaeda
and the Pakistani Taliban because there is a consensus among the country’s
centrist political elites that these groups remain grave threats to both their
country and the writ of their state. It is not obvious, however, that they
either could or would extend this campaign to include the original Taliban and
especially their fugitive leadership.
This fact, however, only underscores the continuity that is likely
to persist in Pakistan’s
approach to counterterrorism even if a civilian government were to ascend to
power in Islamabad.
Although there are likely to be differences in style, nuance, and emphasis, the
weaknesses of Pakistan’s moderate political parties, Islamabad’s enduring
interests vis-à-vis Afghanistan and India, and the likely inability of any
civilian government to exercise comprehensive control over the Pakistani
military and intelligence services all combine to suggest that dramatic changes
in attitude and performance toward the Taliban and the terrorist groups
operating on Indian soil may not be forthcoming. And, although sectarian groups
within Pakistan as well as liberal ideals in Pakistani politics may be pursued
more urgently and hopefully just as resolutely as the war against al-Qaeda, the
net deviation from Musharraf’s currently segmented antiterrorism policies may
be either too subtle or too insignificant to really matter.
(III) Reorienting U.S.
Assistance to Pakistan
The issue of reorienting U.S.
assistance to Pakistan as a
means of shaping Pakistan’s
political evolution is a tricky one and fraught with uncertainty and risk.
As Craig
Cohen and Derek Chollet have pointed out, the majority of the $10 billion
transferred to Islamabad since 2001 has gone towards military assistance: fully
57 percent, or $5.64 billion, has gone toward Coalition Support Funds (CSF);
roughly 18 percent, or $1.8 billion, has been obligated towards security
assistance; about 16 percent, or $1.62 billion, has been absorbed by economic
and budget support in the form of direct cash transfers; and only the residual
amount, some 9 percent, or $.9 billion, has been allocated towards development
and humanitarian assistance. This assistance
pattern suggests quite emphatically, as Cohen and Chollet have phrased it, that
American aid to Pakistan
since the September 11, 2001, attacks “is not money intended to transform the
nature of the Pakistani state or society or to strengthen Pakistan’s
internal stability. In effect, it is politically determined assistance, a
“thank you” to Musharraf’s regime for the critical role Pakistan has played in Operation
Enduring Freedom.”
That such a conclusion should be drawn is not surprising because the Bush
administration unfortunately has ended up emphasizing counterterrorism
objectives in Pakistan
to the neglect of promoting democracy, renewing Pakistani society, and
refurbishing its economic foundations so as to permit stability and
development.
What should Congress do at this juncture then? First,
since counterterrorism operations will continue to be important to American
security for the foreseeable future, cutting back on CSF will be difficult, if
not impossible. Because these funds have been very shoddily dispersed since
2001, however, reforming the disbursal system—by amending the authorizing
legislation if necessary—is critical. The current system of simply cutting checks for whatever bills are
presented monthly by Islamabad as the costs borne for counterterrorism support
engenders institutional corruption in the Pakistani military, destroys the
integrity of the U.S. assistance program, and is unfair to the U.S. taxpayer.
Because money is ultimately fungible, and because it is very likely that Islamabad charges Washington
for far more than it actually spends on counterterrorism operations, the
current CSF allocation ends up becoming a straightforward subsidy for Pakistani
purchases of expensive weapon systems whose principal value derives primarily
from their utility against India.
An alternative modality of disbursing coalition support funds to Pakistan, where
reimbursements are tied either to specific tasks and linked to the performance
of specific objectives or allocated for specific purposes, is long overdue.
Such reform would, not only better align U.S. financial burdens with the true
services rendered by Pakistan but also ensure that U.S. military assistance
would actually be used for counterterrorism efforts rather than diverted toward
other programs, while simultaneously serving as a subtle reminder to Islamabad
that U.S. generosity cannot be taken for granted in the face of continuing
prevarication.
Second, many of the components of the recently obligated $750
million U.S. assistance
program to the FATA are eminently sensible and, if properly implemented, could
help considerably in advancing the common U.S. and Pakistani goal of local
stability. This includes the effort to improve Frontier Corps training; expand
access to education, health, and community services; increase the investments
in infrastructure; and strengthen local public diplomacy, counter-narcotics,
and border control management. Several elements, however, remain of concern. To
begin with, Pakistan’s
financial contribution to the FATA improvement program is asymmetrically
minuscule in comparison to that of the United
States, raising questions about Islamabad’s stakes in, and ownership of, such
an ambitious effort. Further, the complicated and time-consuming nature of this
project, the uncertainty about its effective implementation, and the acute
physical risks to what will inevitably be “high demand, low density” investments
spark concerns about the ultimate success of the program. Finally, Washington’s failure to condition
the availability of these new funds on Islamabad’s implementation of political
reforms in the tribal regions embodies a great lost opportunity: Requiring
Islamabad to begin the process of revising the Frontier Crimes Regulation, eliminating
the political agent as part of the larger process of integrating the FATA into
Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province under the full jurisdiction of
the provincial and national legislatures and the judicial system, and withdrawing
the restrictions on political parties operating in the FATA with an eye to
introducing conventional political institutions, would have provided the
critical complementarities required to ensure that the current U.S. investments
in the FATA would finally pay off in terms of local stability.
Third, Congress ought to revisit the larger composition of
U.S. assistance to Pakistan,
specifically the mix between military and developmental assistance which
hitherto has been lopsidedly tilted towards the former. Given that Pakistan has
also now passed its most serious moment of economic crisis, the United States
should cut back on economic support funds, cash transfers, and other forms of
budgetary support because these subsidies function as the equivalent of the
“resource curse”—unearned “rents” that prevent Islamabad from having to pursue
sound economic policies, exculpate it from responsibility for its decisions,
and inexcusably liberate it from the constraints of opportunity costs, not to
mention helping to destroy whatever notions of democratic responsiveness may
still survive within the polity. While the level and desirability of economic
support funds to Pakistan should,
therefore, be reviewed by Congress sooner rather than later, Congress also
ought to refrain from blocking the transfer of high-end weapons that Pakistan has
already purchased. While there is a compelling case to be made that the
administration ought to be more restrained in its willingness to transfer
certain high-leverage weapons such as advanced air-to-air missiles and airborne
warning and control systems to Islamabad for reasons related to both regional
stability and technological security, Congress should not today interrupt the
transfer of certain high-profile systems, such as F-16 aircraft, already
committed to Pakistan.
The reasons for eschewing such action are many: first, to
avoid further abrading Pakistani sentiments in regard to an aircraft that
enjoys a convoluted symbolism in the recent history of U.S.-Pakistan relations;
second, to avert in crisis in relations with the Pakistani military and
especially with the new Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Kiyani, who is by
all accounts a professional soldier sympathetic to advancing U.S.
counterterrorism objectives; third, to refrain from reinforcing the impression in
Pakistan of the United States as an inconstant and self-serving ally; and,
lastly and perhaps most importantly, to move the bilateral relationship away from a “transactional approach”
centered on “specific reciprocity,” where Islamabad performs certain desirable
actions as a response to some tit-for-tat stimulus, to something that
resembles a “relational equilibrium”
based on “diffuse reciprocity,” where Islamabad pursues the right policies
because the expectation of a steady and lasting partnership with Washington
propels it to act with rectitude, confident that its good conduct would lead to a wider institutionalization
of trust that would pay for itself over time.
(IV) The Security of Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal
Although the
security of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal remains
uppermost in the public mind during any crisis in Pakistan,
it is my judgment that Pakistan’s
strategic assets—to include its nuclear devices, its delivery systems, and its
stockpile of fissile materials—are fundamentally safe today. Compared to the
situation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was
still relatively vulnerable to a variety of external and internal threats, the
security of these assets has improved dramatically as a result of the
protective measures put in place since the late 1990s. The Director General of Pakistan’s
Strategic Plans Division (SPD), Lieutenant General (retd.) Khalid Kidwai
deserves singular credit for remedying the security vulnerabilities that
traditionally plagued the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. These remedies, focused on
insulating the strategic reserves against both external and internal dangers, involve
a combination of solutions ranging from tightened physical security at
strategic installations, to large investments in opacity and deception and
denial, to incorporation of technical controls on the nuclear weapons
themselves, to the institutionalization of organizational solutions aimed at
preventing insider threats. As a result of these cumulative improvements, I
believe that Pakistan’s
nuclear arsenal today is impervious to virtually all threats that might be
imagined as materializing in peacetime.
The following
exceptions apply to this general conclusion. The most potent threat to the
security of Pakistan’s
nuclear estate currently arises primarily from contingencies involving a
fissure in the Pakistani military and a breakdown in the system of authority
and command. I do not believe this to be a realistic threat in present
circumstances and even if relations between President Musharraf and the Chief
of Army Staff, General Kiyani, were to become estranged to the point of rupture,
the threat of a breakdown in the command system of the Pakistani military would
be minimal, given that Musharraf no longer enjoys any line-level control over
his nation’s armed forces. Even if some Islamist parties were to come to power
through the ballot in Pakistan,
they would enjoy no operational control over Pakistan’s nuclear assets. Unless
one posits, therefore, a truly extreme scenario where the chief of army staff
himself turns out to be secretly a political extremist, the security of Islamabad’s nuclear
capabilities ought not to become a matter of more than prudential concern. The
real threats to the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal are likely to arise
mostly over the longer term: if the rising tide of Islamization in Pakistani
society seeps into its armed forces or into its scientific establishments—as
many fear it already has, especially in the lower ranks—and the SPD’s internal security mechanisms fail to detect the
threat either because they are themselves compromised or because of oversight errors
and deficiencies, the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and materials may
once again be at risk. Obviously, this is a contingency that the current
military leadership in Pakistan
is especially sensitive to, but it remains a good reason for the United States
to stay engaged with the Pakistani military to help mitigate this threat should
it arise.
To end this
discussion, the relative high level of security that currently characterizes
the Pakistani nuclear arsenal implies that the administration ought to make its
decisions about supporting Musharraf without reference to any fictitious fears
about the dangers his exit may pose to the protection of the arsenal. Whatever
the reasons for buttressing or abandoning Musharraf may be, the impressive
improvement in the security of Pakistan’s
nuclear assets during the last decade or so implies that concerns about a
compromise of these capabilities should be among the factors least relevant to
that decision.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your attention and your
consideration.