On Sunday 20 Jan 2008 10:32 pm, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > I always thought it was the Chinese who sold the nuke to PK!
Thanks for posting yet another whistleblowing article. The Chinese passed actual (tested) designs of bombs to Pakistan. But a lot of other technology related to refining and bomb-making was allowed to enter Pakistan under the deliberately averted gaze of the CIA. Winning the cold war was paramount, and getting China on the side of the US using Pakistan as pimp was more important than nuclear safety concerns. Let me not go so far as calling it racism - that is a loaded word. But it is possible that cold warriors subscribed to a mindset that perhaps presumed that the brown men of Pakistan would not know what to do with all that technology, or what they did could never ever be a threat. These people lived in the era of "balance of power" in which Pakistan would balance India out just like various other antagonistic entities would balance each other out. In 2005 I reviewed a book that spoke of US policy in Asia. The review is here http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/SRR/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=27 Even now the US sees itself as "holding the ring" i.e that various nations tend to pull the ring in one way or another, and the US holds the ring and stabilizes it. Many references now point to British collusion in the creation of Pakistan in order to have a client state to counter the Soviets. That baton was passed to the US along with the title "superpower ". India was seen by the US as a client state of the USSR and had to be balanced by Pakistan. Pakistan (with US aid) was efficient and modern. India was decrepit and falling apart. Pakistan and Pakistanis could do no harm. The Islamic brotherhood of Pakistan and the Western cold warriors were slapping each other on their backs and singing songs of unity and camaraderie. Soon after the 1998 nuclear tests in Chagai in Pakistan, there was a news report of a US U-2 over Pakistan having detected Plutonium in air samples. That meant only one thing - i.e that at least one readymade Chinese bomb had been tested. Pakistan had virtually NO Plutonium capability up until 1998. For me the happiest "fallout" of 9-11 was that it gradually led to Pakistani nukes being a threat to the US entities and other targets as well as opposed India alone. Nobody really gave a damn as long as it was felt that Pakistani nukes were "needed" and reserved for "Pakistan's neighbor and arch rival, predominantly Hindu India that has fought three wars with Pakistan". Just Google for the bit in inverted commas and check how many scholarly articles and major media links you get using that word combination. So much for India's desperate attempts to be seen as secular and pluralistic in the world. shiv
