[Page S10843] Mr. PRESSLER [Page S10844] The Restraint of Fury: US Non-Proliferation Policy and South Asia HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIPS US NON-PROLIFERATION POLICY [Page S10845] THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT [Page S10846] INTERPRETING THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT CONCLUSION [Page S10847] NOTES
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Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, in 1990 President Bush no longer could certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear weapon. As a consequence, U.S. assistance was cut off. Over the past year, the Clinton administration has attempted to waive current law to allow the shipment of at least 38 F-16's to Pakistan. The language in the Foreign Assistance Act which prevents the administration from sending the planes to Pakistan, as my colleagues know, is the `Pressler amendment.'
In 1985 when the Pressler amendment became law, I was gravely concerned about regional arms building. Those concerns remain today. I have opposed the President's desire to exempt the F-16's for Pakistan. When the Pressler amendment was triggered in 1990, U.S. assistance ended. I did not intend to allow exemptions then. I do not intend to allow exemptions now.
Recently, I wrote a chapter for a book titled `Future Imperiled.' In the chapter, I detail the history and current interpretation of the Pressler amendment. As a way of reiterating the intent of the amendment and to remind the administration of the amendment's importance in thwarting a South Asian arms race, I ask unanimous consent to place a copy of this chapter in the Record at this time.
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The Restraint of Fury: US Non-Proliferation Policy and South Asia
While the end of the Cold War brings with it a waning danger of super power nuclear confrontation, the world remains troubled and unstable. A new security concern has risen from the dust and shadows of the Cold War's rubble. Regional nuclear weapons proliferation is replacing the competition for global hegemony as the world's most pressing security threat. Indeed, mounting evidence suggests that regional nuclear proliferation has been a greater danger than super power weapons-building all along--a danger that has been tolerated, or even ignored, so long as it was creeping rather than leaping, and discreet rather than blatant. This threat is no longer creeping, and it certainly is no longer discreet.
Over the last several decades, the hostilities, suspicions, and border disputes in South Asia have created a complex amalgam of policies and perceptions. Conflicting interests in this region of the world have heightened the concern that rivalries between countries will spur nuclear proliferation in the developing countries of the world. According to Peter Herrly, a US Department of Defence official, `The growing spread of chemical and advanced weapons to Third World combat zones has undermined the restraints against escalation and could bring to a shattering end, a half-century of non-use of nuclear weapons. 1
1 Footnotes at end of article.
Traditional suspicions among South Asians have dampened hopes of establishing long-term regional security agreements. New worries and old rivalries fuel the desire for stronger, more highly modernized, nuclear-oriented militaries. This military blueprint led to a reality in which humanity's most lethal form of fury--the nuclear bomb--is precariously held in check. This fury must be restrained.
Of the numerous security considerations in South Asia, Pakistan's nuclear capability is a special concern. Anxiety over Islamabad's nuclear weapons program has sparked much controversy. Pakistan's aspirations for membership to the nuclear club has raised significant US foreign policy questions. The following narrative assesses Pakistan and India's desire for nuclear military status. Further, it details US reactions and initiatives to counter the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.
HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIPS
To understand America's pressing need to develop a specific non-proliferation policy regarding Pakistan better, one must closely examine Pakistan's relationship with India. That association is especially important to understanding both Pakistan's perceived need for building up its military as well as its actual ability to acquire nuclear weapons.
Indo-Pakistani relations have evolved into an intricate and tenuous configuration, heavily influenced by historical antagonisms. The history of conflict between these two nations, combined with each country's deep suspicions over the other's nuclear intentions, has promoted additional instability in an already unstable South Asia. In 1974, demonstrating its ability to produce highly modernized weaponry, India exploded a nuclear device. This `peaceful' demonstration sent shock-waves around the globe, heralding India's distinct nuclear technology and its more equivocal nuclear ambitions.
In an effort to counter India's aspiring nuclear programme, Pakistan retaliated in kind with its own modernization plans. Evidence suggests that Pakistan embarked on nuclear weapons research projects shortly after the initial Indian nuclear tests in 1974. 2 According to a Carnegie Task Force report on South Asian security, `Islambad's nuclear ambitions stem principally from its efforts to meet the threat from India's conventional military superiority and its nuclear potential, as well as to
counter more subtle forms of Indian dominance in regional affairs.' 3 More assertively, a once-classified State Department memorandum claims: `Pakistan's long-term goal is to establish a nuclear deterrent to aggression by India, which remains Pakistan's greatest security concern. 4
And so began a South Asian chain reaction of attempted nuclear bomb acquisition. India, fearing China, built a tomb. Pakistan, partially because it considered India's nuclear programme a threat to its own national security, developed its own nuclear programme. While both India and Pakistan may believe this tit for tat nuclear policy lowers the risk of conflict, should a hot conflict erupt, the stakes would be much higher with nuclear weapons figured into the calculation. Therefore, `The Indian high command must not go past a certain threshold that might provoke a nuclear exchange. They cannot be sure what Pakistan thinks the threshold is. One must go with impressions and guesses' 5
The mutual suspicion over the other's clandestine nuclear arsenal and the ever-present, still unresolved disputes over Kashmir have impeded Western attempts at persuading the two nations to shrink their expanding nuclear programmes. Added to frustrated US efforts, some Indian and Pakistani military strategists enthusiastically espouse their beliefs in the presumable benefits of nuclear weapons. `There are some senior military strategists in both countries who apparently believe that a nuclear war on the subcontinent would be winnable in both tactical and strategic terms. 6 As a result of this distorted yet discernible military perspective, India has maintained its nuclear threshold status.
India's nuclear drive can be traced to a deep-rooted desire for regional respect, command, and even economic self-sufficiency. To achieve this great, regional hegemonic status, India believes a nuclear weapons capability is essential. According to an Indian public opinion poll conducted in the early 1980s, `more than 70 per cent of the urban residents in 15 of India's leading cities wanted the country to acquire nuclear weapons capability regardless of what its neighbours were doing.' 7 The Indian populace seems to concur with what military strategists have believed all along--calculated ambiguity keeps the region on its collective toes! This policy, `has proven to be an extremely useful policy to keep both hawks and doves hopeful, contributes somewhat indirectly toward collective efforts of total nuclear disarmament, provides a face-saving device and can pay desired dividends in the national politics.'
India and Pakistan can choose to aggravate or to prevent the South Asian weapons competition. Unless India and Pakistan constrain their nuclear weapons research and development programmes, these technological programmes could create the political momentum within each country to build and test nuclear weapons. The main goal in the region should centre on verifiable commitments not to build nuclear weapons.
While India maintains that its nuclear objectives are peaceful, Pakistan remains suspicious. `Whether or not India in fact possesses a number of nuclear weapons at this time, it clearly has the capability to manufacture them quickly, and Pakistani strategists have to assume that Pakistan would confront a nuclear-armed adversary in any future conflict.' 8 Politically destabilizing events involving India and Pakistan constantly offer the potential for an explosion. Regional tensions and violent internal eruptions in India or Pakistan threaten to provide just the catalyst needed to trigger a nuclear reaction. For that reason, it is necessary to counteract such risks before they escalate beyond the region. This raises a substantial foreign policy question for the United States: How can American influence stop a nuclear arms race in South Asia?
US NON-PROLIFERATION POLICY
As one nation obtains the technology and the components necessary to construct atomic weapons, it is politically difficult for another country, that feels threatened by the first, to withstand temptations to strengthen its own nuclear programme. This competition substantially increases the possibility that disputes between the two nations could end in an atomic clash.
International pleas urging India and Pakistan to halt their nuclear programmes have met significant resistance. Attempts to persuade the two nations to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have been fruitless in recent years. `India considers the treaty discriminatory since it allows the nuclear-weapon States to keep their nuclear arsenals while denying nuclear weapons to other countries, and because the treaty imposes inspections of civil nuclear facilities on non-nuclear weapon States but not on nuclear-weapons States. India has also said that it will not sign the NPT unless the nuclear-weapons States disarm.' 9
Indian opposition to the NPT creates little reasonable incentive for the Pakistani government to support accession to the treaty. The Indian government appears willing to support only a nuclear pact that includes the world-wide elimination of all nuclear weapons. Pakistan has proposed several initiatives designed to eliminate atomic weapons in the region. The then Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, advanced an agreement to control nuclear weapons in South Asia in June 1991. This proposal, supported by the United States, would allow India and Pakistan to negotiate weapons reduction with mediation provided by China, the United States, and Russia. India rejected this offer and refused to sign the Sharif agreement, citing again its opposition to regional settlements. 10
The United States, in November 1991, urged India to reconsider its objections to signing a regional agreement with the Pakistani government. The Indian government, to date, has not accepted that request. While the two South Asian adversaries have signed an agreement not to attack each other's nuclear facilities--itself a positive move toward non-proliferation--a nuclear-free compromise has not been achieved in South Asia. Because of this continued inability to obtain a regional arms agreement, other US foreign policy action has been warranted.
While the United States has pressured India moderately to discontinue its nuclear programme, US policy has been aimed more heavily at Pakistan. The rationale for the country-specific policy is based on several factors. At the time a US policy response was being developed to address nuclear proliferation in South Asia, India's programme was already in place. Pakistan, however, had not yet acquired the technology. In addition, because of its smaller industrial base, Pakistan turned its attention to acquiring critical technology and components from abroad--sometimes in violation of US and other countries' export laws.
Pakistani violations of US domestic laws governing the export of sensitive materials and technology have been particularly vexing. In June 1984, US Customs agents arrested and charged three Pakistanis in Houston with violating US law by attempting to export krytons, extremely high-speed switches that can be used to detonate nuclear weapons. One of the suspects eventually was convicted and deported to Pakistan. In another case, Arshad Z. Pervez, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin, was arraigned in the United States in July 1987 on the charge that he attempted to bribe US Customs agents to grant licenses required for the
export of maraging steel, very hard steel which can be used in uranium enrichment centrifuges. Pervez was later convicted of conspiracy to export beryllium illegally and making false statements, but was acquitted on the grounds of entrapment of attempted bribery and of illegally seeking to export maraging steel.
Yet another factor in US policy toward Pakistan was American intelligence assessments during the late 1970s and early 1980s that indicated India was not actually building nuclear weapons. On the other hand, other intelligence did indicate that Pakistan was pursuing an aggressive nuclear weapons development programme. For these reasons, US policy-makers believed India was less vulnerable to US influence than Pakistan. The United States and other industrialized countries had more leverage to manipulate the Pakistani nuclear agenda.
United States policy-makers also believed Pakistan was susceptible to a `carrot and stick' approach in terms of US economic and military assistance because of the United States' role as a major provider of aid to Pakistan. India, on the other hand, was much more closely aligned with the former Soviet Union and received comparatively little assistance from the United States. The level of US assistance to India was insufficient to serve as a bargaining tool in obtaining US non-proliferation objectives in India.
Another basis for focusing US initiatives on Pakistan was US concern over potential Pakistani ties to Islamic fundamentalism. Anti-Western factions have taken hold in several Islamic countries in recent years, including Iran, Libya and Syria. While certainly not governed by religious fanatics, given its religious and cultural foundations, Pakistan was viewed more likely than India to cooperate with such governments. In this regard, US foreign policy was designed to slow the possible proliferation of nuclear weapons beyond south Asia to the Middle-East.
In 1976, Congress adopted Section 669 as an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. This provision of law was modified in 1977 by Senator John Glenn, and it is now known as the Symington-Glenn Amendment. That amendment was designed to prohibit US assistance to any country that acquires unsafeguarded uranium enrichment technology, unless the country places all of its nuclear facilities under full-scope safeguards; or unless the President certifies he has reliable assurances that
the country will neither acquire nuclear weapons nor help other nations to do so.
The Carter Administration in April 1979 invoked the Symington-Glenn Amendment after it received intelligence assessments confirming Pakistan was building a secret uranium enrichment facility. Pakistan is the only country ever to be designated as violating Section 669 and sanctioned under its terms. In late 1981, Congress enacted section 620E of the Foreign Assistance Act to allow the President, under certain conditions, to waive Section 669 sanctions. This move allowed the resumption of US assistance at a time when Pakistan ws being threatened by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
In 1984, faced with mounting evidence that Pakistan wsa intensively developing a nuclear weapons capability, Congress began consideration of legislative proposals to strengthen conditions on US assistance to Pakistan. In that year, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee considered an amendment offered by Senators Alan Cranston and John Glenn to cut off US assistance to Pakistan unless the President, on a yearly basis, was able to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device, was not developing such a device, and was not acquiring technology, material, or equipment for the purpose of either manufacturing or detonating a nuclear weapon. The Cranston-Glenn Amendment was defeated in the face of strong Administration opposition.
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THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT
In 1985, in an effort to curtail the fledgling nuclear programme in Pakistan, I offered a non-proliferation amendment to the US foreign aid authorization legislation. The provision, commonly known as the `Pressler Amendment', amended Section 620E of the Foreign Assistance Act to read as follows:
No assistance shall be furnished to Pakistan and no military equipment or technology shall be sold or transferred to Pakistan, pursuant to the authorities contained in this Act or any other Act, unless the President shall have certified in writing to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, during
the fiscal year in which assistance is to be furnished or military equipment or technology is to be sold or transferred, that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device and that the proposed United States assistance programme will reduce significantly the risk that Pakistan will possess a nuclear explosive device.
In 1985, the Reagan Administration welcomed the Pressler Amendment, insisting that Pakistan not develop a nuclear weapon. Because some members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee wished to cut off all US assistance to Pakistan in 1985, Congress, and indeed Pakistani leaders, viewed the amendment as a viable compromise--aid to Pakistan would continue, provided the President could certify that the country did not possess a nuclear explosive device.
In 1985, Pakistan faced 120,000 Soviet troops on its border, repeated cross-border raids from Afghanistan, and wanton acts of Soviet-inspired terrorism in the crowded bazaars of Peshawar and Islamabad. A draconian cut in US foreign assistance to Pakistan at that time would have undermined the security interests of both Pakistan and the United States. Nevertheless, I believed, as did the Reagan Administration, that it was important to send a strong but fair message to Pakistan. The Administration-supported Pressler Amendment compromise established a clear policy on US assistance to Pakistan. The standard merely required the President to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear weapon. If the President made the certification, generous levels of economic and military assistance would be available.
From the time the Pressler Amendment was adopted until the beginning of the US Government's 1991 fiscal year (1 October, 1990), the President was able to make the required certification and the US Congress supported annually the President's request for both security and economic assistance to Pakistan. Pakistani officials were well aware of the provisions of the Pressler Amendment. They were reminded of it time and again by senior US officials. It offered no surprises. So long as Pakistan did not cross the nuclear line, it would continue to receive US assistance. Until 1990, Pakistan was among the largest recipients of US foreign assistance. In 1990, however, President George Bush was not able to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear weapon. Consequently,
All economic and military assistance to Pakistan was cut off.
In early spring 1991, President Bush proposed to strike the Pressler Amendment. In a letter dated 12 April, 1991, Bush indicated that this action was consistent with his approach of removing country-specific provisions from the US Foreign Assistance Act--not because he disagreed with the substance of the law's provisions.
The President indicated he would continue to hold Pakistan to the same standard embodied in the Pressler Amendment even if the amendment were struck. His letter stated:
While the proposed elimination of the Pakistan-specific certification requirement is intended to uphold the general principle of Presidential authority, I will continue to insist on unambiguous specific steps by Pakistan in meeting non-proliferation standards, including those specifically reflected in the omitted language known as the Pressler Amendment. Satisfaction of the Pressler standard will remain the essential basis for exercising the national interest waiver that is in the Administration's proposal.
The Administration's attempt to strike all provisions it perceived to be Congressional micromanagement of foreign policy, failed. During the US House of Representatives' consideration of the Foreign Assistance Act, an amendment to repeal the Pressler Amendment was offered. This effort failed by the significant margin of 151-252 on 12 June, 1991.
Despite the aid ban, the bonds of friendship continue to exist between Pakistan and the United States. Pakistan supported the Afghan freedom fighters during the brutal Soviet invasion. During the recent Persian Gulf war, Pakistan's Government, led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, stood courageously with the United States--in spite of contrary pressures from powerful elements in the Pakistan military. Notwithstanding the mutual desire for continuation of the historic friendship between the United States and Pakistan, the US Congress should not retreat from its fair and principled non-proliferation objectives in that region of the world. Eliminating the Pressler Amendment in no way would further US non-proliferation policy. The current non-proliferation policy in South Asia should continue with regard to Pakistan. The solution is squarely in
the hands of Pakistani leaders. They can dismantle their nuclear weapons and, by the terms of the Pressler Amendment, Pakistan once again legally would be able to receive aid.
Why does Pakistan need a nuclear programmeme? Pakistani leaders have claimed that they must do whatever is necessary to protect themselves against potential aggression from India. Although India is known to have exploded a nuclear device in 1974, there is no evidence that India has sought to develop a nuclear arsenal. Is it really protection that Pakistan seeks, or is it something else? As already mentioned, anti-Western factions have taken hold in several Islamic countries in recent years. Such forces are on the verge of victory in Algeria and have enough power to threaten the stability of Pakistan's government. The direction the now independent Soviet Islamic republics will take is unclear. Should control of these nations shift to religious fanatics, these countries suddenly could find that they have much in common, both ideologically and geographically.
This could well be enough incentive for these countries to form, at the very least, some kind of loose-knit confederation. It is true that several of these countries historically have had serious disputes. However, religious fundamentalism may very well provide the tie that binds. Past differences, at least on one level, could be put aside. The result can be a new nuclear power in the world.
Since the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, it has been fashionable to talk about a `New World Order' in which the United States has new leadership responsibilities. As the world's sole remaining super power and faced with significant domestic problems exacerbated by excessive federal budget deficits, the United States must rethink its role in the world.
America no longer can conduct business as usual with any developing nation that continues to squander resources on the development of nuclear, chemical, or conventional weapons. For instance, in July 1992, I visited nine of the countries emerging from the former Soviet Union, as well as Latvia. Just prior to that trip, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee considered the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and the full Senate passed the `Freedom Support Act' to provide aid to the former Soviet republics. Under the terms of the Lisbon Protocol to the START Treaty, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine each
agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear States parties.
Such assurances would be equally valuable from the other nations emerging from the former Soviet Union, as well as other developing countries around the world. The terms of the Pressler Amendment should be applied to other developing nations receiving aid from the United States. The United States should use economic means to encourage countries to remain non-nuclear. It should be made clear that, should they decide to pursue a nuclear weapons programme, it will be without the help of the United States.
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INTERPRETING THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT
Andrew Hamilton once said: `Power may justly be compared to a great river; while kept within its bounds it is both beautiful and useful, but when it overflow its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed; it bears down all before it, and brings destruction and desolation wherever it comes.' The power of the Pakistani military machine, when kept within proper bounds, serves to protect its nation and deter potential adversaries. When, however, that military might becomes too powerful, perhaps through the illegal acquisition of U.S. technology and equipment transfers, that protection becomes the very threat it was designed to defend against.
In February 1992, reports emerged charging that U.S. manufacturers had continued private military sales to Pakistan despite the U.S. assistance embargo mandated by the Pressler Amendment. `The Bush Administration has quietly permitted the Pakistani armed forces to buy American-made arms from commercial firms for the last year and a half; according to classified documents and Administration officials. Among the military items licensed for sale to Pakistan are spare parts for American-made F-16 fighter planes, which form the nucleus of Islamabad's Air Force. Officials said the equipment is intended to help Pakistan maintain its current arsenal.' 11 Such sales can only be made pursuant to licenses issued by the U.S. Government under authorities contained in the Arms Export Control Act. But U.S. Government-licensed commercial sales of arms and military technology violate the U.S. non-proliferation policy embodied in the Pressler Amendment.
As a result, when the then Secretary of State, James Baker, appeared
before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 1992, I questioned him as to how the Administration could interpret the Pressler Amendment to allow the licensing of commercial sales of military parts and technology to Pakistan. In response, Secretary Baker stated:
`We have indeed cut off all foreign assistance to Pakistan because we were unable to certify within the parameters of [the Pressler] amendment. We have legislative history, and as a legal matter we do not believe it applies to commercial sales or exports controlled by the Department of Commerce, so we look at munitions and spare parts that are necessary to maintain the Pakistani military at current levels on a case-by-case basis.' 12
I then asked for a copy of the documents used by the Administration to reach this policy decision. I was provided an unsigned paper consisting of an outline of the reasons why a suspension of such licensing was not legally required by the Pressler Amendment:
It is not reasonable to interpret the language of the Pressler Amendment as prohibiting Executive branch licensing of arms exports pursuant to private sales.
Licensing of arms exports pursuant to private sales have consistently been treated as not covered by statutory language comparable to that used in the Pressler Amendment.
When Congress intends that provisions in foreign assistance legislation apply to private arms transactions, it consistently uses language making clear that intention.
The legislative history of the Pressler Amendment confirms that it was meant to apply to US Government sales and assistance, but not to licensing of arms exports pursuant to private sales. 13
In a series of letters between myself and Secretary Baker from March through July 1992, I explained that the paper failed to answer how the US State Department, as a matter of law, could permit continuation of the licensing of private sales of arms and military technology in light of a
straightforward statutory ban on the sale or transfer of any military equipment or technology to Pakistan.
Before being elected to Congress, I served as a lawyer at the US State Department. During my tenure there, departmental interpretations of legislation were based on memoranda of law written in a specific legal format, and signed by the lawyer responsible for providing the opinion--not unsigned papers created in response to a Senator's question after a policy decision was implemented.
On 30 July, 1992 the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the Administration's interpretation of the Pressler Amendment. During that hearing, the Committee explored the process by which the Executive Branch of the United States Federal Government exercises its responsibility of interpreting and enforcing laws passed by the Legislative Branch of Government. The hearing also considered what the proper level of consultation should be between the Executive and Legislative Branches, as the process of Interpreting and implementing federal law unfolds. Finally, the hearing considered U.S. policy toward Pakistan.
During the hearing, State Department officials were presented with a letter to Secretary Baker from myself and Senators John Glenn and Alan Cranston, both of whom played an active role in the development of the Pressler Amendment. Our letter expressed our opposition to the Administration's position. A reading of the Pressler Amendment that allows the Federal Government to license the private sales of arms and military technology is without foundation within the plain language of the statute or its legislative history.
While the policy conflict between the US Congress and the Administration has yet to be resolved, the debate certainly will continue. The global stakes are simply too high to allow otherwise. The issue involves much more than simply US-Pakistani relations. It tests the United States' resolve to develop a strong non-proliferation policy.
CONCLUSION
The expressive words of Russel Watson articulately describe the consequences of modern military conflict:
The history of war is an arms race. As men keep finding more ingenious ways to kill each other, they become caught in what the war-college gurus call an `offense-defense spiral.' The lance overcomes the shield, the bullet pierces the armor. Tanks crush men in their trenches, the missile destroys the bunker. 14
Peace in South Asia is fragile--its delicate state predicated upon the balancing actions of the industrialized world. For the sake of future South Asian stability and to deter nuclear confrontation in the region, the United States unquestionably should maintain its nuclear non-proliferation policy toward Pakistan.
US export decisions that have steadily provided Pakistan with the wherewithal to modernize its nuclear weapons capabilities have created military and political consequences for all of South Asia. As possibilities for regional conflict multiply, so too does the potential arms market. International nuclear arms traffic renews tensions recently calmed by the demise of United States-Soviet Union rivalry. The presence of nuclear devices in South Asia increases the possibility that these weapons may be used.
As the United States attempts to reorder priorities and alliances in the aftermath of the Cold War, non-proliferation matters must be high on the agenda. In the case of South Asia, the Pressler Amendment directly confronts the issue of nuclear weapons acquisitions in the developing world. The amendment sends a strong message that the United States will not reward a nation that covertly or overtly maintains a nuclear weapons programme.
The Pressler Amendment was not designed to punish Pakistan. Rather, it reflects the commitment of the US Congress to stopping nuclear weapons proliferation and ensuring that US taxpayers are not forced to subsidize, however indirectly, the building of nuclear weapons in another country. The highly specialized technology, skill, and intelligence necessary for the Pakistani military to modernize its nuclear arsenal depends upon crucial US assistance. This assistance, if renewed or illegally continued, would sent the wrong signals to Pakistan and other nations. Arms shipments and technology transfers to Pakistan will not encourage that country to enter into an arms control regime.
In the final analysis, the issues and debate surrounding the Pressler Amendment pertain to more than Pakistan or even South Asia. They
involve global concerns. Unless the United States acts decisively to stop nuclear proliferation among the world's developing nations, it will not be able to defend its non-proliferation policy. Other countries seeking membership in the nuclear club surely will reach their own conclusions from any failure on the part of America to act with resolve. Russell Watson's vision of the `offense-defense spiral' could take on a wholly new and tragic dimension. Ironically, this could occur in a world, which for the first time, is witnessing meaningful progress toward nuclear disarmament by the major powers.
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NOTES
1 Peter Herrly, `Middleweight Forces and the Army's Deployability Dilemma', in Parameters, September 1989, p. 47.
2 `Memorandum: The Pakistani Nuclear Program', The US State Department, 23 June 1983, p. 5.
3 Carnegie Task Force on Non-Proliferation and South Asian Security, Nuclear Weapons and South Asian Security, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 1.
4 `Memorandum: The Pakistani Nuclear Program', p. 1.
5 Steve Coll, `South Asia Retains Its Nuclear Option: India and Pakistan Pose Dual Risk as Potential Flashpoints', in The Washington Post, 30 September, 1991, p. A01.
6 Ibid.
7 Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, `Prospects for Nuclear Freeze in South Asia', in the Asian Defence Journal, December 1991, p. 23.
8 Leonard S. Spector, The Undeclared Bomb, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1988, p. 106.
9 US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service Issue Brief, `India and Nuclear Weapons', Washington, D.C., 1992, p. 4.
10 Steve Coll, `Pakistan Seeks Talks on Nuclear Weapons: Announcement Timed to Improve US Ties', in The Washington Post, 1 June, 1991, p. A20.
11 Murray Waas and Douglas Frantz, `Despite Ban, US Arms are Sold to Pakistan', in The Los Angeles Times, 6 March, 1992, p. 1.
12 Testimony by Secretary of State James Baker before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. Hearing on Foreign Policy Overview, 5 February, 1992.
13 State Department Paper, reprinted in Congressional Record, 19 March, 1992, p. S3950.
14 `Borders', in Newsweek, 31 December, 1990, p. 31.
END
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