Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass

The Bush administration’s pragmatic policy toward Pakistan suggests its foreign policy is less ideological than imperial.

By Lakshmi Chaudhry

Why wait?” asked William Kristol in a July 24 Weekly Standard op-ed calling for a preemptive military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later.” By August, the usual array of neoconservative pundits were chanting the “Why wait?” mantra, as their supporters within the administration, most notably Donald Rumsfeld, issued dire warnings against “appeasement.”

Yet in the midst of saber-rattling, the Bush administration was quietly doing its own share of appeasing—in the literal, if not historical, sense. In late July, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report revealing that Pakistan was building a heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. The response from Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, was surprisingly mild: ”The reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported.”