- The revelation that the founder of Pakistan's nuclear
weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had been providing the designs and
technology to produce nuclear fuel for nuclear weapons to Iran, North Korea
and Libya for the past 15 years highlights the traditional hypocrisy between
state ideology and state interests.
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- Khan, who had made millions of dollars selling information
to countries that are part of the Bush administration's "axis of evil,"
oversaw a network where nuclear hardware was secretly transported on charter
planes to destinations in Iran, North Korea and Libya. These three countries
have earned the scorn of Washington since each of them has worked counter
to U.S. interests in their respective regions.
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- Furthermore, evidence that some of the nuclear material
sent to North Korea appeared to have been flown on government cargo planes
raises questions as to how involved President Pervez Musharraf's government
in Islamabad was in the nuclear proliferation. Even more concerning, American
intelligence officers told the New York Times that Pakistani nuclear transfers
to Libya continued through last fall.
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- In order to shield itself from the blame, Islamabad has
placed various nuclear scientists under house arrest, claiming that it
has isolated the individuals who had been selling nuclear secrets abroad.
Yet the family members of those detained have been speaking up adamantly,
arguing that the government was completely complicit in the selling of
the secrets.
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- There have been no calls within the Bush administration
to deal forcefully with Khan, who is a national hero in a country that
the administration looks at as the key link in the "war on terrorism"
and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and the rest of Central and South Asia.
Since the plan to invade Afghanistan was drawn up, the Bush administration
utilized Pakistan's dictatorial regime in order to help support U.S. interests
in the region, giving in return recognition of Musharraf's contested rule.
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- The Bush administration's tepid response to Khan's actions
highlights how a state's national interests often overshadow its state
ideology. The fact that Dr. Khan was able to be a principal contributor
to nuclear proliferation and not receive a harsh response from the U.S.
government shows that the Bush administration wants to keep the controversy
about his actions to a minimum so as not to upset President Musharraf's
tenuous hold on power. Washington was so lax on its treatment of Khan that
the scientist received a full pardon from Musharraf.
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- If the administration were to harshly condemn Islamabad
and Khan for their nuclear proliferation activities, which would have been
a response more in line with the traditional Bush administration policy,
it would threaten to make Musharraf so unpopular at home that it could
create enough instability to remove him from power, an already ominous
thought considering the frequent, and fairly sophisticated, assassination
attempts on his life.
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- If the Bush administration were to lose its influence
in Pakistan, it would give up a vital foothold in U.S. involvement in Afghanistan
and Central and South Asia. Furthermore, with Pakistani society already
having predominately virulent attitudes toward the U.S., without Musharraf's
iron grip on Pakistan's domestic population there would probably be retaliation
against U.S. interests, likely in the form of terrorism.
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- These geostrategic concerns explain why the Bush administration
has seemingly diverted from its policy of hard-line treatment toward any
state that is involved in the production or proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction. If the administration were to treat each case the same,
in what the administration has often called "moral clarity,"
it would possibly prove disastrous to U.S. interests in the world. In order
to secure a country's national needs, it is often necessary for state leaders
to ignore their own stated ideology with the intention of protecting their
country's national interests.
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- http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=144&language_id=1
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