WASHINGTON, Dec 1: The US military should work jointly with the Pakistan Army to protect the country’s nuclear weapons if the constitutional government in Islamabad is ever under siege, says the man who devised the Bush administration’s Iraq troop surge policy.
The proposal, first published in a joint op-ed piece by Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon in The New York Times, urges Washington not to watch from the sidelines if the Pakistan government begins to unravel.
Mr Kagan, however, denied handing over any ‘blueprint’ to the Bush administration to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, as a media report claimed he did. “There’s no blueprint and nothing has been handed over to the Bush administration,” Mr Kagan told Dawn.
He also denied suggesting that US and British troops be sent to Pakistan to secure the weapons. In fact, the proposal he co-authored with Mr O’Hanlon acknowledges that it’s “beyond the means of the United States and its allies” to use military means to stabilise Pakistan.
“Rule-of-thumb estimates suggest that a force of more than a million troops would be required for a country of this size,” the proposal warns. The authors also acknowledge that Pakistan will never allow the US to destroy its weapons.
“Somehow, American forces would have to team with Pakistanis to secure critical sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place,” they suggest.
Referring to the media story which says he suggested taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to New Mexico, Mr Kagan said what the proposal merely observes is that even pro-American Pakistanis would oppose such a move.
“More likely, we would have to settle for establishing a remote redoubt within Pakistan, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops,” the proposal said.
Explaining the proposal, Mr Kagan said that what they argued in their paper was, “We cannot just stand by and allow Pakistan to slip into an abyss.”
Mr Kagan said he and his co-author had discussed various possible scenarios, which included the possibility that constitutional forces within the government in Islamabad were besieged, in one way or the other, by the extremists.
“And if that’s to happen, the US should come to Islamabad’s assistance to help secure the nuclear weapons,” he said. “We are not proposing to take them away from Pakistan.”
Recent developments, however, indicate that “Pakistan will work through the current crisis” and none of the things he and his colleague discussed in the article may happen.
“We are not advocating anything against Pakistan but to make American cognizance of the fact that Pakistan is a very important country and we cannot leave it alone,” he said.
Mr Kagan said he did not know how real was the danger that extremists may actually acquire Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, but it would be incredibly dangerous to the world, should it happen.
“That’s why we are proposing that the government of Pakistan, the US government and other allies make a plan to deal with it,” he said, adding, “I think the likelihood of this actually happening is very low.”
Mr Kagan and his co-author also propose raising an international force to help the Pakistani armed forces if they are attacked by the extremists. The proposed force should not only include troops from the United States, but ideally also other Western powers and moderate Muslim nations.
