Nuclear Pakistan : Strategic Dimension

Nuclear Pakistan elucidates the role of the media in the process of securitisation and the construction of identities. It examines the linkages between security perceptions and the mass media. Pakistan is one of nine states to possess nuclear weapons, and the only Muslim majority country to do so. Pakistan began development of nuclear weapons in January 1972 under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who delegated the program to the chairman of PAEC Munir Ahmad Khan with a commitment to have the bomb ready by the end of 1976. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons development was in response to neighboring India’s development of its nuclear programme. Bhutto called a meeting of senior scientists and engineers on 20 January 1972, in Multan, which came to known as “Multan meeting’. More importantly, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are kept disassembled, typically in three or four component parts with each of those parts kept in separate facilities. Thus the nuclear warheads are kept separate from the delivery vehicles. Moreover, the fissile cores of the warheads are separated from the conventional, i.e. non-nuclear explosives. Even if a militant terrorist organization was to penetrate a facility where the nuclear components are stored it could not obtain a functioning nuclear weapon. Pakistan has relied for more than a quarter century on its nuclear weapons to conduct its strategy against India. The Military’s grand strategy has rested on maintaining the centrality of the covert war (war through terrorism) strategy.

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