The new evidence sheds light on the discovery of the Pakistani uranium enrichment program in 1978–1979 and the surprised reaction of top State Department officials to Pakistan's progress in acquiring the technology needed to enrich uranium for a weapons program. 2Įnlightening and informative as those contributions are, declassifications of materials in recent years permit an even fuller understanding of the Carter administration's policymaking on the Pakistani nuclear program, including the impact of intelligence findings on decisions and diplomatic initiatives. That perspective resonates with Rabia Akhtar's study of the “blind eye” that Washington cast toward Pakistan's nuclear program. strategy by depicting the Carter administration's “fragile” efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons, allowing concerns about Pakistani security to override nonproliferation objectives from 1979–1980 onward. Thomas Cavanna challenges claims about the central role of nonproliferation in U.S. Using British records, Craig provides extraordinary detail on how the UK government became aware of Pakistan's secret enrichment program. nonproliferation policy and international relations generally. opposition had been made clear, the Carter administration turned from “prevention to mitigation” by trying to limit the impact of Pakistani nuclear activities on U.S. and British approach to the Pakistani nuclear program, Malcolm Craig contends that by mid-1979, when Pakistan's success in resisting U.S. In a chapter in a major study of nonproliferation policy, Nicholas Miller argues that the Carter administration could not thwart the Pakistani bomb because the sanctions threat was too modest to provide effective leverage over Islamabad. effort to pursue a no-nuclear-test understanding with Pakistan as a nonproliferation stopgap after the United States had failed to stop that country's uranium enrichment program. bargaining with proliferators over nuclear testing, Or Rabinowitz discusses the U.S. Few studies, however, have used the newest available sources to interpret President Carter's policy toward Pakistan in a more or less comprehensive way. The challenge posed by a nuclear program initiated in deep secrecy has invited the attention of historians and social scientists. Smith saw a “damnable dilemma”: how could Washington “retain any integrity” for its nonproliferation policy if Pakistan could freely develop a nuclear weapons capability? By lowering standards, he argued, “we would be driven to accept South African enrichment and plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in many countries.” He warned that President Carter “should face squarely up to the fact that a major policy will have been aborted.” 1 Having favored a confrontational approach toward Pakistan's secret nuclear activities, he believed that the Carter administration was scuttling its nonproliferation goals by acquiescing in Islamabad's nuclear activities so long as Pakistan did not test weapons or transfer nuclear technology. government officials had begun confronting the complex, thorny problems raised by new intelligence about Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, President Jimmy Carter's representative for nonproliferation issues, Gerard C. During the summer of 1979, months after U.S.
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