APLN Policy Brief 9

The following is a summary. Click on the adjacent link to download the full brief.

In the four decades since Pakistan launched its nuclear weapons program, and especially in the fifteen years since the nuclear tests of 1998, a way of thinking and a related set of feelings about the bomb have taken hold among policy makers and the public in Pakistan. These include the ideas that the bomb can ensure Pakistan’s security; resolve in Pakistan’s favour the longstanding dispute with India over Kashmir; help create a new national spirit; establish Pakistan as a leader among Islamic countries; and usher in a new stage in Pakistan’s economic development.

None of these hopes has come to pass, and in many ways Pakistan is much worse off than before it went nuclear. Yet the feelings about the bomb remain strong and it is these feelings that will have to be examined critically and set aside if Pakistan is to move towards nuclear restraint and nuclear disarmament. This will require the emergence of a peace movement able to launch a national debate, and that a much higher international priority be accorded to the grave dangers posed by nuclear arms racing in South Asia.

About the Author

Pervez Hoodbhoy has taught at the Department of Physics at Quaid-e-Azam University since 1973, and now also teaches in the Departments of Physics and Mathematics at Forman Christian College in Lahore. He is the author of Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality (Zed Books, 1991) and editor of Education and the State: Fifty Years of Pakistan (Oxford University Press, 1998) and Confronting the Bomb – Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out (Oxford University Press, 2013). As producer and presenter, he has made several documentary series on popular science for Pakistan Television. He also has made two documentary films on nuclear dangers in South Asia with Zia Mian. He is a member of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN).

Zia Mian, a physicist, directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and teaches at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His research and teaching focus on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy policy, especially in Pakistan and India.

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