Bhutto Visit to Washington a Success in Every Way But One

By Tim Kennedy

Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's 12-day official visit to the United States in April included a White House meeting with President Bill Clinton, diplomatic calls on State Department officials, hosting embassy receptions, and thanking American business for signing new trade deals with Pakistan worth more than $6 billion.

The lobbyists representing these American-Pakistan ventures give credence to the axiom, "business knows no politics." They included Pierre Salinger, the White House spokesman for President John F. Kennedy, and Robert C. McFarlane, a former national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan.

All of the carefully organized events were important to U.S.-Pakistan relations, but Bhutto's meeting with President Clinton was the principle reason for her journey, culminating Pakistan's earnest efforts during the last few months to renew a frayed strategic and economic relationship important to both countries.

By all appearances, Bhutto's trip has been beneficial. After her meeting with the president, Clinton pledged to try to find a way to override congressional legislation known as the "Pressler Amendment" to open the way for Pakistan to take delivery of 28 partially-paid-for fighter jets valued at $1.4 billion. Clinton acknowledged that it was "unfair" of America not to resolve the stalled aircraft deal—which, as a further insult, is costing Pakistan $50,000 each month for storage in the U.S. of the undelivered jets.

Privately, however, insiders in the Clinton administration are skeptical whether Clinton can fulfill this promise. One White House official said "Clinton would be lucky" just to get Pakistan a refund of the $658 million it already paid toward the aircraft.

The Pressler Amendment, sponsored in 1990 by Senator Larry Pressler (R-ND), bars U.S. economic and military assistance to Pakistan unless the United States can certify that the country has abandoned its nuclear weapons program.

Pakistan, which like India and Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons capability, has insisted that it is not about to deploy nuclear bombs. Bhutto used the occasion of her recent visit to repeat this declaration.

"We don't have nuclear weapons," she said in a joint news conference with Clinton. "We have enough knowledge and capability to make and assemble a nuclear weapon. But we have voluntarily chosen not to either assemble a nuclear weapon, to detonate a nuclear weapon, or to export technology."

Bhutto added that when a country follows that path, "I think that country should be recognized as a responsible international player which has demonstrated restraint."

The State Department did not alter its adherence to the Pressler Amendment.

Bhutto's statements—however conciliatory—did not convince the U.S. State Department to alter its adherence to the bans imposed by the Pressler Amendment. Shortly before Bhutto departed Washington, Robin Raphel, the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, told journalists: "Let me repeat what we've often said on this very question, and that is that we believe that Pakistan could assemble a relatively small number of nuclear devices in a relatively short time frame."

According to newly declassified U.S. Defense Department documents, Pakistan began nuclear weapons design work shortly after India tested an atomic bomb in 1974. Pakistan—"unofficially"—contends that it was "forced" to pursue the nuclear option to counter the threat posed by neighboring India.

India's nuclear arms development program gained unofficial U.S. endorsement in 1964 after China tested its first nuclear bomb. According to Pentagon Papers author Daniel Ellsberg, then-U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and various Defense Department officials believed "India needed a nuclear weapon as a deterrent and there was no reason for them not to have it...Why shouldn't our friends have nuclear weapons now that our enemies have them?"

Official Washington policy regarding nuclear arms proliferation is no less contradictory. Long before the passage of the Pressler Amendment, Senator Stuart Symington (D-MO) successfully sponsored a bill which made it illegal for the U.S. to provide foreign aid funds to any nation that sold or received nuclear reprocessing or enrichment materials, equipment, or technology.

In the 18 years since the Symington Amendment was incorporated into the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, many billions of dollars in foreign aid have been paid to Israel, India and other countries with suspected nuclear weapons programs. The law has been applied two times to Pakistan, and to no other nation since its approval in 1977.

Singling Out Pakistan

Why has the U.S. government all but ignored nuclear arms programs in Israel and India, but singled out Pakistan? Seymour M. Hersh, whose The Samson Option is a definitive history of Israel's nuclear arms program, describes this conundrum as the "arms control community's rationalization for its failure[s]...Israel [and India were] no longer a proliferation problem [because they] had already proliferated."

This bizarre logic seems to have contributed to America's selection of India as its ally-of-choice in the deadly nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan. This strange rationalization apparently also has fueled Washington's decision to cultivate India as an export market for U.S. arms and weapons development technology.

This year, four U.S. trade delegations headed by cabinet-level White House officials have paid calls to New Delhi. These officials have included Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (whose four-day tour of India in mid-April turned into a political disaster when he discovered that New Delhi had simultaneously invited Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani personally to partake—for a price—in India's nuclear know-how); Commerce Secretary Ron Brown; Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary; and Defense Secretary William Perry.

Perry's overseas junkets, in particular, are seen by many weapons proliferation experts as nothing more than sales presentations on behalf of the U.S. arms industry. The U.S. secretary of defense has made no secret of his opposition to controls on American arms exports. During testimony before a Senate panel, Perry said it was "hopeless" trying to control technology that has a "dual-use"—in other words, trying to stop the trade of technology which has civilian applications, but which also is capable of making nuclear bombs and long-range missiles. Perry also had repeatedly expressed concern that much of the Defense Department's efforts to stop the export of dual-use technology "interferes with a company's ability to succeed internationally."

"Under [Defense Secretary] Perry," Gary Milhollin, director of the Washington-based Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Controls, wrote in a Washington Post editorial, "there appears to be no institutional counterweight to the pro-export pressure of industry and its allies in the Commerce and State departments."

Regarding U.S. arms export policies toward South Asia, Milhollin told the Washington Report that India clearly has gained America's favor.

"There will be pressure from the Clinton administration to lower export restrictions on both India and Pakistan," Milhollin said, "but the basic motivation is the desire to make a quick buck. It is clear if you look at the parade of cabinet-level secretaries going to India, that industry—and, therefore, the White House—perceives India to be principally a market, and only secondarily a proliferation threat...whereas in the past, India was thought of primarily as a proliferation threat, and only secondarily as a market...So in that sense, there has been a shift."

Milhollin, after having private meetings last year with Defense Department officials, revealed that "several Pentagon staff members said 'we now have four layers of bosses who don't believe in export controls—Secretary of Defense William Perry, Assistant Secretary Ashton Carter, Mitchell Wallerstein (deputy to Ashton Carter), and Undersecretary Frank Wisner.'"

These defense officials complained to Milhollin that Wisner had systematically scaled back the Pentagon's export controls on missile technology—controls laboriously built up under Presidents Reagan and Bush.

Frank Wisner, it should be noted, has since left the Department of Defense to serve as U.S. ambassador to India. In view of Wisner's new appointment—and other clearly pro-India overtures by the U.S. government—it appears unlikely that Bhutto can expect delivery of her jets or a refund of her cash in the near future.

Tim Kennedy, an analyst based in Washington, DC, writes about defense technology and foreign affairs.