Muslims and Liberals

Chicago Tribune
June 6, 1989

In December, 1971, Ambassador George Bush ran into Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir at UN headquarters in New York. Learning that the young woman was attending Harvard, Bush gave her his calling card. “My son is up at Harvard, too,” he said. “Call me if you ever need anything.”

Benazir Bhutto, now Pakistan’s prime minister, will call on President Bush on Tuesday and ask him to help her problem-ridden democratic government.

Bush is eager to help Pakistan; Republicans have often been. Besides, Bhutto is the first Pakistani leader to enjoy genuine support among key Democrats. She cultivated them when the Reagan administration was busy courting her nemesis, the late President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. Zia had overthrown her father from the post of prime minister through a military coup and later hanged him. The struggle Bhutto subsequently waged against Zia’s dictatorship-during which she was repeatedly jailed and persecuted-has earned her great admiration in the West. Her visit will reach a climax when she gives the commencement address at her alma mater, Harvard, on Thursday.

But would Americans really help her government? Bhutto has inherited a near-bankrupt economy from Zia, who died in a plane crash last year, precipitating her election. To obtain the military’s green light to assume power, she had to agree not to touch the defense budget, a staggering 36.7 percent of national budget outlays. This, together with another 20 percent earmarked for debt servicing, leaves her very little to fulfill her many election promises and run the administration and economy. She needs substantial U.S. economic and military aid to bolster her standing among the public and military. Also, she seeks to buy 60 F-16 fighter aircraft, which Pakistanis consider necessary because India’s air defense is superior by a ratio of 3 to 1.

Congress and the administration appear ready to approve next year’s Pakistan security and economic aid request for $626 million (part of a six-year, $4.2 billion assistance package) and, probably, the F-16 deal as well. In addition, Rep. Stephen Solarz (D., N.Y.) has proposed a modest grant to boost literacy in Pakistan’s depressed Baluchistan province. He views it as a gesture of appreciation of Bhutto’s struggle for democracy.

Yet the fate of the aid package and, in fact, the whole gamut of U.S.-Pakistan relations is clouded by a knotty little issue: Pakistan’s nuclear program. Negotiations between the two governments during the last four months have failed to resolve differences. Two U.S. laws-the Symington and Pressler Amendments-bar U.S. aid to countries suspected of having, or trying to have, the nuclear bomb.

Bhutto, like her predecessors, insists unconvincingly that Pakistan’s Kahuta nuclear plant is meant only to produce energy for peaceful uses. But then, also like her predecessors, she resists outside inspection of the facility unless India allows similar inspection of its nuclear plants, a suggestion India spurns. Indians have big-power ambitions and would not forswear their right to the bomb as long as China and others have nuclear arsenals.

It is an old dispute. In the 1970s it triggered a cutoff of U.S. aid to Pakistan and brutalized relations between the two countries. However, after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, America shelved the issue to prop up Pakistan against a possible Soviet thrust toward the Arabian Sea and use the country as a conduit for arms to Afghan rebels. Now that the Soviets have left Afghanistan, the Bush administration has revived the dispute.

For the Pakistan aid package to go through Congress, the law requires the President to certify that Pakistan does not have a nuclear weapons program. Bush says he cannot do that unless Pakistan provides evidence that it is not making the bomb.

Pakistanis resent the arm-twisting over the nuclear weapons issue, especially when the United States has not put similar pressure on countries such as Israel and South Africa, which are believed to possess nuclear arms. They also complain that the United States, an ally, shows little concern about their poor defenses against India, with which they have fought three wars. Last month India successfully tested its medium-range Agni missile and CIA Director William Webster warned Congress that the Indians appear headed toward producing nuclear weapons. If India gets the bombs, its 1,500-mile-range Agni can shower them anywhere on Pakistan and beyond.

Bhutto also has another grievance. When Zia was in power, Americans flooded Pakistan with aid based on the dictator’s pledge that his country did not have the bomb. Why can’t they accept the same word from her democratic government?

The whole argument appears to be futile. U.S. nonproliferation laws have not deterred any country from trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Pakistan actually speeded up its Kahuta program during 1976-79 after Washington had stopped all aid, hoping to bring the program to a halt. It is time Congress think about changing its two unproductive laws. Besides, it does not make sense to come down hard on a friendly country’s nuclear program without having leverage on that of its archenemy.

Most Pakistanis think, erroneously, that their nuclear option could be the answer to India’s awesome military might. Today no government can survive in Islamabad after renouncing that option. The Bush administration is asking Bhutto to deliver the impossible. The best way to try to dissuade Pakistan from seeking the bomb is to buttress its conventional defenses. Pakistan should be encouraged to have enough conventional forces to deter an Indian attack, though not so much as to unsettle India. The aid package and the F-16s would promote that goal.

At the same time, Bhutto needs to start educating her ignorant hawks about India’s far more advanced nuclear program and its resource base, which is three times greater. She must tell them that a nuclear arms race will further weaken, rather than enhance, Pakistan’s security. Bhutto has shown great courage fighting a dictator. She should now prepare to stand up to the country’s equally pernicious jingoists.