U.S. Security Response to China’s Nuclearization of Pakistan (1977-2013)

Abstract

Ever since the history of the atom bomb began in 1945, the U.S. Congress and successive Presidents have been employing different security/foreign policy approaches and taking various preventive and punitive measures to dissuade, moreover, compel different states not to acquire the atom bomb/build nuclear weapons. Hence, since 1945, a major component of U.S. security policy has been to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons (Smith & Cobban, 1989). Pursuing its general nonproliferation policies and as a particular security response to the China’s nuclearization of Pakistan, the U.S. employed hegemonic policies against both the countries, China and Pakistan, to pressurize former to stop assisting later in building nuclear weapons and latter to abandon its nuclear program. The U.S. hegemonic policies against China and Pakistan contain the invocation of U.S. congressional domestic nonproliferation laws, such as the Pressler Amendment and international nonproliferation regimes, like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). To pressurize China to stop nuclear weapons building assistance to Pakistan, the U.S. Congress and Ronald Reagan and George Herbert W Bush kept on delaying nuclear energy cooperation with China for nearly a decade. The nuclear power plants installation cooperation agreement negotiations between the U.S. and China began in 1981 and were concluded in 1985 and, yet the agreement was fully implemented in 1989. The delay was made because U.S. Congress linked the U.S. nuclear exports to China with its nuclear proliferation activities to Pakistan. (Kan & Holt, 2007) Thus, the U.S. invoked congressional domestic nonproliferation laws and international nonproliferation regime against China to impose economic sanctions to stop assistance to Pakistan in nuclear weapons building program and against Pakistan to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The congressional nonproliferation laws invoked vis-a-vis Pakistan comprised the Symington Amendment (1976), Glenn Amendment (1977) and Pressler Amendment (1985). Consequently, with the enforcement of the Pressler amendment in 1990, the U.S. implemented a comprehensive set of economic sanctions against Pakistan.