The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), in its recent Special Dispatch (http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD195308), reproduced an article written by Pervez Hoodbhoy, Professor of Nuclear Physics at Qaed-e-Azam University in Islamabad, a well known analyst and an avowed anti-nuke activist. In his article, Prof. Hoodbhoy comments on the impact of nuclear weapons on Pakistan's society.

Titled "Ten Years Later," the article makes an interesting argument, which is probed further, here. It argues, that "Pakistan has turned out to be a country that is badly insecure and frightened of its future. Sorrowful faces see bunkers everywhere; soldiers, machine guns in hand, are lined up behind sandbags; there are roadblocks and barbed wires on roads. In Baluchistan and the Federally-Administered Tribal Districts, helicopter gunships and fighter jets fly in the skies…Today, we are in a state of war on many fronts - but the bomb provides us with no security on any front. On the contrary: If we are faced with such a situation, the bomb is a cause of it."

None can deny the first part of the above argument. There is insecurity inside Pakistan and many are unsure where the country is heading. But, does Hoodbhoy overstate the case, when he links the presence of bunkers and soldiers everywhere to Pakistan's nuclear weapons? Given the recent history in the region in the last three decades and external developments including 9/11, should Pakistan's ills be directly linked with its nuclear weapons? What role did Pakistan's larger insecurities and faulty foreign policy strategies play in the regional chaos, in which the country is situated today and at the receiving end of?

Three aspects need to be probed further. From Pakistan's perspective, since the break up of Pakistan in 1971, followed by India's first nuclear tests in 1974 and the entry of Soviet troops in 1979, there were serious threats to the country's very survival. These threats may have been real, perceived or even exaggerated but none can deny the existence of threats to Pakistan's security since 1971. Second, to address the above threats, Pakistan (both military and democratic regimes, included) undertook numerous measures. Some of these objectives and strategies may be criticized but Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear weapons and its Afghanistan and India policies since then should be seen in the above perspective. Third, the failure of democratic governance and political parties, political assertion of the military and the relationship between the polity and military further aggravated Pakistan's problems since the 1970s.

Linking Pakistan's ills only to its nuclear weapons is likely to absolve other faulty policies that the democratic governments and the military pursued in the last three decades. With or without nuclear weapons, the above three aspects would have remained more or less the same.

Hoodbhoy's second major argument is that "After the Chagai… Pakistan changed... The bomb changed the national mindset; most importantly, it changed the way the military and politicians thought, spoke and acted…" To a large extent, the Chagai tests made Pakistan's military feel more secure, leading it into an adventure in Kargil. However, if Pakistan was so sure of its nuclear weapons, why did it initiate a peace process with India and why has sustained it since 2003? What made Gen. Pervez Musharraf initiate a process of making the borders irrelevant in J&K? If the nation and military was "full of excitement and enthusiasm" following the nuclear tests, why has there been a yearning for peace in Pakistan's civil society? Even within India there has been excitement and enthusiasm about its nuclear weapons but does this mean that the majority in India prefer a military solution vis-a-vis Pakistan? True, nuclear weapons have resulted in creating a kind of nuclear nationalism and jingoism in both the countries; but has this affected the majority's willingness to live in peace with each other?

The third major argument Hoodbhoy makes is that the nuclear bomb has promoted a culture of violence. An interesting argument. Can the violence in Pakistan today or for that matter in India be linked only to nuclear weapons? Violence today in Pakistan has three major forms - ethnic violence, as has been the case in Balochistan; sectarian violence, as has been the case in Karachi, NWFP and parts of Punjab and Sind; and jihadi violence, as has been the case all over Pakistan, spearheaded by al Qaeda, Taliban and their local supporters. Which of the above forms of violence can be linked with nuclear weapons?

True, nuclear weapons in Pakistan is unlikely to provide the country security. It is also true, as Hoodbhoy eloquently states, that "in the near future, Pakistan faces real danger, not from India but from terrorism and fundamentalism…That the bomb could provide security to Pakistan, its people, or its armed forces was a lie." As he concludes, Pakistan's looming threats are internal, and hence it is unproductive to build more nuclear weapons. Where the problem lies is, in linking Pakistan's ills, narrowly to nuclear weapons. Such an approach absolves the democratic and military regimes from their strategic miscalculations and failure to deliver. More importantly, such a narrow focus undermines a credible nuclear debate in Pakistan, in terms of whether nuclear weapons provide security or not.