Nuclear Security

What will happen to pakistani nukes if Pakistan’s government fails?

Transcript:

Of all the crises in the world, the one that keeps me up at night is Pakistan. It’s never had a stable government, but in the last year has gotten even more unstable.

The central government has abandoned control of large sections of Pakistan to the Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives are active in urban centers nationwide.

Pakistan has no middle class, just a large, uneducated population which is ripe for jihadist recruiters.  It’s ruling classes – a perennially corrupt landed aristocracy and a Taliban sympathizing army – fight with each other over control.

Religious extremism has taken root, and a generation of young men have been radicalized while attending Madrassas,

And, for the last decade, Pakistan  has possessed nuclear weapons. Yet, as bleak as things have been, Pakistan has never provided a direct threat to the national security of the United States – that is until Jihadists got within 60 miles of Pakistan’s capital.

The Pakistani army has recently beaten the Taliban back, but the Taliban is not going away.  It is funded by drug money from the Afghanistan poppy crop and has sympathizers in the Pakistan Army – and especially the Pakistani intelligence services. Their fight against the Taliban has also been compromised from within.

If Pakistan’s government falls in the next year, the critical question for the US is who has operational control over Pakistan some 90 nuclear weapons.  Could one find its way into Al Qaeda’s hands?

It ever since Sept 11 the nightmare scenario haunting the national security community is what might happen if terrorists get their hands on nuclear weapons. The very real possibility of Pakistan imploding could lead to just that.