The activities of Pakistan’s notorious Abdul Qadeer Khan in proliferating nuclear weapons technology are examined in detail in a recent Master’s Thesis, along with an analysis of their enabling conditions and some of their larger implications.
“The A. Q. Khan nuclear supplier network constitutes the most severe loss of control over nuclear technology ever,” wrote author Christopher O. Clary.
“For the first time in history all of the keys to a nuclear weapon–the supplier networks, the material, the enrichment technology, and the warhead designs–were outside of state oversight and control.”
“This thesis demonstrates that Khan’s nuclear enterprise evolved out of a portion of the Pakistani procurement network of the 1970s and 1980s. It presents new information on how the Pakistani state organized, managed, and oversaw its nuclear weapons laboratories.”
See “The A.Q. Khan Network: Causes and Implications” by Christopher O. Clary, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2005.
Satellite imagery of RAF Lakenheath reveals new construction of a security perimeter around ten protective aircraft shelters in the designated nuclear area, the latest measure in a series of upgrades as the base prepares for the ability to store U.S. nuclear weapons.
It will take consistent leadership and action to navigate the complex dangers in the region and to avoid what many analysts considered to be an increasingly possible outcome, a nuclear conflict in East Asia.
Getting into a shutdown is the easy part, getting out is much harder. Both sides will be looking to pin responsibility on each other, and the court of public opinion will have a major role to play as to who has the most leverage for getting us out.
How the United States responds to China’s nuclear buildup will shape the global nuclear balance for the rest of the century.