The revelations made through Dr AQ Khan’s letter to his wife regarding complicity of the Pakistan government in nuclear proliferation have excited media worldwide. The Indian government has sought a full investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Dr Khan’s letter was written in 2003, was obtained by a journalist in 2007, and has been released only now. Now the world is watching Pakistan.

Accountability is demanded from Pakistan. This reaction is pathetic and hypocritical. We will never get genuine reform unless the real villains of nuclear proliferation are nailed. The real rogue nations are China and the US. China is the fountainhead of nuclear proliferation. The US was aware but remained complicit because of its considerable vested economic interests. Pakistan and North Korean nuclear partnership could not have occurred without Beijing ’s nod. China can bring North Korea to its knees and starve it within one week. China ’s nuclear and missile aid to Pakistan is very well-known.

Despite this the root cause of nuclear proliferation has never been addressed. The corporate business lobby in the US has subverted the government in Washington . The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can browbeat the government in Beijing . Unless Washington can contain its corporate lobby and Beijing can prevail over the PLA there is no hope for any meaningful change in the nuclear situation. The bulk of the low tech Chinese exports to the US in the five-to-one trade imbalance favoring China since decades are owned by the PLA. Its profits fund the Chinese military. Profits help Chinese Generals become billionaires. Together, the US business lobby and the PLA comprise the real axis of evil.

To reinforce this claim I reproduce extracts from an article I wrote for a magazine now defunct on March 1, 2004:

“For years bits of information suggesting Pakistan ’s involvement in nuclear proliferation dribbled from western intelligence agencies. The US turned a blind eye to them... Eventually, investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed that Dr Khan had illegally obtained nuclear technology from a Dutch firm. Neither Washington nor Islamabad could ignore this. One thing led to another and Islamabad was compelled to investigate and subsequently arrest Dr Khan. The latter said that senior Pakistani leaders and army officers, including General Pervez Musharraf, had been aware of his actions… He then sought a meeting with Musharraf. It was immediately granted. After the meeting he retracted to say that nobody apart from him was involved in the nuclear transactions. He abjectly confessed to selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. A day after this “confession” Musharraf granted him full pardon… The US went along with this naked charade by describing the whole affair as Pakistan ’s internal affair. US spokesmen reiterated Washington’s confidence in Musharraf and ruled out his involvement in the proliferation scandal…

“The odd thing is that world attention is focused primarily on customers willing to buy nuclear know-how. Little attention is paid to the powers spreading nuclear weapons through illegal sales… Confronting Musharraf and Pakistan could force the US to confront China… The fiction that Pakistan is the fountainhead of nuclear proliferation is convenient for the US . It helps the US and the world’s mainstream media to ignore China helping, guiding and masterminding moves by the Islamist fundamentalists of Pakistan inside and outside its army. It is naïve to the point of silliness to believe that China would transfer nuclear weapons or know-how to any nation directly or indirectly without ensuring that it retains overall control… The foundation of Pakistan ’s nuclear weapons system was laid by China . And the US is fully aware of this. In the New York Times of January 4, 2004 David Sanger and William J Broad wrote: “A declassified State Department memo obtained by the National Security Archive in Washington concluded that China , sometime after its first bomb test in the mid-1960s, had provided Pakistan technology for ‘fissile material production and possibly also nuclear device designs’.” … Why is the US administration so coy about confronting Pakistan ? The probable reason is that it cannot do this without confronting China which controls Pakistan ’s fundamentalism... The Business Coalition for US-China Trade has over 1000 of the largest US corporations as members… Henry Kissinger is the central adviser for the Coalition…All these US mega corporations would lose billions if the US were to impose sanctions against China for its record in nuclear proliferation…”

The threat of nuclear weapons reaching terrorists has become so acute as to alarm even Dr Kissinger. He is now strenuously advocating total nuclear disarmament. But for years America sat alongside China among the world’s big five nuclear powers. American media and government sermonized to the whole world about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. America strenuously promoted the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Could deceit have been more brazen?

September 22, 2009

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