A fierce debate goes on whether the conclusions of the 3 years long study conducted by Georgetown University students under supervision of Professor K on Chinese nuclear weapons & missiles are valid.  The study has refocused world attention on China’s aggressive military postures. China may or may not have three thousand nuclear weapons but it definitely has tried to intimidate its neighbors in the South China Sea by using strong-arm tactics. China just announced opening of its first military base overseas in the Indian Ocean island state of Seychelles. What is generally not recognized is the China’s role in proliferating and escalating the dangers of nuclear weapons. 

Iran continues to defy the world opinion with uncommon belligerence. Iran may also be preparing for its first nuclear test having amassed enough heavy enriched uranium.  Iran has consistently indulged in a game of diplomacy and obfuscation since early 2003. For the first time, former Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Masood Qureshi acknowledged that Pakistani nuclear weapons are not safe in the hands of the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. Though Qureshi did not give details of how Pakistan's nukes were in danger, he promised to give more information in near future.  He claimed that as foreign minister he was privy to classified information and knew the pressures and stresses Pakistan was facing over its nuclear program. Unfortunately, the international community has naively characterized this illegal international nuclear trade merely as a private network started by the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, AQ Khan as Nuclear Wal-Mart.  To call the clandestine nuclear proliferation & trade activities as Nuclear Wal-Mart is an insult to Sam Walton the founder of Wal-Mart. It is neither a private enterprise owned by Dr. AQ Khan nor a legitimate business owned by Pakistan. It is an illegal state sponsored illicit nuclear trade network meticulously nurtured by the Pakistani government-military-intelligence-industrial-jihadi-business complex. The whole effort was supported by Peoples’ Republic of China and funded by Saudi Arabia. 

The nuclear programs of China, Pakistan and Iran are interlinked. The nuclear Pak-Mart is a small segment of a larger axis of nuclear proliferation that consists of CHI. P. NOK. I. S. S.; i.e.  CHIna, Pakistan, NOrth Korea, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia.  China has consistently indulged in vertical, horizontal and extended nuclear proliferation activities globally. The Wiley communist dictatorship has surreptitiously either sold or “donated” nuclear technology to all the rogue nations creating a dangerous situation. Barring Pakistan, all the members of CHIPNOKISS had originally signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.  China, the fountainhead of the CHIPNOKISS network, before joining the NPT in 1992, stealthily gifted Pakistan 50 kilograms of heavily enriched uranium, 10 tons of UF6 (natural) and 5 tons of UF6 (3%). It provided Pakistan with nuclear weapons designs and gave access to the Chinese nuclear testing site,  Lon Nor,  for a nuclear test in1990. China also helped Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in setting up UF6 plant, production reactor for plutonium and reprocessing plant. These facts were acknowledged by Pakistani rogue scientist Dr. AQ Khan in a letter to his Dutch wife Henny. Saudi Arabia has already funded Pakistan's nuclear program for the last three decades and will pay Pakistan further in hard cash for extended deterrence. It also has the ability to pay cash on the spot for ready-made nuclear weapons ordered from Pakistan. Through its client state Pakistan, China has proliferated to countries like North Korea & Libya.   Libya came clean to the IAEA in the last decade to prevent US military intervention. Documents turned in by the former Libyan government to the IAEA included Chinese nuclear weapons designs. Syria received nuclear designs from North Korea and a secret Syrian nuclear reactor was bombed by Israel in 2007 without any Syrian resistance. 

While scape-goating AQ Khan, the international community condoned the role played by China and its client state and all-weather friend Pakistan. In the self-exculpatory letter to his wife, DR. AQ Khan clearly states: “You know we had cooperation with China for 15 years. We put up a centrifuge plant at Hanzhong. We sent 135 C-130 plane loads of machines, inverters, valves, flow-meters, pressure gauges. Our teams stayed there for weeks to help and their teams stayed here for weeks at a time. Late minister Liu We, VM Li Chew, vice Minister Jiang Shengjie used to visit us”. 

Any further leakage of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials from the CHIPNOKISS into hands of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups must be prevented at any cost. As the patron saint of the CHIPNOKISS, China has overzealously guarded its minions.  China has usurped its position as a member of N5 of the NPT and the P5 of UNSC to deflect serious and effective action against these rogue nations while portraying a facade of diplomacy. The six-party talks were a Chinese game-plan to frustrate the efforts by international community to contain the North Korean nuclear proliferation. The four-plus one formula (Germany, France, UK and UN) to deal with Iran floundered in 2003 because of covert support and encouragement by China to the Iranian Ayatollahs. While maintaining a diplomatic charade, China has enabled these rogue nations in subverting the international non-proliferation regimes.

Nuclear containment and partial denuclearization, and not appeasement should be the strategic response of the civilized world. If international community continues to let this axis grow, the world would witness nuclear blackmail as the future diplomatic currency. The civilized world would not be able to deal with the terrorism, drug-wars and criminality because of the threats of retaliation by nuclear weapons from non-state actors. A fresh start must be made by the international community led by the IAEA in denuclearizing North Korea and Pakistan despite Chinese objections. Without defanging these two unstable and dangerous nuclear nations, no further progress would be made in preventing future nuclear proliferation.  Pakistan has already propounded the seductive theory of neo-nuclear apartheid. Nuclear disarmament must start with Pakistan, North Korea and Iran. Iran must be prevented, at any cost, from crossing the nuclear redline.  Total zero is very far away and remains a distant fuzzy dream. Meanwhile, international efforts have to focus on making the world safer by isolating and de-fanging the most dangerous and irresponsible regimes and their surrogate non-state actors that may indulge in international nuclear blackmail. Most importantly, the international community must call a spade a spade and hold China to account for its reckless nuclear proliferation activities.