Pakistan’s bomb became known in the worried West as the “Islamic bomb.” The hypocrisy of American presidents in ignoring the Pakistani progress while constantly urging nonproliferation elsewhere has been noted again and again by journalists here and elsewhere around the globe. The Pakistani military is now estimated to have untold hundreds of nuclear bombs, some of which have been miniaturized and are capable of being delivered by a fighter bomber. Pakistan did not perfect the process of enriching raw uranium ore to the level needed for weapons-grade uranium-more than 90 percent-until the mid-1980s, a decade after India had tested its first nuclear bomb, at which point it began producing bombs with no American interference. So is India, its rival, an on-and-off ally of both Russia and America that rarely, if ever, discusses its own nuclear capability. The issues then and today are the same: Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation. The story I eventually published in the New Yorker was edited slightly in accordance with a White House request that I did not contest. This piece is from Seymour Hersh’s Substack, subscribe to it here.ĭuring the first year of the Obama administration, I spent months in the summer and fall of 2009 reporting about the Pakistani nuclear arsenal from here in Washington from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital from New Delhi, the Indian capital and from London, where Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan as well a former army chief was living in exile. World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons At the annual Air Force Association conference held this week, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned that “whether intended or not, China is acquiring a first-strike capability.Flickr – World Economic Forum – Pervez Musharraf – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2004. In recent weeks, Pentagon officials have issued a series of warnings over China’s growing nuclear capability. arsenal is “sufficient.” However, his first defense budget backs two controversial new projects put in motion by former President Donald Trump - a low-yield warhead outfitted on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and research into a new sea-launched cruise missile - as well as doubling down on upgrading all three legs of the nuclear arsenal. He ran in 2020 on a platform of opposing new nuclear weapons, on multiple occasions saying the current U.S. President Joe Biden has a long history of pushing for less reliance on nuclear weapons. In August, Dalton was nominated to be the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for homeland defense and global security affairs. strategy, posture, and policy adjustments and consider program execution risk - all with a goal of maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.” Melissa Dalton, who is performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, will lead the Nuclear Posture Review in Tomero’s place, the first person said.ĭalton has been involved in the nuclear review process for months, telling the House Armed Services Committee in June that the review “will consider and assess U.S. Tomero also led a similar review of missile defense policy. Started in July, the review is slated to be completed early next year in conjunction with the department’s National Defense Strategy. nuclear weapons policy in the wake of growing threats from China, dubbed the Nuclear Posture Review. In the deputy position, Tomero led the Biden administration’s effort to review U.S. When reached for comment, a defense official emailed, “as a matter of policy, we won’t comment on personnel matters.” Quarantello declined to comment once reached by phone, saying she doesn’t talk to reporters. Tomero didn’t return an immediate request for comment. Communications from the Pentagon about her departure were “very vague,” one aide told POLITICO. It was unclear to some congressional staffers why Tomero was on her way out of the administration after only eight months. The deputy position was eliminated as part of the reorganization, the person said. The Pentagon’s new assistant secretary for space, a position Congress recently created, will absorb the responsibility for nuclear and missile defense, one of the people said.
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