Nuclear Con-fusion

CNN reports that during Bush's trip to India, a new deal was struck in cooperation with abiding to requests to allow international inspectors and advisors to India's nuclear sites in exchange for arms sales which include combat aircraft such as the F-16 and F-18. Probably helping them overcome their aging MiG fleet they acquired mostly from Russia back in the Cold War.

What does this mean? Well its a little "tit-for-tat" type of deal... an effort to reduce the threat and build-up of nuclear arms between India and its rival, Pakistan. So rather than allowing a rise in nuclear arms build-up, funding a conventional arms build-up somehow makes the whole situation "breathable".

The story fails to bring into light the number of Arms Control Amendments passed against India and Pakistan during the rise of the nuclear and arms standoff. One in particular was passed in 1999:


Brownback II

Adopted 1999. Incorporated into the fiscal year 2000 defense appropriations bill (Public Law 106-79).

Gives the president indefinite authority to waive, with respect to India and Pakistan, all the provisions of the Glenn, Symington and Pressler amendments. States that the "broad application" of export controls on Indian and Pakistani government agencies and private companies suspected of having links to their country's nuclear or missile programs is "inconsistent" with the national security interests of the United States, and urges the application of U.S. export controls only against agencies and companies that make "direct and material contributions to weapons of mass destruction and missile programs and only to those items that can contribute to such programs."

The Brownback Amendment II is arms the United States president with the ability to waive the prior amendments on controlling the arms race in South Asia. Of the prior amendments the Pressler Amendment banned any economic or military assistance in 1985 to Pakistan if it did possess a nuclear device, forcing the nation strapped for cash to abide by the amendment. During that time the United States supplied Pakistan's air force made up of mainly F-16's:

The Air Force relies on aging Mirage III and V variants, Chinese models of older Soviet MiGs, and a few F-16A Falcons delivered in the 1980s. Any qualitative edge Pakistan might once have enjoyed over India is gone, except perhaps in subsystems and electronic warfare components. In 1994 the air force was organized into eighteen squadrons, with a total of 430 combat aircraft. The mainstay of the air force was the F-16 fighter. Of the forty aircraft originally acquired, thirty-four were in service, divided among three squadrons. Some were reportedly grounded because of a lack of spare parts resulting from the 1990 United States suspension of military transfers to Pakistan (see The United States and the West , ch. 4). Pakistan had an additional seventy-one F-16s on order, but delivery has been suspended since 1990.

In other words, Pakistan's air force is grounded in comparison to the all shiny new F-16 fleet India will be getting soon. Contradictory? It seems like it, especially when Pakistan was shafted and given no nuclear aid from the United States, its key "ally" in the war against terror. So you provide nuclear assistance (for civilian use of course), help arm a rival nation with new weaponary, but give nothing to a nation that provides military assistance, air-space, and the use of strategic locations during the ground-war in Afghanistan.... This just doesn't look right, way too unbalanced. According to DoD, Pakistan recieves $1.5 billion in military aid from the United States from for the year 2005-2009 but a mere $110 million for earthquake aid...

Although the United States calls for Pakistan to become a "democracy" that may soon fall onto deaf ears after all that Pakistan has provided for the United States military. Even at that, the State Department has not declared Pakistan a "terrorist" nation even though India has accused Pakistan of fueling insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and in fact asked for the recall of the Pressler Amendment back in 1999 saying that terrorists would use weapons supplied by the United States to the Pakistan military to fan the flames in Kashmir. So is the United States wary of providing further military assistance to Pakistan in fear that it may turn around like the Stinger missles in Afghanistan (Pakistan did recognize and support the Taliban)? So do you say that Pakistan is a terrorist state, or keep using them until you get your money's worth - all $1.5 billion?

It just sounds like the region is just becoming more continously destablized... I don't know how arms deals equate to further peace between two rival nations. I mean they are both third-world nations, it would seem to wise to try to stay away from "weapons" and provide assistance in the form of technology, infrastructure, education, even more aid for earthquake hit areas of Pakistan and tsunami ravaged coast of Eastern India - in other words, money and aid where it is needed most, not to escalate straining relations in South Asia or to further fund the "supposed" war on terror.