Political contention in Israel remains as boisterous as in Pakistan, if occasionally not more, but what differentiates it from us is its politicians' meticulous circumspection to ensure that their country's nuclear programme remains beyond public discourse. Its nuclear programme is almost 60 years old, and its nuclear arsenal is believed to have "hundreds" of nuclear warheads with fully developed capability to deliver them far and wide. But all along, excepting the lone admission of his country's nuclear weapons by disgruntled nuclear technician Mordechi Vannunu in 1986, not a word has been uttered by any Israeli about his country's nuclear programme. And who doesn't know to what length the Israeli authorities had gone to punish Vannunu, the whistleblower. Of course, other nuclear weapons states are not as secretive as Israel but there, too, the nuclear option rarely makes headlines in their media. But not so here in Pakistan, where the nuclear topic is one of the unending subjects for public debate and discussion. We had just been through the Memogate scandal where our nuclear programme figures prominently that Shah Mehmud Qureshi has made the preposterous claim that President Zardari is out to subvert Pakistan's nuclear option - as if our nuclear deterrence is susceptible to an individual's choice and all the multi-layered control regime is of no real consequence. If a person, who only six months ago was the country's foreign minister, alleges that the Head of State is out to undermine the national nuclear capability then who is the net loser in this blame-game - neither the former foreign minister nor the Head of State, but the State itself. Thanks to such boisterous claims no wonder Pakistan's nuclear programme is today the most maligned and therefore confronted with challenges of crippling embargoes and discriminatory international treatment. Shah Mehmud Qureshi should have demonstrated discretion and exercised control even when the gathering at Ghotki was much larger than he had expected. In statecraft, withholding information is as important as revealing it, especially for a person of his stature who till recently was the foreign minister and thus also a member of the Nuclear Command Authority. What else he is going to 'disclose' about the country's nuclear programme at his promised rally in Karachi next month, he should think again. No single individual howsoever high-ranking has exclusive control of his/her country's nuclear programme, neither in Pakistan nor anywhere else. Even when countries undergo total political re-orientation, as was the case in Russia, the nuclear option retains its national character. And if at all, a country decides to jettison its nuclear option, as a number of countries have done during the last two decades, it is always the people through their elected representatives who make the decision. That President Zardari can barter away Pakistan's nuclear option, the former foreign minister is sadly mistaken, if not naïve enough for the post he had held to think so. Given a perennially hostile India's preponderance in conventional weaponry, Pakistan is left with no other option but to maintain minimum credible nuclear deterrence. And this option would be maintained "at all costs", as stated by the Foreign Office spokesperson while refuting Shah Mehmud Qureshi's outlandish assertion. The fact is, in these days of raging perceptional mismatches over myriad national issues, if any thing still enjoys the nation's complete consensus, it is the nuclear option. If there is any critique about its need, it is outside Pakistan and stems from sources known for their anti-Pakistan bias. Over the last couple of years, the propaganda has been that our nuclear assets can fall into the 'wrong hands', euphemism for extremists. That a former foreign minister of Pakistan should become a votary, even unwittingly, of such a malicious campaign is simply unacceptable. We will ask him - many others already have: why he had kept quiet so far over the president's alleged 'designs' to undermine Pakistan's nuclear programme. But, it certainly exposes his inability to comprehend, in all its dimensions, an issue as critical as the nuclear option and why it cannot be hijacked by any single individual, even if he were the Head of State. Copyright Business Recorder, 2011
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