Pak apparent view of US as threat, 'equal to or larger than India' leading country to rush for more

Islamabad, Jan 30 (ANI): Pakistan's apparent opinion about the US of being a threat equal to or larger than India, amid its changing relationship with the latter, has led Islamabad into rushing to make more bombs, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) has claimed in a write-up.

Americans are now a threat, equal to or larger than India. They are also considered more of an adversary than even the TT jihadists who have killed thousands of Pakistani troops and civilians, Pervez Hoodbhoy, a former head of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University, writes in The Express Tribune column.

They are also considered more of an adversary than even the TT jihadists who have killed thousands of Pakistani troops and civilians.

The anti-American feeling is allegedly rising over reports that the US is tightly embracing India, and standing in the way of a Pakistan-friendly government in Kabul.

The writer says that this shift in their attitude has created two strong non-India reasons that favour speeding up bomb production.

First, Pakistan's nuclear weapons are seen to be threatened by America. This perception has been reinforced by the large amount of attention given to the issue in the US mainstream press, and by war-gaming exercises in US military institutes.

The second, and perhaps the more important reason, could be that nukes act as insurance against things going too far wrong. Like North Korea, Pakistan knows that, no matter what, international financial donors will feel compelled to keep pumping in funds. Else a collapsing system may be unable to prevent some of its hundred-plus Hiroshima-sized nukes from being destroyed.

This insurance could become increasingly important as Pakistan moves deeper into political isolation and economic difficulties mount, the column added.

This claim that Pakistan has become the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, was first published in a Bulletin of Atomic Scientists report entitled "Pakistan's nuclear forces - 2011" by Hans M Kristensen and Robert S Norris.

They had claimed in the publication that although the numbers of Pakistani warheads and delivery vehicles is a closely-held secret, yet "we estimate that Pakistan has a nuclear weapons stockpile of 90-110 nuclear warheads, an increase from the estimated 70-90 warheads in 2009". The Bulletin report has not been denied by Pakistan. (ANI)