The United States and Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program, 1975–1990

Chapter 4 examines the proliferation dispute between the United States and Pakistan. As with the Middle East, averting containment failure in South Asia was the overriding aim of the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations. Slowing or halting the clandestine Pakistani nuclear weapons program was always a subordinate goal. The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was the turning point. Chapter 4 examines the oscillations in US nonproliferation policies toward Pakistan, from the Ford administration’s offer of advanced fighters for nuclear restraint in 1975–1976, to the Carter administration’s imposition of sanctions in early1979, to the Reagan administration’s provision of a $1.4 billion foreign military assistance package and efforts to circumvent nonproliferation legislation in exchange for Pakistani dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s pledge not to cross four nuclear “red lines” from 1981 to 1988, to the George H. W. Bush administration’s resumption of sanctions after the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1990.