Colonial Undertones of Western Nonproliferation Discourse about Pakistan

Following the end of World War II, nuclear proliferation was characterized as the biggest security challenge to international peace and security by Western states (predominately the United States). The discourse on nuclear proliferation has several strands, and it cannot be understood as a monolithic concept. There are clear divisions in how states think about and understand nuclear proliferation in their national security policies. Rather than taking it as a technological challenge, Western states understand nuclear proliferation as a civilizational, political, cultural, and sociological phenomenon.1 This is reflected in the discourse on nuclear proliferation.

Discourse may have both linguistic and non-linguistic elements.2 Discourse may include all kinds of text, written or spoken, or it may only refer to the specific text whose meaning has relevance in a particular context. It is not just the discourse itself that is important but also the speaker, audience, the reasoning, placement and timing of the communication.3 Schmidt distinguishes between two primary types of state discourses: coordinative discourse, which is concerned with the construction of policy and communicative discourse, which relates to how the constructed policy is conveyed to the public. “(I)ndividuals and groups at the center of policy construction who are involved in the creation, elaboration, and justification of policy and programmatic ideas” like politicians, bureaucracy, civil servants, policymakers fall in the former distinction while “individuals and groups involved in the presentation, deliberation, and legitimation of political ideas to the general public” like journalists (or the media), civil society members, experts, think-tanks fall in the latter category.4 This does not imply that individuals who construct the discourse cannot or do not communicate it, rather the distinction is more applicable to the nature of discourse itself. The process through which a policy position is constructed is different from how it is communicated and disseminated to the public. While the distinction between coordinative and communicative discourse is clear, the interaction between the two is quite complex. It is mostly directed from coordinative to communicative discourse as it makes logical sense; however, the opposite course is also observed.5

This article analyzes the Western nonproliferation discourse regarding Pakistan while adopting a postcolonial position. Postcolonial theory has undergone a resurgence in recent years as a number of scholars with a critical worldview are seen challenging conventional thinking or developing alternative perspectives.6 Eurocentric security studies distort and devalue the role of the Global South, which results in a flawed analysis and inadequate comprehension of security relations between the West and the Rest. “Thinking derived from conventional security studies, then, is at best a poor basis for understanding and action in contemporary security environments.”7 Postcolonialism is “used in wide and diverse ways to include the study and analysis of European territorial conquests, the various institutions of European colonialisms, the discursive operations of empire, the subtleties of subject construction in colonial discourse and the resistance of those subjects, and, most importantly perhaps, the differing responses to such incursions and their contemporary colonial legacies in both pre-and post-independence nations and communities.”8 According to Slemon, postcolonialism has multidisciplinary usage and explains “a remarkably heterogeneous set of subject positions, professional fields, and critical enterprises.”9 Slemon emphasizes the use of the postcolonial prism in contemporary writings by stating:

It has been used as a way of ordering a critique of totalizing forms of Western historicism; as a portmanteau term for a retooled notion of ‘class’, as a subset of both postmodernism and post-structuralism (and conversely, as the condition from which those two structures of cultural logic and cultural critique themselves are seen to emerge); as the name for a condition of nativist longing in post-independence national groupings; as a cultural marker of non-residency for a Third World intellectual cadre; as the inevitable underside of a fractured and ambivalent discourse of colonialist power; as an oppositional form of ‘reading practice’; and—and this was my first encounter with the term—as the name for a category of ‘literary’ activity which sprang from a new and welcome political energy going on within what used to be called ‘Commonwealth’ literary studies.10

The multidisciplinary nature of the postcolonial literatures adds to its diversity. Moreover, it underscores that even though colonialism in its traditional shape and form has ceased to exist, colonial ideology continues to exist in some shape and form. The civilizational discourse put forth by postcolonial interventions in critical security studies highlights the disparities that extend racial differences and are apparent in technological and developmental gaps between the Global North and the formerly colonized states of the Global South.11

Concerning Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, Western policy and published discourse portrays it as the biggest threat to international peace and security. This threat perception is reflective of biased Western thinking put forth like a truism. To be clear, this threat perception is not because Pakistan poses a direct security challenge to the West or any Western state. Conversely, Pakistan was at the forefront of the US containment strategy against communism, and it joined the US-led multilateral groupings to contain the Soviet Union. This threat perception is rather rooted in colonial thought patterns, which see the colonized people as weak and feminine, emotional, and irrational. This imperial binarism is apparent in how Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear technology is portrayed in Western discourse. The use of binary oppositions in presenting Pakistan as part of the Third World and thereby invoking the image of a backward, technologically challenged, foreign aid-dependent, poverty-stricken, crisis-prone, “coup-vulnerable” country has justified the nonproliferation policies of the Western nations towards Pakistan.12 Edward Said underscored this binary construction of the Third World by the West as its mirror image, which in turn makes one everything the other is not.13 In the nuclear context, if the West rightfully possesses nuclear weapons, then Pakistan, as a Third World country and a representation of the Other, cannot justify the acquisition of nuclear capability. If the Western threat perceptions necessitate the maintenance of nuclear capability, then Pakistan’s arguments for the protection of its sovereignty and defence against external aggression are insubstantial.14

In the context of technological expertise with regard to nuclear weapons, Western coordinative and communicative discourse about Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear capability is centered on three key arguments. One, Pakistan does not have the requisite knowledge or the industrial base to master these complex technologies.15 Two, Pakistan’s nuclear program will be marred by accidents because of its “fragile nuclear infrastructures and safety precautions.”16 Three, even if Pakistan is able to develop some rudimentary deterrent, it does not have the management and administrative structures to maintain a robust nuclear command and control system.17 These arguments lead to the corollary that Pakistan is too backward and undeveloped to master complex technologies used in making nuclear weapons. The perceived deficiency of Pakistan’s safety standards, technological backwardness, inferior management practices, and increased risk of accidental nuclear use are often cited in contrast to the practices and measures adopted by Western nuclear-capable states. As if these dangers are only present in Third World spaces such as Pakistan.18 Statements by officials (at times unnamed) in newspapers are offered as facts and are then rehashed and analyzed by academics – thereby, completing the circle of information-flow, opinion-shaping, and swaying the public opinion. The “rationality” accorded to Western decision-makers is in contrast to the “irrationality” of Third World states like Pakistan in the Western coordinative and communicative discourse. Rather than judging Western and non-Western (or Third World) nuclear aspirants against an evenly laid out criteria, the discursive institutionalism on nuclear nonproliferation assumes the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Third World states like Pakistan as being directly proportional to the increased probability of the use of nuclear weapons in conflict or crisis situations. This assumption is often based on the perception of Pakistan and its leadership as an irrational actor. Anthony Parsons, the former British Ambassador to Iran, shared his concerns about a nuclear-capable Pakistan in his meeting with senior US State Department officials in 1979. Parsons based his arguments on the premise that “Pakistan was an unstable, paranoid state with a deeply unsatisfactory government”19 and that acquisition of nuclear weapons by a Muslim country like Pakistan would be “one of the most horrifying developments since 1945.”20

This makes clear why the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Western states is not deemed threatening but the pursuit of the nuclear weapons technology by states characterized as “them” is considered as a security challenge by Western states. This discourse has evolved based on the significance of the proliferating state in question and its relationship with the West. This was evident concerning Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in the 1980s, which was largely ignored by the US as Pakistan’s cooperation was needed to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, but as soon as the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the US took an about turn on how it viewed Pakistan’s nuclear program. This resulted in a changed Western discourse about nuclear proliferation and Pakistan.

Author’s Note: This is an excerpt of an in-depth working paper focusing on the colonial undertones of Western nonproliferation discourse.

About the Author

Haleema Saadia

Haleema Saadia is a Doctoral Candidate at the National University of Sciences and Technology and is a Lecturer at the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad.