Nuclear security

Despite political and economic upheaval, Pakistan has made improvements in the perception of its nuclear security, according to a new report by a nuclear safety-focused US think tank. The Nuclear Security Index 2023 ranked over 175 countries on different metrics, although the most important ones only focused on the 22 countries known or believed to have weapons-usable nuclear materials. While Pakistan was generally ranked at the lower end of the lists overall, it was higher than several known or suspected nuclear-capable countries with similar levels of economic development. In fact, besides being ranked higher than India, Iran and North Korea on security, Pakistan was only a few points behind Russia and Israel.

On the security of nuclear facilities, Pakistan tied with Israel and Russia but placed well ahead of India, Iran, North Korea and several other countries. Though the report acknowledged Pakistan on several counts, it said building more confidence in our nuclear security would require more transparency on nuclear material stocks — both civilian and military — and voluntary International Atomic Energy Agency inspections every five years. We checked none of the four related metrics, while most other countries checked at least the ones relating to civilian programmes. The report also suggests intensive work to “strengthen insider threat prevention” and cybersecurity, including more frequent psychological reviews of staff and improved whistleblower and reporting mechanisms.

But while the rankings show massive room for improvement, they do serve as another source of external validation that Pakistan’s nuclear assets are secure, or at least more secure than several countries that are not constantly subjects of speculation in the international press — when is the last time anyone heard the Western countries criticise Israel on nuclear security. In fact, while Pakistan did fare poorly on the ranking for “illicit activities by non-state actors”, in a three-way tie for 19^th among 22 countries, those other two countries were Israel and the US.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 22^nd, 2023.

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