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Triggering Doomsday 2.

2. Transcending the nuclear barrier

When you force a rattle snake into a corner, it strikes. There are
probably no serious grounds to assume that the leadership of al Qaeda
in Waziristan will want to respond any differently from the rattle
snake to the severe American pounding of al Qaeda members throughout
the past six weeks.

For al Qaeda, a sizable counterblast might seem a pipe dream, however.
The simple fact that so far al Qaeda has not been capable of bringing
just a small dirty atom bomb into play testifies to the well-nigh
insuperable obstacles experienced by non-state actors who want to
procure and deploy a nuclear weapon.

No state and no supreme command in its right mind will want to let go
of the full control of its nuclear weapons and a terrorist sponsorship
will never include a nuclear licence.

But then, the American decision-makers have hardly overlooked the fact
that by assaulting al Qaeda in Waziristan the Pentagon is at the same
time violating the territory of a nuclear power, indeed killing
Pakistani citizens.

No doubt Washington has taken great pains to make sure the Pakistani
government is informed of the limited nature of the American
aggression, but this is not all there is to say.

The Pakistan of today is a deeply disunited society and as nuclear
scientist Pervez Hoodbhoy has stated (1, 2) the split between pro-
Western and islamistic factions even pervades the control organs of
the nuclear weapons of Pakistan.

Could a cornered and desperate al Qaeda accentuate this clash of
interests triggering the transcendence of the nuclear barrier ?

While I do not insinuate al Qaeda could buy a nuclear weapon from the
Pakistani army I do suggest that in the absence of any countervailing
force against the present American attack on Pakistani soil, al
Qaeda’s bounteous war chest could evoke the sympathetic response al
Qaeda wants from their islamistic nuclear weapons possessing
conversation partners throughout the last decade: the detonation,
masquerading as the act of a group of terrorists, of just one small,
low-yield nuclear weapon against an Israeli or American city.

Steen Hjortsoe

References:

1. Hoodbhoy, Pervez: Bin Laden and Hiroshima.
http://www.chowk.com/articles/9503

2. Matzen, Jeppe: De forkerte hænder (Interview with Pervez Hoodbhoy).
In: Weekend-Avisen, Copenhagen, 4 July 2008.