Securing Pakistan's Nukes

A senior defense official called the proposed plans for a military intervention to secure Pakistan's nukes "wildly hypothetical and speculative." This is reassuring to say the least. A military intervention in Pakistan to secure access is flawed on several levels.

On a political level, I don't think it would be wise to intervene in Pakistan in any capacity. When you look at how popular the US drone attacks are, you can safely assume that any intervention would be met with extremely harsh criticism. Furthermore, Pakistan is supposedly our ally, and using military force inside their country is unlikely to improve those relations.

On a strategic level, do we have the resources to secure a country as large as Pakistan? Remember, it took close to 20 combat brigades to secure Iraq, a country with around 25 million people. Pakistan has close to 170 million people, how do expect to secure the entire country? If the US redeployed its forces from all over the world and called up all of its reserves, it would only have around 75-80 combat brigades, far below what it would take to confidently secure Pakistan. Securing parts of the country would not make much sense, so you would almost have to have SOF (special operations forces) do the work. If Pakistan were to "fail," how would SOF get deep inside the country (where the weapons probably are)? Getting to the weapons would be a problem, and getting the weapons out would be a problem. You are looking at using helicopters, and considering the nuclear weapons installations are likely to be heavily guarded, the probability of success rapidly dwindles.

While Pakistan is not a model for stability at the moment, we should not overestimate or overreact to the potential threat. Make no mistake, if Pakistan imploded, and the military split into factions, then that is a very worrying scenario. But if a state actor got control of the weapons, I would think that conventional deterrence theory applies. The threat of radical military factions giving the nuclear weapons to terrorists is also of concern. Pakistan only has a handful of operational weapons, why would the radical faction willingly give some up when possessing the weapons gives them a legitimate grip on power?