A choice for Pakistan

India has always wanted a nuclear bomb for strategic and nationalistic considerations, and by testing and going public in May it finally ensured that it would have one. Pakistan was always ambivalent about the political as well as economic costs, and went nuclear only reluctantly after India set the pace. In the difference between the nuclear attitudes of the two South Asian countries lies the possibility of limiting some part of the damage done by the successive tests they conducted in the spring of this year.

Pakistan has its own grounds to consider reversing course, accepting the test-ban and nonproliferation treaties, and softening its insistence on becoming a fully-fledged nuclear power.

Some argue that it should reverse course and take and exploit the moral high ground. That alone would not satisfy Pakistan's legitimate concern for its security, particularly in respect to its large and powerful rival India. But a turn off the nuclear road would give Pakistan a strong claim to the strategic patronage of the world's nuclear powers, including the United States and, in time, India itself. Exploration of this idea would tax Pakistan's current leadership but its merits may become more appealing as Pakistan's woes increase.

-- The Washington Post