The Center for International Strategic Studies (CISS), on Wednesday, rebutted an international study on Pakistan’s nuclear command and control structure (NC2)by arguing that it attempted to undermine its credibility through weaknesses in the system, which did not exist. A report, ‘The Finger on the Button: The Authority to Use Nuclear Weapons in the Nuclear-Armed States’ by a US-based think tank, James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies, raised several concerns about Pakistan’s NC2 system. Its co-authors, Jeffery Lewis and Bruno Tertrais, have doubted the commitment and credibility of this structure by quoting anonymous sources, misquoting other sources, in addition to using factually incorrect, and dubious premises.
For instance, the authors have incorrectly claimed, while citing other sources, about the existence “of a system of two separate codes, one civilian and one military”. To which, CISS Senior Fellow, Dr Naeem Salik replied, “For one thing, their basic concepts are skating on a thin ice.
How would any nuclear control work, if there are two commands (civilian and military), which would be a recipe for confusion and disaster.”
The authors further contended that the Employment Control Committee, the main policy and decision-making body of the National Command Authority (NCA), comprises of five civilians and four military officials. Responding to which, Dr Salik said that they erroneously conclude from this information that the military officials will use their majority to dominate the decision making.
Several questions have also been raised on Pakistan’s centralized and assertive command and control with no pre-delegation by selectively quoting from the NCA Act 2010 and without understanding the context, he maintained. The delegation of authority by NCA to Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and Director General Strategic Plans Division (SPD), Dr Salik explained, is meant to facilitate the day to day handling of routine administrative functioning of strategic organizations and not for operational use as the authors have wrongly deduced.
Other factual errors and omissions can also be found, which include their characterization of Maj Gen Ret Mahmoud Durrani as a former SPD official and their reliance on nameless sources described as “author’s source.”
Published in Daily Times, February 21st 2019.
