Since acquiring nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan have relied on the United States to de-escalate crises. This approach is inherently risky and must be changed.

The Pakistani military claimed on April 19 to have successfully tested a 60 kilometer-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile, a move that might indicate Islamabad’s intention to develop low-yield nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield.

Zia Mian reviews Fallout, Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz’s account of how the CIA recruited the Tinner family as agents inside the Abdul Qadeer Khan network. In addition to adding detail to previous accounts of the Khan network, the book shows how the CIA sought to protect its dominant position in internal U.S. policy debates on Khan’s nuclear smuggling operation and shielded the Tinners from criminal prosecution.

The people of Pakistan face multiple hardships: catastrophic flooding, a Taliban-affiliated insurgency, political assassinations, and chronic poverty. Yet, the country’s powerful military establishment has directed much of the nation’s wealth and perhaps even international nuclear technical assistance to building a nuclear arsenal that does nothing to address these urgent threats.

If the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) does not agree soon on new guidelines for selling sensitive nuclear technology, there would be a good argument for dropping the effort, a senior Obama administration official said Oct. 18.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Gary Samore, the White House arms control coordinator, said, “I think that if we are not able to reach agreement, my guess is that we should probably decide that this is an effort that was just not going to be successful.”

The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) last month concluded its annual plenary meeting with little apparent progress on two high-profile issues, the potential sale of two reactors from China to Pakistan and the adoption of more-stringent rules for sensitive nuclear exports.