In 1998 I wrote a memo to President Bill Clinton titled “Pakistan: The
Most Dangerous Country in the World.” Pakistan had just tested nuclear
weapons, and nowhere else on the planet were so many ominous trends
colliding in a uniquely combustible way. During subsequent crises with
India, Pakistan issued threats of nuclear war (as did India), and today
it has the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world, not to mention
a long history of proliferating its nuclear technology to other countries.
Former foreign minister of Iran Ali Akbar Velayati has confirmed that
Pakistan provided his country with its first nuclear centrifuge technology
in 1985. By the time President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the
fearsome trends had not abated, and he asked me to chair an interagency
strategic review of U.S. policy toward Pakistan—a country with which
the United States is locked in what is best described as a deadly embrace