Few nations have endured a more persistent nuclear double standard than Pakistan. Since the 1970s, it has faced sanctions and stigma, not due to misconduct but because of a bias that treats deterrence as a civilizational right for some and a provocation for others.
Pakistan’s deterrent is India-specific, regionally bounded and rooted in strategic necessity. Yet, recent baseless claims, such as those by former Biden administration officials alleging a Pakistani ICBM, reflect how speculation often replaces analysis. Pakistan’s deterrent is India-specific. As a US Major Non-Nato ally, Pakistan neither seeks nor benefits from extended-range systems.
The Foreign Affairs claim of a Pakistani ICBM is based solely on an anonymous intelligence reference with no test data or technical indicators. Pakistan has neither tested nor signalled intent to pursue intercontinental-range missiles, nor does it possess the infrastructure for such a programme. Earlier narrative cited large rocket motors as evidence of global strike ambitions but these are common to MIRV or precision missile improvements. Even SUPARCO’s civilian space activity has faced unjust scrutiny, showing how Pakistani technological progress and declared policies are consistently misread.
Pakistan’s Full Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) is a calibrated response to India’s Cold Start doctrine and missile defences. It is India-focused, threat-contingent and aimed at preventing conflict escalation rather than projecting power. Systems like Nasr and Ababeel are designed for credibility across escalation levels, not to signal extended-range ambitions. An ICBM pursuit would contradict both doctrine and necessity.
India, by contrast, has tested the Agni-V (8,000 km) and the forthcoming Agni-VI (10,000+ km, MIRVs), along with SLBMs like the K-4 and K-5, clearly intended for global reach. Yet its ambitions escape scrutiny. Despite its ambiguous NFU posture, ASAT tests, and non-NPT status, India is seldom questioned. This reflects a strategic indulgence rooted in geopolitical alignment, allowing India’s expansion to be normalised while Pakistan is accused of capabilities it doesn’t possess.
There is no evidence, technical or doctrinal, that Pakistan seeks ICBMs. No tests, signals or infrastructure suggest such intent. Instead, some intelligence reports and vague satellite imagery are repackaged as strategic evidence. This reflects a familiar pattern: modernisation by allies is seen as foresight, while others are accused of escalation. Such distortions erode credibility in global arms control narratives.
India’s access to advanced technologies from Russia and Israel has enabled it to develop credible intercontinental capabilities, yet it faces minimal scrutiny. In contrast, Pakistan, without SLBMs or space launch vehicles, is accused of ambitions it doesn’t have. This asymmetry reflects narrative construction, not objective analysis. While India’s buildup is legitimised, Pakistan’s doctrinal consistency is treated with suspicion.
In this accusation lies a deeper structural failure of asymmetry in how international discourse operates: threat perceptions are a function of geopolitical alignment, not material capability, and analysis has mutated into narrative warfare. The architecture of so-called global non-proliferation regime claims equity, free speech and liberalism but seldom gives space to other perspectives, incentivises opacity, rewards hedging and penalises doctrinal consistency. Pakistan maintains regionally confined doctrine but is accused of the very behaviour it explicitly avoids. That is the essence of the nuclear apartheid: persistent, selective and self-reinforcing.
Discrimination is costly. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was established in response to Indian proliferation, but it granted India a trade waiver. The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) rewarded its proliferation with membership and opened the spigot to sensitive technologies for space and missile programs that produced ASAT weapons and ICBMs. Pakistan stands in South Asian ring blindfolded and hands-tied to fight an opponent on steroids: sanctioned for procurements for peaceful technologies. Such strategic bias corrodes the norms and rules-based order the West has claimed to uphold. Islamabad should be thanked for adhering to norms without meaningful returns.
In casting India as a Net Security Provider in the Asia-Pacific region, Washington has overlooked the role of the influential diaspora in presenting Pakistan’s deterrence development as an obstacle to the regional order. Paradoxically, the more India expands, the more it is normalised; the more Pakistan stabilises, the pressures increase. Such policy and narrative increase instability, not prevent it. As the Regional Security Stabiliser, Pakistan carries the burden of addressing strategic instability.
The ICBM speculation is strategically flawed. Pakistan has a secure command and control structure, credible second-strike capability, and doctrinal focus strictly confined to South Asia. Survivability measures, such as MIRVs or mobility enhancements, are either being misinterpreted or deliberately mischaracterised as strategic anxiety. The dangerous narrative is legitimising the logic of preventive strikes while pathologising the logic of deterrence. Import destabilising strategic templates into South Asia undermines regional stability.
Conflating capability with intent flattens crucial doctrinal distinctions. Pakistan’s India-specific deterrent, rooted in clearly defined boundaries, cannot credibly be grouped into a 'Category 5' threat to the US. Such mischaracterisation risks disproportionate responses, distorts regional dynamics, and legitimises indiscriminate US nuclear expansion under a false premise of uniform threat.
Pakistan is not developing an ICBM; the claim is politically driven and strategically reckless. The issue lies not in Pakistan’s actions, but in selective perceptions shaped by ex-officials now driving biased policy narratives. While India expands its intercontinental and space capabilities with external support, Pakistan is criticised for complicating the situation. This distortion erodes the credibility of global non-proliferation, incentivises opacity and undermines South Asian stability. Deterrence norms must apply equally, or they fail altogether.
South Asian nuclear stability requires adherence to four principles: rejecting claims lacking evidence, applying standards uniformly, upholding doctrinal consistency and confronting narrative asymmetry. Pakistan’s regionally focused deterrent is not the threat; strategic bias is. Its challenge is not rebuttal, but the preservation of restraint amid distorted scrutiny. True stability requires restoring analytical honesty and holding all states to equal standards, free from geopolitical favouritism. Only then can the legacy of nuclear apartheid begin to unravel.
The writer is an arms control adviser at the Strategic Plans Division, where he has also served as the director general of the Arms Control & Disarmament Affairs Branch.
