Islamabad. Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had made a firm declaration in 1965 that “If India makes a bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even starve, but we will get a bomb of our own.” However, it took time. It took more than three decades and a secret (secrets) network of theft and espionage for Pakistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, to finally detonate that bomb.
According to geopolitical experts, in the contemporary global political system, Pakistan is a de facto nuclear nation, having built its nuclear program outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) framework following the philosophy of ‘beg, borrow, or steal’ . Gary Milhollin, a leading expert on nuclear weapons proliferation, said Pakistan’s bomb would not have existed without China’s help.
Pakistan has a stockpile of about 170 nuclear weapons – which represents a steady increase in their arsenal since 2022.