Pakistans Pathway to the Bomb, Mansoor Ahmed
Pakistans Pathway to the Bomb, Mansoor Ahmed
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Pakistan's Pathway to the Bomb
Ambitions, Politics, and Rivalries

Author: Mansoor Ahmed

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 12 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Kalorama

Published: 07/12/2022


Synopsis

Pakistan's pathway to developing nuclear weapons remains shrouded in mystery and surrounded by misconceptions. While it is no secret why Pakistan became a nuclear power, how Pakistan became a nuclear state has been obscured by mythmaking.

In Pakistan's Pathway to the Bomb, Mansoor Ahmed offers a revisionist history of Pakistan's nuclear program and the bureaucratic politics that shaped its development from its inception in 1956 until the 1998 nuclear tests. Drawing on elite interviews and previously untapped primary sources, Ahmed offers a fresh assessment of the actual and perceived roles and contributions of the scientists and engineers who led the nuclear program. He shows how personal ambitions and politics within Pakistan's strategic enclave generated inter-laboratory competition in the nuclear establishment, which determined nuclear choices for the country for more than two decades. It also produced unexpected consequences such as illicit proliferation to other countries largely outside of the Pakistani state's control.

As Pakistan's nuclear deterrent program continues to grow, Pakistan's Pathway to the Bomb provides fresh insights into how this nuclear power has evolved in the past and where it stands today.

About Mansoor Ahmed

Mansoor Ahmed is a senior fellow at the Center for International Strategic Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a former Stanton Nuclear Security junior faculty fellow (2015-16) and postdoctoral research fellow (2016-18) with the International Security Program and Managing the Atom project at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. He also served as a lecturer in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, from 2011-15.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Abhi on February 21, 2025

If you want to learn about... errr... Pakistan's pathway to the bomb, I recommend NOT reading this as your first book. Its main purpose is to deconstruct the myth of A. Q. Khan being the father of nuclear Pakistan. The second purpose is to log in excruciating detail, the bureaucratic tussles behind......more

Goodreads review by Manraj on December 23, 2023

A bal account. De emphasise role of AQ Khan. How Pak has worked towards achieving the feet. I learnt about nuclear strategy of Pakistan. Overall a good account on Pak making a bomb......more