Chagai: Pakistan answers India’s tests, and sanctions follow

Background

On 11 and 13 May 1998 India conducted five nuclear tests at Pokhran, ending decades of ambiguity¹. The pressure on Pakistan to respond was immediate. The Clinton administration launched an intensive effort to persuade it not to test: Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, with General Anthony Zinni of US Central Command and other officials, flew to Islamabad and met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on 17 May, and President Clinton spoke to Sharif several times^2,3. Washington offered to work for the lifting of existing sanctions and other benefits if Pakistan held back; Pakistani officials replied that no package could substitute for a credible deterrent^3,4.

What happened

On 28 May 1998 Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in the Chagai hills of Balochistan, followed by a further test on 30 May^1,4. Sharif telephoned Clinton early on 28 May, just before announcing the tests; Clinton, who had urged him at length the night before not to proceed, expressed his profound disappointment³. The tests were celebrated in Pakistan, where 28 May is now marked as Youm-e-Takbeer, as restoring the strategic balance with India⁵.

Sanctions

US law left the administration little discretion. Section 102 of the Arms Export Control Act, the Glenn Amendment, required sanctions against any non-nuclear-weapon state that detonated a nuclear device: an end to most foreign assistance and military sales, opposition to non-humanitarian lending by international financial institutions, and restrictions on US bank lending and government credits^6,7. Clinton imposed the sanctions on India on 13 May and on Pakistan on 30 May⁶. On 6 June the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1172, condemning the tests and calling on both states to stop their nuclear-weapons programmes and refrain from further tests¹.

For Pakistan, whose foreign-exchange reserves were already thin, the sanctions - and the freezing of foreign-currency accounts that the government imposed at home - threatened a financial crisis^7,8.

A quick retreat

The sanctions soon began to erode. In July 1998 Congress exempted US agricultural credits, protecting American wheat exports to Pakistan. In October, through the Brownback amendment (the India–Pakistan Relief Act), it gave the president authority to waive many economic sanctions for a year, which Clinton used in November and December^8,9. Analysts described this as a pattern of confrontation followed by retreat, as Congress weighed nonproliferation against trade and regional stability⁸.

Why it mattered

The tests made Pakistan an overt nuclear-weapons state and permanently changed the context of US policy: from preventing a Pakistani bomb to managing the risks of nuclear-armed rivals. They also set the agenda for the rest of Clinton’s term - the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, export controls and restraint - through talks led by Talbott with both countries⁹.