Why China Helped Countries Like Pakistan, North Korea Build Nuclear Bombs

“Former U.S. Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed knows nuclear bombs better than most people as he designed two of them when he worked at the Livermore National Laboratory as a weapons designer.”

Reed recently spoke with U.S. News's Alex Kingsbury.

In this interview Reed states that all countries that built bombs, including the United States, spied on or were given access to the work of other nuclear powers.

Based on discussions with Chinese nuclear experts Reed discloses to Kingsbury that it was under Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir BhuttoBenazir Bhutto, Pakistan built its first functioning nuclear weapon. Reed believes that during Bhutto's term in office, the People's Republic of China tested Pakistan's first bomb for her in 1990.

Pakistanis were so quick to respond to the Indian nuclear tests in 1998 that it took them only two weeks and three days. When the Soviet Union took the United States by surprise with a test in 1961, it took the U.S. seventeen days to prepare and test, a device that had been on hand for years. The Pakistani response makes it clear that the six bombs Pakistan tested in May 1998 under Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz SharifNawaz Sharif were very carefully engineered devices in which they had great confidence.

Reed for unknown reasons believes that the world is safer for having all the permanent UN Security Council members possess nuclear weapons. He thinks that North Korea, Pakistan, and India having nuclear weapons is probably not a good idea; but Reed condones Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons.

“The United States conducted nuclear tests in Nevada openly and with full disclosure in the 1990s on behalf of our U.K. allies. Reed speculates on Israeli access to the U.S. test results. In the wake of the Suez crisis in 1956, the French and the Israelis initiated a joint nuclear weapons program that resulted in a test in the Algerian desert. At that test in 1960, two countries went nuclear with one shot and thus Israel was given assistance in developing their bomb while the United States looked the other way.”