Deterrence and diplomacy.

THE strategic choices most consequential to Pakistan's future lie within. They involve dealing with recurrent economic crises, providing effective governance, defeating terrorism, making education accessible to all its children and generating jobs to absorb the population's youth bulge to avert a potential demographic disaster. The implications of these internal challenges for national security are apparent and can be ignored only at great peril to the country.

But external security challenges have been no less imposing since the country's inception, confronting it with enduring dilemmas. The burden of history and tyranny of geography - a volatile neighbourhood and the headwinds of geopolitics unleashed by big power competition - have consistently put security from external threats at the top of Pakistan's national agenda. Contested borders inherited from colonial rule compounded this dilemma.

Few books have been written by Pakistanis about how the country's enduring external security predicament motivated its quest for a nuclear capability. Feroze Khan's Eating Grass was the first to chronicle Pakistan's nuclear history and the challenges it faced to acquire a nuclear weapons capability.

The book's concern with how Pakistan surmounted numerous obstacles to master the nuclear fuel cycle left a gap in the role of diplomacy and how its diplomats defended the country and promoted its interests in the nuclear domain.

A compelling new book now fills that gap. The Security Imperative: Pakistan's Nuclear Deterrence and Diplomacy by Zamir Akram, deals with nuclear diplomacy with sharp insight and extraordinary breadth. Having dealt first-hand with nuclear issues and negotiations, Akram, an outstanding diplomat, is especially qualified to tell the definitive story of Pakistan's quest for security by acquiring credible nuclear deterrence in which diplomacy played a crucial role.

Pakistan's main challenges lie within but external security has also posed enduring dilemmas.

The main theme of his well-researched book is the security-driven nature of Pakistan's nuclear deterrence. In the opening chapter, Akram describes how the country's security compulsions were the consequence of history and geography. The legacy of disputes and hostility with India shaped its security paradigm.

Pakistan initially relied on an external balancing strategy including military alliances to assure its security. But this failed to prevent India's aggression in 1971. That...