ABSTRACT
Pakistan emerged on the nuclear map after five decades of sustained effort. This chapter explores the dynamics of organizational and bureaucratic nuclear decision-making in Pakistan and its impact on the evolution of the country's four-decade-long nuclear program. Nuclear decision-making remained highly personalized with competing alliances of like-minded individuals in different institutional and personal positions of significance and authority. In Pakistan, domestic and bureaucratic politics were supplemented by "nuclear myth-making" and the "technological imperative" as drivers of vertical proliferation. In the absence of a centralized command and control structure, a highly personalized management that was independent of organizational cultures characterized Pakistan's nuclear program. Since Pakistan lacked an elaborate industrial base, a two-pronged strategy for acquiring nuclear capability had to be devised—indigenization coupled with external procurement of critical materials and equipment. Now Pakistan had to develop nuclear facilities indigenously. Pakistan was acutely aware of India's program to develop nuclear explosives.
