Pakistan Requested Nuclear Weapons Assistance From China in Talks Over Strategic Port

In bilateral talks this year, Pakistan asked China for a nuclear second-strike capability in exchange for the Gwadar Port—a demand that was rebuffed by China

Pakistani spectators watch the Shaheen II long-range missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, during the National Day parade in Islamabad, 23 March 2005. AFP PHOTO/Farooq NAEEM via Getty Images.

Negotiations between the Pakistani military and China over the future use of a strategic port in the city of Gwadar have stalled over major demands made by Islamabad for support from Beijing, including the provision of a second-strike nuclear capability that would significantly upgrade Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

The breakdown of talks with China comes amid a broader crisis facing the military, with public discontent over a failing economy, rigged elections, and the imprisonment of former prime minister Imran Khan triggering mass public protests in the capital this November. China has been long cited as a potential savior for the country's flailing economy. But, as Drop Site News has learned, that relationship appears to be in free fall over public and private disputes over security concerns, as well as China's demand to build a military base inside Pakistan.

Earlier this year, Drop Site reported on negotiations over the creation of a Chinese military base at the strategic Pakistani port city of Gwadar. According to classified Pakistani military documents, Pakistan had given private assurances to China that it would be permitted to transform Gwadar into a permanent base for the Chinese military.

As part of those ongoing talks, as Drop Site has learned from sources informed about the conversations, Pakistan's military-backed government has asked China to provide it sweeping concessions, including economic and military aid to insulate it from Western backlash over the strategically located port. But the request for a nuclear second-strike capability to be provided to Islamabad by Beijing goes well beyond previously known demands.

A second-strike capability is a highly prized form of military deterrent, as it allows a country to retaliate even if it suffers an attack that cripples other components of its nuclear triad. Possession of a second-strike capability is intended to deter hostile powers from attempting to win a war with a decisive nuclear first strike of their own, by guaranteeing that they would also face some form of nuclear retaliation regardless, whether from attacks carried out by nuclear-armed submarines or missiles stored in hardened silos.

"Second strike is designed to call a bluff and check a threat," said Kelsey Atherton, a military technology expert who has published on nuclear weapons, speaking generally. "If a country devotes significant resources to not just a nuclear arsenal, but a nuclear arsenal that can still be put into use even if some of it is destroyed, then the stakes of a first strike become too high to contemplate."

In the already select group of nuclear-armed countries worldwide, China is part of a small subset that maintains this capacity. According to sources with knowledge of the talks between Beijing and Islamabad, the demand for a second-strike capacity in exchange for Gwadar was deemed unreasonable by the Chinese side, leading to a stalling of negotiations. The failure to reach an agreement on the subject seems to have further soured the turbulent relations between the two allies and pushed back any agreement on militarization of Gwadar, despite Pakistan's repeated promises that it would be made available for Chinese use.

The ongoing talks between the two countries have taken place in a format known as the Consultation on Strategic Defense and Security Cooperation, or the 2+2 Dialogue. Previous rounds of 2+2 talks had been held in Beijing and the city of Urumqi, in China's Xinjiang region. The last round was held in Islamabad this January.

The Pakistani consulate in New York and the Chinese embassy in Islamabad did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The Pakistani military has now found itself stuck with an increasingly difficult balancing act, as it attempts to maintain good ties with both the U.S. and China, even as the relationship between Beijing and Washington grows more and more hostile. With Donald Trump set to take office in the U.S. in January 2025, his expected hawkish stance on China and potential skepticism toward the Biden-era alliance with the Pakistani military junta could further complicate Pakistan's position and risk crucial support from both countries.

“The food is already on the plate”

The status of Gwadar, prized by China for strategic reasons, has long been a particular area of concern for the U.S., which is in the midst of a broad campaign to contain China in the Indo-Pacific region. The view held in Chinese security circles is that militarization of Gwadar is inevitable. Or, as a People's Liberation Army officer quoted in a 2020 study published by the U.S. Naval War College said, “The food is already on the plate; we’ll eat it whenever we want to.”

Beijing has pushed Pakistan hard to allow it access to Gwadar, currently the site of joint economic cooperation between the two countries, for military purposes—including, according to Drop Site's sources, the ability to permanently station troops, military equipment, and resources for maintenance and logistics at the port.

Access to Gwadar would allow China to break free from U.S. naval blockades on its vital energy shipments in the Strait of Malacca, while potentially allowing the People's Liberation Navy to conduct its own blockades on Western energy shipments in the Middle East should a war break out.

In return for Gwadar, Pakistani officials taking part in the talks have asked Beijing to provide sweeping indemnification against any political, economic, and diplomatic blowback that Islamabad may suffer from the U.S. over granting the port to China, as well as support with modernizing its military and intelligence capacities to keep pace with rival India.

Yet it is the demand for second-strike capacity that reportedly antagonized China the most. Granting the demand would represent a major upgrade to Pakistan's own nuclear capability, but would also require China to become party to nuclear proliferation in the subcontinent and potentially violate international law.

As a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, China is classified as a nuclear-weapon state (NWS). The treaty explicitly prohibits NWS parties from transferring nuclear weapons, technology, or materials to any non-nuclear weapon state for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons. Pakistan, which is not a party to the NPT, is considered a non-nuclear-weapon state under the treaty framework.

A second-strike capability would be a huge and expensive augmentation to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, entailing significant costs and technical complexity. Since the early 1990s, Pakistan has invested heavily in expanding and modernizing the nature of its nuclear arsenal, maintaining the fastest growing nuclear weapons stockpile in the world.

A 2016 report by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace noted that Pakistan's "ongoing arms buildup, continuing fissile material production, and investment in sea-based second-strike capabilities suggest a shift toward a complex deterrence posture rooted in the notion of maintaining a strategic balance," while citing retired senior Pakistani officers who stated, "a second strike capability is being developed by equipping the conventional submarines with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles."

Providing nuclear weapons technology to another country would not only risk damaging China's global reputation, but also trigger likely diplomatic and economic consequences, including possible nonproliferation sanctions.

Despite longstanding security and political ties, relations between Pakistan and China have come under severe strain in recent years. In another decision that reportedly infuriated Beijing, during a joint naval exercise last year known as Sea Guardians III, Pakistan did not allow Chinese ships to make a port call at Gwadar, in apparent deference to American sensitivity about China's presence at the site.

Protests and Insurgents

The 2+2 negotiations have taken place against the backdrop of a deteriorating political, economic, and social situation in Pakistan. Mass protests in Islamabad in November by supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan—who was deposed by Pakistan's military in 2022—paralyzed the capital for days, before a violent crackdown by the military killed an unknown number of protestors and dispersed the demonstrations. Militant and separatist violence in multiple provinces have also killed dozens of Pakistani security forces in recent months, while the country's leadership struggles to find solutions for widespread inflation and energy shortages.

The continued deterioration of Pakistan’s relationship with China in this climate could cost it dearly. Pakistan today owes China billions of dollars in loans, Chinese energy companies power much of Pakistan, and, in the past few decades, Pakistan's major weapon purchases, including fighter jets and naval ships, have originated from China. So far these investments have not paid dividends for Pakistani citizens, who have continued to struggle with inflation and shortages despite China’s increasingly visible footprint in the country. And terrorist factions in certain regions of the country have lashed out against China's presence, killing several Chinese engineers and citizens in repeated attacks.

In recent months, China has also aired rare public criticism of Pakistan over its failure to protect Chinese nationals in the country from terrorist attacks carried out by separatist insurgents in the province of Balochistan.

“China prioritizes the safety of its citizens globally,” Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Jiang Zaidong said in a heated public exchange recently. "We cannot proceed with our projects if security concerns remain unresolved."

Balochistan is an important part of a major Chinese infrastructure project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as well as the Gwadar port that China has sought to augment its own military capacity in the Indian Ocean. While CPEC was launched with grand promises of economic revival, it has so far proven to be a disappointment to both Islamabad and Beijing, partly due to ongoing militant violence and political instability inside Pakistan.

Militants in Balochistan have accused China of helping facilitate the exploitation of their province, by carrying out development projects aimed at sapping its resources for the benefit of the government in Islamabad. They are also motivated by longstanding grievances with the Pakistani state, whom they accuse of neglecting their economic and political rights. The Baloch are an ethnic group spanning multiple countries in the region, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, and insurgents have sought to secede and form a new state from these contingent parts. The insurgency in Pakistan is also believed to be supported by India, whom Pakistan also accuses of helping orchestrate terrorist attacks inside the country aimed at undermining foreign investment.

This week, Pakistani media reported that the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Planning Development was informed that Pakistan and China were entering into a joint security agreement to combat the terror attacks. Drop Site reported the existence of this proposed arrangement this September, in an article that was attacked by representatives of the Pakistani government at the time as fake news intended to harm the country’s institutions.

The Pakistani military now finds it in a position where it is alienating its closest ally in Beijing, while also failing to reap meaningful benefits from the U.S., where the Biden administration has shown limited appetite for reengagement. A growing upsurge of criticism from lawmakers over the miltary's crackdown on democracy and imprisonment of Khan is now threatening to turn the country into a pariah in Washington, with little prospect that the incoming Trump administration will act to intervene in Pakistan's favor.

As the Pakistani government reels from these overlapping economic and political crises under military rule, it now faces the prospect of isolation from the majority of its own public, the U.S. government, and its closest foreign allies in Beijing. Far from helping guarantee its economic and security interests as had once been hoped, the stalled negotiations over Gwadar now threaten to add one more insolvable item to the military's growing list of dilemmas.