Mubashir Hassan, the pacifist and former finance minister in Lahore,
told me he worries that Pakistan, like the United States, is the sort
of country that would actually use its atomic bombs. He said he had
once asked Pakistan’s leaders when they thought such use would be
justified.

One said, “When we are threatened enough.”

“But when will you be threatened enough? If India takes Lahore?”

“We don’t know.”

“But if you throw a bomb, and India throws two bombs back in return,
what then?”

“So what?” the man said. “Then we die.”

Hassan was appalled by this logic, but alternative strategies of “no
first use” are credible only in the most richly endowed nuclear
nations and are simply not realistic for countries like Pakistan. Once
such a country has a bomb, it must be determined not just to use it,
but to use it first.


(The Atomic Bazaar - The Rise Of The Nuclear Poor; William Langewiesche)