Nuclear weapons are by far one of the most lethal weapons ever invented by mankind, so much so that in 1945, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, no country dared to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
Nuclear weapons are a formidable deterrent, but it is not easy to obtain them. Even in the absence of opposition, sanctions, and suppression by major powers, a lot of manpower and material resources need to be invested in order to develop an atomic bomb. In 1942, the United States mobilized 539,000 people to develop the atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer, Fermi, Feynman, Pol, Alvarez, Lawrence, Seeberg, von Neumann, Rabbi, Yuri, Wu Jianxiong and many other top scientists, and spent 2.6 billion US dollars in three years.
In 2021, Pakistan's GDP is 346.343 billion US dollars, and the per capita GDP is only 1537.94 US dollars, which is a relatively poor country. At the same time, Pakistan's science and technology is also very backward, and Pakistan, which lacks financial resources and scientific and technological talents, how can it obtain the atomic bomb?
First, the impetus comes from its sworn enemy, India.
After the United States obtained the atomic bomb, the Soviet Union also obtained many key data and materials from Klaus Fuchs, a famous British physicist involved in the Manhattan Project. In 1949, Soviet scientists developed their first atomic bomb.
Many scientists in Britain and France participated in the Manhattan Project, so after World War II, they also developed their own atomic bombs.
After the founding of New China, the mainland was in a state of exhaustion and a very weak industrial base, and it was difficult to study its own atomic bomb, but then, the Soviet Union's comprehensive assistance to China created a complete industrial system for the mainland, which played a key role in helping the mainland's various scientific research work. In 1964, with the efforts of the mainland's scientific research work, the mainland developed its own atomic bomb.
After several major countries in the world possessed their own atomic bombs, India, which had a "great power dream", could not sit still and attached importance to its own atomic bomb research program. India's industrial base is very weak, coupled with the partner United States, always "stumbling" on key technical issues. The United States provides India with nuclear materials, but does not provide technical support for implosion-type atomic bombs, provides Indian nuclear reactors with uranium-238 fuel rods that can only produce plutonium-239, and says nothing about centrifuges that can produce gases, the key equipment for uranium bombs.
This has made India's atomic bomb research work very slow.
In 1948, India established the Atomic Energy Commission and began its own atomic bomb research work. It was only in 1974 that India conducted its first underground nuclear test. In 1998, After several consecutive nuclear tests, India officially became the seventh nuclear-armed state.
After possessing the atomic bomb, India declared that it possessed nuclear weapons in order to maintain peace, but its opponent Pakistan was like a needle in the haystack.
Pakistan and India, historically belonged to the same country, British India. In 1947, when britain was forced to end its colonial rule over India, he divided India into two countries, India and Pakistan, in order to resolve the serious religious contradictions within India. Let the Hindu people live in India and the Muslims live in Pakistan. Although everyone has the right to choose which country to live in, the reality is that in the same region, there are both Muslims and Pakistan, some people want to join Pakistan, some people want to stay in India, but everyone is reluctant to leave their homeland, which intensifies the contradictions between Muslims and Hindu believers.
India and Pakistan are at war because of religious conflicts, various entanglements of interests arising from the separation of families, and competition for regions such as Kashmir.
In 1974, pakistan's security was threatened after India conducted an underground nuclear test, which also accelerated its own atomic bomb research.
Secondly, Pakistan is luckier.
After World War II, Israeli scientists helped France develop the atomic bomb, which allowed Israel to master the relevant technology and develop its own atomic bomb.
Israel and the Arab States are mortal enemies.
In 1947, after the Jews established their own state of Israel on the land of Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon and other Arab countries were very angry, they regarded Israel as a thorn in the eye, a thorn in the flesh, and wanted to get rid of Israel. For this reason, the Arab countries and Israel broke out five Middle East wars, but because of the help of the United States, they all lost to Israel.
The Arab countries could not defeat Israel, and Israel also had a large-scale atomic bomb, which made them feel threatened. In order to balance Israel, Arab countries began to help Pakistan, which is also Muslim, develop an atomic bomb. At the same time, they also hope that after helping Pakistan obtain the atomic bomb, they can get relevant technical support from Pakistan when they want to develop the atomic bomb.
With the support of a large number of Arab countries, the poor and backward Pakistan has a certain guarantee of financial resources when studying its own atomic bomb.
In 1991, the Soviet Union, a nuclear power on a par with the United States, collapsed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tens of thousands of nuclear bombs he possessed were inherited by Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia. Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which did not have the financial means to sustain soviet-era nuclear forces, chose to destroy thousands of atomic bombs in their possession after receiving security pledges from the United States, Britain, and Russia. Russia has retained thousands of nuclear weapons it has inherited, but it has also stopped developing its nuclear forces as it did during the Soviet era.
Ukraine and Kazakhstan have become non-nuclear states, and Russia has slowed its own development of nuclear weapons. As a result, a large number of nuclear experts during the Soviet period lost their jobs. When these excellent scientists were worried about their future, Pakistan threw an olive branch to them, and a large number of Soviet nuclear experts were taken advantage of by Pakistan. The arrival of Soviet nuclear experts also brought to Pakistan a large number of precious raw materials that could not be bought on the market, which brought a qualitative improvement to Pakistan's atomic bomb research.
With the help of Soviet experts, in 1998, after India's nuclear tests and successful nuclear weapons, Pakistan also retaliated with-for-tat and carried out its first nuclear test, which allowed Pakistan to successfully enter the list of nuclear-armed countries and also possess a great weapon to balance India.