Analyzing the U.S. Policy towards Pakistan’s Nuclear Program from the Viewpoint of the Neo-realism and Constructivism

This article evaluates the factors that have influenced the formation of the U.S. policy towards Pakistan’s nuclear program. The issue of Pakistan’s nuclear program, as one of the most crisis prone countries in the world, is a significant issue in the domain of the nuclear program. To deal with this issue, the U.S. has primarily adopted an indecisive policy and avoidance of imposing unbearable pressures. The hypothesis of this article is that the U.S. policy towards Pakistan’s nuclear program is mainly the result of material such as features of structure of international system, as well as identity such as collective and social identity variables. To develop this hypothesis, the authors alongside applying the neorealist theory, move to introduce two constructivist variables of collective and social structures. They conclude that the U.S. for a variety of reasons such as containment of communism, nuclear deterrence, balance of power and struggle against terrorism, in accordance to material structure and existence of some sort of identity rivalry (known as Locke’s situation) as a consequence of Washington and Islamabad collective and social identity in accordance to Imaterial structure, has adopted an indecisive policy towards Pakistan’s nuclear program.