MONDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2001 — With nuclear nations India and Pakistan edging closer to war, it’s worth remembering former New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s warning when Pakistan developed atomic weapons. In May 1998, after Pakistan detonated its first nuclear weapon, Moynihan, a former ambassador to India, appeared on NBC’s Today show to analyze the situation. Today didn’t air all of Moynihan’s comments, but the Moynihan camp made them available to me, and they bear striking relevance to the current state of affairs.

"If Pakistan detonates a bomb, the US must say to the government in Islamabad that any sign of its being transferred to the Middle East will be an occasion for war by the US," Moynihan said, during unaired portions of the interview. "If they go ahead, we have to say to them they mustn’t transfer that power to the Middle East or we will have to destroy that power ourselves."

Of course, America won’t be going to war with Pakistan any time soon. The US needs Pakistan too much for the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. Moynihan’s comments, nonetheless, were on target in assessing the grave danger posed by Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Under President Pervez Musharraf — the military general who replaced the former elected leader — Pakistan is formally a secular regime. One reason Musharraf, who models himself after Turkey’s zealously secular Kemal Ataturk, is flexing Pakistan’s muscles toward India is to give himself cover over outrage that he has been too friendly to the US. Even so, Musharraf’s vulnerability on that point only underscores the power of Moynihan’s warning.

Here’s the quandary: if Musharraf’s regime should fall, nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of those friendly to the Taliban. If Musharraf remains in power, the potential exists for one US ally, Pakistan, to be at war with another US ally, India.

Much of the fault here lies with the prior US administration. Clinton administration officials ignored warnings about Pakistan’s nuclear program at a time when the US could still have mitigated the situation. Once the outgunned Pakistanis detonated their device, the day of a nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan became inevitable.

Moynihan’s warning, finally, resonates in one other way as well. The United States, under both Clinton and George W. Bush, has been far too slow to see India’s value as a strategic partner in South Asia. India, a secular nation, is the world’s largest democracy, situated between the Islamic world and China. The mindset of State Department policymakers has not changed since the time when India’s socialist leanings caused it to gravitate to the Soviet Union and Pakistan’s rightist generals favored the US. While current short-term realities require the US to work closely with Pakistan, in the long-term America needs to see who its true allies are. And the latest news that Pakistan’s troops have been somewhat less than zealous in interdicting Al Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan offers an indication of where that country’s actual sympathies lie.