The construction of the military in Pakistan has for long been a subject of academic interest. Whether observers close their lens on the functions of the military, on the patterns of civil-military interaction, or on the issue of the nuclear program, Pakistan has provided a vivid and interesting point of inquiry. Most often, however, the inspecting has followed a path of determining dichotomist understandings and interpretations. On one side, the narrative has developed a curious case of sensationalism that falls far from factual objectivity and that carries the mark of tautology. On the other side, the direction moves away from the limited range and the modest explanatory power of the aforementioned narrative and captures the intricate realities of Pakistani military patterns with a refreshingly unorthodox perspective. And following the latter direction is Feroz Hassan Khan's recently published book Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb.

“Why do states pursue nuclear weapons, and how do they do so? What, if anything, is unique about the Pakistani case?” (3) are the central questions in Khan's seminal work on the evolution of nuclear developments in Pakistan. While abandoning the labyrinthic syntax of “claims and counterclaims” (ix) that made previous research arduous, Khan breaks down the issue of the atomic bomb by systematically and analytically looking at how the program was organized, at the role played by external powers, and at the regional implications of the process of nuclear bomb acquisition, as well as at the setbacks that pushed the program into repeated periods of stagnation. And all of these purposes are projected onto a background aimed at providing an evolutionary account of the phenomenon, while maintaining a strong focus on the etiological dimension. Moreover, what sets Khan's book apart is the fact that these research derivatives stem not from a theoretical vacuum, but rather from a successful juxtaposition of the realist concept of balance of power with that of strategic culture. For the author, a retired Pakistani Brigadier, strategic culture “stands as an important intervening variable between changes in the material bases of power and state behaviour” (4), and the relevance of this connects the chapters of the book.

So what is, then, the making of the Pakistani bomb? And most importantly, what is the relationship between the Pakistani nuclear program and the idea of “eating grass”? In dealing with these questions, Khan provides a comprehensive set of answers in which the history of Pakistan overlaps with that of the efforts behind the acquisition of the ultimate weapon. In this equation, the operative word is “effort” as the strong image of “eating grass” captures the exact extent of the difficulty of establishing and carrying out a nuclear program: “If India makes an atom bomb, then even if we have to feed on grass and leaves—or even have to starve—we shall also produce an atom bomb as we would be left with no other alternative” (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, quoted on 7).

These grim auspices do indeed mark the beginning of the program. Khan labels this period the reluctant phase. Pakistan's prospects of developing the nuclear bomb were unstable throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but the defeat in the 1971 war and the subsequent independence of Bangladesh solidified the willingness into praxis, and so triggered the development of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. In explaining the decision-making process, Kahn uses a comparative approach, and, similarly to the Indian case, he links Pakistan to two key experiences. The first is the moment of “never again” experiencing a national humiliation or loss (68), and the second reflects the importance of building national identity and strengthening it through the managing of a nuclear program. From this point of view, Khan argues that the Pakistani case falls within the lines of most of the existing cases of nuclear bomb development, and does not represent a significant outlier.

However, what becomes a distinctive feature of Pakistan's nuclear program is the series of historical challenges to Pakistan's nuclear program. Khan operates a classification of the setbacks through specific lenses which manage not only to provide a clear focus, but also to particularize the understanding of their implications. To begin with, the political side is explored in its domestic and international dimensions. While the challenges arising from within the state center on the consequences of sectarianism, such as the Bengali conflict that produced an exodus of scientific minds, the ones connected to international politics include the effects of the international nonproliferation regime and the subsequent sanctions targeting the Pakistani bomb. Secondly, the book looks at the technological and social-economic challenges and at the mutual conditionality between the spheres. Thus, Khan details the process by which the civil-military relations, the direct economic expense of the nuclear program, and the increasing reliance on Saudi Arabian and Libyan funding determined a slowing down of the nuclear development in terms of time and quality.

The last part of the book moves from the specificities of the Pakistani nuclear program to the contemporary problems Pakistan faces. In this section, Khan describes the current status of the institutional binary that provided the framework for the development of the nuclear program: the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and Kahn Research Laboratories (KRL). With a past consumed by constant attempts at reciprocal discreditation, the institutional interaction reached a critical point with the 1998 testing of the nuclear bomb. And this was because, for a decade, until the creation of the Strategic Plans Division, Pakistan saw itself as incapable of transforming the nuclear weapons into a deterrence force. This situation was worsened by the crisis generated by A. Q. Khan, one of the leading scientific minds in Pakistan, and the US claims that he represented a proliferation risk, the episode representing “undoubtedly the darkest chapter in the country's nuclear history” (360). The conclusion wraps up the argument by putting forward two distinctively opposite directions for the future: one that portrays a robust and norm-complying Pakistan, and one showing a radical and risk-accepting Pakistan.

Comprehensive, detailed, and written with military precision and objectivity, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb is an elegantly crafted and engaging history of the Pakistani efforts to obtain the atomic bomb that will become a reference work in the study of Pakistan and its nation-defining relationship with the nuclear program.