PRISTINA, Kosovo — Imagine Yugoslavia and President Slobodan Milosevic with nukes. Scary? Well, there is a country with an equally disintegrating, dysfunctional collection of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups. President Bill Clinton has called the area "the most dangerous place on earth." The country is Pakistan — and it has nuclear weapons.

Like so many other post-colonial states, Pakistan is a cobbled-together, artificial nation. Since its birth in 1947, however, it has lived with the delusional dream that the Muslims could regain the hegemony over the Hindus that they enjoyed before the British came. It has squandered its vast potential, devoting almost all of its intellectual and material resources to the military — including its nuclear program — and to servicing a growing debt in an obsessional and vain effort to keep up with a far larger India.

Even when it gained independence, Pakistan was more an acronym than the homeland for Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. "P" was for Punjab, "A" was for the Afghan-border region of the northwest frontier, "K" for Kashmir, "S" for Sind, and "TAN" for Baluchistan. More Muslims in Hindu-majority states of British India were left behind than were included in the new Islamic nation.

During the Cold War, Pakistan became a satellite of the United States. It provided a base for American U2 planes to spy on the Soviet Union, helped the United States establish relations with China and assisted the Afghans in ejecting the Soviet Army. Islamabad's support for radical Islamic groups dates back to this struggle, when the CIA helped Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Agency create the Taleban — a Frankenstein's monster for both countries.

But while the United States was lavishing money and weapons on the Pakistan military, the country was unraveling. Its eastern wing, now Bangladesh, broke away after a bloody war in 1971. A violent rebellion was suppressed in Baluchistan. The Pashtuns in North-West Frontier Province began pushing for an independent Pashtunistan. And Sind, Pakistan's second most populous province, which produces two thirds of the country's revenue through its port city of Karachi, is being torn apart by violence between the indigenous population and the immigrants from India, known as mohajirs. Only Punjab, whose elites dominate the civil service and officer corps, remains relatively stable.

Pakistan's sole hope for survival is to take dramatic action. It should forget India and concentrate on what is best for Pakistan. It should announce that it will end its nuclear program, following the lead of South Africa, Argentina and Brazil onto the non-nuclear high road.

What would it gain? Everything. The United States would again become a major benefactor, moving Pakistan into the same league as Israel and Egypt. Other Western countries, Japan and international financial institutions would also provide aid and investment.

If anyone can take such a revolutionary step it is General Pervez Musharraf, the secular-minded, level-headed "chief executive" who came to power last October in a bloodless coup. A mojahir, born in New Delhi and raised in Karachi and Turkey, he is consolidating his power base by removing hard-liners with Islamist sympathies from decision-making positions and replacing them with moderates.

As important, he has a close relationship with the American military, including his friendship with General Anthony Zinni, who just stepped down as U.S. commander responsible for South Asia. General Zinni told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, "when the United States isolates the professional Pakistan military, we deny ourselves access to the most powerful institution in Pakistan society."

General Musharraf will need all of the army's muscle to break the back of the feudal social structure in Pakistan. Land must be redistributed. Every internal ill — fiscal bankruptcy, Islamic extremism, terrorism — flows from the few thousand feudal landlords and business oligarchs. They pay no taxes, and the land barons exercise a quasi-medieval control over millions of serf-like agricultural workers and keep them largely illiterate.

General Musharraf's role models are Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who forced Turkey to break free from its stultifying past. Like them, he wants a secular Muslim state. A prosperous, progressive, tolerant, non-nuclear Pakistan would be a model for Muslim and non-Muslim countries alike.

Now that is a dream worth pursuing.

Stanley A. Weiss is founder and chairman of Business Executives for National Security. The views he expresses are his own.