The Next Nuclear Wave

Not since the early days of the Cold War have proliferation experts and the general public been so attuned to the threat of nuclear weapons--and with good reason. There are more than 28,000 nuclear devices in existence today, more and more countries are acquiring the means to produce them, and there is mounting evidence that al Qaeda has every intention of using a nuclear weapon if only it can get its hands on one. Simply recognizing these dangers, however, is not a strategy for confronting them; workable remedies are sorely needed.

Nuclear threats fall into two basic categories. In the short term, nuclear terrorism poses the most acute risk. Once al Qaeda or another group possesses a weapon, deterring or preventing an attack will be all but impossible. Luck, as much as money and hard work, has helped prevent such an attack to date. A second, more complex danger stems from the proliferation of nuclear capabilities to governments. In the long term, the wider state acquisition of nuclear weapons dramatically increases the odds that one might be used, intentionally or not. This concern applies not only to so-called rogue regimes, but to key U.S. allies as well. Given the global insecurity of much weapons material, state proliferation also contributes to the risk of a nightmarish nuclear terrorism scenario.

The conclusions of the 1965 Gilpatric report on nonproliferation to President Lyndon Johnson noted,

The spread of nuclear weapons poses an increasingly grave threat to the security of the United States. New nuclear capabilities, however primitive and regardless of whether they are held by nations currently friendly to the United States, will add complexity and instability ... aggravate suspicions and hostility among states neighboring new nuclear powers, place a wasteful economic burden on the aspirations of developing nations, impede the vital task of controlling and reducing weapons around the world, and eventually constitute direct military threats to the United States.

Forty years later, this assessment still holds--with the added danger posed by the nexus of nuclear weapons and terrorism.

Fortunately, this dual threat has prompted the publication of several valuable new resources for trying to understand and address them. Graham Allison's Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe describes enough nuclear disaster scenarios to fuel a dozen Hollywood thrillers and lays out an aggressive and, crucially, marketable strategy to keep nuclear weapons out of terrorists' hands. For those focused on the risks of proliferation among states, The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices should be required reading. Edited by Kurt Campbell, Robert Einhorn, and Mitchell Reiss, it focuses on a new breed of potential proliferators and does a real service by assessing what factors have helped keep most countries from going nuclear--and what factors might tip the balance in the other direction. Meanwhile, the more narrowly focused and expert-oriented The Future of Arms Control, by Michael Levi and Michael O'Hanlon, makes clear that these two threats and possible strategies for confronting them are not as distinct as they first appear. Despite their divergent focuses, all three books come to strikingly similar conclusions on the 800-pound gorilla of nuclear security: the weakness of a system that allows governments, in full compliance with their nonproliferation obligations, to produce and possess enriched uranium or separated plutonium, with few assurances that they will not at some point use the material for less-than-peaceful purposes.

PRE-EMPTIVE PREVENTION

More than 60 percent of Americans say they are are more worried about a nuclear attack than they were ten years ago. They would no doubt be distressed to learn, as Allison compellingly relates in Nuclear Terrorism, that Osama bin Laden is not alone in shopping around for a nuclear bomb. Numerous other subnational groups, from Hezbollah and Jemaah Islamiyah to Chechen separatists and rogue Pakistani elements, have the motive, the ambition, and potentially the means to go nuclear.

But nuclear weapons do not grow on trees, and terrorist groups cannot at the moment produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium--the key ingredients in a nuclear device--which can come only from the existing military or civilian stocks of nations. The bad news, as Allison lays out in great detail, is that the world is losing the race to secure its nuclear material. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has documented close to two dozen cases of nuclear smuggling, raising the terrifying question of what might have gone unnoticed. Although some of his examples are less substantiated than others, Allison provides ample evidence that terrorists have opportunity to buy or steal either a nuclear device or the material to build one. Interspersed with graphic images of recent terrorist attacks in Russia, reports of such opportunities do more than enough to communicate the gravity of the threat.

Nonproliferation experts must walk a fine line: scaring people into action but not paralyzing them with fear. A sense of fatalism already pervades the debate about nuclear weapons; what is needed is a sense of what can be done about the threat and how much it will cost, in both money and political capital. It is thus in his detailed recommendations of what Washington and its allies must do to prevent a nuclear attack that Allison makes his real contribution. Distressingly few reporters, policymakers, or average citizens ever find their way to the important but arcane proposals of proliferation specialists. Allison makes the subject clear and accessible; his recommendations come across as not only logical, but also imperative.