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The new containment: an alliance against nuclear terrorism

National Interest, The, Fall, 2002 by Graham Allison, Andrei Kokoshin

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Separatist militants (in Kashmir, the Balkans and elsewhere) and messianic terrorists (like Aum Shinrikyo, which attacked the Tokyo subway with chemical weapons in 1995) could have similar motives to commit nuclear terrorism. As Palestinians look to uncertain prospects for independent statehood--and never mind whose leadership actually increased that uncertainty in recent years--Israel becomes an ever more attractive target for a nuclear terrorist attack. Since a nuclear detonation in any part of the world would be extremely destabilizing, it threatens American and Russian interests even if few or no Russians or Americans are killed. Policymakers would therefore be foolish to ignore any group with a motive to use a nuclear weapon against any target.

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II. Means

To the best of our knowledge, no terrorist group can now detonate a nuclear weapon. But as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has stated, "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Are the means beyond terrorists' reach, even that of relatively sophisticated groups like A1-Qaeda?

Over four decades of Cold War competition, the superpowers spent trillions of dollars assembling mass arsenals, stockpiles, nuclear complexes and enterprises that engaged hundreds of thousands of accomplished scientists and engineers. Technical know-how cannot be un-invented. Reducing arsenals that include some 40,000 nuclear weapons and the equivalents of more than 100,000 nuclear weapons in the form of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium to manageable levels is a gargantuan challenge.

Terrorists could seek to buy an assembled nuclear weapon from insiders or criminals. Nuclear weapons are known to exist in eight states: the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. Security measures, such as "permissive action links" designed to prevent unauthorized use, are most reliable in the United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom. These safeguards, as well as command-and-control systems, are much less reliable in the two newest nuclear states--India and Pakistan. But even where good systems are in place, maintaining high levels of security requires constant attention from high-level government officials.

Alternatively, terrorists could try to build a weapon. The only component that is especially difficult to obtain is the nuclear fissile material--HEU or plutonium. Although the largest stockpiles of weapons-grade material are predominantly found in the nuclear weapons programs of the United States and Russia, fissile material in sufficient quantities to make a crude nuclear weapon can also be found in many civilian settings around the globe. Some 345 research reactors in 58 states together contain twenty metric tons of HEU, many in quantities sufficient to build a bomb. (3) Other civilian reactors produce enough weapons-grade nuclear material to pose a proliferation threat; several European states, Japan, Russia and India reprocess spent fuel to separate out plutonium for use as new fuel. The United States has actually facilitated the spread of fissile material in the past--over three decades of the Atoms for Peace program, the United States exported 749 kg of plutonium and 26.6 metric tons of HEU to 39 count ries. (4)

The new containment: an alliance against nuclear terrorism

National Interest, The, Fall, 2002 by Graham Allison, Andrei Kokoshin

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