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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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Finally, as President Bush has stressed, terrorists could obtain nuclear weapons or material from states hostile to the United States. In his now-infamous phrase, Bush called hostile regimes developing WMD and their terrorist allies an "axis of evil." He argued that states such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea, if allowed to realize their nuclear ambitions, "could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred." The fear that a hostile regime might transfer a nuclear weapon to terrorists has contributed to the Bush Administration's development of a new doctrine of preemption against such regimes, with Iraq as the likeliest test case. It also adds to American concerns about Russian transfer of nuclear technologies to Iran. While Washington and Moscow continue to disagree over whether any safeguarded civilian nuclear cooperation with Iran is justified, both agree on the dangers a nuclear-armed Iran would pose. Russia is more than willing to agree that there should be no transfers of technology that could help Iran make nuclear weapons.

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III. Opportunity

Security analysts have long focused on ballistic missiles as the preferred means by which nuclear weapons would be delivered. But today this is actually the least likely vehicle by which a nuclear weapon will be delivered against Russia or the United States. Ballistic weapons are hard to produce, costly and difficult to hide. A nuclear weapon delivered by a missile also leaves an unambiguous return address, inviting devastating retaliation. As Robert Walpole, a National Intelligence Officer, told a Senate subcommittee in March, "Nonmissile delivery means are less costly, easier to acquire, and more reliable and accurate." (8) Despite this assessment, the U.S. government continues to invest much more heavily in developing and deploying missile defenses than in addressing more likely trajectories by which weapons could arrive.

Terrorists would not find it very difficult to sneak a nuclear device or nuclear fissile material into the United States via shipping containers, trucks, ships or aircraft. Recall that the nuclear material required is smaller than a football. Even an assembled device, like a suitcase nuclear weapon, could be shipped in a container, in the hull of a ship or in a trunk carried by an aircraft. After this past September 11, the number of containers that are X-rayed has increased, to about 500 of the 5,000 containers currently arriving daily at the port of New York/New Jersey--approximately 10 percent. But as the chief executive of CSX Lines, one of the foremost container-shipping companies, put it: "If you can smuggle heroin in containers, you may be able to smuggle in a nuclear bomb."

Effectively countering missile attacks will require technological breakthroughs well beyond current systems. Success in countering covert delivery of weapons will require not just technical advances but a conceptual breakthrough. Recent efforts to bolster border security are laudable, but they only begin to scratch the surface. More than 500 million people, 11 million trucks and 2 million rail cars cross into the United States each year, while 7,500 foreign-flag ships make 51,000 calls in U.S. ports. That's not counting the tens of thousands of people, hundreds of aircraft and numerous boats that enter illegally and uncounted. Given this volume and the lengthy land and sea borders of the United States, even a radically renovated and reorganized system cannot aspire to be airtight.

The new containment: an alliance against nuclear terrorism

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

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