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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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(1.) This judgment echoes that of a Department of Energy task force on nonproliferation programs with Russia led by Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler: "The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home." A Report Card on the Department of Energy's Nonproliferation Programs with Russia, January 10, 2001.

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(2.) Although biological and chemical weapons can cause huge devastation as well, "the massive, assured, instantaneous, and comprehensive destruction of life and property" of a nuclear weapon is unique. See Matthew Bunn, John P. Holdren and Anthony Wier, "Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action", Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Managing the Atom Project, May 20, 2002, p. 2. This report provides extensive, but not-too-technical detail on many of the points in this essay.

(3.) See U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2003 Budget Request: Detailed Budget Justifications--Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (Washington, DC: DOE, 2002), p. 172.

(4.) Summarized in NIS Nuclear Trafficking Database, available at www.nti.org.

(5.) The Nuclear Threat Initiative maintains a database of cases and reported incidents of trafficking in nuclear and radioactive materials in and from the former Soviet Union. Available at www.nti.org.

(6.) U.S. Department of Defense, "Narrative Summaries of Accidents involving U.S. Nuclear Weapons: 1950-1980" (April 1981).

(7.) Joshua Handler, Amy Wickenheiser and William M. Arkin, "Naval Safety 1989: The Year of the Accident", Neptune Paper No. 4 (April 1989).

(8.) U.S Senate Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, "Statement of Robert Walpole before the Senate Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services", 107th Cong., 1st sess., March 11, 2002.

(9.) A proverbial Russian refrain: "What is to be done?"

(10.) Bunn, Holdren and Wier, "Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials."

(11.) Speech by Senator Richard Lugar, May 27, 2002, at the Moscow Nuclear Threat Initiative Conference.

(12.) Sam Nunn, "Our New Security Framework", Washington Post, October 8, 2001.

Graham Allison is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Andrei Kokoshin is director of the Institute for International Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a former secretary of the Security Council of Russia.

The new containment: an alliance against nuclear terrorism

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

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