03/20/2003
The Biggest Threat
Former Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar have devoted a large portion of their time over the past decade or so on the paramount issue of the day, securing nuclear weapons and materials. A few days ago the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which Nunn and Lugar originally sponsored, issued its latest report. It’s sobering. This is an issue I have noted from time to time in both this space as well as my “Week in Review” column. I thought I would share some of the findings.
[Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier, and John P. Holdren of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University authored it, while Nunn and Lugar are responsible for the ‘forward.’ It’s all of 260 pages, incidentally.]
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In Summary, among the key findings:
--Al Qaeda has been attempting to secure nuclear weapons or material to make them for over a decade – “and hundreds of tons of potential bomb materials, in hundreds of buildings around the world, are dangerously insecure, making the possibility that they might succeed frighteningly real.”
--The easiest way to prevent the material from being stolen in the first place is to secure it. “In that sense, homeland security begins abroad, wherever insecure nuclear stockpiles exist.”
--By the end of 2002, a little over 1/3 of Russia’s potentially vulnerable nuclear material was considered secure. “Scores of research reactors fueled with highly enriched uranium (HEU) around the world remain dangerously insecure.”
From Nunn and Lugar:
“Today, the most likely, most immediate, most potentially devastating threat is the terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction. The best way to address the threat is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons or weapons material in the first place. But the chain of worldwide security is only as strong as the link at the weakest, least-protected site. The odds are dangerously uneven. The terrorist margin for error is almost infinite – numerous failures will not end the threat. Our margin for error is miniscule; one failure anywhere in the world could lead to catastrophe.”
In June 2002, the G8 announced a Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, pledging $20 billion over 10 years to reduce the threats, but the effort is not as fast-paced as Nunn, Lugar and the others feel is critical.
Back to al Qaeda, Nunn and Lugar add:
“Four times, terrorists have been caught ‘casing’ Russian nuclear warhead storage facilities or the trains that carry these warheads. Osama bin Laden has met with top Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists to seek information on making nuclear weapons. And the essential ingredients of nuclear bombs are spread around the world in abundant and poorly secured supply
“In Russia, for example, comprehensive security and accounting procedures must be installed for every facility that houses nuclear material. That will take several years We are only 37% of the way to completing our short-term goal of installing rapid security upgrades and 17% of the way to our longer-term goal of putting comprehensive security measures in place. That pace must be accelerated to protect us from this deadly threat.
“We do not have the luxury of time.”
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From authors Bunn, Wier, and Holdren:
“Hundred of tons of HEU and separated plutonium, the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons, located in hundreds of buildings in scores of countries around the world, are dangerously insecure – demonstrably unprotected against the scale of outsider attack that the terrorists have already proven their ability to mount, as well as against the more insidious danger of insider theft. Yet the amounts of these materials required for a bomb are measured in kilograms, not tons – amounts small enough that unless proper security and accounting systems are in place, a worker at a nuclear facility could put in a briefcase or under an overcoat and walk out.”
“If detonated in a major city, a terrorist nuclear bomb could wreak almost unimaginable carnage. A 10-kiloton bomb detonated at Grand Central Station on a typical workday would likely kill some half a million people, and inflict over a trillion dollars in direct economic damage. America and its way of life would be changed forever.”
On leadership:
“The effort to ensure that nuclear weapons and materials around the world are effectively secured and accounted for faces a wide range of impediments that are slowing progress, and cannot move forward at anything like the pace required without sustained, day-to-day engagement from the White House. The lesson from the history of U.S. arms control and nonproliferation efforts is very clear: when the President is personally and actively engaged in making the hard choices, overcoming the obstacles that arise, and pushing forward, these efforts succeed. When that is not the case, they fail.”
While the authors of the report don’t fault President Bush, per se, “the level of sustained, day-to-day engagement from the highest levels in accelerating efforts to secure nuclear warheads and materials has been very modest (as, indeed, it was in the previous administration, and the one before that)...”
“Currently, the United States is spending roughly $1 billion per year for all cooperative threat reduction The total budget (for this) represents less than 1/3 of one percent of U.S. defense spending.” [They add that the answer, of course, is not just to spend money but to implement other changes as well.]
Progress has been made, but, again, it is still “measured by the fraction of potentially vulnerable nuclear warheads and materials secured, the fraction of the excess stockpiles destroyed, or the fraction of unneeded nuclear weapons experts and workers provided with sustainable civilian employment, much less than half the job has been done.”
“ If there was intensive, sustained leadership focused on this mission from the highest levels of the U.S. government; a single senior leader in the White House with full-time responsibility and accountability (it would be a giant step forward).”
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We’ll have more next week.
Brian Trumbore
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