06/28/2007
The Nuclear Threat
The Nuclear Threat Initiative [nti.org] is dedicated to reducing the threat from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Co- chaired by Ted Turner and former Senator Sam Nunn, it’s an organization worth supporting.
Sam Nunn gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, June 14, 2007, that takes a look back and then addresses the latest developments on this front.
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Sen. Nunn
I. The nuclear age – the first 60 years
On Veterans Day in 1948 – at the dawn of the nuclear age after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – General Omar Bradley said in a speech:
“The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”
It might surprise General Bradley, if he were alive today, to know that we have made it sixty years without a nuclear catastrophe. Thousands of men and women thought deeply and worked diligently on both sides of the Iron Curtain to prevent nuclear war, to avoid overreacting to false warnings and to provide safety mechanisms and joint understanding to reduce risk.
We were good, we were diligent, but we were also very lucky. We had more than a few close calls, including: the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; the 1979 scare when a technician at Omaha accidentally loaded a simulated attack into our warning system; the 1983 Soviet warning glitch which falsely showed 5 nuclear missiles launched against it by the U.S. India and Pakistan have already had more than one close call – and their nuclear age has just begun.
II. The nuclear age today – the tipping point
Making it through 60 years without a nuclear attack should not make us complacent. In the future, it won’t be enough to be lucky once or twice. If we’re to avoid a catastrophe, all nuclear powers will have to be highly capable, careful, competent, rational, and lucky – every single time.
We do have important preventive efforts underway and some successes – including the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, the Proliferation Security Initiative, the rollback of Libya’s nuclear program and UN Resolution 1540.
These all mark progress and potential, but from my perspective, the risk of a nuclear weapon being used today is growing, not receding. The storm clouds are gathering:
--Terrorists are seeking nuclear weapons and there can be little doubt that if they acquire a weapon they will use it.
--There are nuclear weapons materials in more than 40 countries, some secured by nothing more than a chain link fence, and, at the current pace, it will be several decades before this material is adequately secured or eliminated globally.
--The know-how and expertise to build nuclear weapons is far more available today because of an explosion of information and commerce throughout the world.
--The number of nuclear weapons states is increasing. Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs threaten to spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Asia.
--A world with 12 or 20 nuclear weapons states will be immeasurably more dangerous than today’s world and make it more likely that weapons or materials to make them will fall into the hands of terrorists.
--Our worst nightmare – the spread of nuclear capability to terrorist groups, with no return address and little way of being deterred – will become more likely.
--With the growing interest in nuclear energy, a number of countries are considering developing the capacity to enrich uranium ostensibly to use as fuel for nuclear energy, but this would also give them the capacity to move quickly to a nuclear weapons program if they chose to do so. The New York Times recently reported that roughly a dozen states in the Middle East have turned to the IAEA for help in starting their own nuclear programs.
--Meanwhile, the nuclear giants, the United States and Russia, continue to deploy thousands of nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles that can hit their targets in less than 30 minutes – a short warning time, prompt launch capability that carries with it an increasingly unacceptable risk of an accidental, mistaken or unauthorized launch.
The bottom line: the accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material has brought us to a nuclear tipping point. The world is heading in a very dangerous direction.
III. The need for a new direction
The greatest dangers of the Cold War we addressed primarily by confrontation with Moscow. The greatest threats we face today: catastrophic terrorism, a rise in the number of nuclear weapons states, increasing danger of mistaken, accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch – we can prevent only in cooperation with Moscow, Beijing and many other capitals.
We must change direction. The good news is that I believe the security and economic interests of the great powers – the U.S., Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India – have never been more aligned. As Henry Kissinger says – “the great powers have nothing to gain by military conflict with each other. They are all dependent on the global economic system.” Old rivalries should not keep us from seeing common interests.
Both leaders and citizens here and abroad must reflect on what is at stake.
If Al Qaeda had hit the trade towers with a small crude nuclear weapon instead of two airplanes, a fireball would have vaporized everything in the vicinity. Lower Manhattan and the financial district would be ash and rubble. Tens of thousands of people would have been killed instantly. Those who survived would have been left with no shelter, no clean water, no safe food, no medical attention. Telecommunications, utilities, transportation, and rescue services would be thrown into chaos.
That would have been just the physical impact. If you were trying to draw a circle to mark the overall impact of the blast – in social, economic, and security terms – the circle would be the equator itself. No part of the planet would escape the impact. People everywhere would fear another blast. Travel, international trade, capital flows, commerce would initially stop, and many freedoms we have come to take for granted would quickly be eroded in the name of security. The confidence of America and the world would be shaken to the core.
From my perspective, we are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe.
[Nunn then discusses moves that need to be made in terms of cooperation between the nuclear powers, before closing with .]
A Parable of Hope
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the United States began funding Russia’s work to dismantle Soviet nuclear missiles and warheads, our countries struck a deal called the U.S. – Russian Highly Enriched Uranium Agreement.
Under this agreement which was signed in 1993, 500 tons of highly enriched uranium from former Soviet nuclear weapons is being blended down to low enriched uranium, and then used as fuel for nuclear power plants in the United States. Shipments began in 1995 and will continue through 2013. When you calculate that 20% of all electricity in the U.S. comes from nuclear power plants, and 50% of the nuclear fuel used in the U.S. comes from Russia through the HEU Agreement – you have an interesting fact: roughly speaking – one out of every ten light bulbs in America today is powered by material that was in Soviet nuclear warheads pointed at us a few years ago.
From swords to ploughshares. Who would have thought this possible in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s? It would have certainly been seen as a mountain too high to climb.
Nearly 20 years ago, President Reagan asked his audience to imagine that “all of us discovered that we were threatened by a power from outer space – from another planet.” The President then asked: “Wouldn’t we come together to fight that particular threat?” After letting that image sink in for a moment, President Reagan came to his point: “We now have a weapon that can destroy the world – why don’t we recognize that threat more clearly and then come together with one aim in mind: How safely, sanely, and quickly can we rid the world of this threat to our civilization and our existence.”
If we want our children and grandchildren to ever see the mountaintop, our generation must begin to answer this question.
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Hott Spotts will return July 12. Have a good holiday.
Brian Trumbore
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