Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear terrorism

  • Bin Laden’s Nuclear Connection

    In his interviews and writings over the past decade, Osama bin Laden has repeatedly talked about America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He believes (incorrectly) that it was the atomic bombings that shocked the Japanese imperial government into an early surrender–and, he says, he is planning an atomic attack on America that will shock us into retreating from the Middle East.

    For an Administration that believes that the only thing it has to fear is the absence of fear, Osama’s threat is a helpful reminder that we live in a dangerous world. “It may only be a matter of time,” President Bush’s recently installed CIA director, Porter Goss, told the Senate Intelligence Committee, “before Al Qaeda or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.”

    While such threats cannot be ignored, it is important to historicize and contextualize them if we are to understand how we have contributed to undermining our own security. There were alternative policies at the beginning of the nuclear age that our government could have followed–and could still promote–that would have mitigated the dangers we face today. There were people then, as now, who recognized that the knowledge of how to construct and deploy atomic bombs could not be kept secret for long. And there were people then, as now, who recognized that such bombs could be smuggled into major urban areas–meaning there is no defense against nuclear terrorism. Chief among those who clearly saw the nuclear future–as we have lived and are living it–was the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, who developed a plan for a nuclear-free world and did his best to promote this alternative path.

    The history of Oppenheimer’s failure to contain the nuclear genie makes clear that unilateralism and hubris are hardly unique to the Bush Administration; they have been a recurrent characteristic of US decision-making ever since the latter years of World War II. America’s nuclear monopoly was “the great equalizer,” Secretary of War Henry Stimson triumphantly declared in July 1945 at the Potsdam conference upon learning of the success of the atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The bomb was our “trump card,” our “ace in the hole,” President Truman and his closest advisers believed. But others, more informed and more thoughtful, like Oppenheimer, realized that the bomb was a Trojan horse that would soon threaten our own security as much as it threatened the security of others. Oppenheimer’s efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons at the beginning of the atomic age are as applicable today as they were then.

    On October 25, 1945, Oppenheimer was ushered into the Oval Office to meet Truman to discuss his plans to eliminate nuclear weapons. By one account, Truman opened the conversation by stating, “The first thing is to define the national problem, then the international.” Oppenheimer disagreed. “Perhaps it would be best first to define the international problem,” he cautiously replied. He meant, of course, that the first imperative was to stop the spread of atomic weapons by placing international controls over all atomic technology. At one point in their conversation, Truman suddenly asked him to guess when the Russians would develop their own atomic bomb. When he replied that he did not know, Truman confidently said he knew the answer: “Never.” For Oppenheimer, such foolishness was proof of Truman’s limitations. The “incomprehension it showed just knocked the heart out of him,” recalled the Los Alamos scientist Willy Higinbotham.

    A week later, on November 2, Oppenheimer returned to the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory. Some 500 people packed into the facility’s theater to hear “Oppie” talk about what he called “the fix we are in.” He spoke for an hour–much of it extemporaneously–and his audience was mesmerized; years later, people would say, “I remember Oppie’s speech.” “It is clear to me,” he said, “that wars have changed. It is clear to me that if these first bombs–the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki–that if these can destroy ten square miles, then that is really quite something. It is clear to me that they are going to be very cheap if anyone wants to make them.”

    A few days earlier, Truman had given a bellicose “Navy Day” speech in New York in which he had reveled in the atomic addition to America’s military power. The bomb, Truman said, would be held by the United States as a “sacred trust” for the rest of the world, and “we shall not give our approval to any compromises with evil.” Oppenheimer disliked Truman’s triumphalist tone: “If you approach the problem and say, ‘We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us,’ then you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed…. You will find yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster.”

    In late January 1946 Oppenheimer was nevertheless heartened to learn that negotiations begun several months earlier had resulted in an agreement between the Soviet Union, the United States and other countries to establish a United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. Pressured by veterans of the Manhattan Project and their media supporters, Truman appointed a special committee to draw up a concrete proposal for international control of nuclear weapons.

    As the only physicist on the board–indeed, as the only member of the board who knew anything about atomic energy– Oppenheimer naturally dominated their discussions, and he quickly persuaded his fellow panel members to endorse a dramatic and comprehensive plan. Turning to the internationalism of modern science as a model, Oppenheimer proposed an international agency that would monopolize all aspects of atomic energy and apportion its benefits as an incentive to individual countries. Oppenheimer believed that in the long run, “without world government there could be no permanent peace, [and] that without peace there would be atomic warfare.” Since world government was not a prospect, Oppenheimer argued that in the field of atomic energy all countries should agree to a “partial renunciation” of sovereignty.

    Under his plan, the proposed Atomic Development Authority would have sovereign ownership of all uranium mines, atomic power plants and laboratories. No nation would be permitted to build bombs–but scientists everywhere would still be allowed to exploit the atom for peaceful purposes. Complete and total transparency would make it impossible for any nation to marshal the enormous industrial, technical and material resources necessary to build an atomic weapon in secrecy. Oppenheimer understood that one couldn’t un-invent the weapon; the secret was out. But one could construct a system so transparent that it would at least provide ample warning if a rogue regime set about to make an atomic weapon.

    Soon afterward, Oppenheimer’s draft plan, which became known as the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, was optimistically submitted to the White House. But optimism was misplaced. While Secretary of State James Byrnes made a pretense of saying that he was “favorably impressed,” he was in fact shocked by the sweeping scope of the report’s recommendations. A day later he persuaded Truman to appoint his business partner, Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, “to translate” the Administration’s proposals to the United Nations. When Oppenheimer read the news, he told his Los Alamos friend Willy Higinbotham, by then president of the newly created Federation of Atomic Scientists, “We’re lost.”

    In private, Baruch was already expressing “great reservations” about the Acheson-Lilienthal Report’s recommendations. Like his advisers, Baruch was alarmed by the idea that privately owned mines might be taken over by an international Atomic Development Authority. (Both Baruch and Byrnes happened to be board members of and investors in Newmont Mining Corporation, a major company with a large stake in uranium mines.) And, as far as atomic weapons were concerned, Baruch thought of the US bomb as a “winning weapon.” In short order negotiations broke down completely over the question of “penalties.” Why, Baruch asked, was there no provision for the punishment of violators of the agreement? He thought a stockpile of nuclear weapons should be set aside and automatically used against any country found in violation.

    Disregarding the opinion of most scientists, Baruch decided that the Soviet Union would not be able to build its own atomic weapons for at least two decades, and thus that there was no need to relinquish the American monopoly anytime soon. Consequently, the plan he intended to submit to the UN would substantially amend–indeed, fundamentally alter–the Acheson-Lilienthal proposals: The Soviets would have to give up their right to a veto in the Security Council over any actions by the new atomic authority; any nation violating the agreement would immediately be subjected to an attack with atomic weapons; and, before being given access to any of the secrets surrounding the peaceful uses of atomic energy, the Soviets would have to submit to a survey of their uranium resources. What Baruch was proposing was not cooperative control over nuclear energy but an atomic pact designed to prolong the US monopoly.

    On June 14, 1946, Baruch presented his plan to the UN, dramatically stating that he offered the world “a choice between the quick and the dead.” As Oppenheimer and his colleagues had predicted, it was promptly rejected by the Soviet Union, which proposed as an alternative a simple treaty to ban the production or use of atomic weapons. The Truman Administration rejected the Soviet response out of hand. Negotiations continued in a desultory fashion for many months, but to no end.

    An early opportunity had been lost to make a good-faith effort to prevent an uncontrolled nuclear-arms race between the two major powers. It would take the terrors of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and the massive Soviet buildup that followed it, before a US administration in the 1970s would propose a serious and acceptable arms control agreement. But by then it was too late to prevent an arms race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    Oppenheimer’s anguish was real and deep. Every day the newspaper headlines gave him evidence that the world might once again be on the road to war. “Every American knows that if there is another major war,” he wrote in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on June 1, 1946, “atomic weapons will be used.” This meant, he argued, that the real task at hand was the elimination of war itself. “We know this because in the last war, the two nations which we like to think are the most enlightened and humane in the world–Great Britain and the United States–used atomic weapons against an enemy which was essentially defeated.”

    He had made this observation earlier in a speech at Los Alamos, but to publish it in 1946 was an extraordinary admission. Less than a year after the events of August 1945, the man who had instructed the bombardiers exactly how to drop their atomic bombs on the center of two Japanese cities had come to the conclusion that he had supported the use of atomic weapons against “an enemy which was essentially defeated.”

    A major war was not Oppenheimer’s only worry. Sometime that year he was asked in a closed Senate hearing room “whether three or four men couldn’t smuggle units of an [atomic] bomb into New York and blow up the whole city.” Oppenheimer responded, “Of course it could be done, and people could destroy New York.” When a startled senator then followed by asking, “What instrument would you use to detect an atomic bomb hidden somewhere in a city?” Oppenheimer quipped, “A screwdriver [to open each and every crate or suitcase].” There was no defense against nuclear terrorism–and he felt there never would be. International control of the bomb, he later told an audience of Foreign Service and military officers, was “the only way in which this country can have security comparable to that which it had in the years before the war. It is the only way in which we will be able to live with bad governments, with new discoveries, with irresponsible governments such as are likely to arise in the next hundred years, without living in fairly constant fear of the surprise use of these weapons.” Today he would add Osama bin Laden’s terrorists to his list.

  • Bush Administration Eliminating 19-year-old International Terrorism Report

    WASHINGTON – The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

    Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

    Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism.”

    But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office ordered “Patterns of Global Terrorism” eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush’s administration’s frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.

    “Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public,” charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.

    Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last year’s mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.

    “This is the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be an effort to withhold it – or any of the key data – from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing politics with this critical report.”

    A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the allegation that it was being done for political reasons was “categorically untrue.”

    According to Johnson and U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided to the State Department reported 625 “significant” terrorist attacks in 2004.

    That compared with 175 such incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.

    The statistics didn’t include attacks on American troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called “a central front in the war on terror.”

    The intelligence officials requested anonymity because the information is classified and because, they said, they feared White House retribution. Johnson declined to say how he obtained the figures.

    Another U.S. official, who also requested anonymity, said analysts from the counterterrorism center were especially careful in amassing and reviewing the data because of the political turmoil created by last year’s errors.

    Last June, the administration was forced to issue a revised version of the report for 2003 that showed a higher number of significant terrorist attacks and more than twice the number of fatalities than had been presented in the original report two months earlier.

    The snafu was embarrassing for the White House, which had used the original version to bolster President Bush’s election-campaign claim that the war in Iraq had advanced the fight against terrorism.

    U.S. officials blamed last year’s mix-up on bureaucratic mistakes involving the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the forerunner of the National Counterterrorism Center.

    Created last year on the recommendation of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the center is the government’s primary organization for analyzing and integrating all U.S. government intelligence on terrorism.

    The State Department published “Patterns of Global Terrorism” under a law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism assessment by April 30 each year.

    A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986 in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal requirement to produce one.

    The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public in place of “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” but that it wouldn’t contain statistical data.

    He said that decision was taken because the State Department believed that the National Counterterrorism Center “is now the authoritative government agency for the analysis of global terrorism. We believe that the NCTC should compile and publish the relevant data on that subject.”

    He didn’t answer questions about whether the data would be made available to the public, saying, “We will be consulting (with Congress) … on who should publish and in what form.”

    Another U.S. official said Rice’s office was leery of the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate the data for 2004, believing that analysts anxious to avoid a repetition of last year’s undercount included incidents that may not have been terrorist attacks.

    But the U.S. intelligence officials said Rice’s office decided to eliminate “Patterns of Global Terrorism” when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.

    The officials said they interpreted Rice’s action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration’s claims that it’s winning the war against terrorism.

    To read past “Patterns of Global Terrorism” reports online, go to www.mipt.org/Patterns-of-Global-Terrorism.asp

  • In Search of Security: Finding An Alternative To Nuclear Deterrence

    According to the President just elected, nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism represent the single most important threat to US and global security.

    I wrote that sentence three weeks ago, well before the election results were known, and yet I knew it would be true – because it was one of the key issues on which Senator Kerry and President Bush – and, for that matter, most other world leaders – agreed.

    That said, fundamental differences of opinion remain on how to deal with this ever growing menace to our survival. Should we opt for diplomacy or for preemption? What are the relative merits of collective versus unilateral action? Is it more effective to pursue a policy of containment or one based on inclusiveness?

    These are not new questions, by any measure. But they have taken on renewed urgency as nations struggle, both regionally and globally, to cope with an extended array of conflicts, highly sophisticated forms of terrorism, and a growing threat of weapons of mass destruction.

    The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) remains the global anchor for humanity’s efforts to curb nuclear proliferation and move towards nuclear disarmament. There is no doubt that the implementation of the NPT continues to provide important security benefits – by providing assurance that, in the great majority of non-nuclear-weapon States, nuclear energy is not being misused for weapon purposes. The NPT is also the only binding agreement in which all five of the nuclear-weapon States have committed themselves to move forward towards nuclear disarmament.

    Still, for all of us who have been intimately associated with the implementation of the Treaty for over three decades, it is clear that recent events have placed the NPT and the regime supporting it under unprecedented stress, exposing some of its inherent limitations and pointing to areas that need to be adjusted. Today I would like to discuss some of the lessons that can be taken from recent experience, and a number of possible ways for moving forward.

    The Iraq Experience: What Can We Learn?

    Of all the recent actions to address nuclear proliferation and other security concerns, the most dramatic have taken place in Iraq. Naturally, it remains too early to judge the final outcome of the Iraq War, but I believe there are some insights to be gained already from the events that led up to the war and those that have transpired since.

    The first point to be made is that the inspections were working. The nuclear inspection process – while requiring time and patience – can be effective even when the country under inspection is providing less than active cooperation. When international inspectors are provided adequate authority, aided by all available information, backed by a credible compliance mechanism, and supported by international consensus, the verification system works. The report recently issued by the Iraq Survey Group confirmed the conclusions the IAEA was providing to the United Nations Security Council before the war – when we said we had found no evidence to suggest that Iraq had reconstituted any element of its former nuclear weapon programme.

    But inspections are only of value when the results are accepted in good faith and taken into account in future action. Unfortunately, the Iraq inspection process was not given the time required, nor were its findings given due recognition. It is true that the record and mode of behaviour of Saddam Hussein´s regime did not inspire much confidence; but it is also true that we had not seen any clear and present danger involving weapons of mass destruction, after months of intrusive inspection.

    The second point to be made is that we need to exercise maximum restraint before resorting to military force. In 1841, the US Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, characterized preemptive military action as being justified only when the prospect of an attack made clear that “the necessity of that self-defence is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” Naturally, times have changed, but the exhortation for restraint expressed in those words remains valid. The Iraq experience should tell us that unless extreme conditions exist to justify preemptive action against a suspected weapons of mass destruction programme, diplomacy in all its forms, including maximum pressure, coupled with credible verification, should be the primary avenue of choice. In my view, loosely defining what justifies pre-emptive action by individual nations could become an invitation for all countries to use force in a garden variety of situations, and render a severe setback to the UN Charter effort to limit the use of force to cases of self-defence of the type Webster described, and to enforcement actions authorized by the Security Council. And in this context, I should recall Henry Kissinger´s remark: “It is not in the American national interest to establish preemption as a universal principle available to every nation.”

    The third point to be made is that no one gains when we are divided on crucial issues such as the use of force. Like the international community as a whole, the Security Council was deeply divided in its views in the run-up to the Iraq War – and, after years of collective decisions on Iraq, the Council’s role and authority was set aside by the decision of the Coalition to take military action. But one lesson has been made very clear by the Iraq experience: when the international community and the Security Council are divided on matters of war and peace, everyone loses. The Coalition lost in credibility in some people’s eyes by proceeding to use force without the endorsement of the Security Council. The United Nations lost in credibility as the body driving the action against Iraq on behalf of international legitimacy, and as a result has come to be perceived in some quarters – particularly by many in Iraq – as an adjunct of the Coalition force, and not as an independent and impartial institution. And perhaps it is the Iraqi people who have lost the most; after years of suffering under a brutal dictatorship, and after enduring the hardships brought on through an extended period of sanctions, they have had still more misery brought on by the ravages of war and the unforeseen and extended period of insurgency and civil disorder.

    Other Lessons From Recent Verification Experience

    Of course, the Iraq experience is the most glaring recent case relevant to nuclear proliferation and security, but unfortunately not the only one. The IAEA´s efforts to verify undeclared nuclear programmes in Iran, Libya and the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea have also provided considerable insights and a number of lessons.

    The first lesson is that, for nuclear verification to be successful, IAEA inspectors must have adequate authority. The “any time, any place” authority granted by the Security Council in the case of Iraq was extraordinary, and it is not likely that countries would voluntarily grant the IAEA such blanket rights of inspection. Moreover, the IAEA´s authority under the NPT is limited to verifying that nuclear material has not been diverted for non-peaceful uses – and we have no clear-cut mandate to search for weaponization activities, per se, unless we have reason to believe that nuclear material has actually been diverted to those activities.

    Nonetheless, within the NPT framework, adequate authority can be achieved in those countries that accept the so-called “additional protocol” as a supplement to their NPT safeguards agreement. The additional protocol provides the Agency with significant additional authority with regard to both information and physical access. As illustrated by the IAEA’s experience in Iraq before the first Gulf War, without the authority provided by the protocol, our ability to verify nuclear activities is mostly limited to the nuclear material already declared – with little authority to verify the absence of undeclared, or clandestine, nuclear material or activities. By contrast, our recent efforts in Iran and elsewhere have made clear how much can be uncovered when the protocol is applied.

    The second lesson is that international efforts to limit the spread of technology through the use of export controls have left much to be desired. The most disturbing insight to emerge from our work in Iran and Libya has been the revelation of an extensive illicit market for the supply of nuclear items. The relative ease with which a multinational illicit network could be set up and operated demonstrates the inadequacy of the present export control system. The fact that so many companies and individuals could be involved (more than two dozen, by last count) – and that, in most cases, this could occur apparently without the knowledge of their own governments – points to the shortcomings of national systems for oversight of sensitive equipment and technology. It also points to the limitations of existing international cooperation on export controls, which relies on informal arrangements, does not include many countries with growing industrial capacity, and does not include sufficient sharing of export information with the IAEA.

    But more importantly, it is time to change our assumptions regarding the inaccessibility of nuclear technology. In a modern society characterized by electronic information exchange, interlinked financial systems, and global trade, the control of access to nuclear weapons technology has grown increasingly difficult. The technical barriers to mastering the essential steps of uranium enrichment – and to designing weapons – have eroded over time. Much of the hardware in question is “dual use”, and the sheer diversity of technology has made it much more difficult to control or even track procurement and sales.

    The only reasonable conclusion is that the control of technology is not, in itself, a sufficient barrier against further proliferation. For an increasing number of countries with a highly developed industrial infrastructure – and in some cases access to high enriched uranium or plutonium – the international community must rely primarily on a continuing perception of security as the basis for the adherence of these countries to their non-proliferation commitments. And security perceptions can rapidly change.

    In fact, a country might choose to hedge its options by developing a civilian nuclear fuel cycle – legally permissible under the NPT – not only because of its civilian use but also because of the “latent nuclear deterrent” value that such a programme could have, both intrinsically and in terms of the signal it sends to neighboring and other countries. The unspoken security posture could be summarized as follows: “We have no nuclear weapons programme today, because we do not see the need for one. But we should be prepared to launch one, should our security perception change. And for this, we should have the required capacity to produce the fissile material, as well as the other technologies that would enable us to produce a weapon in a matter of months.” Obviously, the narrow margin of security this situation affords is worrisome.

    The third lesson, as amply illustrated by the North Korean situation, is that the international community cannot afford not to act in a timely manner in cases of non-compliance, and before available options are narrowed. Beginning in the mid-1980s, North Korea took seven years to fulfill its obligations under the NPT to conclude a safeguards agreement with the Agency. In 1992, shortly after this agreement was concluded and the IAEA began inspections, we sounded the alarm that North Korea had not reported its total production of plutonium. From that time forward, despite the Agreed Framework concluded with the United States, North Korea has been in continuous non-compliance with its NPT obligations, and has not allowed the IAEA to fully verify its nuclear programme. At the end of 2002, North Korea capped that non-compliance by ordering IAEA inspectors out of the country, dismantling the monitoring cameras, breaking IAEA seals and, a few weeks later, declaring its withdrawal from the NPT.

    Naturally, all of these actions were promptly reported by the Agency to the Security Council – but with little to no response. This lack of timely action may have complicated finding a solution, and may have conveyed the message that breaking the non-proliferation norms with impunity is a doable proposition – or worse, that acquiring a nuclear deterrent will bring with it a special treatment.

    Lesson four: insecurity breeds proliferation. It is instructive that nearly all nuclear proliferation concerns arise in regions of longstanding tension. In other words, nuclear proliferation is a symptom , and these symptoms will continue to persist and worsen as long as we leave unaddressed the underlying causes of insecurity and instability – such as chronic disputes which continue to fester, the persistent lack of good governance and basic freedoms, a growing divide between rich and poor, and newly perceived schisms based on ethnic or religious differences.

    It is in this context that I have begun to stress not only the value but also the limitations of the IAEA´s role. While the Agency can use verification effectively to bring to closure questions of compliance with legal and technical requirements, the long term value of these efforts can only be realized to the extent that they are reinforced by all other components of the non-proliferation regime, and followed by the necessary political dialogue among concerned States to address underlying issues of insecurity, and to build confidence and trust. I should note that verification, supported by diplomacy, has been an important part of the success so far in Iran and Libya, and in that sense I can only hope that the continuation of the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear programme will yield results that will include, inter alia, full IAEA verification.

    Exploiting the Window of Opportunity

    Clearly, the world has changed. The key features of the international security landscape have been altered significantly over the past two decades. Whatever value the concept of nuclear deterrence may have served during the Cold War, as the volatile currency on which the standoff between two superpowers was balanced, they have now become the ultimate “elephant in the parlor”. For the five countries recognized as nuclear-weapon States under the NPT, their nuclear arsenals are increasingly becoming either a focal point for resentment or cynicism among the nuclear “have-nots”, or, worse, a model for emulation for States that wish to pursue clandestine WMD programmes, hoping that this will bring them security and status.

    It is the height of irony that, in today´s security environment, the only actors who presumably would find the world’s most powerful weapons useful – and would deploy them without hesitation – would be an extremist group. A nuclear deterrent is absolutely ineffective against such groups; they have no cities that can be bombed in response, nor are they focused on self-preservation. But even as we take urgent measures to protect against nuclear terrorism, we remain sluggish and unconvinced about the need to rapidly rid ourselves of nuclear weapons.

    Why? The answer, in my view, is that the international community has not been successful to date in creating a viable alternative to the doctrine of nuclear deterrence as the basis for international security. Nuclear weapons will not go away until a reliable collective security framework exists to fill the vacuum. The aftermath of the Cold War should have served as the logical lead-in to such an effort. The resulting changes to the international security landscape have been obvious; it is only that we have not acted to adapt to these changes.

    If there is any silver lining to this dark cloud, it is that the window of opportunity is still open. The efforts to counteract Iraq´s phantom weapons of mass destruction, to unveil a clandestine nuclear weapon programmes in Libya, to understand the extent and nature of Iran´s undeclared nuclear programme, to bring North Korea back to the NPT regime and dismantle any nuclear programme they may have, and to prevent nuclear terrorism have all brought worldwide attention to bear on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear security. That energy is ours to harness. If we are ever to build a global security culture based on human solidarity and shared human values – a collective security framework that will serve the interests of all countries equally, and make reliance on nuclear weapons obsolete – the time is now.

    The Responsibility For Action

    The question remains, how? Whose responsibility is it to create this collective security framework? Is this an initiative for policy makers? The UN Security Council? The scientific community?

    The answer, of course, is that it will take all of us. Progress must be made on all fronts – political, scientific and societal. We must all take the responsibility for action.

    Sidney Drell comes to this problem as a physicist, and I come to it as a lawyer and diplomat, but we have arrived at the same basic conclusion: that reliance on nuclear weapons is a recipe for self-destruction. I find it encouraging that people from all sectors of society have been coming forward with proposals on how to address the challenges of nuclear proliferation and nuclear arms control.

    In my view, this could be the beginning of a much needed discussion on security – and we should do all we can to stimulate this dialogue, move it forward, and keep it in public focus. I would like to spend my remaining minutes outlining what I see as the types of actions that must be taken.

    Creating the Framework: the Political and Policy Front

    Let me first turn to the political and policy front. In this area, leadership must be focused on restoring and strengthening the credibility of multilateral approaches to resolving conflicts and threats to international security – conflicts and threats ranging from preserving the environment to ensuring respect for human rights, working for sustainable development, and controlling weapons of mass destruction – which, in our globalized world, can only be resolved through a collective and multilateral approach, in which competing interests and powers can be contained and harmonized. The system of collective security hoped for in the United Nations Charter has never been made fully functional and effective. This must be our starting point.

    For some years now, efforts to achieve Security Council reform have been mostly focused on the question of whether additional countries should be given a permanent seat. In my view, such a change would be helpful in making the Council more representative of today’s global realities, and in removing the current correlation – in that the same five countries recognized under the NPT as nuclear weapon States hold the five permanent seats on the Security Council.

    But more importantly, for the Security Council to take the leadership role for which it was designed, its reform must be focused on more than issues of membership. The Council must be able and ready to engage swiftly and decisively in both preventive diplomacy and enforcement measures, with the tools and methods in place necessary to cope with existing and emerging threats to international peace and security. This should include mechanisms for preventive diplomacy to settle emerging disputes within and among nations. The genocide in Rwanda and the appalling situation in Darfur, where 10 000 people are dying every month, are two prime examples of the lack of early and decisive intervention by the Security Council.

    The Security Council should also have, at the ready, “smart” sanctions that can target a government without adding misery to its helpless citizens, as we have seen in Iraq. The Council should have adequate forces to intervene in the foreseeable range of situations – from maintaining law and order, to monitoring borders, to combating aggression. And yes – in my view, the Security Council should be able to authorize collective pre-emptive military action when the imminence and gravity of the threat merit such action.

    Increasing the effectiveness and relevance of the Security Council is an essential step towards a functional system for collective security. Such a system is the only alternative to the reliance that some nations, including nuclear weapon States and their allies, now place on nuclear deterrence – in a “good guys versus bad guys” approach that inevitably leaves some nations seeking to achieve parity. A functional system for collective security is the only alternative to the current hodge-podge of approaches to addressing security issues – ranging from inaction or late action on the part of the international community, to unilateral and “self-help” solutions on the part of individual States or groups of States.

    With a viable system of collective security in place, policy makers and political leaders may find it easier to make progress on the nuclear arms control front, such as bringing into force the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and negotiating an internationally verifiable Fissile Material (Cut-Off) Treaty.

    In my view, every effort should be made, starting at the 2005 NPT Review Conference and continuing in other venues, to agree on benchmarks for non-proliferation and disarmament. These benchmarks should include: urging all States to bring the additional protocol to IAEA safeguards agreements into force; tightening and formalizing the controls over the export of nuclear materials and technology; working towards multilateral control over the sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle – enrichment, reprocessing, and the management and disposal of spent fuel; and ensuring that States cannot withdraw from the NPT without clear consequences, including prompt review and appropriate action by the Security Council. The international community should also work rapidly to reduce the stockpiles of high enriched uranium and plutonium around the globe, and to strengthen the protection of existing nuclear material and facilities.

    An essential benchmark will be that a concrete roadmap for verified, irreversible nuclear disarmament, complete with a timetable, and involving not only the NPT nuclear weapon States but also India, Pakistan and Israel, is at last put in place.

    Just over a month ago, the foreign ministers of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden spoke out jointly, saying: “Nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament are two sides of the same coin, and both must be energetically pursued.” Thirty years after the enactment of the NPT, with the Cold War ended and over 30 000 nuclear weapons still available for use, it should be understandable that many non-nuclear-weapon States are no longer willing to accept as credible the commitment of nuclear-weapon States to their NPT disarmament obligations.

    In my view, we have come to a fork in the road: either there must be a demonstrated commitment to move toward nuclear disarmament, or we should resign ourselves to the fact that other countries will pursue a more dangerous parity through proliferation. The difficulty of achieving our ultimate objective – the elimination of all nuclear weapons – should by no means be underestimated. But at the same time, it should not be used as a pretext for failing to start the process of drastic reductions in existing nuclear arsenals, and simultaneously to explore the development of collective response mechanisms that will be needed against any future clandestine nuclear proliferation efforts.

    The Scientific Front: Roles for Researchers and Inventors

    I would also like to emphasize the role of scientists in advancing non-proliferation and disarmament objectives, and the responsibility for action that lies with the scientific community. Science brought us the atom bomb. And if we are to rid ourselves of nuclear weapons, we will need an equally intensive effort on the part of scientific researchers – to develop innovative tools for nuclear verification and mechanisms for reducing the proliferation potential of nuclear material and technology.

    In the area of nuclear verification, for example, advances in environmental sampling and analysis techniques are enabling IAEA inspectors to determine, with far greater precision, the nature and origin of individual particles of uranium – and thereby to help us detect undeclared activities. Satellite imagery technology and advanced information analysis techniques have also broadened the range of inspection capabilities. And in the long run, science may be able to develop additional innovative ways and means to neutralize the impact of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

    The Responsibility of Concerned Citizens

    The proliferation of nuclear weapons – “The Gravest Danger” , in the words of Sidney Drell and James Goodby – is a legacy we all share, and ultimately, every concerned citizen also shares the responsibility for action. In countries ranging from the most powerful to some of the least developed, the voice of the citizen is increasingly a force in the political debate. It is vital that we engage individuals from all sectors of society in a public dialogue on international security – to remind them of the continued danger of nuclear war, to explain to them possible alternatives, and to offer avenues for involvement. We must continue to develop and refine proposals for action, to bring them to the attention of governments and opinion leaders, and to promote public discourse on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament that will become too forceful to be ignored.

    And here I am pleased to recognize the important role played by CISAC as a force in the field of international security and cooperation. Your efforts to develop proposals that aim to move us away from a reliance on nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence has never been more urgent or more relevant.

    Conclusion

    For centuries, perhaps for millennia, security strategies have been based on boundaries: city walls, border patrols, and the use of racial and religious groupings or other categories to separate friend from foe. Those strategies no longer work. The global community has become interdependent, with the constant movement of people, ideas and goods. Many aspects of modern life – global warming, Internet communication, the global marketplace, and yes, the war on terrorism – point to the fact that the human race has walked through a door that cannot be re-entered.

    Yet with all the strides we have made to connect on many levels, we continue to think disconnectedly on others. We think globally in terms of trade, but we continue to think locally in terms of security. We cherish our connectivity on the Web, but turn away from solidarity in matters of extreme poverty. James Morris, Executive Director of the World Food Programme, recently pointed out, “There are about 800 million hungry people in the world today, about half of them children” – yet the governments of the world spent $900 billion on armaments last year. Could it be that our priorities are skewed?

    This is a mindset we must change. In this century, in this generation, we must develop a new approach to security capable of transcending borders – an inclusive approach that is centred on the value of every human life. The sooner we can make that transition, the sooner we will achieve our goal of a planet with peace and justice as its hallmark.

    by IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei

  • Kerry Pledges To Give Nuclear Terrorism His Top Priority

    Kerry Pledges To Give Nuclear Terrorism His Top Priority

    In his speech, “New Strategies to Meet New Threats,” delivered in West Palm Beach, Florida on June 1, 2004, John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President, referred to the possibility of nuclear terrorism as “the greatest threat we face today,” and offered a program to eliminate this threat based on US leadership. Kerry promised to prevent nuclear weapons or materials to create them from falling into the hands of al Qaeda or other extremist organizations. “As President,” he pledged, “my number one security goal will be to prevent the terrorists from gaining weapons of mass murder, and ensure that hostile states disarm.”

    Kerry recognizes that the US cannot accomplish this task by itself and pledged to build and repair coalitions. “We can’t eliminate this threat on our own,” he stated. “We must fight this enemy in the same way we fought in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, by building and leading strong alliances.”

    In order to confront nuclear terrorism, Kerry offered a four-step plan. His first step called for safeguarding all bomb-making materials worldwide. He called for an approach that would “treat all nuclear materials needed for bombs as if they were bombs,” and pledged to secure all potential bomb material in the former Soviet Union within his first term as president. “For a fraction of what we have already spent in Iraq ,” he pointed out, “we can ensure that every nuclear weapon, and every pound of potential bomb material will be secured and accounted for.”

    Kerry’s second step called for US leadership to verifiably ban the creation of new materials for creating nuclear weapons, including production of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium. He pointed out that there is strong international support for such a ban, but that the Bush Administration has been “endlessly reviewing the need for such a policy.”

    Kerry’s third step called for reducing excess stocks of nuclear materials and weapons. He recognized the importance of the US adopting policies consistent with what we are asking other countries to do. He asked rhetorically, “If America is asking the world to join our country in a shared mission to reduce this nuclear threat, then why would the world listen to us if our own words do not match our deeds?” In line with this commitment, Kerry promised that as president, he would “stop this administration’s program to develop a whole new generation of bunker-busting nuclear bombs.” He called the bunker-buster “a weapon we don’t need,” one that “undermines our credibility in persuading other nations.”

    The fourth step in Kerry’s plan called for ending the nuclear weapons programs in other countries, such as North Korea and Iran . He called for strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, strengthening enforcement and verification through the International Atomic Energy Agency, and tightening export controls to assure no future black market activities in nuclear materials.

    In order to accomplish these goals, Kerry pledged to appoint a National Coordinator for Nuclear Terrorism and Counter-Proliferation to work with him “to marshal every effort and every ally, to combat an incalculable danger.” Kerry made clear that “preventing nuclear terrorism is our most urgent priority to provide for America ‘s long term security.”

    President Bush has also called for steps to prevent nuclear terrorism, but in a number of respects Kerry’s position on nuclear terrorism is stronger than that of the current administration. First, and most important, Kerry pledges to end the double standard of calling on others not to develop nuclear weapons while the US moves forward with research on new nuclear weapons, such as the bunker buster. Research on the bunker buster, as well as on lower yield, more usable nuclear weapons, has been an important aspect of the Bush Administration’s nuclear policy.

    Second, Kerry pledges to gain control of the nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union at a far more rapid rate than that of the Bush Administration. Third, Kerry promises to appoint a Nuclear Terrorism Coordinator to work with him in the White House in overseeing this effort. Finally, Kerry calls for taking prompt action on a verifiable ban on the creation of new fissile materials for nuclear weapons, a step long supported by the international community and nearly all US allies, but never before acted upon by the US .

    Both Bush and Kerry have called for strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but only in relation to preventing nuclear materials from civilian nuclear reactors from being converted to nuclear weapons. Neither Bush nor Kerry has set forth a plan to fulfill US obligations for nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the treaty. This is a major omission since the nuclear disarmament requirement of the treaty is a foundational element, and without US leadership to achieve this obligation it may be impossible to prevent nuclear terrorism.

    “We must lead this effort not just for our own safety,” Kerry stated, “but for the good of the world.” Kerry is certainly right that the world now needs US leadership on this critical issue. This leadership must include a dramatic reduction in the size of nuclear arsenals on the way to their total elimination, as agreed to by the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in order to prevent the nuclear warheads from being available to terrorist organizations.

    If any leader of the United States is truly serious about preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, he must realize that nuclear disarmament is an essential element of the equation. Kerry posited the equation: “No material. No bomb. No terrorism.” That equation must be expanded to include: “No material. No bombs – period. Not in anyone’s hands.”

    There are no good or safe hands in which to place nuclear weapons. In the end, to eliminate the threat of nuclear terrorism will require more than attempting to prevent nuclear proliferation; it will require the elimination of all nuclear weapons, a goal agreed to by the United States, United Kingdom and former Soviet Union in 1968 when they signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org)

  • New Strategies to Meet New Threats: Remarks of Senator John Kerry

    In West Palm Beach Florida on June 1, 2004, John Kerry explained why his highest priority as President will be leading the world to lock up and safeguard nuclear weapons material so terrorists can never acquire nuclear weapons.

    Thank you and thank you all for being here.

    This weekend, thousands of men and women and children lined the streets in Florida to watch the Memorial Day Parades.  They waved flags.  Sons and daughters sat on their fathers’ shoulders and cheered as high school marching bands and bands of brothers-and sisters-marched passed them with their heads held high.

    It is a great time in America-a common scene to honor uncommon valor.   Every year we gather in our cities and towns to remember.  We praise our fathers and mothers.  We mourn lost  brothers and sisters.  We miss best friends.  And we thank God that we live in a country that is good as well as great.

    In America, we are blessed to have World War II veterans like Debra Stern to lead us in the “Pledge of Allegiance.”  We are blessed that hundreds gathered at Royal Palm Memorial Gardens to dedicate a memorial to our most recent veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq.   We are blessed that so many in Florida could stop and pause to remember their neighbors and friends and the 35 who have fallen Iraq.

    In America, we are blessed.  When you stop and think about what it takes for people to risk their lives, say good-bye to their families, and go so far away to serve their country – it is a profound gesture of honor.

    It symbolizes the spirit of America – that there are men and women who are ready to do what it takes to live and lead by our values.  I met so many of them when I fought in Vietnam and I have met them since from Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Their love of country is special.  And we will never tire of waving a flag, saying a prayer, or laying a wreath for those who fell to lift the cause of freedom.

    Their sacrifice calls us to a higher standard.  In these dangerous times and in our determination to win the war on terror, we need to be clear about our purposes and our principles.  When war and peace, when life and death, when democracy and terror are in the balance, we owe it to our soldiers and our country to shape and follow a coherent policy that will make America safer, stronger, and truer to our ideals.

    Last week, I proposed a new national security policy guided by four imperatives:  First, we must lead strong alliances for the post 9-11 world.  Second, we must modernize the world’s most powerful military to meet new threats.  Third, in addition to our military might, we must deploy all that is in America’s arsenal — our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, and the appeal of our values and ideas. Fourth, to secure our full independence and freedom, we must free America from its dangerous dependence on Middle East oil.

    These four imperatives are a response to an inescapable reality: the world has changed and war has changed; the enemy is different – and we must think and act anew.

    These imperatives must guide us as we deal with the greatest threat we face today-the possibility of al Qaeda or other terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear weapon.  We know what al Qaeda and terrorists long to do.  Osama bin Laden has called obtaining a weapon of mass destruction a sacred duty.

    Take away politics, strip away the labels, the honest questions have to be asked.  Since that dark day in September have we done everything we could to secure these dangerous weapons and bomb making materials?  Have we taken every step we should to stop North Korea and Iran’s nuclear programs?  Have we reached out to our allies and forged an urgent global effort to ensure that nuclear weapons and materials are secured?

    The honest answer, in each of these areas, is that we have done too little, often too late, and even cut back our efforts or turned away from the single greatest threat we face in the world today, a terrorist armed with nuclear weapons.

    There was a time not so long ago when dealing with the possibility of nuclear war was the most important responsibility entrusted to every American President. The phrase “having your finger on the nuclear button” meant something very real to Americans, and to all the world.  The Cold War may be over, the nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States may have ended, but the possibility of terrorists using nuclear weapons is very real indeed. The question before us now is what shadowy figures may someday have their finger on a nuclear button if we don’t act. It is time again that we have leadership at the highest levels that treats this threat with the sense of seriousness, urgency, and purpose it demands.

    I can think of no single step that will do more to head off this catastrophe than the proposal I am laying out today.  And that is why I am here today to ask that America launch a new mission, that America restore and renew the leadership we once demonstrated for all the world, to prevent the world’s deadliest weapons from falling into the world’s most dangerous hands.  If we secure all bomb making materials, ensure that no new materials are produced for nuclear weapons, and end nuclear weapons programs in hostile states like North Korea and Iran, we can and will dramatically reduce the possibility of nuclear terrorism.

    We can’t eliminate this threat on our own.  We must fight this enemy in the same way we fought in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, by building and leading strong alliances. Our enemy has changed and is not based within one country or one totalitarian empire.  But our path to victory is still the same.  We must use the might of our alliances.

    When I am president, America will lead the world in a mission to lock up and safeguard nuclear weapons material so terrorists can never acquire it.  To achieve this goal, we need the active support of our friends and allies around the world.  We might all share the same goal: to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, but we can’t achieve it when our alliances have been shredded.

    It will take new leadership-the kind of leadership that brings others to us.  We can’t protect ourselves from these nuclear dangers without the world by our side.

    Earlier this year, my colleague Senator Joe Biden announced the results of a challenge he issued.  He asked the directors of our national laboratories whether terrorists could make a nuclear bomb.  The bad news is they said “yes” – and when challenged to prove it, they constructed a nuclear bomb made entirely from commercial parts that can be bought without breaking any laws, except for obtaining the nuclear material itself.  The good news is the materials-the highly enriched uranium and plutonium needed to detonate a bomb-do not occur in nature and are difficult for terrorists to produce on their own-no material, no bomb.

    The weapons are only in a few countries, but the material to make a bomb exists in dozens of states around the world.  Securing this material is a great challenge.   But as President Truman said, “America was not built on fear.  America was built on courage, on imagination and unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

    We know how to reduce this threat.  We have the technology to achieve this goal – and with the right leadership, we can achieve it quickly.

    As president, my number one security goal will be to prevent the terrorists from gaining weapons of mass murder, and ensure that hostile states disarm.  It is a daunting goal, but an indisputable one-and we can achieve it.

    I think of other great challenges this nation has set for itself.  In 1960, President Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon.  Our imagination and sense of discovery took us there.  In 1963, just months after the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly brought the world to nuclear disaster President Kennedy called for a nuclear test ban treaty.  At the height of the Cold War, he challenged America and the Soviet Union to pursue a strategy “not toward .annihilation, but toward a strategy of peace.”   We answered that challenge.   And in time, a hotline between Moscow and Washington was established.  The nuclear tests stopped.  The air cleared and hope emerged on the horizon.

    When America sees a great problem or great potential, it is in our collective character to set our sights on that horizon and not stop working until we reach it.  In our mission to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, we should never feel helpless. We should feel empowered that the successes in our past will guide us toward a safer, more secure world.

    Vulnerable nuclear material anywhere is a threat to everyone, everywhere.

    We need to employ a layered strategy to keep the worst weapons from falling into the worst hands.  A strategy that invokes our non-military strength early enough and effectively enough so military force doesn’t become our only option. America must lead and build an international consensus for early preventive action.

    Here’s what we must do.  The first step is to safeguard all bomb making material worldwide.  That means making sure we know where they are, and then locking them up and securing them wherever they are.  Our approach should treat all nuclear materials needed for bombs as if they were bombs.

    More than a decade has passed since the Berlin Wall came down. But Russia still has nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons, and enough nuclear material to produce 50,000 more Hiroshima-sized bombs.

    For most of these weapons and materials, cooperative security upgrades have not been completed – the world is relying on whatever measures Russia has taken on its own. And at the current pace, it will take 13 years to secure potential bomb material in the former Soviet Union. We cannot wait that long. I will ensure that we remove this material entirely from sites that can’t be adequately secured during my first term.

    It is hard to believe that we actually secured less bomb making material in the two years after 9/11 than we had in the two years before.

    At my first summit with the Russian President, I will seek an agreement to sweep aside the key obstacles slowing our efforts to secure Russia’s nuclear stockpiles.    But this threat is not limited to the former Soviet Union.

    Because terror at home can begin far away, we have to make sure that in every nation the stockpiles are safeguarded. If I am president, the United States will lead an alliance to establish and enforce an international standard for the safe custody of nuclear weapons and materials.

    We will help states meet such standards by expanding the scope of the Nunn-Lugar program passed over a decade ago to deal with the unsecured weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union.  For years, the administration has underfunded this vital program.  For a fraction of what we have already spent in Iraq, we can ensure that every nuclear weapon, and every pound of potential bomb material will be secured and accounted for.

    This is not just a question of resources.   As president, I will make it a priority and overcome the bureaucratic walls that have caused delay and inaction in Russia so we can finish the important work of securing weapons material there and around the world.

    The Administration just announced plans to remove potential bomb material from vulnerable sites outside the former Soviet Union over the next ten years.  We simply can’t afford another decade of this danger.  My plan will safeguard this bomb making material in four years.  We can’t wait-and I won’t wait when I am president.

    The second step is to prevent the creation of new materials that are being produced for nuclear weapons.  America must lead an international coalition to halt, and then verifiably ban, all production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for use in nuclear weapons — permanently capping the world’s nuclear weapons stockpiles.

    Despite strong international support for such a ban, this Administration is stalling, and endlessly reviewing the need for such a policy.

    In addition, we must strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to close the loophole that lets countries develop nuclear weapons capabilities under the guise of a peaceful, civilian nuclear power program.

    The third step is to reduce excess stocks of materials and weapons.  If America is asking the world to join our country in a shared mission to reduce this nuclear threat, then why would the world listen to us if our own words do not match our deeds?

    As President, I will stop this Administration’s program to develop a whole new generation of bunker-busting nuclear bombs.  This is a weapon we don’t need.  And it undermines our credibility in persuading other nations.  What kind of message does it send when we’re asking other countries not to develop nuclear weapons, but developing new ones ourselves?

    We must work with the Russians to accelerate the “blending down” of highly enriched uranium and the disposition of Russian plutonium stocks so they can never be used in a nuclear weapon.

    We don’t need a world with more usable nuclear weapons.  We need a world where terrorists can’t ever use one.  That should be our focus in the post 9/11 world.

    Our fourth step is to end the nuclear weapons programs in states like North Korea and Iran.

    This Administration has been fixated on Iraq while the nuclear dangers from North Korea have multiplied.   We know that North Korea has sold ballistic missiles and technology in the past.  And according to recent reports, North Korean uranium ended up in Libyan hands.  The North Koreans have made it clear to the world – and to the terrorists – that they are open for business and will sell to the highest bidder.

    We should have no illusions about Kim Jong II, so any agreement must have rigorous verification and lead to complete and irreversible elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.  For eighteen months, we’ve essentially negotiated over the shape of the table while the North Koreans allegedly have made enough new fuel to make six to nine nuclear bombs.

    We should maintain the six party talks, but we must also be prepared to talk directly with North Korea.  This problem is too urgent to allow China, or others at the table, to speak for us.  And we must be prepared to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that addresses the full range of issues of concern to us and our allies.

    We must also meet the mounting danger on the other side of Asia.  While we have been preoccupied in Iraq, next door in Iran, a nuclear program has been reportedly moving ahead.  Let me say it plainly: a nuclear armed Iran is unacceptable.  An America, whose interest and allies could be on the target list, must no longer sit on the sidelines.  It is critical that we work with our allies to resolve those issues.

    This is why strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is so critical. The Iranians claim they’re simply trying to meet domestic energy needs.  We should call their bluff, and organize a group of states that will offer the nuclear fuel they need for peaceful purposes and take back the spent fuel so they can’t divert it to build a weapon.  If Iran does not accept this, their true motivations will be clear.  The same goes for other countries possibly seeking nuclear weapons.  We will oppose the construction in any new countries of any new facilities to make nuclear materials, and lead a global effort to prevent the export of the necessary technology to Iran.

    We also need to strengthen enforcement and verification. We must make rigorous inspection protocols mandatory, and refocus the mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency to stop the spread of nuclear weapons material.

    Next, we must work with every country to tighten export controls, stiffen penalties, and beef up law enforcement and intelligence sharing, to make absolutely sure that a disaster like the AQ Khan black market network, which grew out of Pakistan’s nuclear program, can never happen again.  We must also take steps to reduce tension between India and Pakistan and guard against the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands there.

    So let it be clear: finally and fundamentally,  preventing nuclear terrorism is our most urgent priority to provide for America’s long term security.  That is why I will appoint a National Coordinator for Nuclear Terrorism and Counterproliferation who will work with me in the White House to marshal every effort and every ally, to combat an incalculable danger.

    We have to do everything we can to stop a nuclear weapon from ever reaching our shore-and that mission begins far away.  We have to secure nuclear weapons and materials at the source so that searching the containers here at the Port of Palm Beach isn’t our only line of defense-it is our last line of defense.

    This is not an easy topic: it can be frightening.  At this hour, stockpiles go unguarded, bomb making materials sit in forgotten facilities, and terrorists plot away.  They sit in unassuming rooms all across the globe.  They have their technology.  They have their scientists.  All they need is that material.  But we can stop them.  Remember.  No material.  No bomb.  No nuclear terrorism.

    We are living through days of great and unprecedented risks.  But Americans have never surrendered to fear.  Today, we must not avert our eyes, or pretend it’s not there-or think that we can simply wait it out.  That is not our history-or our hope.

    Last Saturday, I attended the dedication of the World War II memorial.  I had the honor to sit next to a brave man, Joe Lesniewski who was one of the original “Band of Brothers” from the ‘Easy Company” of the 101st Airborne Division.  He’s part of the Greatest Generation and jumped into enemy territory during the invasion of Normandy.  Like so many other young men that day, he looked fear in the face and conquered it.  June 6th-this coming Saturday-marks the anniversary of that day which saved the free world.

    Sixty years ago, more than 43,000 young men were ready to storm Omaha Beach.  Their landing crafts were heading for an open beach, where they averted a wall of concrete and bullets.  They knew there was an overwhelming chance that they might die before their boots hit the sand.

    But they jumped into the shallow waters and fought their way ashore. Because at the end of the beach, beyond the cliff was the hope of a safer world.  That is what Americans do.  We face a challenge-no matter how ominous-because we know that on the other side of hardship resides hope.

    As president, I will not wait or waver in the face of the new threats of this new era.  I will build and lead strong alliances.  I will deploy every tool at our disposal.   I know it will not be easy, but the greatest victories for peace and freedom never are.  There are no cake-walks in the contest with terrorists and lawless states.

    We have to climb this cliff together so that we, too, can reach the other side of hardship and live in a world that no longer fears the unknowable enemy and the looming mushroom cloud on the horizon.

    We must lead this effort not just for our own safety, but for the good of the world.  As President Truman said, “Our goal is collective security.If we can work in a spirit of understanding and mutual respect, we can fulfill this solemn obligation that rests upon us.”

    Just as he led America to face the threat of communism, so too, we must now face the twin threats of nuclear proliferation and terrorism.  This is a great challenge for our generation-and the stakes are as high as they were on D-Day and in President Truman’s time.  For the sake of all the generations to come, we will meet this test and we will succeed.

  • What About the WMDs that Do Exist?

    Now that it’s acknowledged by all but hardcore supporters of the Bush administration that weapons of mass destruction were not present in Iraq at the time of the U.S. invasion, it’s time to take a look at such weapons that do exist.

    According to the authoritative Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, there are more than 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Eight nations are known to possess them (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel). And a ninth (North Korea) might have some as well.

    The vast majority of these nuclear weapons are in the hands of the United States and Russia. Each of these nations maintains more than 2,000 of them on hair-trigger alert, ready at a moment’s notice to create a global holocaust in which hundreds of millions of people would die horribly. Even the much smaller nuclear arsenals of the other nuclear powers have the potential to cause unimaginable destruction.

    Recognizing the unprecedented dangers posed by nuclear weapons, the nations of the world have signed a number of important nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements over the past four decades. These include the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 1972 and two Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties, the first in 1972, the second in 1979.

    After a short hiatus occasioned by the revival of the Cold War, they were followed by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I, in 1991 and START II, in 1993), and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT, in 1996). These agreements limited nuclear proliferation, halted the nuclear arms race and reduced the number of nuclear weapons.

    The lynchpin of these agreements is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, in which the non-nuclear signatories agreed to forgo development of nuclear weapons in return for a pledge by the nuclear powers to move toward nuclear disarmament. A few non-nuclear countries, such as India, kept their options open by refusing to sign the treaty. But the overwhelming majority of nations signed the agreement, because they considered it a useful way to reverse the nuclear arms race.

    As late as the year 2000, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty promised an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.” This included taking specific steps, such as preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty and ratifying and putting into force the CTBT.

    Although the U.S. government is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty — indeed, initiated it and lobbied hard for its acceptance — the Bush administration has decided that it will not be bound by the treaty’s provisions. It has pulled out of the ABM Treaty, an action that also has the effect of scrapping the START II Treaty. The administration has also rejected the CTBT and this past fall pushed legislation through Congress to begin building new nuclear weapons. A resumption of U.S. nuclear testing, halted in 1992, seems in the offing.

    How long other nations will put up with the flouting by the United States of the world’s arms control agreements before they resume the nuclear arms race themselves is anybody’s guess. But it probably won’t be very long.

    As in its other policy initiatives, the Bush administration has fallen back on the “war on terror” to justify its abandonment of nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties. But, as Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has noted, terrorist groups will not be affected by nuclear weapons. “A nuclear deterrent is clearly ineffective against such groups,” he declared this past October. “They have no cities that can be bombed in reply, nor are they focused on self-preservation.” By building additional nuclear weapons and provoking other nations to do the same thing, the Bush administration has enhanced the prospect of “loose nukes” becoming available to terrorists and other fanatics.

    Wouldn’t the United States be safer if there were fewer nuclear Weapons — or none? That’s what poll after poll has shown that the public thinks. And that’s what both Republican and Democratic presidents have argued since the advent of the nuclear era. Even Ronald Reagan, an early nuclear enthusiast, came around to recognizing the necessity for building a nuclear-free world.

    Evidently the Bush administration thinks otherwise. While talking loosely (and misleadingly) of nuclear dangers from “evil” regimes, it has jettisoned the U.S. government’s long-standing commitment to nuclear arms control and disarmament. Unless this policy is reversed, the world faces disasters of vast proportions.

    *Lawrence S. Wittner is a professor of history at the State University of New York/Albany and author of “Toward Nuclear Abolition” (2003). This article was orginally posted in the History News Service.

  • Is a Nuclear 9/11 in Our Future?

    Is a Nuclear 9/11 in Our Future?

    Sooner or later there will be a nuclear 9/11 in an American city or that of a US ally unless serious program is undertaken to prevent such an occurrence. A terrorist nuclear attack against an American city could take many forms. A worst case scenario would be the detonation of a nuclear device within a city. Depending upon the size and sophistication of the weapon, it could kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.

    Terrorists could obtain a nuclear device by stealing or purchasing an already created nuclear weapon or by stealing or purchasing weapons-grade nuclear materials and fashioning a crude bomb. While neither of these options would be easy, they cannot be dismissed as beyond the capabilities of a determined terrorist organization.

    If terrorists succeeded in obtaining a nuclear weapon, they would also have to bring it into the US, assuming they did not already obtain or create the weapon in this country. While this would not necessarily be easy, many analysts have suggested that it would be within the realm of possibility. An oft-cited example is the possibility of bringing a nuclear device into an American port hidden on a cargo ship.

    Another form of terrorist nuclear attack requiring far less sophistication would be the detonation of a radiation weapon or “dirty bomb.” This type of device would not be capable of a nuclear explosion but would use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials within a populated area. The detonation of such a device could cause massive panic due to the public’s appropriate fears of radiation sickness and of developing cancers and leukemias in the future.

    A bi-partisan task force of the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, headed by former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and former White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler, called upon the US in 2001 to spend $30 billion over an eight to ten year period to prevent nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union from getting into the hands of terrorists or so called “rogue” states. The task force called the nuclear dangers in the former USSR “the most urgent unmet national security threat facing the United States today.” At present, the US government is spending only about one-third of the recommended amount, while it pours resources into paying for the invasion, occupation and rebuilding of Iraq as well as programs unlikely to provide effective security to US citizens such as missile defense.

    The great difficulty in preventing a nuclear 9/11 is that it will require ending the well-entrenched nuclear double standards that the US and other nuclear weapons states have lived by throughout the Nuclear Age. Preventing nuclear terrorism in the end will not be possible without a serious global program to eliminate nuclear weapons and control nuclear materials that could be converted to weapons. Such a program would require universal agreement in the form of an enforceable treaty providing for the following:

    • full accounting and international safeguarding of all nuclear weapons, weapons-grade nuclear materials and nuclear reactors in all countries, including the nuclear weapons states;
    • international tracking and control of the movement of all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade materials;
    • dismantling and prohibiting all uranium enrichment facilities and all plutonium separation facilities, and the implementation of a plan to expedite the phasing out all nuclear power plants;
    • full recognition and endorsement by the nuclear weapons states of their existing obligation pursuant to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for an “unequivocal undertaking” to eliminate their nuclear arsenals;
    • rapidly dismantling existing nuclear weapons in an orderly and transparent manner and the transfer of nuclear materials to international control sites;
    • and criminalizing the possession, threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    While these steps may appear extreme, they are in actuality the minimum necessary to prevent a nuclear 9/11. If that is among our top priorities as a country, as surely it should be, the US government should begin immediately to lead the world in this direction. Now is the time to act, before one or more US cities are devastated by nuclear terrorism.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the co-author of Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age.

  • Emergency Medicine After a Nuclear 911

    I have been asked to comment on the medical response to ³The Day After the Day After,² that is, a deliberate terrorist attack against the U.S. population and/or infrastructure by terrorists utilizing nuclear materials. A few caveats are in order. First, my predictions of damage and plausible medical response are estimates, featuring a range of possible consequences. However, I feel that these are realistic estimates, based on data from atomic weapons tests, the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, nuclear power plant accidents, and responses to other non-nuclear mass casualty incidents. I have a bibliography of sources for my talk available to anyone who is interested. Second, my remarks will not include evaluation of probable environmental, political, economic, or psychological effects, all of which certainly will impact any emergency medical response. Those effects will be covered by other speakers. It is important to understand that all those various effects would be additive in completely unpredictable ways. Thirdly, my remarks will be addressed to the scenario of a single attack, or at most a few simultaneous attacks; in other words, not relevant to a nation-vs.-nation exchange of nuclear weapons, which is an almost unimaginable catastrophe threatening the existence of all life on the planet. Finally, there are differing potential modalities of terrorist nuclear attack against the U.S., including:

    – Attack on the transport by truck or train of nuclear waste , to steal the nuclear material for further use;

    – Detonation of a so-called ³dirty² bomb, which is a conventional explosive deliberately contaminated with radioactive material to cause dispersal of that radioactivity;

    – Physical takeover of a nuclear power plant by intruders, with subsequent intentional interference with plant operation leading to a ³meltdown² of the core and release of radioactivity;

    – Detonation of a conventional weapon, delivered by motor vehicle, boat, or airplane, at a nuclear power plant;

    – Explosion of a thermonuclear bomb.

    Because of time constraints and the particular focus of this conference, Iwill limit my remarks about medical response to the latter two scenarios: that is, conventional weapon explosion at a nuclear power plant, and, principally, explosion of a terrorist nuclear bomb.

    In order usefully to understand possible emergency medical response to those scenarios, it is necessary to review what comprises emergency medicine at this time in the U.S. Our medical system is one of the most technologically advanced in the world. A corollary is that U.S. emergency medicine depends on a technological infrastructure, which distinguishes it from Third World medicine, featuring simple intravenous fluid therapy, pills, and few facilities with often limited accessibility and affordability, and from rudimentary ³medicine,² or basic first aid. Although our own medical and public health systems are currently tenuous and in increasing jeopardy, nonetheless they still feature and will continue to feature the following: – Hospitals in communities of all sizes, with designated Emergency Rooms ;

    – Trained specialists, including Emergency Physicians, Registered Nurses, laboratory technicians, radiology technicians, and the clerks, housekeeping staff, and other ancillary personnel without which they could not operate;

    – An infrastructure consisting of electric power, clean and abundant water, and communications including telephone and radio; – Adequate equipment and supplies, replenishable through our transportation system of roads, vehicles, airports, and planes;

    – First responders, that is, Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics with ambulances, fire departments with trained personnel, and police departments;

    – Coordinating Emergency Medical Systems in every community, responsible for maintaining readiness and reacting to disasters. Without all those and more, we would have no functioning emergency medicine.

    SCENARIO #1: Attack on a nuclear power plant

    Nuclear power plants are repositories of huge quantities of radioactive material. The spent fuel ponds, where used fuel rods are stored, hold 5 to 10 times the long-lived radioactivity in the core, where energy is produced and harnessed. A single spent fuel pond in a typical reactor holds 20 to 50 million curies of radioactivity, represented by various radioactive substances, most prominently radioactive iodine, with a relatively short half-life, and radioactive cesium, with a half-life of about 30 years. A single spent fuel pond holds more Ce-137 than was released into the atmosphere by all atmospheric nuclear tests in the Northern

    Hemisphere during more than 3 decades of nuclear testing. A conventional explosion at a spent fuel pond could easily dissipate the cooling water of the pond, exposing the zirconium lining of the fuel rods to air and leading to immediate ignition. Such a fire is inextinguishable and will burn for days to years. During the conflagration essentially 100% of the Ce-137 and most of the other radioactive material will be released into the air. Its distribution will depend on weather and wind conditions. Only two means of medical protection are available: shelter, which will be required for all those downwind of the release for a minimum of 2 days, up to 7 to 10 days; and ingestion of potassium iodide orally, in pill or liquid form, which will prevent the thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive iodine in the air. Potassium iodide must be take before or within 4 hours of exposure to be effective. The U.S. government has offered potassium iodide to all residents within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant. There is no similar substance to protect against exposure to Ce-137 or the many other radioactive substances released. When to allow people outdoors again will depend on measurements of when the radioactive plume has passed and how much ambient radiation remains in the area.

    Those at the plant who survive with blast injuries may be treated as are victims of any explosion. However, treating personnel and facilities will need protection from contamination carried by those victims. At any rate, those victims will have been exposed to such high radiation doses that death within a few days is inevitable. Others, not injured by blast, who have been exposed to more than 30 Gy (3000 rads) of radiation will suffer effects on the cardiovascular and central nervous systems, and develop almost immediate nausea, vomiting, and headache, followed by seizures, shock, and death. There is no effective treatment. Those exposed to 10 to 30 Gy will suffer damage of the digestive system, characterized by nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea; after an apparent brief recovery of a few days, symptoms will recur and they will die. There is no effective treatment. Those exposed to 2 to 20 Gy will suffer destruction of their bone marrow. After their vomiting and diarrhea subside, in a few weeks they will die from infection or hemorrhage unless they receive a bone marrow transplant. Bone marrow transplantation is a complex and expensive medical treatment requiring prolonged hospitalization and intensive care. Only a few medical centers in each state provide such treatment. If the power plant attacked is in a rural area, probably hundreds of victims will need such treatment, taxing the resources of the entire U.S. medical system. If the power plant attacked is in an urban area, the thousands of survivors with bone marrow destruction will have no treatment available to them and will die miserable deaths.

    There is no practical way medically to distinguish those victims with severe radiation injury from those without, because there is no practical way to measure absorbed radiation dose. Thus it will be impossible for medical practitioners and facilities to discriminate between those presenting with headache, vomiting, and diarrhea who will die despite any medical intervention, those with similar symptoms who will recover spon- taneously (but will be susceptible to cancer years later), and those who are suffering the identical symptoms from the non-organic causes of stress, fear, and, yes, terror. In sum, an attack on a nuclear power plant with release of radiation will potentially cause many immediate and short-term deaths and serious injuries, untold long-term cancers, and extreme demands on emergency medical facilities in the involved state and surrounding states.

    SCENARIO #2: A terrorist nuclear bomb

    Now for the bad news. The above scenario is trivial in comparison with the probable effect of detonation of a nuclear bomb. The atomic bomb which devastated Hiroshima is estimated to have had the power of 12.5 to 15 kilotons of TNT; Nagasaki¹s, 15 to 20 Kt.

    The largest thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb exploded had a yield of about 50 megatons; the U.S., Russia, and the other nuclear powers have bombs ranging from less than 1 Kt to many Mts. Given the practical constraints of acquisition and production, it is estimated that terrorists could acquire or produce a bomb with a yield between 0.1 and 20 Kt. For our discussion I will postulate a weapon of 10 Kt. Such a bomb could weigh between 40 and 100 lbs., and be dropped from a plane or brought into a city by suitcase, car, or shipping crate. The most likely terrorist target would be a large city; for example, Los Angeles. Atomic bombs destroy by several effects: Blast, usually comprising the release of about 50% of the bomb¹s energy; Thermal radiation, both heat and light, comprising about 35% of the bomb¹s energy; Radiation, about 15%, involving both short-term and long-term damage, as we have already seen in discussing the first scenario; Electromagnetic pulse. Bombs with more than 10 Kt of yield have a larger range of blast and burn than radiation effects. Damage to people and objects from an atomic bomb depends on the size of the explosion and distance from ground zero. It is virtually impossible to determine whether victims succumb to blast, burn, or radiation effects, since most victims suffer from all…and many are simply vaporized. Effects also depend on whether the bomb is detonated at ground level, which spews enormous amounts of soil into the air and increases radioactive fallout, or in the air, which increases the effect of blast and heat.

    The major effects of an atomic bomb: BLAST: A 10 Kt bomb will create a crate between 1/4 and 1/2 mile wide and several hundred feet deep. Wind velocity will be between 250 and 500 mph at the hypocenter, and over 60 mph even 2 miles away.Most blast deaths and injuries result from the collapse of buildings, from people being blown into objects at high speed, and from objects being blown into people. Unreinforced buildings several miles away may be destroyed or seriously damaged. The blast will be so loud and intense and the pressures so great that people will suffer ruptured eardrums with consequent deafness, and ruptured lungs, many miles away. HEAT: The temperature at the center of the blast will be approximately 1 million degrees C, approximately that of the sun; even if the explosion is in the air, ground temperature beneath it will be about 7000 degrees C. People 2.5 miles or more away from the epicenter will suffer horrendous burns; wood will be charred black 2 miles away. The heat will be sufficient to evaporate metal, melt glass, and ignite clothing miles away from the epicenter. At Hiroshima 8 sq. mi. of area was reduced to ashes by a resulting firestorm. LIGHT: The intensity of emitted light will be so great that people and animals will suffer retinal burns up to 20 to 25 miles away, with at least temporary blindness for hours to days, and possible permanent blindness. RADIATION: Short-term and long-term effects will depend on the composition of the bomb and the weather, as mentioned in Scenario #1.

    ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE: This phenomenon will incapacitate radio, television, cellular telephone, and cable transmissions for undetermined distances, making communication in the entire region and possible entire state unavailable, as well as permanently disabling appliances.

    The Hiroshima bomb killed approximate 115,000 people immediately or within a few days of its detonation. Tens of thousands more were injured, a great many seriously. Among initial survivors of a terrorist blast would be tens of thousands with extensive third-degree burns. In all of the L.A. metropolitan area there are 82 hospital burn beds; in all of California, 203; in the entire U.S., about 5,000. Tens of thousands of survivors would suffer crushing injuries, fractures, penetrating lacerations with heavy bleeding, and acute radiation injury.

    There are about 90 acute care hospitals in Los Angeles County. Many would be destroyed or rendered non-functional by the blast. Hospitals and doctors offices tend to be located centrally in urban areas, so doctors would be killed or seriously injured at rates greater than those of the general population. There will be no help available from outside the devastated area, not only because of fearfully high levels of radiation, and firestorms, but also because there will be no electricity, communication, shelter, or intact bridges or roads. Badly injured victims will probably die in agony, without even the possibility of receiving relief from pain. Those so-called survivors will probably envy the dead. Apparently uninjured survivors miles from the explosion, including police, government officials, fire personnel, gas station attendants, store owners, bank and hospital employees — almost everyone — will be thinking first of themselves and their loved ones, how they can survive, and where they can flee to. Roads out of the city will be jammed. Communities throughout the region, such as Santa Barbara, will be inundated with those in panicked flight, and hospitals in those regions will be deluged with people who are either injured or think that they are. The medical system in general, and emergency medicine in particular, will be completely incapable of responding in any effective or meaningful way to a terrorist nuclear bomb explosion. Medical preparation for such an event may make us feel better, but only if we delude ourselves. The only plausible strategy of preparation is the utmost effort at prevention.
    *Dr. Steve Daniels is an emergency room physician in Santa Barbara, chairman of the Santa Barbara chapter of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, and a speaker in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Speakers Bureau.

  • U.S. Can’t Ignore Nuclear Threat

    Originally Published in USA TODAY

    I’m worried that we’re about to make the same mistake we made a decade ago.

    In August of 1991, when a coup by Soviet hard-liners fell apart, then-president Mikhail Gorbachev gave credit to live global television for keeping world attention on the action, and Time magazine wrote: ”Momentous things happened precisely because they were being seen as they happened.”

    But if good things can happen because a lot of people are watching, bad things can happen when few people are watching. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the media moved off the story of the nuclear threat — and we moved into the new world order without undoing the danger of the old world order.

    In the wake of Sept. 11, people are realizing that the nuclear threat didn’t end with the Cold War. Soviet weapons, materials and know-how are still there, more dangerous than ever. Russia’s economic troubles weakened controls on them, and global terrorists are trying harder to get them.

    When President Bush (news – web sites) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (news – web sites) meet in Moscow next week, they will sign a treaty to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on each side. They need to reduce a lot more than that. Some of the poisonous byproducts of the two powers’ arms race are piled high in poorly guarded facilities across 11 time zones. They offer mad fools the power to kill millions.

    At a Bush-Putin news conference two months after the terrorist attacks, Bush declared: ”Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.” He also has told his national security staff to give nuclear terrorism top priority.

    Where’s the money?

    But it’s hard to see this priority in the budget and policies of the administration. Not a dollar of the $38 billion the administration requested in new spending for homeland defense will address loose weapons, materials and know-how in Russia. The total spending on these programs — even after Sept. 11 — has remained flat at about a billion dollars a year, even though, at this rate, we will still not have secured all loose nuclear materials in Russia for years to come.

    But what worries me most is not the lack of new spending, but the lack of new thinking. Where are the new ideas for preventing nuclear terrorism?

    We can’t just keep doing what we’ve been doing, and we can’t just copy old plans; we’ve got to innovate. If we are hit with one of these weapons because we slept through this wake-up call from hell, it will be the most shameful failure of national defense in the history of the United States.

    Waning public interest

    Unfortunately, public pressure for action is weak, partly because media attention on nuclear terrorism has begun to fade. And it’s fading not because the threat has been addressed or reduced, but because the media cover what changes, and threats don’t change much day to day. They just keep on ticking.

    The media need to stay on this story because it’s harder to get government action when there’s not much media coverage. If something’s not in the media, it’s not in the public mind. If it’s not in the public mind, there’s little political pressure to act. If public attention moves off this nuclear threat before the government has moved to reduce it, we will be making the same mistake we made after 1991.

    Leadership, however, means being out in front even if no one’s pushing from behind. Bush and Putin need to think bigger and do more. They need to reduce the chance that terrorists can steal nuclear weapons or materials or hire away weapons scientists. They need to work together as partners in fighting terror and encourage others to join. They need to launch a worldwide plan to identify weapons, materials and know-how and secure all of it, everywhere, now — if we are to avoid Armageddon.
    *CNN founder Ted Turner last year established the Nuclear Threat Initiative, dedicated to reducing the threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He has pledged to provide $250 million to fund its activities.

  • New Threats for the 21st Century: Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism

    INTRODUCTION

    Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism (depicted also as ultra- or superterrorism) is often reported as terrorism using mass destruction weapons or WMD terrorism. This is however not quite correct reducing thus the wide spectrum of terrorist means and methods falling under this term (CBRN) only to military weaponry of this art. There are also other terminological misunderstandings considering certain violent events occuring in wars and armed conflicts to be terrorism. Terrorism as a violence or threat with violence of individuals or/and groups based on racial, national, ethnic, political, religious, economic, ecologic, sexual and other ideology or motivation against individuals or social groups predestinates the choice of instruments of violence. Just the eve of the 21st century has marked escalation of violence in the shift from classical means ( silent weapons, incendiaries, fire-arms, explosives) to actual inclusion of toxic and biological agents into the arsenals of terrorists. Increasing brutality of contemporary terrorism under its proceeding internationalisation in globalised environment allows to anticipate further development of terrorism from its classical forms using incendiaries, light weapons and explosives towards its most destructive forms – to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism. Assessment of actual and potential forms and sources of CBRN terrorism is a necessary point of outcome for combatting terrorism, effective preventive, repressive, protective, rescue and recovery measures and systems on national and global scale. This paper is aimed in the first line to categorise material sources and forms of CBRN terrorism. Differences between WMD and CBRN terrorism are elucidated. The former is considered to be no more and no less than one of the basic forms of the latter.

    Main forms of CBRN terrorism in wide possible varieties are reviewed and portrayed, generally far exceeding the alternatively used term WMD terrorism.

    FORMS AND MATERIAL SOURCES OF THE CBRN TERRORISM

    Principal forms and their material sources can be shortly reviewed as follows (1,2):

    The first and basic source for the CBRN terrorism ( to which it is often terminologically reduced) is the misuse of military means, i.e. WMD. Possibilities of non-authorised using chemical, bacteriological (biological), toxin and nuclear weapons are limited mainly in the connection with their strategic importance and ongoing implementation of existing arms control and disarmament agreements.

    The second source (applied e.g. at all known terrorist chemical and biological attacks and threats that have occured till now) is the own manufacturing WMD components, i.e. supertoxic lethal compounds, highly lethal bacteriological agents and toxins as well as misusing industrial toxic agents, infectious materials and radionuclides. High attention is devoted to the possible misuse of fissile materials, mainly of weapon-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) for possible illicit manufacturing primitive nuclear device.

    The third form, till now generally underestimated, is the violent pushing of secondary effects typical for striking industrial and social infrastructures of modern society (nuclear, chemical, petrochemical and like) with conventional weapons in wars and armed conflicts. Such disastrous terrorist strikes causing sudden release of toxic, inflammable and liquefied chemicals, radionuclides and infectious materials (often with explosive character, sometimes followed by burnings, in some cases with fireballs) differ in the pushing mechanism from the similar but much less dramatically proceeding peacetime incidents and accidents, caused by personal, material or system failure or by natural forces.

    These forms and sources are portrayed in following chapters based on profound analysis (3).

    MISUSE OF MILITARY MEANS (WMD TERRORISM)

    CBRN Terrorism based on using WMD means any misuse or unauthorised use of existing military arsenals of WMD, i.e. of concrete chemical, bacteriological (biological), toxin and nuclear weapons or their key components, acquired as a result of stealing, robbery or illicit trade from military bases, storage sites, manufacturing facilities, transports etc. (similarly like conventional weapons and explosives) which is however much more uneasier because of items of strategic importance, strongly guarded. In this connection, the most probable is considered access to already commissioned chemical, biological and nuclear weapons determined to elimination pursuant to respective bi- or multilateral arms-control and disarmament agreements in the State Parties or to standard weaponry in the non State Parties (mainly in those in suspicion to support terrorist groups). In ongoing discussions, several reasons have been indicated why terrorists have not yet used WMD on mass scale, while during two decades (1979 – 1998) at least 12 conventional high-casualty assault cases are known involving more than 100 fatalities each, not to speak about the events of September 11, 2001. Among the reasons, there are e.g. general reluctance to experiment with unfamiliar weapons and lack of corresponding precedents, fear that the weapon would harm the producer or user, fear that it would not work at all, or only too well, fear of alienating relevant constituencies and potential supporters on moral grounds, fear of unprecedented governmental crackdown and retaliation, lack of a perceived need for indiscriminate, high-capacity attacks for furthering goals of the group, and lack of funds to buy e.g. nuclear material on the black market (4). Some of the reasons are however weakened due to increasing occurence of suicidal terrorist attacks. It is a question of time when the WMD terrorism actually emerges.

    As for chemical weapons (CW) concerned, among the State Parties to the Convention on general and comprehensive prohibition of chemical weapons (CWC) (from 1993, that entered into force in 1997), main possessors are Russia and the USA and in the second line India and South Korea having declared small amounts of CW. Possession of CW is anticipated in some signatory states which have not yet ratified (e.g. Israel) and in others (mainly Arabic neighbours of Israel and their sympatisants) that have even not yet signed, binding their signature on Israel´s cancelling its nuclear programme. Iraq´s CW are blocked at present.

    In the case of bacteriological (biological) and toxin weapons (BTW), the situation is far less clear. On the one hand, there exists the Convention on prohibition, development, production and stockpiling BTW and on their destruction (BTWC) (from 1972, that entered into force 1975, by the way the first disarmament document outlawing one class of WMD) but on the other hand with the lack of any verification mechanisms. The State Parties only have declared elimination of the BTW stockpiles and transformation of corresponding R&D and production facilities to peaceful purposes. This Convention was signed in the time of ending classic era of BW (lasting for about six centuries) and starting rapid development of biotechnologies shortly after its signature. This is why some countries were continuing in the R&D of new BTW and defence against them. It is to be noted, that the use of BTW (similarly like the use of CW) in wars is prohibited by the Geneva Protocol (from 1925 that entered into force in 1928). As for toxin weapons (TW), their development, production, stockpiling and use are prohibited also by the above mentioned CWC, committing to their verified destruction. The long feeling absence of mechanisms for verification of eliminating BTW stockpiles will be solved by strengthening the régime of BTWC amending it by a Protocol on implementation, elevating it on the similar level like CWC. The aim of this Protocol is to prove objectively and under international verification system that the stockpiles have been actually destroyed and any new ones are not being developed. This Protocol is a matter of very complicated negotiations proceeding from the early 1990s. It is a pity that the ongoing negotiations have entered a deadlock recently. From the point of view of potential targets of terrorism it can be added that while CW are only defined as antipersonnel means, BTWC are defined also as means against animals and plants. (Practice of use of toxic agents however involved also multiple intentional use of phytotoxic agents as a method of warfare e.g. in Malaysia and mainly in the Second Indochina War).

    Radiological weapons (RW), i.e. intentional dissemination of radioactive materials in armed conflicts are not covered by any international agreement yet. During negotiations on this issue in Geneva Conference on Disarmament, this problem was withdrawn from the agenda in 1984 because the group of neutral and non aligned countries had required to combine this problem with the issue of nuclear weapons ban. Even from the military point of view such weapons were not considered actual ( Their massive use gives neither quick effect like CW nor high delayed one like BTW). There is a general opinion that such weapons do not exist in military arsenals of WMD at all, even if the UNSCOM inspectors concluded in the early 1990s that Iraq had tried to develop such weapons.

    Nuclear weapons (NW) as the most effective WMD are also subject of efforts aimed to their reduction and total ban as a final goal. Beside multilateral agreements involving testing and deployment in various environmental compartments and geographis zones, the most important is the Treaty on non proliferation of NW (NPT) (from 1968) closely connected with the system of IAEA safeguards. The core of nuclear arms control and partial disarmament are represented in the first line by bilateral agreements between USA and USSR (Russia respectively). Previous bilateral agreements concluded in the Cold War era on the strategic nuclear arms, such as nuclear bombers, ICBMs, SLBMs (including MIRVs) i.e. mainly SALT-I, SALT-II, did not reduce numbers of weapons, but only regulated bilaterally balanced increase (limitation). This was the reason why the overall number of nuclear explosive devices gradually reached about 60 thousand (including nuclear charges of other NW states) worldwide in the mid-1980s. This was considered as actual nuclear multi-overkill and the nuclear status of the major Powers created then the situation characterised as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) which is not a strategy of any side as it has been sometimes reported but an objectively existing threat for both sides and for the whole mankind.

    The first document on actual nuclear disarmament is the bilateral agreement (USA – USSR) on the elimination of nuclear missiles with the range of 500 – 5500 km (IMF) signed in December 1997. In the early 1990s both sides commenced with actual reduction of NW what is reflected in the START-I and START-II agreements. Recent developments, mainly refusal of ratifying the latter agreement and unilateral withdrawal from the ABM treaty of 1972 again have stopped ongoing reductions of NW arsenals. Moreover, recent orientation towards mininukes gives bad signal also from the point of view of nuclear terrorism.Contemporary estimated number of nuclear explosive devices is slightly over 20 thousand on the global scale. Simultaneously with growing number of NW states (USA, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq) and rising number of states with missile technologies, the possibility of misusing NW increases. NW belong to the strategic interest of highest importance, well protected against non-authorised use. Even the simplest arial bombs are fitted with up to 5 independent systems to prevent it from unauthorised or accidental explosion, the highest levels controlled by the Command of Strategic Nuclear Forces and Presidents (USA, Russia) personally, in order to prevent accidental outburst of nuclear war.

    TERRORISM USING CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL, RADIOLOGICAL AND NUCLEAR MATERIALS

    Due to expected complications with stealing, robbery, illicit trade etc. of standard WMD from above mentioned sources, some already executed terrorist attacks have shown the ability of potent terrorist groups to develop and manufacture supertoxic lethal chemicals and highly contagious biological agents (5). This is enabled by the scientific and technological development and open access to information contributing also to the scientific and technological level of well organised terrorist groups. Growing dissemination of information mainly by means of the global computer network enable quick global communication without risk of being disclosed. Database of Incidents Involving Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Materials, Since 1900 till Present in the Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies marked 329 cases till 1999. Most of them are connected with chemical and biological materials with clearly shown terrorist motivation.

    Among chemicals, beside manufacturing of toxic agents, in the first line the most effective supertoxic lethal chemicals (standard chemical warfare agents, like GB and VX), also misuse of stolen riot-control agents and of toxic industrial chemicals like chlorine, phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen chloride etc. can be considered for direct mass-casualty or mass incapacitation attacks (to evoke panics). Much wider possibilities in the choice of chemicals are given in indirect strikes (or threat with strikes), i.e. through contaminated water or food. Beside stable supertoxic agents (like VX, HD etc.) many other chemicals like persistent pesticides, cyanides, arsenous cmpounds, heavy metals, oil products etc. can be expected.

    Biological agents of many types and origin, accessible e.g. from banks at medical and university institutes can be taken in consideration, including the misuse of infectious materials from foci of proceeding epidemies, both human and animal, not to speak about manufacturing of some toxins.

    Similarly, radionuclides from several peacetime sources including radioactive wastes, disseminated by various mechanisms, most probably through explosion could be used in terrorist attacks.

    At the time being, diverse views have been expressed concerning the posibility of nuclear terrorism. Even if the construction of nuclear explosive device seems theoretically very simple, there are obviously large very qualified teams and very specific conditions necessary to develop and manufacture such device. Taking into consideration material and technological requirements including own safety, this is generally considered as hardly possible without state involvement. From strategic reasons, R&D and many manufacturing steps belong to a best guarded state secrecy, moreover localised in strongly guarded areas. Nevertheless, taking in consideration proceeding nuclear horizontal proliferation, extent of the respective parts of the military-industrial complex in growing number of countries, partial escaping of information, material and brains are not excluded.

    Parallel to proceeding decrease of numbers of operational nuclear devices paradoxically increases possibility of terrorist misuse due to growing volume of fissile material from nuclear weapons decommissioned mainly according to above mentioned agreements (IMF, START-I) as well as due to routinely proceeding upgrading of nuclear arsenals. It is in the first line the weapon-grade plutonium but more probably the highly enriched uranium (HEU) due to its extremely high amount and possibility to construct primitive types of nuclear explosive devices with the yields typical for mininukes (in order of t – kt) resembling large conventional demolition charges. While there has long been concern about nuclear material being acquired by non-state groups, recent reports indicate that NW may now, or soon will be, availabe to terrorist groups. Large quantities of HEU that are poorly controlled and otherwise unaccounted in the former USSR and some other countries could be a very attractive source. This fissile material (only in the former USSR is enough to build about twenty thousand nuclear charges). HEU can, however, be readily diluted with natural uranium to a low-enriched level where it has high commercial value as proliferation-proof fuel for nuclear energetic reactors (6).

    CBRN TERRORISM THROUGH VIOLENTLY EVOKED ACCIDENTS

    In various assessments of terrorist threats, this mechanism is more-or-less aside of analysing CBRN terrorism in spite of its high probable and even actual occurence and under certain circumstances also of very high effectiveness, sometimes less targetable, in other cases with large extent (which also belongs to the terrorist aims).

    The principle lies in violently evoked secondary effects of accident acts, analogically as in cases of intentional and unintentional strikes with conventional weapons on infrastructures of modern civilised societies (7,8,9) such as chemical, petrochemical, nuclear, energetic, cooling and other facilities including social and hygienic installations. These terrorist strikes are aimed to release toxic, inflammable and liquefied chemicals, radionuclides, highly infectious materials ( frequently accompanied with explosions, implosions, blast waves, fires with the effects of toxic products of burning, sometimes also with a fireball). These acts are similar to peacetime incidents and accidents caused by material, personal or system failures or to phenomena caused by natural forces (lightning, earthquake, earth shift, tsunami ) but differ very significantly in the extent and velocity of occurence of destructive factors due to pushing mechanism. So, e.g. a rupture in welding joint of the stationary or mobile tank filled with chlorine of other liquefied or highly volatile chemical or petrochemical or a leakage in large cooling equipment (food industry, ice-hockey arenas) filled with liquefied ammonia will be considerably different from hiting with e.g. anti-armour missile or demolition explosive charge. In the first case, typical for peacetime incidents, a longtime-acting point source with slow generating toxic plume is being formed. This enables rather effective protective and rescue measures. The latter disastrous event, occuring in armed conflicts and in potential terrorist attacks, is represented by sudden dramatic creation of a momentum volume source with very quick evolution and proliferation of a plume possessing extremely toxic to lethal effects (depending on toxic chemical) within the close neighbourhood.

    It is obvious that this category of terrorist attacks is applicable in the first line for chemical terrorism as mentioned above.

    One can however imagine also biological attack evoked through strike e.g. on storage of infectious waste or simply on the communal waste water purification facilities aimed to contaminate water supply etc.

    Very dangerous seem in this respect strikes against nuclear installations (hydrochemical uranium mining, enrichment and reprocessing facilities, nuclear reactors, storage sites for spent nuclear fuel and institutional radioactive waste, waste water and waste sludge reservoirs etc.), representing an extremely deleterious form of radiological terrorism with extensive and long-lasting contamination. This would be especially in case of a destroyed nuclear reactor much worse than the contamination following a nuclear attack (due to presence of nuclei with long half-time of radioactive decay in the reactor´s inventory).

    To the category of evoked accident belongs as a matter of fact even the shocking scenario from the September 11, 2001. Intended accident of three Boeings 757 with suicidal steering towards the twin WTC towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington had the character of terminal phase of guided missile trajectory with extremely destructive power due to combination of kinetic energy of heavy objects flying a speed of about 500 km/hr and mainly of thermic energy of several tons of burning jet fuel from nearly full tanks of aircrafts on the route to the eastern shore after relatively short flight from the Lugan airport in Boston.

    SUMMARY

    Main three categories of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism (often depicted as ultra- or superterrorism) according to form and material source are suggested. Differences between terrorism using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and CBRN terrorism are explained, the WMD terrorism being only one of the three categories of CBRN terrorism. CBRN terrorism involves in the first line misuse of the WMD, in the second line use of non weaponised toxic, contagious and radioactive materials, or primitive nuclear explosive devices. The third category implies violent strikes against infrastructures of present civilised and industrialised societies causing accidents with release of toxic agents, highly infectious materials and radionuclides resembling the pushing mechanism of disastrous wartime strikes with conventional weapons rather than peacetime accidents caused by personal, material or system failures. Examples of already executed cases of CBRN terrorism support this approach and categorisation of these highest forms of terrorism.

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