Politics
The Urgent Need to Secure Loose Nukes
Michael Krull and Arnie Arnesen
RED
The Urgent Need to Secure Loose Nuclear Materials
By Michael Krull
Back when I was in elementary school, we used to have air raid drills. It seems kind of absurd now. Crouching in a hallway with a book covering my head and humming the “duck and cover” song doesn’t seem to have been an effective strategy for mitigating the effects of a nuclear blast. But, we all knew who the enemy was and that we each had a role to play.
Flash-forward a couple of decades and the enemy that was the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight of corruption, destructive policies and inhuman philosophy. Cold War nuclear balance of terror and its promise of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was suddenly a thing of the past.
Following the end of the Cold War, Senators Sam Nunn of Georgia (D) and Richard Lugar of Indiana (R) recognized the need to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction in the states of the former Soviet Union and the result was the 1992 law that established the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTR). This program provides funding and expertise for Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to decommission nuclear, biological and chemical weapon stockpiles.
The program has been successful in eliminating more than 6,300 warheads and their launchers, missile silos, submarines and other delivery modes. More than 260 tons of fissile material has been secured and nuclear storage sites have received security upgrades.
This program is to be lauded. It is far-sighted, bipartisan (in addition to the two main sponsors of the legislation, it was signed by President George H. W. Bush and implementation began during the Clinton Administration), and addresses a real national security concern. On the other side of the ledger, it has been implemented too slowly, not funded adequately and hasn’t been expanded to include other countries. On top of that, the fissile materials are not necessarily destroyed, they are simply stored – oftentimes in facilities much less secure than when they were in the warhead on a military base.
But it’s not just fissile materials with which we need to be concerned. Of the 47 countries that participated in the Nuclear Security Summit last week in Washington, DC, 40 possess some sort of radiological materials that would be of interest to terrorists or organized criminal gangs – these would be actual nuclear devices, weapons-grade fissile material or material from which a dirty bomb can be made, such as some kinds of medical waste, material from nuclear research reactors or industrial equipment, etc. In each of these 40 countries – even the United States – some of this material cannot be accounted for. It is not enough to secure some material or even a large percentage: All of it needs to be secured.
The rest of the world needs to be concerned with this too. The United States is not the only target. Russian authorities have been concerned enough with terror attacks by Chechen rebels that they have increased security around their nuclear research sites as well as military bases. Believe me, they need to increase their security – I have personally witnessed the lack of security at military bases in travels around Russia.
Alexander Pikayev, of Moscow’s Institute of World Economy, has studied and written widely about the problems of securing Russia’s nuclear arsenal. On securing these materials, he has said, “I would say it’s simply a matter of luck, because, especially in the 1990s, the situation was so poor that one should be surprised that the worst-case scenario wasn’t realized.”
Mr. Pikayev is certain that some of the fissile material from dismantled Soviet warheads have fallen into the hands of both terrorists and organized criminal gangs. “There were cases that criminal gangs used radioactive materials for killing some businessmen,” Pikayev has said. “For instance, they implanted radioactive uranium into [the] armchair of one businessman. He died because of that; because of the radiation.”
In testimony before the Congress, CIA Director Porter Goss stated that enough nuclear material has disappeared in Russia since the end of the Cold War to build a nuclear bomb.
Most people think about terror groups driven by some sort of twisted ideology wanting this material, but I would argue that the greater danger is organized criminal gangs who are used to moving money, drugs, guns, humans – you name it – around the world quickly and efficiently. Their motive is profit, and the return on nuclear materials is high.
This isn’t just a story line from “24.” In a little-reported case just last week, the Georgian intelligence service apprehended criminals looking to sell enriched uranium; not highly enriched enough for a nuclear weapon, but high enough that it would make for an effective dirty bomb, which are inexpensive and relatively easy to make. All you need is a reasonably big explosion to disperse the material over a wide area. A truck bomb or similar device is all that you’d need.
Consider that for a moment: If a small, tactical nuclear device or even a dirty bomb is detonated by terrorists or criminal a gang in any city, whether New York, Moscow, London, Paris, Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi, wherever, our world will irrevocably change instantly and more profoundly than it did on September 11, 2001. Parts of that city won’t be safe or inhabitable for years – even decades. Commerce will come to a halt. International, interstate and perhaps even inter-city transportation will be disrupted and delayed. Shortages of food, fuel, consumer products and every imaginable modern convenience will become the norm. Total chaos.
What can we do? The Nuclear Security Summit held last week is a start, but since the communiqué issued was vague and the steps to be taken by governments voluntary, the summit was more for show than for any practical good. However, this group should meet every year and take additional steps toward securing these materials.
Securing loose nuclear materials should be on the agenda of every G8 and G20 meeting and these countries should make it abundantly clear to every nation, criminal gang and terrorist group that dealing in these materials will result in swift, decisive – and lethal – action. And we had better mean it.
With our allies in the United Nations, we should establish a working group to help formalize processes, and we should expand the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to all countries – and Congress must fully fund it even if other nations won’t.
Finally, we ought to strengthen the non-proliferation regime and put some real teeth behind it. I fear that the international community is getting lax on this issue and we are about to lose control. We cannot allow another country to obtain nuclear weapons or the ability to make them. Too much is at stake.
It is bad enough that North Korea has them. This fact leads other countries to question the will of the international community. Knowing that weird little Kim Jong Il can defy the international community and drag out the Six Party Talks (it’s been almost 15 years!) must spur on the mullahs in Iran – how can they look at themselves in the mirror knowing that he has them and they don’t?
If Iran gets them – remember, our State Department has for more than a quarter of a century listed Iran as the biggest supporter of terrorists in the world – then the Middle East will be awash in nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan will develop them almost overnight in order to deter Iran. After that, it won’t stop and a nuclear confrontation in that part of the world is almost assured.
The United States must lead on this issue. It is too important for us not to. We must stop other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons and we must secure all loose nuclear materials. Immediately. Either that or we will all need to again start practicing our “duck and cover” air raid drills.
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Michael Krull is a graduate of Luther College and Iowa State University. He has worked on disaster relief for the State Department, a major Washington, DC public relations and political consulting firm, and is currently working for American Solutions for Winning the Future. He is a member of the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs.
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BLUE
The Urgent Need To Secure Loose Nukes
By Arnie Arnesen
Bombs for the poor? Bombs for the poor?
Here Osama, here is one kilo of plutonium...
One kilo Abdul? Last week you gave me two kilos?
I had a bad week Osama.
Ahhh Abdul, "you" had a bad week, but why should I suffer?
Who said this? And When?
…you know, thousands of years ago we had psychotics and we had religious fanatics and we had megalomaniacs. But about the most they could do was throw a stone at somebody if they wished evil on them.
Today, since 1945, the ability to inflict evil, or harm, on other people in huge numbers has grown exponentially. And right now there's the knowledge around to use nuclear material. And we've got to hope that the wrong people don't get their hands on it.
…. but there are lots of loose nukes around the world. We've got multiple governments that have the capability. We have lots of chemical and biological agents that are ill guarded around the world and it should be at the top of the list for our government.
Give up?
Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, in an interview conducted on June 19, 2005 on CNN with Lou Dobbs.
The Loose Nukes Threat (it takes only about 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium or eight kilograms of plutonium to make a crude nuclear bomb) is not a headline grabber designed by the Obama administration to showcase Obama’s international appeal but a real and growing danger that has been dancing along the periphery of public awareness for decades even as it has been keeping a growing number of military and political world leaders up at night for at least as long. I don’t say this because of the spike of media attention the issue has gotten in the last couple of days because of the Nuclear Security Summit (the two day meeting hosted by the Obama administration that brought 46 nations together to focus on locking up the tons of loose nuclear material scattered across the globe). I, say it, because I sadly joined the league of nightmare possessed leaders over a dozen years ago.
Back in the late winter and spring of 1997 I had the good fortune of being chosen as one of six Fellows at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School. The Kennedy School is academically notorious for bringing in all kinds of folks for advanced academic training. In addition to the half dozen politicians-in-recovery (IOP Fellows) they also have a program known as The National Security and Human Rights (NSHR) Program. As Harvard describes it: NSHR examines national security issues through the prism of human rights, weaving humanitarian concerns into the fabric of traditional security studies. Towards the end of my Fellowship the directors of the IOP and the NSHR decided to host a luncheon for some of the political fellows and some of the military brass studying at the National Security Program. During the meal the conversation turned to the “under the radar threats” that few Americans, including the pols sitting at the table knew about but the security experts obsessed about. It was then that I learned about the very real threat posed by the growing stock of unprotected and under protected fissile materials that is held in hundreds of locations around the world. As the politicians at the table turned ashen by the horrific scenarios that were now possible because of the toxic cocktail of terrorist groups hell bent on acquiring a nuclear or dirty bomb and the tons of fissile material easily stolen or purchased from such places as obscure as Jamaica, Vietnam or Ghana to the obvious nuclear actors, such as Russia or Pakistan. I remember blurting out: "So who the hell in the administration knows about this shit and who is keeping the focus on locking it down or destroying the nuclear material?" Much to the shock of the IOP Fellows at the table, the military leaders looked at each other and then one of them said: believe it or not Vice Pres. Al Gore gets it..he gets it big time and is trying to get the administration to pay more attention to Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar, who have made it the focus of their political careers since the early 90s (check out NUNN-LUGAR COOPERATIVE THREAT REDUCTION PROGRAM).
It is now 2010 and finally a president (sadly not Al Gore) has assembled an amazing array of world leaders to do what one country cannot do alone. But as Newsweek pointed out this week: Obama’s main challenge, will be to dispel what Matthew Bunn, principal investigator for Harvard's Managing the Atom project, calls "years of massive complacency" about the threat. He will then have to persuade the assembled leaders to spend money to avert a potential catastrophe.
And Obama’s other challenge will be to get out in front of conservative nay sayers, such as columnist and FOX news contributor, Charles Krauthammer, who still lives in a world where “state” sponsored nuclear threats (Pakistan and Iran) are the only real threats. As Think Progress so cleverly pointed out: ... the most significant nuclear terror threat does not emanate from a state giving nuclear weapons to a terror group. Nuclear terrorism is frighteningly more straightforward than conservatives seem to get. Al Qaeda doesn’t need Iran to get a Nuke, they just need to find a “Nick the Greek.”
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D. Arnie Arnesen is a radio and TV commentator based in New Hampshire. She has lectured at Harvard, Dartmouth, UNH, SNHU, Vermont Law School, St. Olaf, and other colleges. She is a former NH Legislator and a former democratic nominee for Governor and Congress. Arnie has been a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics at Harvard and has trainied women who want to run for office throughout the United States and future NH Leaders. You can hear Arnie every Wednesday on Talk of Iowa on IowaPublicRadio.org and every Friday on the Dan Mitchell Show on WKBKam.com.
