Washington Fails to Set Priorities in Addressing Nuclear Terrorism Threat, Experts Say

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States allocates resources for the prevention of nuclear terrorism without setting priorities for the effort, a panel of top nonproliferation experts said here Friday (see GSN, March 29).

The scholars engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about what such priorities might be, calling for any generally accepted approach.

“There are no really good structures to address this priority-setting process,” whether in the United States or the international arena, Nuclear Threat Initiative Vice President Laura Holgate said. Such structures are “desperately needed,” she said.

Before an audience of proliferation watchers gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the experts stressed that “resources” to be prioritized include not only funds but also diplomatic attention and “political capital.”

They discussed what priorities to set in a series of binary oppositions: safeguarding potential terrorism targets or nuclear materials, focusing on failing governments or rogue states, stronger International Atomic Energy Agency inspections or a greater focus on preventing new nuclear production.

Given the infinite number of potential targets, George Washington University professor Amitai Etzioni said, “Hardening targets is probably not the best way to dedicate any additional resources.” A number of panelists agreed, arguing for efforts to secure the supply of nuclear weapons and materials over those to protect terrorist targets.

Council on Strategic and International Studies senior fellow Edward Luttwak went a step further, calling on governments to focus primarily on ready-made nuclear weapons, which are finite in number and reside in a limited number of locations. Protecting such weapons, Luttwak said, would require better “administrative measures” in Russia, where bribery is rampant and there is no “culture of protecting these materials.”

As the supply side presents a convenient “chokepoint,” Harvard University professor Graham Allison said, countries should start there, pursuing three goals: “no loose nukes”; “no new nascent nukes” — that is, no new production facilities for highly enriched uranium or plutonium; and “no new nuclear weapon states.”

The Bush administration, Allison said, is faring poorly on all three counts.

In Bush’s second term, according to Allison, the administration should pursue a “global lockdown” of all weapons and weapon-usable materials.

Another immediate priority for Allison was the conclusion of a deal with Iran, suspected of seeking to produce nuclear weapons (see GSN, March 31).   Allison said the elements of such a deal may be coming into place: a European Union “bribe”; a Russian agreement to fuel Iran’s Bushehr reactor, and to take spent fuel back from the facility; the possibility of a U.S. promise not to attack Iran, as long as the latter abides by its nuclear commitments; and a credible Israeli threat to try to destroy Iranian production facilities if necessary.

Besides focusing on supply rather than targets, Etzioni called for reversing what he called an existing tendency to prioritize the threat from rogue states over the threat from failing nations.

“If the issue is nuclear terrorism, the failing states are much more problematic than the rogue states,” he said.

The latter, said the professor, at least have functioning governments with which negotiations can be undertaken. Failing states could present a much more immediate problem, Etzioni said, citing instability and inadequate nuclear controls in Pakistan and Russia.

“We could come out of this meeting and find that the Taliban took over the government” of Pakistan,” Etzioni said (see GSN, March 29).

Despite the discussion’s theme of setting priorities, former top U.S. State Department nonproliferation specialist Robert Einhorn questioned the necessity of placing more focus on either failing states or rogues.

“I don’t see why we have to choose between dealing with rogues and failing states,” said Einhorn, a Center for Strategic and International Studies senior adviser. “De-emphasizing the rogues seriously underestimates the risks associated with rogues becoming nuclear powers.”

Beyond the fact that some rogues, such as North Korea (see GSN, April 1), are also failing states, Einhorn said, rogue countries could transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists and could trigger regional domino effects of proliferation. He added that less progress may be possible in failing states.

The experts also briefly hashed out the oft-discussed question of whether to focus on reforming the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, with the associated nuclear energy privileges and inspections for members, or to seek to prevent new nuclear activity altogether (see GSN, March 30).

Einhorn questioned a call by Etzioni for moving from the treaty’s “controlled maintenance” to a policy of “deproliferation.” The goodwill demonstrated by adhering to the pact, Einhorn said, confers greater legitimacy on the United States to promote other antiproliferation steps, such as sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the comprehensive IAEA investigation into Iran and the Proliferation Security Initiative.

Speaking last on the panel, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Vice President George Perkovich sought to shift the emphasis in “nuclear terrorism” from the first to the second term.

Not only supply but also demand must be addressed, Perkovich said. The United States, he said, should seek to kill terrorists when possible and should pursue a foreign policy that does not “politically reproduce” those terrorists that have been eliminated, in part by promoting resolution of regional security matters such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Luttwak opposed such an approach, in part on the grounds that, while demand is infinite, nuclear sources are finite.

“There is no finite demand to reduce. This is totally unpredictable,” he said. 

Speaking from the audience after the panelists’ presentations, Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow Gerald Epstein sought to place the debate in a broader framework. The fact that it was taking place at all, he suggested, demonstrated how much work remained to be done in seeking a consensus on what steps to take first to prevent nuclear terrorism.

“We have not got there, to a persuasive operational scheme,” Epstein said. “This is not the silliness of this or that administration. We don’t have a scheme.”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.