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WMD Potential Threatens World Safety, Lugar Says
The potential for terrorists to obtain weapons of mass destruction endangers not only world security, but also efforts to boost countries’ stability and economies, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said last week (see GSN, Jan. 11). Unconventional weapons enable “a small nation, or even a subnational group to kill as many innocent people in a day as national armies killed in months of fighting during World War II,” Lugar said during a Jan. 26 speech to Defense Threat Reduction Agency personnel. The death and fear caused by a WMD strike would undermine work to heighten people’s standard of living around the world, Lugar said. “Even if we succeed spectacularly at building democracy around the world, bringing stability to failed states, and spreading economic opportunity broadly, we will not be secure from the actions of small disaffected groups that acquire weapons of mass destruction,” he said. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program has led to a significant reduction in Russian nuclear weapons — including destruction of 611 ballistic missiles and 563 submarine-launched ballistic missiles — and is supporting construction of a chemical weapons disposal facility at Shchuchye, Lugar said. The program has aided Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in eliminating their nuclear stockpiles. The program has also expanded to address problems outside of former Soviet states, for example by providing $50 million for Albania to destroy its chemical weapons, Lugar said (see GSN, July 22, 2005). “We must create new nonproliferation partners and aggressively pursue any nonproliferation opportunities that appear,” he said. “This is an instrument begging to be used anywhere that we can achieve diplomatic breakthroughs” (U.S. State Department release, Jan. 30).
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