How to Stop Nuclear Terror

Graham Allison

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2004

Summary:  President Bush has called nuclear terror the defining threat the United States now faces. He's right, but he has yet to follow up his words with actions. This is especially frustrating since nuclear terror is preventable. Washington needs a strategy based on the "Three No's": no loose nukes, no nascent nukes, and no new nuclear states.

Graham Allison is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government and Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. From 1993 to 1994 he was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans.

A GRAND ALLIANCE

As the preceding discussion suggests, the United States cannot undertake or sustain its war on nuclear terrorism unilaterally. Fortunately, it need not try. All of today's great powers share an interest in the proposed campaign. Each has sufficient reasons to fear nuclear weapons in terrorists' hands, whether they are al Qaeda, Chechens, or Chinese separatists. All great powers can therefore be mobilized in a new global alliance against nuclear terrorism, aimed at minimizing this risk by taking every action that is physically, technically, and diplomatically possible to prevent nuclear weapons or materials from being acquired by terrorists.

Construction of this alliance should begin with Russia, where the close personal relationship between Presidents Bush and Putin will be a major asset. Russia will be flattered by the prospect of standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States -- especially on the one issue on which it can still claim to be a superpower. Americans and Russians should also recognize that they have a special obligation to address this problem, since they created it -- and since they still own 95 percent of all nuclear weapons and material. If they demonstrate a new seriousness about reducing this threat, the United States and Russia will also be able to credibly demand that China likewise secure its weapons and materials. China could sign up Pakistan. And the rest of the nuclear club would quickly follow.

Objections will surely be raised about the unfairness of a world in which some states are allowed to possess nuclear weapons while others are not. But that distinction is already embedded in the NPT, to which all non-nuclear weapons states except North Korea are signatories. Although the treaty also nominally commits nuclear weapons states to eventually eliminate their own weapons, it never set a timetable, and no one realistically expects that to happen in the foreseeable future.

The United States and its allies already have the power to define and enforce new global constraints on nuclear weapons. To make this order acceptable, however, they should undertake a concerted effort to eliminate nuclear weapons and nuclear threats from international affairs. The United States and Russia should accelerate current programs to reduce their arsenals. Moreover, the Bush administration should drop its current plans to conduct research for the production of new "mini-nukes."

Is the course of action outlined above conceivable? For perspective, consider the leap beyond the conventional box that the American president took in enunciating the "Bush Doctrine." With that strategy, the administration unilaterally revoked the sovereignty of states that provide sanctuary to terrorists. Declaring that "those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves," the president ordered American military forces to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Of course, this new principle has yet to be enshrined in international law. It has, nonetheless, already become a de facto rule of international relations. Any government that knowingly hosts al Qaeda or its equivalent knows that it is inviting attack. True, the move beyond the current war on terrorism to a serious war on nuclear terrorism based on the three no's would be ambitious. But the leap involved would be no greater than the distance already traveled since September 11.