Asleep at the Nuclear Switch
Book Review
By Fred Siegel
Table of Contents
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NUCLEAR TERRORISM : The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe
by Graham Allison
Times Books, 272 pp, $24.00
In an election season dominated by fears of future attacks, the Bush administration's flaccid response to the growing threat of nuclear terrorism has, until now, drawn scant attention. The Bush team, for instance, has engaged in tough talk about North Korea's well-advanced nuclear program, but has done pathetically little to halt the program's development. Two years after it became clear that North Korea had resumed its production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, the Bush administration not only hasn't reduced the threat, it hasn't even decided what its approach to handling the issue will be.
This is one of the frightening conclusions found in Graham Allison's new book on the terrorist catastrophe that could befall us, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe. Allison, a renowned Harvard scholar and founding dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, shows that President Bush's failures go well beyond North Korea -- to Iran, Pakistan, and Russia. Bush has asserted repeatedly that his "highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction," Allison notes. Yet, "his words have not been matched by deeds."
Allison, the author of Essence of Decision (1971), the classic study of the Cuban Missile Crisis, has condensed a decade of thinking about the unthinkable into this short, powerful volume. The first half of the new book, written in response to Bush's "inaction," is devoted to the seeming inevitability of nuclear terrorism. "Hundreds of these weapons are currently stored in conditions that leave them vulnerable to theft by determined criminals, who could then sell them to terrorists," Allison writes. He also notes that the late Russian general and politician Alexander Lebed once acknowledged that 84 of some 132 special KGB "suitcase nuclear bombs are unaccounted for," while enough highly enriched uranium to build an additional 20 nuclear devices was "lost" in the shift from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation.
Corrupt, underpaid, and demoralized, the Russian military's ability, or even desire, to protect fissionable materials is questionable. In the words of an American intelligence officer, "We don't know with any confidence what has gone missing, and neither do they." Allison reports that in 1995 Chechen separatists placed a radioactive so-called "dirty bomb" in a Moscow Park. They decided not to detonate it -- but they could change their minds next time. After all, they showed in the Beslan school massacre in September that they are capable of mass murder.
Thanks to funding from the Gulf oil states, Islamist terror organizations have the money to pursue nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union, writes Allison. But, should they fail, they have other options. The author describes in some detail the relationship among North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, and al Qaeda-associated groups.
The father of Pakistan's nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, who was trained in Europe, has had extensive contacts with both the North Koreans and Islamist radicals. Khan, acting with at least the tacit understanding of the Pakistani intelligence services, ran a virtual Wal-Mart for nuclear materials. Those materials, constructed into a bomb, could easily enter the United States. Allison explains that "approximately 21,000 pounds of cocaine and marijuana are smuggled into the country each day in bales, crates, car trunks -- even FedEx boxes." The same methods could be used to smuggle in weapons of terror.
Having led the reader to the brink of resignation, if not despair, Allison pulls backs and shows how such a catastrophe can be averted. "Preventing nuclear terrorism," he explains, "will require a comprehensive strategy: one that denies access to weapons and materials at their source, detects them at borders, defends every route by which a weapon could be delivered, and addresses motives as well as means."
This leads to his "Three No's." The first is "no loose nukes." In a striking section on Bush's policy failures, Allison shows how we have actually gone backward on this issue during the past four years. The farsighted 1991 Nunn-Lugar legislation, passed in the waning years of the Cold War, provided money to secure leftover Soviet nukes. But under the Bush administration, funding for Nunn-Lugar has been frozen. Worse yet, no single official has the clear responsibility to secure loose nukes. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) have implored the current administration to designate such an individual, but to no effect.
The second no, with direct reference to Iran, is "no new nuclear facilities." This admonition comes just as processing uranium yellowcake. Noting both the futility of European diplomatic efforts on Iran and the Bush administration's lack of any policy on Iran's nuclear program other than to decry it, Allison lays out a regimen of carrots and sticks, including the plausible threat of force. "U.S. officials can explain that meeting America's requirements is the he writes.
The third no is aimed at North Korea: "no new nuclear states." Bush administration policy on North Korea has been paralyzed by the ongoing hostilities between the State Department, which wants new negotiations, and the hardliners like Vice President Cheney, who declares, "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it." Rhetoric notwithstanding, the Bush administration has spent three years shuffling its feet on North Korea, even as the rogue state continues to create more fissile material for additional bombs. Frightened, South Korea has recently begun its own nuclear program. Japan is following suit, with further proliferation on the horizon.
Allison argues that Washington should drop the threat of regime change and, along with China, Russia, and Japan, offer a package of food and energy subsidies to North Korea. But at the same time, the author wants to intimidate Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, with video footage "of American precision-guided munitions destroying ... palaces and underground bunkers." In the absence of a credible military threat, he concludes, "Kim is not likely to choose peaceful denuclearization."
The reader finishes the book with a knot in the stomach. For all of Allison's persuasive analytic powers, his program to prevent nuclear terrorism is not nearly as convincing as his account of how easy it could be to attack us -- especially under an administration that has been asleep at the switch.
Fred Siegel is a professor at The Cooper Union and culture editor of BLUEPRINT.