Suitcase Bomb Plutonium

What’s the biggest national security threat the United States faces? China? North Korea? Despite the fall of the Berlin Wall, the answer remains: Russia’s thousands of nuclear missiles. The Bush administration is trying to develop a prohibitively costly missile defense to counter Russia, China, rogue states and terrorists when it should be facing an older, bigger problem with aging Russian missiles. A solution exists. But not only is the administration avoiding this solution, it’s trying to kill it.

In June 1993, then-Vice President Al Gore, working with then-Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, announced a joint commission for U.S.-Russian cooperation that was, among other things, supposed to assist Russia in decommissioning and disabling nuclear weaponry. The U.S. would also pay to move Russian nuclear scientists to peaceful projects. This program failed because of corruption in Russia. But one plan did emerge that still makes sense: taking plutonium out of warheads. The idea was that the United States and Russia would each convert 50 tons of plutonium by turning it into fuel or combining it with nuclear waste to immobilize it.

Now the Bush administration is trying to back out, complaining that at $6.6 billion it is too costly. As opposed to what? The administration is requesting $8.3 billion for missile defense for fiscal 2002, a 57% increase over current spending. The U.S. should be doing all it can to disable plutonium before corruption spreads it around. It’s precisely the idea of a suitcase bomber armed with bootleg plutonium that should concern the administration.

The governing assumption in Washington these days appears to be that all Clinton-Gore foreign policy should be abandoned. But Gore had this one right.