Bush and Putin Must Confront Nuclear Terror

The centerpiece of this week’s Moscow summit will be the signing of a treaty cutting the number of deployed strategic warheads by two-thirds over the next decade. But as both President Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin have acknowledged, the agreement looks more to the Cold War than to future dangers. Especially in the aftermath of Sept. 11, their priority at this summit should be to act now to prevent nuclear terrorism.

If the United States or Russia finds itself the victim of a nuclear attack next week or next year, the perpetrator will almost certainly be a terrorist group. Rogue states such as Iraq have serious nuclear ambitions, but Saddam Hussein knows that attacking the U.S. would mean national suicide. The most urgent, direct nuclear threat is that Al Qaeda or the Chechens might steal nuclear weapons or materials from which a weapon can be constructed.

The good news about nuclear terrorism can be summarized in one line: No highly enriched uranium or plutonium means no nuclear explosion.

Although the world’s stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials are vast, they are finite. The prerequisites for manufacturing fissile material are many and require the resources of a modern state. Technologies for locking up super-dangerous material are also well-tested.

But we must still have a strategy to prevent nuclear terrorism. A decade of Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat-reduction programs has accomplished much in safeguarding nuclear materials. Unfortunately, bureaucratic inertia, bolstered by mistrust and misperception on both sides, leaves these joint programs bogged down on a timetable that extends into the next decade.

At the summit, the two presidents can seize the moment to make nuclear security a presidential priority by forming a new alliance against nuclear terrorism. Each should pledge that he will direct his government to do everything possible to minimize the risk of theft of nuclear weapons and hold his subordinates accountable. Understanding that each country bears responsibility for the security of its nuclear materials, each should offer any assistance required to make this happen and provide the other sufficient transparency to monitor performance.

To put this on the fastest possible timetable, both governments should name specific individuals, reporting directly to their president, to co-chair a group to develop an American-Russian strategy and report back within one month. Although this is a big demand, consider what the presidents would demand if a weapon were stolen.

The nuclear superpowers should establish a new “international security standard” based on Putin’s proposal at the U.N. Millennium Summit in 2000 for new technologies that can produce electricity with low-enriched nuclear fuel from which it is impossible to make a nuclear weapon.

The next phase of this effort would make the alliance global, ensuring that weapons and materials in all nuclear-weapons states meet this new security standard.

Right now, the critical nation is Pakistan, from which Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda have sought nuclear weapons know-how and material.

A dozen countries--such as Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro) and Ghana--hold small caches of potential nuclear weapons in settings that are dangerously vulnerable to theft. They should be approached immediately with a demand that the material be removed or secured, conveyed as an offer they cannot refuse.

Finally, the U.S. and Russia should construct an aggressive, multilayered program to prevent further proliferation of nuclear arms, beginning with Iran and Iraq. Adopting lessons learned in U.S.-Russia cooperation in the campaign against Bin Laden and the Taliban, the new effort should be heavy on intelligence sharing, preemption, disruption and active controls on the sale of materials and know-how to nuclear wannabes.

After Sept. 11, failure to confront the specter of nuclear terrorism invites catastrophe. Preventing nuclear terrorism is a finite challenge that is susceptible to a finite solution if the presidents determine to just do it.