Q&A: The Nuclear Terror Threat
From the Council on Foreign Relations, October 27, 2004
cfr.org
Reprint: The New York Times October 27, 2004
nytimes.com
Charles D. Ferguson II cfr.org , the Council on Foreign Relations' top expert on the problems of nuclear proliferation, says the United States faces three kinds of nuclear threat. There is the possibility that Russia and the United States might mistakenly launch nuclear-tipped missiles at each other. There is the fear that states like North Korea and Iran might build up nuclear arsenals. But Ferguson, a fellow in science and technology and a former Navy submariner who also worked on nonproliferation issues at the State Department, says his chief concern involves terrorists. "The [threat] that I've been very concerned about in the last three years, since September 11, 2001, has been a nuclear terror attack on the United States or directed at one of our allies," he says.
Ferguson, who says he has not advised either presidential campaign, calls the Bush administration's proliferation record "mixed." He credits Senator Kerry, who he said showed little interest in proliferation issues during the 1990s, for developing a thorough proposal as part of his White House candidacy.
He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on October 26, 2004.
Nuclear proliferation has been in the news these days, with tensions caused by nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran. Can you set the table concerning the status of these issues?
As I see it, there are three nuclear threats that put the United States in peril. The first threat--which you didn't mention--is a holdover from the Cold War. I think a lot of us have forgotten that even though Russia is no longer an enemy, [it and the United States] still have thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at each other, thousands are on what is called "hair-trigger" alert. That means they can be launched at a moment's notice and, within 30 minutes, we could have thousands of nuclear warheads raining down on both the United States and Russia. I'm not saying this is likely to happen, but we could stumble by accident into this tragedy.
I think most people don't realize that, even though the Cold War is long over, both strategic systems are still aimed at each other.
They are. Go back to President Clinton's pronouncements, and there are well over 100 saying that he signed a "de-targeting" agreement with his counterpart, then-President [Boris] Yeltsin. But the fact remains--and many experts agree on this--that within a minute or so, the non-targets can revert back to the old targeting package. We saw something like this almost take place in January 1995. A Norwegian scientific rocket was launched and it arched toward Russia. The aging Russian radar systems picked it up. President Yeltsin was called. They brought out his nuclear briefcase, they reviewed the targeting packages, and reportedly he was within several minutes of launching a retaliatory strike.
We came very close to stumbling, by accident, into nuclear war. It truly is an existential threat that Americans and Russians face, and some political leaders are still talking about this. Former Senator Sam Nunn [D-Ga.] and Senator Richard Lugar [R-Ind.] are very much concerned about the issue of taking these nuclear warheads off hair-trigger alerts and trying to put in place nuclear-reduction strategies. That's the No. 1 existential threat we face.
The other two nuclear threats we face are lesser but, I would argue, more likely to lead to an actual nuclear detonation on American soil. The one that I've been very concerned about in the last three years, since September 11, 2001, has been a nuclear terror attack on the United States or directed at one of our allies. There are two types of pathways that the terrorists could take to acquire the means to detonate an actual nuclear weapon. One, they could seize a nuclear weapon from a military arsenal and figure out how to overcome the security features on the weapon and detonate it. There are a lot of steps involved, so it's not likely that that would occur, but it would clearly be a catastrophic event.
What do we know about the security features?
Most nuclear weapons, as far we've been able to tell from open sources, are protected by various security features. To get technical, there's something called a "Permissive Action Link" or "PAL" for short. Those are long codes that you have to enter, 10- or 12-digit codes, in order to actually activate the weapon. There are other security features like that on nuclear weapons. There are fears that some of the older Russian tactical nuclear weapons don't have a lot of these security features and, therefore, may be susceptible to terrorist use.
The other nuclear terror threat, which is possible but not very likely, is that terrorists could actually steal or buy or acquire nuclear material--plutonium or highly-enriched uranium--and build their own crude nuclear device and detonate that. It probably would not have the kind of explosive yield you'd get from a military nuclear weapon, but it would certainly be a very powerful bomb. In an area like Washington or New York, it would probably kill tens of thousands--if not hundreds of thousands--of people in a very short period of time and lead to massive destruction, have global economic effects, and leave radiation from nuclear materials.
Is this the so-called "dirty bomb?"
That's something else. There are four types of nuclear terrorism that we need to be concerned about. The first two I just described are the most catastrophic threats, that terrorists could get or build their own nuclear weapon. A third involves terrorists attacking a nuclear facility like the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York and trying to release radiation. The point there would be to try to cause a lot of radioactive contamination or try to kill some people with the radiation released. Then there's the "dirty bomb" threat. That would involve terrorists stealing, buying, or acquiring nuclear materials, and coupling that with some kind of dispersal mechanism like conventional explosives that would spread the material. Urban environments provide the most likely targets to try to create a lot of contamination. It's important to remember that a dirty bomb would probably not kill many people immediately from the radiation itself. We'd probably see a number of people killed by the conventional bomb blast, but the two effects we need to be concerned about in the dirty bomb are radioactive contamination, which could lead to economic costs, and panic. People would not want to reuse [affected] land areas and would fear that there would be other dirty bomb attacks.
You haven't mentioned North Korea or Iran.
That's another nuclear threat area. In terms of ranking these things, I start with the most catastrophic, existential threat. Then I focus on the most likely nuclear threat. I think most likely, terrorists would use a bomb because, unlike nations, it's very difficult to deter the kind of terrorist groups that would want to build nuclear bombs and actually detonate them.
The third area would be states like Iran and North Korea. North Korea is not shy in saying they have a nuclear weapons program. Iran, on the other hand, is saying they don't want nuclear weapons, although the United States government and some allied governments suspect that Iran has a nuclear-weapons program. Because these are states and deterrence works pretty well on a state-to-state level, it's less likely that Iran or North Korea would use a nuclear weapon against the United States. We can imagine scenarios where that could take place, but it's far less likely that we'd see that kind of use, especially compared to a terrorist trying to use a nuclear weapon.
Even though governments spend a lot of time on North Korea and Iran, talking and negotiating and devising scenarios, you're persuaded that the bigger threat comes from the unknown?
That's right: the "unknown," meaning some shady character or shady terrorist group could acquire nuclear materials or an actual nuclear weapon, smuggle it somewhere, and use it. That's probably much harder to detect than what's happening at the state level.
Do you think the Iranians have a plan to produce nuclear weapons?
I don't know. I think what they're probably likely to do is to keep hedging, to develop the latent capability to produce nuclear weapons materials. They can sneak up to that level by using the Non-Proliferation Treaty disarmament2.un.org . They keep pointing to Article 4 in the treaty, which says they have a right to civilian nuclear technology.
They can enrich uranium up to a certain point?
That's right. But the same enrichment plant can go beyond that point and produce weapons-grade material.
What does it take, in laymen's terms, to take low-grade enriched uranium to high-grade?
It just requires more passes through the enrichment plant. You can use the same technology, the same equipment. Some very advanced centrifuge technology would require only a few more passes through the plant; lower-level technology might take several more passes to get to the higher enrichment levels. That technicality aside, it just takes more effort.
A lot of people don't realize that most of the energy to get to bomb-level uranium is already expended to get from natural uranium to low-enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. A nuclear power plant only needs 3 to 4 percent enriched uranium and a nuclear bomb needs about 90 percent enriched uranium, but what it takes to go from the natural uranium level, 0.7 percent, to 3 percent, takes more energy than going from 3 percent to 90 percent. The way the enrichment works out, it's a very complicated function and complicated equation, but you've expended most of the energy you need to get to weapons-grade level once you've crossed the barrier into the fuel level.
What do you think of the Bush record on proliferation?
It has been mixed. For starters, the administration inherited a lot of problems and, unfortunately, a lot of these problems hatched and became apparent on their watch. The nuclear terrorist threat has always been with us, but it became almost front-and-center after September 11. We've known about the North Korean nuclear program, but the Clinton administration froze what we thought was their program in 1994, and even though there were some hints that North Korea might have been going into the uranium-enrichment business, it really didn't come home until the Bush administration. And we've known Iran had a nuclear program for some decades, but it wasn't until August of 2002 that it really came home to us that it had an extensive nuclear program.
The Bush administration wanted the focus to be on Iraq in 2002 but, almost on the heels of each other, we saw all three states demanding attention. As the president was going to the United Nations in September of 2002 [to make the case against Iraq], we had, just a month before, the revelation [about Iran's program] and, inside the government, the revelations that North Korea was building a uranium-enrichment program. I think the administration wasn't solely focused on Iraq but, if you look at which of those nations was farthest along with a nuclear-weapons program, Iraq was last. But we ended up spending the most resources on that instead of Iran and North Korea.
What about Senator Kerry's plan?
It's interesting, because back in the 1980s when he first became a senator, he was very interested in Cold War problems of arms control and he worked on some of those issues. But if you look at his record in the 1990s on nuclear proliferation, you don't see an extensive legislative record. I do give him credit now for developing a plan johnkerry.com that focuses on the nuclear terrorism problem; I've studied it in detail. I should say up front that I haven't offered any advice to either campaign, and I want to remain independent of both to be able to praise or criticize either one.
Instead of the Bush approach, which might take 13 years to secure nuclear materials in Russia, Kerry's very detailed plan, released in June, would try to secure all this Russian material in four years. Kerry said that, instead of the Bush plan to research new nuclear weapons capabilities, we don't need that at all. He said he would shut down those programs. He said the Bush plan with North Korea isn't really going anywhere--we need to be able to deal with North Korea directly. That's interesting because Kerry is normally labeled a multilateralist, and here he's saying we need to be more direct with North Korea. I think he still wants the six-party talks [on North Korea's nuclear program] to continue with the allies, but he thinks the way to wrap up this issue quickly is to deal with North Korea directly, because the U.S. is the kingmaker in North Korea's eyes.
What about Iran?
What's interesting there is that Kerry seems to have seized upon a major idea in President Bush's speech in February of this year at the National Defense University. In that speech cfr.org , Bush made the suggestion that we should be able to offer nuclear fuel to countries that want civilian nuclear programs. In exchange, those countries must agree not to develop the capability to make their own enriched uranium or processed plutonium that could be diverted into weapons programs. That seemed to be President Bush's bargain. What's interesting is that we haven't seen outward signs of the Bush administration putting together a serious package offering that kind of deal to Iran.
Then recently, the Kerry/Edwards campaign said we needed to offer that kind of deal to Iran. They kept talking about that on the campaign trail, and soon after that, we saw in The New York Times that [under secretary of state for arms control and international security] John Bolton, President Bush's top official on nuclear proliferation, had reluctantly agreed to meet with his European counterparts and discuss the issue of providing some kind of fuel package to Iran, if Iran agrees not to enrich uranium. At this stage, the Iranians are considering a proposal, but they say that they're not interested in permanently shutting down their enrichment program, although they might consider some kind of freeze.
But your greatest fear is a terror strike?
It is, but, for a couple of reasons, we can't ignore the states that might develop nuclear weapons. One, it increases the risk that terrorists may find other outlets to seize nuclear bombs and nuclear materials. It's not likely that a state will knowingly transfer a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group, because the state would have to fear that the United States could retaliate against that kind of act. The more nuclear weapons there are in the world, the greater the risk that terrorists might be able to acquire them by that route. That's one reason we need to pay attention to the state concern. The other reason is that other states in those regions, whether it's northeast Asia or the Middle East, may feel compelled to develop nuclear weapons programs in response to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons or North Korea's nuclear weapons program continuing to grow.
Is the Non-Proliferation Treaty in jeopardy?
I like to think that the glass is still at least half-full. We're still in a lot better shape than we were when President Kennedy said that, by the 1970s, we may see somewhere around 15 to 25 nuclear weapons states. We're not anywhere close to that. We have the five permanent nuclear weapons states still in existence [China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States], three states outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty with nuclear weapons--India, Pakistan, and Israel--and then North Korea believed to at least have a few nuclear weapons or the ability to make weapons quickly. That's the ninth state. Those are all the ones that we know of. We're still shy of President Kennedy's warning, and so I'd say that we've had a lot of success, not just with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but in developing export controls through the Nuclear Suppliers Group nuclearsuppliersgroup.org . Those types of mechanisms try to limit the transfer of duel-use nuclear technology that could be used in nuclear weapons programs. I don't think we need to scrap the Non-Proliferation Treaty. I think it needs to be buttressed, and we need to be pushing to have states sign on to the additional protocol, which would call for more rigorous inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
A lot has been written about Russia having all these nuclear weapons lying around. Are old Russian stockpiles the most likely source for terrorists?
It's kind of the Willie Sutton principle, the famous bank robber who, when asked why he robbed banks, said, "That's where the money is." If someone asked terrorist groups who want to acquire weapons, "Why would you be interested in Russia?" they'd say, "That's where most of the nuclear weapons are." We have thousands of Russian nuclear weapons still in existence, and it's not clear how many of them are non-strategic, or tactical. We have a pretty good count of the strategic nuclear weapons because of the START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty state.gov ] process, whereby Russia and the United States had to declare how many strategic weapons they had.
How many strategic weapons are there?
At this stage, we're down to about 6,000 deployed weapons on each side. Last summer, the Bush administration announced it would probably reduce the U.S. strategically deployed warheads by half. This follows the Treaty of Moscow whitehouse.gov in 2002. Under that treaty, the administration could maintain its strategic deployment at a fairly high level, around the 6,000 level, for the next eight years. There wasn't an obligation to reduce that stockpile immediately, but the U.S. made this announcement in June, which didn't get much press coverage. I think this is a major development. The United States is planning to keep a number of the weapons it's taking off active deployment in reserve deployment as spares and as a hedge against the unknown.
Are these mostly land-based ballistic missiles?
The United States didn't say. I think a number of the sea-based systems will probably be removed, because there are plans to reduce the number of warheads on Trident submarines. In sea-based, I think around 1,000 or more warheads are going to be removed. In the land-based systems, there's the MX or the Peacekeeper missile, which has 10 warheads per missile. They are in the process of being removed. Right there, you would have 500 warheads taken off of active deployment.
Are the Russians reciprocating, or was this a unilateral action by the United States?
What's interesting is that the Treaty of Moscow gives either side a lot of flexibility. We're not as coupled to each other as we were under START I state.gov or START II state.gov . The Russians can reciprocate if they want. All the treaty says is that by its due date, which is coming up around 2012, both sides have agreed to reduce their strategically deployed warheads to around the 2,000-warhead level. Russia can take steps to move in lockstep with us if they want, but they're under no obligation to do so. |
