A clear and present danger

Posted March 26, 2012 14:39:49

Nuclear terrorism remains the greatest threat to international security.

Today, the leaders of 53 countries will gather in Seoul for the second Nuclear Security Summit.

When president Obama chaired the last event two years ago, it was the largest gathering of world leaders on American soil since the advent of the United Nations.

But it is not Iran or even Pyongyang - less than 200 kilometres away - that will dominate their talks; rather it will be the threat posed by nuclear terrorism.

However, there exists a widening disconnect between this harsh reality and public perceptions which remain fixated on the threat posed by state-sanctioned uses of nuclear weapons.

And while these 'rogue' countries do remain a concern - particularly their ability to give passage of nuclear material to sympathetic non-state actors - their present capability to create immediate mass casualties is limited on the threat spectrum.

In contrast, the possibility of an attack of nuclear terrorism remains a clear and present danger.

Historically, at the height of The Cold War populations worldwide were informed of - even drilled in responding to - the possibility of a nuclear attack from another state. The strategic standoff between the United States and the United Soviet Socialist Republics was widely believed to represent an inevitable case of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and on at least four occasions militaries mobilised in preparation.

At the time, the threat was real and perceived by the public.

While many other states both inside and outside the archaic Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have since acquired or sought nuclear weapons, the threat of attack from another state has waxed and waned in the collective consciousness of the Western world in recent years; helped along at times by flare-ups in tensions with states such as Iraq and more recently Iran and North Korea.

However, under the surface a much greater threat - that of a non-state actor obtaining nuclear weapons - has gone largely unnoticed by the public despite violent terrorist attacks such as September 11.

Indeed, while the total number of nuclear warheads worldwide has dropped from a high of 65,000 in 1985 to around 22,000 today, the decentralisation of their ownership has only increased the possibility of one warhead falling into unsafe hands - either through negligence (such as unsecure transportation) or deliberative actions.

The world has already come close to experiencing nuclear terrorism on at least five occasions.

In June 2002 an American citizen was arrested for planning a radiological attack on Chicago and in November 2006 the British intelligence service, MI5, issued a warning that Al Qaeda were seeking to attack the United Kingdom with nuclear weapons obtained clandestinely. The following year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation across The Atlantic issued an arrest warrant for a Saudi Arabian born man, Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah, for plotting to detonate several nuclear devices across the United States. The Times newspaper has also reported at least three instances of attacks on Pakistan's nuclear facilities designed to secure nuclear material.

Admittedly, while the security of nuclear stocks in countries such as Russia are safer under the United States initiated Nunn-Lugar program this does not diminish the possibility of a state actually selling or providing nuclear material to a terrorist organisation.

On the eve of the last Nuclear Security Summit, president Obama labelled a nuclear attack from a terrorist organisation the greatest threat facing the United States and the world. He went on to say that, "the risk of a nuclear confrontation between nations has gone down, but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up".

However, polling by ABC News (America) and The Washington Post found that only 12 per cent of Americans agreed with his assessment and while over 45 per cent thought it did represent a threat it was by no means the largest.

Despite this, former foreign minister Gareth Evans among others, have pointedly highlighted that nuclear weapons are in fact more of a present threat than climate change or economic fears which consume public attention and calls for action - indirectly causing what he has called "a decade of sleepwalking" on the part of policymakers to address proliferation.

This is a view shared by The National Security Advisory Group (NSAG) chaired by former United States defence secretary William J Perry (also includes former secretary of state Madeline Albright) that concluded in July 2005 that "the gravest threat facing Americans today is a terrorist detonating a nuclear bomb in one of our cities". Indeed, as Graham T Allison from Harvard University has highlighted Al Qaeda's publicly stated goal is to kill four million Americans would either take 1,344 September 11 style attacks or one nuclear weapon.

However despite this evidence, efforts by the Western world continue to be focussed narrow-mindedly on taming or combating state sponsored nuclear development programs in North Korea and Iran.

While the United States' Nuclear Posture Review in 2010 noted that terrorist groups obtaining a nuclear weapon is "today's most immediate and extreme danger", this is yet to be met with substantive action. As the NSAG has noted, while the United States is fighting a global war on terror it is ignoring a global war on the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The perplexing reality is that Tehran and Pyongyang are surely aware that any regional hegemonic power developed through 'break out capability - that is the ability to have bombs rolling off the production line quickly - would not only be short-lived but also catastrophic in terms of consequences.

Instead for the moment at least, the ability for these regimes or others to provide nuclear material to terrorist organisations (or indeed for them to source themselves through clandestine means) remains a greater threat to the world's security than any perceived state sanctioned use of nuclear weapons.

Ultimately, while rogue states such as North Korea and Iran occupy the minds of policymakers and the attention of the public there is unlikely to be any catalyst - in the absence of a near or actual attack - towards addressing the threat of terrorists obtaining and using nuclear weapons.

The international community has always been slow and reactionary in responding to non-state-based threats and on the issue of nuclear weapons this remains the norm. However, in this instance their use by non-state actors represents a greater threat to international security than any perceived threat posed by states themselves.

At the end of the day, nuclear terrorism remains a clear a present danger.

Thom Woodroofe is an associate fellow of The Asia Society. Follow on Twitter @thomwoodroofe. View his full profile here.

Topics: world-politics, terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, foreign-affairs, government-and-politics, nuclear-issues