Growing momentum on preventing nuclear terrorism
Preparations are under way for an international summit on nuclear security to be held in April 2010. The administration of United States President Barack Obama is spearheading new efforts to bolster the security of the world’s nuclear facilities and to ward off the danger of terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons.
Nuclear security can be defined as the protective measures taken to prevent a malicious actor from damaging a nuclear facility or stealing nuclear material or weapons. Fears of terrorists using nuclear weapons or attacking nuclear power plants date back to the beginning of the atomic age, although concerns about ‘loose nukes’ sharply increased following the collapse of the Soviet Union, because of the lax security of many of its nuclear facilities. The 11 September 2001 attacks demonstrated the willingness of al-Qaeda to inflict mass civilian casualties, leaving few in doubt that it would use nuclear weapons if it succeeded in obtaining them, a goal that Osama bin Laden has described a ‘religious duty’.
New steps
The administration of George W. Bush argued that the most severe danger to the US lay at ‘the crossroads of radicalism and technology’, and led the establishment of several international initiatives and programmes to improve nuclear security (see box overleaf), these followed cooperative work carried out during the 1990s, mainly in the former Soviet Union. But some observers felt that these efforts lacked urgency and did not match Bush’s rhetorical emphasis on weapons of mass destruction. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama agreed that nuclear terrorism was ‘the gravest danger we face’, but complained that ‘instead of taking aggressive steps to secure the world’s most dangerous technology, [the US has] spent almost a trillion dollars to occupy a country in the heart of the Middle East that no longer had any weapons of mass destruction’. In October 2008 the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, established by the US Congress, warned that unless the world acted decisively it was ‘more likely than not’ that a WMD would be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.
On taking office, Obama appointed Gary Samore (a former IISS director of studies) to the post of White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, proliferation, and terrorism, with an expanded role and a larger counter-proliferation directorate, in keeping with the recommendations of the WMD Commission. In April 2009, in a speech on nuclear issues in Prague most remarked upon for his statements on nuclear disarmament, Obama again asserted that terrorist acquisition of a nuclear weapon was ‘the most immediate and extreme threat to global security’. He argued that, with unsecured nuclear material still vulnerable to theft, ‘to protect our people, we must act with a sense of purpose without delay’. Obama announced an ambitious international effort to secure ‘all vulnerable nuclear material around the world’ within four years. He stressed the importance of breaking up black markets, detecting and intercepting materials in transit, and using financial tools to disrupt ‘this dangerous trade’.
At the June 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, Obama announced that he would host a Global Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. This is to be held on 12–13 April 2010, about a month before the five-yearly Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in New York.
Many of the goals outlined in Obama’s Prague speech were endorsed in September 2009 by UN Security Council Resolution 1887. Addressing a broad range of nuclear issues, the resolution called on states to share best practices in order to raise nuclear-security standards and to secure all vulnerable nuclear material within four years; to minimise and manage responsibly the use of highly enriched uranium for civilian purposes; to improve national capabilities to detect, deter and disrupt illicit trafficking in nuclear materials throughout their territories; and to ‘enhance international partnerships and capacity building in this regard’. Although the resolution was not legally binding, it reaffirmed a broad consensus on the threat of nuclear terrorism and the need to take action.
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