Asymmetrical Information

Maybe the Soviets don't want us traipsing around their country. If we were to secure loose nuclear stuff, what would we do with it. Store it in Yucca Mountain?

Except for Russia, just every former soviet state has either disarmed or is far along in the process of disarming. The process started when Bush the Elder was president.

Source: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/91-144.htm

This is Kerry's strongest argument in foreign policy. Bush has been slow to act.

The argument is always between degrees of bad. The concern is that okay, Kerry will negotiate to secure nuclear material from relatively friendly states, but he won't do squat to secure material from hostile states. Which is the easy problem and which is the hard problem?

Because it's hard to move a bear that doesn't feel like going anywhere. That, and the issues of relative and opportunity costs.

The funding for Cooperative Threat Reduction has been at about 410 Billion dollars. This is the program that helps Russia and former USSR areas secure their existing weapons and material. This money has been supported by both sides of the aisle, and is generally working well -- so far as it goes. Russia, on the other hand, doesn't care much about the process, since they're currently in the grips of a crumbling "democracy" and the apparent resurgence of an authoritarian regime. Granted, they have bad terrorist problems (domestically, worse than our own I would argue, since Chechen separtists are still part of Russia), so I don't really know why they're not more concerned about it. Especially considering that it was Chechen terrorists that have gotten the closest to actually USING a dirty bomb (there are some who argue they already HAVE used it; the evidence I've seen is generally pretty weak) when they planted one in Gorky Park (IIRC), Moscow as a threat. But short of us taking over entirely the clean-up process around Russia, there's only so far we can go.

The other problem is that, once this stuff has gotten out, it's not that easy to figure out where it is. Depending on the kind of material that gets out, shielding it from, say, Geiger counters isn't all that hard for someone willing to try (and who, I would assume, is attempting to protect themselves from the radiation). To beat the streets would be a massive policing effort, which would mean massive costs for either the explicit searches (special forces? FBI?) or a dramatic ramp up in covert searches (CIA?). Either way, the manpower would have to be huge, and it would mean getting in close with a lot of bad people. We're still getting over (in the sense of relearning old methods) the restriction against dealing with obvious criminals when doing covert work. (I think some of this was put in place by Carter as a reaction to the CIA work in Latin America, but that could be folklore. I just know there was a restriction against working closely with acknowledged terrorists, murders, kidnappers, etc. and using them as sources of intelligence.)

Meanwhile, the problem is even worse than "I think we think" it is. That is to say, for use in a radiological weapon, I don't think terrorists are going to worry about the difference between weapons-grade and medical-grade radioactive material, for instance. In that vein, take a look at the rates of "piracy" (I think that's what you'd consider theft on board a ship) in the Malacca Straits. It's one of the narrowest passages in use by major cargo ships. People can literally jump onto a boat from the shore. And it's used by just about everything bound for the subcontinent, east asia, and more coming from the East (well, West, depending on your reference point). A lot of the shipments that have been stolen include big piles of medical-grade radioactive material (things used in MRIs, for instance). Get enough of it, and you can fill a truck with some C4 and get one heck of a spread of radioactive material. The problem, of course, would not be that the material IS a huge health threat, only that it SOUND LIKE a huge threat. People's natural fear will take the largest toll.

In addition, small groups may be attracted to less aggressive kinds of material because of the risks of transportation. That sounds odd, of course, if the group is ultimately going to use it for suicide bombing. But remember, it's a select group who strap explosives to themselves. A lot of people are making a living sending money and goods around the world, and might not touch a glowing green oil barrel of waste, while they would be ok with a truckload of lead-covered medical waste. The lethality of the radiation might be a deterrent to use. (If you get good scientists working for these groups, I think they'd learn ways around this problem -- shielding is tricky but possible).

My point, though it takes me a while to get there, is that even if you funnel huge sums of money into rounding up former USSR nuclear material, it's not really going to solve the bigger problem. So, in the meantime, what could you have been spending the money on? What did you take money away from that could have distrupted the network attempting to get ANY KIND of nuclear waste?

While I hate to be a doom/gloom kind of person, I'm absolutely convinced that there will be a radiological attack on the US in a few years (I'd put it around 10, depending on how fast the AQ network can rebuild). Making sure all of Russia's loose material is located won't prevent it in the least.

Kerry keeps talking about the process proposed by Bush being too slow. To speed it up would incur massive costs for each marginal year you try to buy. Doing it within the next presidential term, from what I have seen, would be astronomical. And it really wouldn't deter the terrorists, since they would have (already have) a viable alternative source for the material.

To make it a little scarier: add to this scenario Iran selling nuke waste out the backdoor for a couple million a barrel. And it doesn't make a bit of difference if the material came from a light or heavy water reactor. In the minds of the target, radioactive is radioactive.

Government responds to crisis after the fact. It doesn't do things to prevent the crisis in the first place. This means that no one will take the idea of a nuclear bomb destroying an American city seriously until it happens. Should New York be turned into Hiroshima, politicians would try to do something about defending the country against this form of attack. Until then we'll be vulnerable.

What makes you think the administration is not currently expending effort along this dimension? It seems to me that this, like many things, would be best accomplished 'on the down-low', away from public fanfare.

Asking why we haven't done more is a useless question. Anyone can say we should do more just like we should do more to help poor people.

"....how come the administration hasn't done more to secure loose nuclear materials in the former Soviet Republics?"

Short answer: You've already answered your own question. That active material is in Russia.

Long answer: Ian and Maniakes have already gone into this subject in great detail. They are wise and well informed. Listen to them.

Actually, the answers to your question isn't a secret and they're really not obscure except for the fact that no one seems to care about this subject. What's really odd is that everyone keeps telling me that they really, really DO care about this sort of thing, but they still don't look into it.

James

Our borders are pretty much wide open. Every day thousands of illegal border crossings are made from Mexico. On the Canadian border we have one guard for every twelve miles. Ports don't inspect containers, and the FAA has no technology for tracking small planes. We don't currently have resources available to defend against an attack. The problem for a group like AQ is getting their hands on a nuclear bomb. Once they do, delivery won't be difficult.

Heres what Russian nuke expert Bruce Blair has to say about the security of Russian nukes-

Two trends are especially prejudicial to our security. First, Russian security policy continues to shift toward an exclusive emphasis on nuclear weapons. Russian planners rely more than ever on these weapons, on their widespread dispersal, and on their first use in a crisis. Second, Russian control over its nuclear arsenal is tottering on the brink of collapse, raising the specter of the accidental, illicit and inadvertent use, or the theft, of Russian nuclear weapons and fissile materials. This is a deadly combination fraught with risk. Growing reliance on intentional quick use in a crisis and growing susceptibility to unintentional use means that the nuclear situation is more unstable and perilous today than it was during the Cold War. And it cannot be endured indefinitely. Russia's nuclear circuits are too overloaded to count on them not blowing sometime in the future. It is not at all unreasonable to anticipate a catastrophic failure of Russian nuclear command and control.

Heres what P Bleek reports-

“The security system was designed in the Soviet era to protect weapons primarily against a threat outside the country and may not be sufficient to meet today’s challenge of a knowledgeable insider collaborating with a criminal or terrorist group.”

The document also assesses the security problems at Russia’s nuclear complex, noting that “security varies widely” among Russia’s facilities and institutes. “Facilities housing weapons-usable nuclear material…typically receive low funding, lack trained security personnel, and do not have sufficient equipment for securely storing such material,” the report states.

The report also observes that “weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian institutes.” Most notably, the report cites an unconfirmed allegation by Viktor Yerastov, head of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy’s Nuclear Materials Accounting and Control Department, that an amount of fissile material “quite sufficient to produce an atomic bomb” was stolen from an unidentified site at the Chelyabinsk nuclear complex in 1998.

The National Intelligence Council—a group of senior experts from both inside and outside the intelligence community—expressed concern over the total amount of material that could have been stolen over the past decade and concluded that “undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent or magnitude of such thefts.”

Jane,
I would like to answer your question with a question before I make an observation.

The question is this: What do *you* think we should have done that we either are neglecting or have neglected? Answering your question would be easier if I had something more specific to work with than "Do more".
The observation is this: I, *personally*, consider the question of nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union in Islamic terrorist hands to be of low probability. Not impossible. Nothing in human affairs in impossible. But low probability. The reasons for this are as follow:

1. One thing I took away from me in the 1 or 2 classes I had on terrorism back in my Pol. Sci. days was that those who go into terrorism (like those who become leftists only more so!), tend to be of the liberal arts and as such more likely to be of the "Cars and guns make heap big noise, make large magic" mindset than to be the sorts who can do a lot with their hands. So even spotting them a physicist or 2 they wouldn't be likely to do much with any nuclear materials that came into their hands that wasn't already manufactured to order and made user friendly. Nothing I've seen since 1978 makes me think that this has changed dramatically. So I doubt that they can make anything on their own nor do I think they would be able to improvise much with a bomb designed for launch from an airplane, submarine, or missile silo even if they somehow got hold of such.

2. We are also talking about *Islamic* terrorists here which means that, for the most part, their background culture does not encourage engineering skills. In this regard the habit of the oil states in relying on emigre skilled labor instead of developing their own may be regarded as our ally rather than theirs. In order to have access to something they can use they would need a patron state to *give* them their user-friendly nuclear BoomBoom. And it's 300 dead schoolchildren too late for them to go to Putin for it even if he had been so inclined before that (Which he clearly was not!). So, if I'm am correct, the Pakistan/North Korea/China connection or Iran that goes uninterupted too long rather than the former Soviet Union, would be the most likely vector they could get what they need from if they were likely to go that route.

Nuclear weapons don't worry me so much as another concern. Since I don't want to give ideas away I will merely say that those who were once worried about the fate of Tom Daschle may make a shrewd guess as to what that concern might be. ^_^;

Ah, Begbee, a very nice post. Much enjoyed!

Bebee writes We are also talking about *Islamic* terrorists here which means that, for the most part, their background culture does not encourage engineering skills.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and Iran will sson. Both are Islamic.

The idea that Islam somehow prevents people from learning engineering is a bizarre fantasy.

Shamus that wasn't me you quote. And me nome de plume is Begbee, not Bebee.

I think securing the Russian nukes should be one of the top priorities in the war on terror. Russia is still run by the same mobsters that ran the country when they claimed to be Communist. They have huge economic problems, and the main worry isnt that they attack us themselves, but some internal subversives gain control of or sell a nuke. That being said, MAD still exists today. The most frightning thing to happen during the intervention in Kosovo was the rumor that a group of Slavic Russians had a nuke on a train that was destined for Paris, and were going to set it off if we didnt get out of the Balkans.

I always thought we missed a great, market-based answer to this problem: let's buy the nukes. In exchange for an agreement not to produce more, we buy the nukes. It gives the former-USSR capital to build infrastructure and it puts the material out of play.

Uhm... I don't want to accuse anyone of being an ignorant bigot. So I won't do that.

But several people who've posted here might be surprised to learn how many of my fellow students of nuclear engineering at, say, Kansas State University circa 70's and early 80's were from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia ... People smarter than me, and well-motivated. (If they failed of their course work, the consequences were SERIOUS.)

Before relaxing, confident that major engineering hurdles prevent terrorists from constructing a nuclear "boom-boom", various folks might refresh their anxieties regarding simpler "dirty bombs" -- radioactive fallout dispersed by conventional explosives. If Timothy McVeigh had had access to a dud nuclear warhead, would downtown Oklahoma City be abandoned today, like the regions around Chernobyl? (Note, decisions to inhabit or not a contaminated area are nearly irrespective of the actual dangers of such fallout.)

And finally, we might ask ourselves, as various Western spooks and agencies cajole, threaten, bargain with and steal from ex-Soviet holders of nuclear materials: do we want such deals publicized? I mean, at either end of the price range? If word got out that one seller of a kilo of plutonium got US$ 1000/gram wouldn't that drive up the price and make other sellers hold out? If another sold at US$ 5/g wouldn't that embolden terrorists to seek out others and offer to "double the Americans' bid"? In this case, it seems to me, the market is best served by secret transactions ... but perhaps there is an economic case to be made to the contrary.

Too, like the "war on drugs", it seems that sometimes we'd want to just buy up a small stash available and take it off the market; and other times we'd want to run a "sting" to track back supply lines to a large manufacturing point. While in the former case we might want word to get around, in underground channels, that the US is buying, we would NOT in the latter case want word to go out that the US is "stinging". In neither case would I expect the US president to phone Dan Rather and crow about a success.

Umm, this administration and the ones before have moved agressively on the issue of CIS nuclear weapons. (Just for background, I deal with dual use metals ie, those things that could be used in nuclear facilites but also in other areas. I don't obviously, deal with uranium and plutonium.)
The US Govt buys HEU (warhead uranium) from the Russian Govt and blends it down so that it can be used in US (and Russian) power reactors. The plutonium is supposed to be treated the same way but the end product there is MOX (mixed oxide fuels) which no one really wants to use in a reactor. Greenpeace and others keep stating that it will increase the possibilities of proliferation when in fact it is a method of prevention of such. I know people who've flown into CIS states and picked up odd parcels of U that were "lying around". The weapons scientists (nuclear, chemical, biological, rocket etc) are being funded to use their skills in civilian research (Mr G**gle for the ISTC).
A lot is being done. If you look at the lists of intercepted materials you'll see that over the past decade the "black market" hasn't handled (or rather, that part of it that has been caught...there have been comments that the only people actually active in these markets are the various agencies looking for crooks trying to sell.) enough U to make a single bomb and as for Pu, less than 1/100 th the amount necessary. Most of the reports of "nuclear materials" (a Reason piece recently, Ron Bailey) are in fact not nuclear at all. Not even dual use items.
You may not want to take the word of someone who works in the Russian metals trade (we're a famously crooked lot) but the purchase and/or smuggling of nuclear metals isn't a problem. The sale of the supporting technologies most certainly is. Centrifuges, etc etc.....that's what I'm worried about.

My understanding is that funding for 'loose nukes' has been declining recently, but that had more to do with Russian intransigence than because of a lack of American will.

The problem and attempts at a solution did not begin with and will not end with this President Bush.

After the Cold War, the US and Euros were able to convince the former Soviet Republics to turn their nukes over to Russia as the legal heir to the USSR. We paid a lot of money to accomplish this.

I would suggest looking at:

http://www.stimson.org/southasia/pdf/MADtoCTR.pdf

http://www.stimson.org/southasia/pdf/MADtoCTR.pdf

The second deals with chemical and bio.

Now, my comments:

1) cooperative threat reduction work has been going on since the end of the Cold War. It began with the Nunn-Lugar program.

2) CTR programs in the former Soviet Union have made some key gains, but have been underfunded from the start, at least if you look at them as more than a bandaid.

3) Advocates of the programs consistently complain how difficult it is to go to Congress to ask for millions more dollars to send to Russia. They ask when will enough be enough? The response is that we are making incremental progress and, at this rate, it is going to take decades to deal with this problem.

4) No president has made it a priority and, despite what Bush and Kerry said in the debates, neither will.

5) The Russians do not seem to care overly much about this program. If anything, they like the cash coming in but dislike having to take credible steps and have a large amount of monitoring. The lack of progress by the Russians in terms of complying with arms control treaty requirements and suspicions that they are milking the CTR programs adds to congressional concerns.

6) There was a hell of a lot of work done on WMD research, production and stockpiling in the former Soviet Union. The dollars to deal with this adequately are absolutely astounding and, to be honest, will probably never be come up with.

7) When you expand from nukes to CBW, the list grows even longer and more frightening. It is costly to destroy CBW weapons (look at our own slow progress in dismantling our own Chemical program) and time consuming.

The combination of costs, the scope of the problem, Russian noncompliance/disinterest, and competition for American dollars at home in the budget process hurts this program big time. None of the above are likely to change.

For a nuclear terrorist attack to occur we must have a willing terrorist with the technical know how to place a nuclear device he/she has obtained in an area where it can be effective. That gives us 1) eliminating willing terrorists 2) eliminating technically proficient terrorists 3) protecting technical knowledge to make more technically proficient terrorists 4) preventing acquistion of enough money to obtain nuclear device 5) protecting nuclear devices to obtain 6) preventing access to locations to plant and 7) stopping them in the act as ways of stopping aforementioned nuclear disaster. I would wager that (5) is too costly in money and diplomatic capital in view of options available for the others (albeit some of the others are impractical as well). It seems that 1 and 4 have the biggest return as per the Bush admins focus...but success on any one of these will stop aforementioned disaster.

Oh, I left out the most important part of this. When you consider WMD in its entirety, especially chemical and biological, it is impossible to ever fully secure the stockpiles or ingredients.

Chemicals are produced by industry in every country of the world. They are sold in almost every region of every country in the world. Household or industrial chemicals can be used to make CW or purchased in smaller amounts from multiple stores to build up a weapon. A pesticide plant is not much different than a cw plant. It has been suggested that enough cw could be worked up to kill several thousand people in a garage or tool shed. How do you stop this? Impossible.

Biological agents pose even more risks - because the seeds of BW can be found in medical, academic, bio-tech, public health, and medical facilities. They can be found in nature. How do you monitor or secure this? Impossible.

The one area where there has been success in regulating access to materials is nuclear. It started out with one country and then to five. Now, if you include South Africa's creation and then destruction of its nukes, has spread from five to 10 and with Iran soon it will be 11 states. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, technology, technicians and materials available increased dramatically. The growth of nuclear power around the world also increases the above. Each year it becomes harder and harder to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle. In the case of would be proliferators, they can be part of the NPT and work on their programs for years in secret under the cover of peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Then, when they can break out in a matter of months, they can withdraw and go nuclear. CTR programs stem the bleeding in the former USSR, but they cant stop the blood from pumping there and in numeroius other places around the world. Further, in terms of components to a nuclear program, France, Germany and Russia will sell them to nearly anyone. Pakistan traded nuclear technology and know how to North Korea for missile technology.

We cannot stop proliferation. In the Cold War, most states could be forced into compliance by the superpowers. In its aftermath, states have a lot more leeway and opportunities. Further, many view it as necessity in the new multipolar world to have WMD to deter and defend themselves.

The old arms control driven Geneva model is dead. People just dont realize it yet. Bush has tried preemption and run into its problems immediately. The sad truth is the number of states with WMD is going to increase rather than decrease in the next twenty years.

Kerry has asserted that this is a major problem, but I am not inclined to believe it. Soviet Union collapsed 15 years ago. If there were a lot of nuclear material floating around the stans, it would have showed up in battle by now. It hasn't, which causes me to believe that it has been put away safe or decayed to usless by now.

Kerry yelling about a non-issue, like the draft and social security? Why am I not surprised.

I dont blame either party for the problems related to the Russian nukes. But I do like the idea of securing them as quickly as possible. There are Russian military claims that weapons grade nuke material is missing, and there maybe some truth to the urban/international(sounds like a bushism) legend of missing suitcase nukes.

I dont know if its possible to entirely stop proliferation, but we should do everything we can to prevent it. The idea of Iran with a nuke is completely unacceptable. Inspections backed with the threat of force work, and you dont have to occupy a nation in order to bomb questionable nuke facilities. NK is a real problem. They are in economic ruin, they supposedly have up to 9 nukes, and lil Kim has already sold weapons to terrorist groups.

Bio and chem weapons developement cant be stopped. Both methods can be utilized without much cost for equipment and minimal technical training. Bioweapons are alot more frightening imo. There are a whole bunch of ways bioweapons can be utilized if you have alot of suicide carriers and access to a nasty disease.

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Kerry has asserted that this is a major problem, but I am not inclined to believe it. Soviet Union collapsed 15 years ago. If there were a lot of nuclear material floating around the stans, it would have showed up in battle by now. It hasn't, which causes me to believe that it has been put away safe or decayed to usless by now.

Kerry yelling about a non-issue, like the draft and social security? Why am I not surprised.
***

Well, I am no fan of Kerry, but I think you are way off base here.

The problem isnt so much that there are nuclear weapons floating around the stans. The US and Europe and Russia secured them and shipped them back to Russia.

The problem with nukes is that the Russians have to come up with a new concept of security. During the Soviet days, security was easy. People werent allowed to move around. Entire cities were off limits to nonauthorized personel. Security was designed to keep people in and foreigners out - of the country. When the USSR fell, this all fell apart. The old view of security needed to replaced with a more western oriented one. The problem and this extends to cbw as well was that the bases, facilities, and waste sites were not protected much, if at all, in a western sense. There is a ton of literature on this if you are interested - and its easy to find.

The idea of unguarded facilities or guarded by a couple not been paid in months Russian soldiers is a frightening one - but the solution is tied to much larger issues in Russia. We make efforts to fix the worst of thing and also some of the easier to fix ones - but it is such a large problem that its nearly impossible.

Its a real issue - just neither party nor the US has the will or ability to deal with this one. It would require billion spent over a decade or two to fix this. Given Russia and its unwillingness to make a real effort on this - its not clear if even that would do it.

Not only has he done nothing to secure the former USSR material, but we got those reports last week that he allowed whatever nuclear weapon producing material there was in Iraq to leave the country.

How the heck is that keeping us safe?

Plus, Bush has ignored border and port security. We aren't doing anything to secure either. Thousands of cargo containers enter the US every day without being checked. And Bush has no plans to change that.

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Plus, Bush has ignored border and port security. We aren't doing anything to secure either. Thousands of cargo containers enter the US every day without being checked. And Bush has no plans to change that.
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The real question is - does Kerry?

How do you solve this problem? How many customs agents will we need? How many goods will stack up in ports waiting to inspected? In the case of a nuclear bomb, would we need to be inspecting container ships 100 miles off the coast? How would we even do it?

I do not see how any major and effective changes could be made to make up more safe in this area.

This is the tough thing about terror in the age of globalization. They use the things that make modern life run and hum against us. I have a post up on my blog summing up a speech Tom Friedman gave at Brandeis last night.

Friedman addressed the issue of terror in globalization in his speech. He said the terror threat was greater than the Red Army during the Cold War because it couldnt be deterred, there were no shared assumptions between us and the terrorists, and they use the key elements of an open society (planes cars shoes etc and this could include shipping) to attack us and there is NO WAY we can defend everything.

It is very unlikely that any entity other than a nation state could put together a workable nuclear bomb using plutonium. As a practical matter it is very difficult to construct such a device. It is not so difficult when you have bomb grade uranium. My question is: how much bomb grade uranium is floating around in the former Soviet Union? My understanding, which is perhaps flawed, is that the nuclear arsenals of the US and the now defunct USSR consisted entirely of plutonium based weapons. Refining uranium to nearly pure U-235 is very expensive. Why bother to do it when you have access to plutonium? I doubt that there is much, if any, bomb grade uranium floating around.

If there ever is a nuclear bomb set off in an American city, the odds are nearly !00% that another nation was responsible for building it and just used whatever terrorists who set it off as proxies. You don't build a plutonium bomb in the rec room of your local Madrassa.

And here we go back to Kerry. He views the WOT as a law enforcement issue. Its all the work of individuals, not governments. He wouldn't do the thing that Bush has done, which is to hold governments accountable for terrorist activities that they promote or tolerate in their territories. And that would be a huge mistake.

If you don't like the idea of a mushroom cloud rising over Manhatten, you would best reject the approach of Mr. Kerry. But hey, if we all just had universal health coverage, it wouldn't make that much of a difference anyway, right? :-)

Preventing nuke proliferation is an area Kerry takes far more serious than Bush. Bushs plan for nukes is alot less aggressive than Kerrys, Bush has done nothing to prevent NK and Iran from acquiring nukes, and you worry that Kerry will allow a mushroom cloud over Manhatten? He doesnt view terrorism as strictly a law enforcement issue.

begbee:

kerry has in his most recent statements said that terrorism is a purely law enforcement issue (ok strongly implied and used metaphors and similes that are solely relevant as a law enforcement issue)

kerry respects states, bush is willing to end states

kerry will go diplomatic as long as possible; bush goes diplomatic when he has to or can, but is more than willing to take aggressive action

i want aggressiove action and think the US needs more of it.. hence bush.. if you think aggressive action is the absolute last resort, dont vote bush...

i think aggressive action should be used as appropriate, and is not the absolute last resort.. its option 2... the world is more 1870 than 1950... people need to wake up to this, and that there is no responsible deterrable counterparty on the other side... its a gang war kids

The problem isnt so much that there are nuclear weapons floating around the stans. The US and Europe and Russia secured them and shipped them back to Russia.

The problem with nukes is that the Russians have to come up with a new concept of security. During the Soviet days, security was easy. People werent allowed to move around. Entire cities were off limits to nonauthorized personel. Security was designed to keep people in and foreigners out - of the country. When the USSR fell, this all fell apart. The old view of security needed to replaced with a more western oriented one. The problem and this extends to cbw as well was that the bases, facilities, and waste sites were not protected much, if at all, in a western sense. . .

The idea of unguarded facilities or guarded by a couple not been paid in months Russian soldiers is a frightening one - but the solution is tied to much larger issues in Russia. We make efforts to fix the worst of thing and also some of the easier to fix ones - but it is such a large problem that its nearly impossible.

Its a real issue - just neither party nor the US has the will or ability to deal with this one. It would require billion spent over a decade or two to fix this. Given Russia and its unwillingness to make a real effort on this - its not clear if even that would do it.

If that is the "problem" he is talking about then it is not a WoT problem as I would understand it. Clearly Putin's interests are aligned with ours. He doesn't want terrorists getting nukes anymore than we do.

There are three possibilities here.

Bush is a moron and so is everybody in Washington other than Kerry, so they have all neglected this problem.

Its not a problem really, Putin is just as scared as John Kerry, Putin's a$$ is more in the sling than JFK's is and the Russian's who are not as stupid as Texans have solved the problem.

Its not a money thing, the Russians will not re-process their pits, which is the expensive part. They don't want to, but they and our CIA/Special-Ops have worked on the security and we are happy with it, but its a secret and Bush can't discuss it on TV.

I still don't think its a real problem. And since Kerry hasn't been to a Senate intellegence Committee meeting in years, how would he know otherwise?

I think it is part of a larger problem: the end of the Cold War (highlighted by the big boom on 9/11) demonstrates that the world has become more dangerous and unpredictable than anyone had realized in the euphoria of the Cold War's end.

Richard K. Betts, a pretty famous and really plugged in academic, argued that in this era the threat of annihilation via WMD is far lower, but the risk of mass destruction with WMD is much higher. I cant remember the exact quote - it was from an article he wrote - but I will try to dig it up when I am in at the office.

During the Cold War, everything was filtered through the East-West conflict. Now, there are lots of autonomous actors (not limited to states) seeking WMD. The old models of arms control and inspections do not work as well (especially with chem bio).

It was during the early 90s that the option of preemption became far more popular within DoD. It didnt grow out of 9/11 - it was recognized long before it that the old tools in the toolkit werent working so well.

The simple fact of the world today is that states that want WMD can get them. The CWC or the CTBT or the Geneva Protocol or the BWC wont stop them. Intrusive inspection regimes wont either. The NPT sure hasnt. If a state wants them and is willing to pay a price they will have them.

The simple, sad fact is that proliferation is likely to accelerate internationally. There will be more states with nukes, chem, and bio weapons ten years from now than there are now.

All of this cooperative threat reduction stuff is designed to make it more difficult - but there is nothing that says it would prevent it.

"It is very unlikely that any entity other than a nation state could put together a workable nuclear bomb using plutonium."

Several points:

1. A naive gun-type plutonium bomb would still have an explosive yield of a few tons. Boost it with tritium, and clad it with a mixture of uranium (higher yield) and cobalt ("better" fallout).

2. High-energy lasers have gotten much cheaper and easier to use. This implies that spherical detonation is not nearly as hard as you think.

3. There may be innovative ways to redirect the blast of conventional explosives to make compression better and/or easier.

Hey, Kerry has never said that terror is purely a law enforcement issue. He has said that he would hunt down and kill the terrorists, and is completely ready to act premptively if the US is in danger.

R Schwartz, the US does think Russian nukes are a problem. We give them significant aid to secure their nukes. There are at least 5 other oppurtunities for Senators in the Intell commitee to be briefed on the intell stated at the meetings attendance is recorded in.

Begbee:

Hey, Kerry has never said that terror is purely a law enforcement issue.

I am sure he hasn't said such a bald faced thing, he never makes such simple staments. His speech patterns are so neurotic. He is incapable of saying anyting simple or straight on.

He has said that he would hunt down and kill the terrorists, and is completely ready to act premptively if the US is in danger.

And he has hedged that stament in many difrent ways including with the infamous Global Test. Also I am sure that if you search the record of his 25 years of public bloviations you will find that he has been on all sides of this issue several times too.

Allow me to remind you that he voted against the first Gulf War.

the US does think Russian nukes are a problem. We give them significant aid to secure their nukes.

Ok so maybe the lady is behind door number 3. and maybe its not a real big problem as Kerry claimed it is.

There are at least 5 other oppurtunities for Senators in the Intell commitee to be briefed on the intell stated at the meetings attendance is recorded in.

I couldn't quite get the hang of this statement. Do you mean that Kerry could have been briefed? I suppose its possible. I just tend to think it is not likely, as he seems to have been a not very dilligent Senator at best.

I suppose this comment thread might be getting a bit stale since it's been a couple of days and Jane is clearly a busy lass and might not have time to read everything.

One thing I want to highlight about my response in relation to the interesting opinions of others: focusing on hard-core material like the kind of uranium or plutonium that might be used in making a nuclear-tipped missile misses some of the point, I think.

To be gruesome for a moment, I'm pretty sure the actual leveling of the WTC was a "bonus" that the original AQ plan didn't foresee. I don't think the size of destruction, in the case of 9/11 and a good deal of other terrorist attacks, is the original intent. True, the scale has been getting bigger as the technical expertise gets better. But terrorists hit a disco in the 80s, and they're still hitting nightclubs in the 2000's. By taking on non-military targets, terrorists are intent on making more political/ideological points, it seems to me, than to score sizable wins on some sort of battlefield. (I am sympathetic to the argument that a good number of Islamic extremists have a pan-Islamic world as their singular goal, but I'm not sure they're waging a "if we can't have the followers, nobody gets 'em" sort of war.)

The attraction then, if I'm on to something here, of getting ahold of radioactive material is the impression a nuclear-sort of weapon might make. For this purpose, it makes no real difference what the stuff is. People would have pretty much the same aversion to returning to work on Wall Street no matter what kind of material came flying out of a van that exploded and took out a building or two.

Spending more on rounding up loose material inside the border of Russia, even if we could get their new Dear Leader to agree to having whole flotillas of new US personnel rummaging around their country, won't do much of anything. There are really good substitutes that terrorists can find with much less hassle.

Speaking of attractiveness, people have also brought up the other letters in the NBCR mix, bio and chem. My quick take is that these two things are much harder to use than a radiological weapon. To get a bio or chem weapon made that will reach more than a few yards takes much more technical know-how than essentially setting a pan of green goo on top of some C4. Meanwhile, chem and bio face big issues in terms of transportation and dispersal. Bio agents are susceptible to heat and cold, mixing, dropping, etc. Chemical transportation is also tough, but slightly more plausible. And in both cases, you have to figure out delivery methods that don't consume the agent in the blast (like a spray bottle, though that gets back to the limited reach problem). You might just have to make sure your delivery method is fool proof, or find a chemist willing to die. Which brings things back to radiological/nuclear.

Proliferation, then, is a worry. But the only solution is preventing any nuclear technology at all, since no matter what use it may have, it produces waste that would be valuable to the right ne'er-do-wells. "Peaceful" nuclear technology, in this sense, just doesn't exist. Not to get too terribly partisan, but this was my huge gripe with Clinton's trying to let NK get by with only certain types of nuclear energy (in fact, I think the US actually helped produce a facility only for "energy production"). In a country as dirt-poor as NK, the price for a few kilograms of nuclear waste might suddenly look darn good. Now imagine the incentives for the religious extremist leaders of Iran.

My sense, and I admit to painting with a large brush, is that the people who decry the "lack of attention" to proliferation during this Bush administration don't support a US position that says "We can have energy from nuclear power, but you can't, since you scare the hell out of us", or something to that effect. Unfortunately, that's the only kind of anti-proliferation that would do much to reduce the chances of a radiological attack.

R Scwartz, Kerry didnt hedge his bet with "global test" comment, he alluded to the need to do everything possible to make the world believe you prior to acting premptively. He cleared that up in the final debate, and referred to it as a "truth standard." I meant exactly what I said about the Senate intell committee meetings, but to simplify, attendence is only taken at one of upwards of 5 briefings on the same material. To claim Kerry was derelict in his duty to the Senate intell committee, you have to know if he attended any of the other meetings.

Ian you make reasonable points on nuke material. I dont agree, but reasonable people can differ on the level of threat nuke material presents. But imo bioweapons are the most frightening wmd out there. I have read CIA gaming that states for about $50,000, terrorists could kill upwards of 5 million people. The scenerio presented by the CIA involves Anthrax, the equipment required to weaponize Anthrax, the use of a aerosal spray gun commonly utilized for painting, and renting a boat on the Hudson river in NYC on a windy day. There are also scenerios of Small Pox dispersed in a subway to take advantage of the air being forced through the tunnels, and several other cheap but devastating methods of use of bioweapons. The other thing to consider, is that when you look at attacks like 911, Al Qaeda uses suicide bombers to create smart weapons that simplify the attack plan. Keeping that in mind, theres a high probability that bioweapons used against the US by Al Qaeda may well be living carriers, exposed to something like any of the African hemorrhagic fevers. And theres little we can do to stop such an attack.

Ian, when it comes to smallpox the best dispersion method is probably non-technical. You get several stooges that aren't on no-fly lists, infect them, and hand them their airplane tickets. You don't even have to tell them that they have been infected - just impress them with how important it is that they follow the itinerary and be in certain public places on certain days, and feeling sick is no excuse. If a terrorist leader can persuade people to strap explosives to their bodies and set themselves off in a schoolbus, it shouldn't be that hard to pump them up with the importance of their mission so they'll keep going until they literally pass out.

And if you want to make it even worse, get hold of some bubonic plague and tell them they're going out to quietly release a few sick rats in places like Times Square. Give them shots against the plague - but don't mention the live smallpox virus you added...

Anthrax is the kind of biological weapon that we would use if we were inclined to use biologicals - nasty, but the effect is largely limited to the target areas. Infectious diseases are less controlled, but low tech. And while we can make it hard to get germ samples, we cannot make it impossible.

Of course, given any sanity at all in the terrorist leader, there are two deterrents to doing this sort of thing. One is if they believe that the USA would find out where this plot originated and turn that country or countries into radioactive glass. The other is that whether or not we ever figure out the source, the epidemics are likely to spread until they come home - and for most terrorists, their home is a whole lot less equipped to treat the victims than we are. So, which presidential candidate looks to the world as more likely to go for the radioactive glass option? And which one would be more likely to send out American doctors to save the ragheads that probably started it?

Mark M I thought Anthrax was an unlikely choice as a bioweapon, but the scenerio actually brought up the possiblity that the terrorists could be vaccinated for Anthrax.

You should also consider which President would use 15 out of 18 Saudi carriers as an excuse to attack Iraq. And you should also consider which party would be more likely to properly use Intell to prevent the attack from even taking place.

The best solution to nuclear materials is to use them to generate electricity, pasteurize food and sterilize Luddites.
The fuel should be reprocessed in the U.S., U.K., France and Russia. The Luddites should be shipped to Cuba.

I had a Cuban Luddite once...smoooth!

There are some topics where I think I admire Bush. I think this may be one of them. Let me explain:
There was a line in an address at the start of the WOT, when Bush said that this war would be hard,and not like wars we've fought before in that it would be "secret even in success."
This administration is a bit secrecy obsessed. Ask critics, and most supporters, and this is one thing most agree upon. I believe, though with little evidence, that we have had some successes that we are not crowing about because we don't want to inform our enemy either through acknowledging a penetration, or by reactions to the inevitably invasive press conferences about the mole in Al Queda, or about how we found the dirty bomb, or whatever. One thing I think we Americans miss is that our free press, when it gets investigative, is a better intelligence agency than anything terrorists are likely to have on their side. This includes providing valuable insights into our character, for what it would reveal about our reaction to provocation.
A few things led me to this belief in a Bush preference for secrecy over visible success in the WOT:
1. I think Osama is quiet for a reason. I cannot imagine him sitting out this election without taking down Bush with a simple video detailing Bush's failure. All he would have to say? "I kill your people with impunity, and I am protected by my Saudi-Bush cousins while you bleed in Iraq. I tore down your towers like the Red Sox tear down the Yankees." (Or some such evidence of contemporary existence) Kerry would be sworn in January 2005.
2. No terrorist has been able to put together a 50 gallon drum of gasoline and a couple pounds of gunpowder for Three-Friggin-Years after 9-11. Do these guys know about explosives? Current events would seem to indicate so. Do they know about petroleum? Uh, yep. Do they know we have pizzarias in the US? Hell, we even have Sbarros at half the malls in California. We have been nailing these guys in secret, or my name is Quetzelcotl.
3. We have made WMD control a priority, yet we have heard little about Russia's. Maybe Bush is still all misty from looking in Putin's eyes and "seeing a democrat" or maybe he doesn't ever admit failure, but maybe he has an understanding that works with Russia. "Vlad, you get yer guys from the old days to suck in some terrorists, and we'll roll 'em up when they go for the bait, all those "loose nukes" that your revitalized police state "can't secure."
This is supposition, because none of us knows, because they aren't talking. And that is a good thing.

Oddly, it may be truly hopeful, in that it indicates that a politician is putting America's interests in front of his electoral chances. I'm not sure all of them would, on either side of the ideological divide.

Begbee:

"Kerry didnt hedge . . . he alluded . . . He cleared that up . . . and referred to . . ."

Whatever. I will try to make this as simple as I possibly can make it. John Kerry speaks with forked tounge (imagine the American Indian sign language to go with that). I have never heard him make a simple direct statement about anything that was not alluded, cleared up, nuanced, explained and othewise covered with a thick fog of whitewash and bu11$sh;t. I am not going to argue with you or anybody else about what he really meant because I don't think that even he has the foggiest idea.

"To claim Kerry was derelict in his duty to the Senate intell committee, you have to know if he attended any of the other meetings."

Au contrarie mon amie. It is beyond my power. Kerry could authorize the committe to release his attendance records, but he has not done so, He could authorize the Navy to release all of his service records, but he has not done so. He could authorise Doug Brinkley to release all of his notes and records, but he has not done so. He could release the records of his divorce and annulment from Julia Thorne, but he has not done so. He and his wife could release all of their tax records, but they have not done so.

And the Mainstream Media, those Paladins of the Peoples right to know, who claim exemption from judicial process because their investigations are so important to democracy, have not once asked for any of this information. Do you suppose they would give a conservative a free pass on this kind of material? (oops, sorry stupid question, my bad.)

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