Nuclear Issues

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, argues that despite not falling victim to a major terrorist event in the last 10 years, the United States must not be complacent in its counter-terrorism efforts. Mowatt-Larssen said in a Belfer Center seminar in September that he believes the possibility of a major attack is higher in the next 10 years than in the preceding decade.

Article in The Nonproliferation Review

"CSIA's research on cooperative denuclearization began during the August 1991 putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev. To those of us familiar with nuclear weapons, their construction, and command and control, and with the looming revolution about to sweep the then–Soviet Union, it was plain that a new and unprecedented danger to international security was emerging. An appropriate policy response to this new form of nuclear threat could not be fashioned from traditional Cold War tools of deterrence, arms control, and military preparedness alone. Safety could only be sought through new policies emphasizing cooperative engagement with the new states, new leaders, and military and industrial heirs of the former Soviet Union...."

Book by Ashton B. Carter, Kurt M. Campbell, Steven E. Miller, and Charles Zraket

Nuclear terrorism is not a post-9/11 or even post-cold war phenomenon. In fact, this review of declassified intelligence estimates spanning the past five decades reveals that the prospect of a clandestine nuclear attack on the United States—be it from the Soviet Union, China, or al Qaeda—has been a regular concern for U.S. officials since the advent of nuclear weapons. Although the estimates themselves have been a mixed bag of quiet successes and failures, this article’s key findings suggest that the threat of nuclear terrorism is very real and that the U.S. government remains ill prepared to counter that threat.