Nuclear Issues

Russian leaders have previously promised to improve the survivability of their offensive nuclear missile force as a means of ensuring that they would retain an effective nuclear deterrent, and that will likely happen.  But recent events and announcements indicate that Russia is also investing money in its own increased missile defenses.

>Consider the evidence on five related fronts: bin Laden, Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Russia.

Some in the intelligence community now refer to the leader of the al-Qaida movement as "Osama bin Missing." While he lost his sanctuary and terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, bin Laden, his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and 86 percent of the individuals identified by the U.S. government as al-Qaida leaders remain at large.

As the nuclear mushroom cloud became the spectre that menaced the second half of the 20th century, the prospect of a nuclear terrorist attack emerges as the gravest danger in the 21st.

Dr. Ashton B. Carter's op-ed in the Washington Post.

Financial Times op-ed by Dr. Ashton B. Carter and Richard Lugar

Op-Ed by Sam Nunn, William J. Perry, and Eugene Habiger in The Washington Post

Op-ed by Dr. Ashton B. Carter and Dr. John M. Deutch in The Wall Street Journal

The greatest single threat to the security of America today, and indeed the world, is the threat from loose nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material from Russia. "Loose nukes' - the loss, theft or sale of weapons-usable nuclear materials or nuclear weapons themselves from the former Soviet arsenal - is not a hypothetical threat; it is a brute fact. Since the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the number of reported, suspected and documented cases of diversion of weapons-usable nuclear material has been increasing steadily.

What is the message of the Oklahoma City bombing for American national security? First, the oft-repeated assertion that with the end of the Cold War, the United States faces no direct or immediate threat to our security at home is dead wrong. As the most open society on a shrinking globe, America's democracy is also most vulnerable to terrorists' attacks. Such actions threaten not only our security but also our freedom.