Resumo de Nuclear Terrorism

Our world is a frightening place, and readers of Graham Allison?s chilling book Nuclear Terrorism -The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe will find plenty of scary scenarios and spooky possibilities proving that point in this candid and sobering work.

In clear and concise language, Allison lays out the threat for any reader not knowing the difference between fission and fusion ? namely, that Islamofascists intend to make 9/11 a footnote in world history by killing and maiming as many Americans as possible.

?We have the right to kill 4 million Americans ? 2 million of them children ? and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands,? Al-Qaida spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith was quoted nine months after 9/11. Gheith cited the usual reasons: Gulf War I, our consistent support of Israel, America is the Great Satan, etc. As patient as Al-Qaida has historically been in planning and implementing their attacks, given an opportunity they?d be thrilled to unleash the mother of all homicidal bombs.

?It would take 1,400 similar assaults (as 9/11) to reach that figure of 4 million. Al-Qaida has made its intentions clear,? Allison writes; ?the challenge to America is to prevent it from succeeding.?

The first half of his book details just how challenging this task will be as Allison explores the groups most likely to seek out nuclear weapons (most are Muslim extremists but doomsday cults like Japan?s Aum Shinrikyo are also cited); the kinds of material available to them (Soviet suitcase devices are but possibly just 250 of the twenty-thousand nuclear bombs comprising the world?s nuclear inventory); where they are likely to get it (Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the developer of Pakistan?s nuclear bomb, has been called ?a Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation?, while Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, nuclear research reactors and the U.S. are also sources); when such a nuclear device could be made operational (it took one Princeton undergrad five months and $2000 to design a beach ball-sized nuclear bomb with a 10-kiloton yield ? he got an ?A? on his thesis); and how a nuclear bomb might be delivered.

While the first half of Graham?s book could conceivably leave many readers trembling under their beds babbling incoherently, the second half offers hope for preventing terrorists from realizing their dream of rendering U.S. cities into a real-life ?Mad-Max? movie. ?As a simple matter of physics, without fissile material, there can be no nuclear explosion,? Allison notes. Preventing terrorists from acquiring a weapon or nuclear material ?is a challenge to our will, our conviction, and our courage, not to our technical capacity.?

Allison calls his proactive strategy for eliminating the threat The Three No?s ? no insecure nuclear material, no new facilities for processing uranium or enriching plutonium, and no new nuclear states. (Note to world: stop Iran.) While some disparage the idea of The Three No?s succeeding, Allison points out that most of the world is already signed up for the idea of no new nuclear states, many could live with the second point of no new nascent nukes, and most countries support securing the world?s supply of nuclear material. Of 183 countries, including scores that have the technical capability to build arsenals, there are only eight with nuclear capability: the U.S., Russia, Great Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel. While it?s estimated that North Korea has anywhere from six to eight nuclear weapons already, Allison contends that a pragmatic combination of quid pro quos and international intimidation through negotiation may eliminate the threat North Korea could be.

While that strategy would seem to ally him with the Bush administration, which has insisted on including neighboring countries in discussions with North Korea, Allison pointedly criticizes the administration for allowing the Nunn-Lugar program, a non-proliferation program founded in 1991 by former Democratic senator Sam Nunn and Indiana senator Richard Lugar, to sink deeper into bureaucracy. ?At the end of the Bush administration?s term in 2005, after thirteen years of effort since the fall of the Soviet Union, the nuclear security balance sheet will show that the job of securing Russia?s nuclear weapons and material remains only half done,? Allison writes.

Make no mistake; Allison is no Chicken Little pestering Americans that a mushroom clouded sky may be falling soon. His book is timely, frightening, and is a call to arms for all Americans to press their elected officials on making the issue of securing the world?s nukes and nuclear materials a priority.

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