A Strategy for Prevention

The largely unrecognized good news is that nuclear terrorism is preventable by a feasible, affordable checklist of actions. The strategic narrows in this challenge is to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons or the materials from which weapons could be made. As a fact of physics: no highly enriched uranium or plutonium, no nuclear bomb, no nuclear terrorism. It is that simple. A strategy for pursuing that agenda can be organized under a “Doctrine of Three No’s”: No Loose Nukes, No New Nascent Nukes and No New Nuclear Weapons States.

No Loose Nukes requires securing all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material, on the fastest possible timetable, to a new “gold standard.” Locking up valuable or dangerous items is something we know how to do. The United States does not lose gold from Fort Knox, nor Russia treasures from the Kremlin armory. Washington and Moscow should develop a standard and then act immediately to secure their own nuclear materials. Russian President Vladimir Putin must see safeguarding those weapons not as a favor to the United States but as an essential protection for his own country and citizens. With Putin aboard, the United States and Russia should launch a new “Global Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism.” Its mission would be to lock down all weapons and materials and clean out what cannot be locked down. This would require engaging the leaders of other nuclear states on the basis of vital national interest: prevent a nuclear bomb from going off in my capital. The global lock-down of at-risk nuclear material must be accelerated to finish the job in the next 12 to 18 months.

No New Nascent Nukes means no new national capabilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. A loophole in the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty allows states to develop these capacities as civilian programs, withdraw from the Treaty, utilize equipment and know-how received as a beneficiary of the Treaty, and proceed to build nuclear weapons. The proposition of no new nascent nukes acknowledges what the national security community has been slow to realize: highly enriched uranium and plutonium are bombs just about to hatch.

The crucial challenge to this principle today is Iran. Preventing the completion of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will require a combination of enticing incentives and credible threats to persuade Tehran to accept a grand bargain for denuclearization. The United States should engage Iran in direct negotiations in coordination with a six-party complement that includes France, Great Britain, Germany, and Russia. The United States currently threatens what Iran’s leadership worries about most: regime change. This was, after all, US President George W. Bush’s announced goal in his declaration of the “axis of evil.” Bush should give Tehran a security assurance that the United States will not attack Iran to change its regime by force as long as it complies with the terms of a moratorium on nuclear enrichment activity and permits intrusive IAEA inspections that exceed the Additional Protocol of the NPT.

The partners should bring to these negotiations all the carrots the international community can reasonably provide Iran. These include a formal Iranian-EU agreement for significantly increased trade and investments; the opportunity to purchase additional civilian nuclear reactors from Russia—Iranian plans call for ten over the next decade; assured supply of fuel for nuclear reactors from internationally supervised suppliers as proposed by IAEA Director ElBaradei to include Russia, the European Union, the United States, and a special IAEA-controlled “reserve of last resort” against the extreme contingency that supply of fuel were to be interrupted for noncommercial reasons; spare parts from the United States for Iran’s aging aircraft; an opportunity to buy new Airbus aircraft from Europe; the beginning of negotiations with the WTO about membership; and a commitment to six-party talks about Iran’s larger security concerns and those of the region. This package could also include an offer by the United States to begin discussion about normalization of relations and reopening embassies.

Carrots alone, however, will not suffice. Crucial to completing the deal will be a judgment by Iran’s leaders that they have no realistic prospect of enriching uranium on an industrial scale. Essential to that judgment is a credible military threat to destroy the facilities before they can become operational. What remains for this deal to come together is for the United States to step up as a determined dealmaker, assemble the full array of international carrots, and package a deal Iran cannot reasonably refuse.

No New Nuclear Weapons States recognizes the fact that each new nuclear state increases the chance of a regional nuclear arms race and the chance that states will sell nuclear bombs or material to terrorists. The urgent test of this principle today is the rollback of the North Korean nuclear program. Putting Kim Jong-Il’s nuclear genie back in the bottle and preventing Pyongyang from becoming a “Nukes R Us” for terrorists are the two biggest challenge the international community faces in the Asian arena.

The best hope for resolution starts with the Joint Declaration at the September 2005 six-party talks in which North Korea committed itself to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing programs and return, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA safeguards.” The only actor that can cause that to happen is China. When Beijing earlier interrupted the flow of oil to Pyongyang “for technical reasons,” North Korea’s response was swift and compliant.

Beijing will only undertake such an initiative if the United States makes this the test of its relationship with China. To persuade Chinese President Hu Jintao to undertake this mission, the Bush administration will have to subordinate its demand for regime change to stopping North Korea’s nuclear program and join multilateral, Chinese-led assurances that North Korea will not be attacked as long as it observes agreed constraints on export or further production of nuclear materials and begins moving towards elimination of its nuclear arsenal.

China will have to be the central actor in the design of a mini-step-by-mini-step process in which regional powers provide benefits to North Korea for the freezing and ultimate dismantling of its nuclear weapons infrastructure. This will only be possible once the United States and other major states recognize that their competing policies have failed. In addition, the responsible members of the international community should articulate credibly a principle of nuclear accountability. States should be held accountable for the nuclear weapons and material they produce. North Korea should be put on notice that any nuclear attack using a weapon or weapon built from fissile material that originated within its borders will be treated as an attack by North Korea and will be met with “a full retaliatory response.”