This August marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history. The massive loss of life and wider devastation caused ultimately led Japan, within days, to surrender in the Second World War to Allied Forces.
Seven decades on, the world is transformed from that of 1945, but nuclear security remains a key issue. However, rather than concern being exclusively focused on potential use of atomic weapons by one of the handful of states with such arsenal, the agenda of policymakers is increasingly attuned to the dangers of nuclear terrorism.
For instance, US President Barack Obama declared in Prague in 2009 that atomic terrorism is “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security”. Upon assuming office, his administration created the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) process and, to date, there have been three major NSS summits in Washington (2010), Seoul (2012), and The Hague (2014), with the next meeting scheduled for 2016.
In 2009, Obama set an enormously ambitious deadline to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years”. While this goal was not achieved, there has been significant progress, including in reducing the number of countries with access to Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and plutonium.
Enough HEU for some 3,000 nuclear weapons has been ‘down-blended’ by Moscow and Washington; around a dozen countries have returned their previous stockpile of HEU back to the country of origin (mostly to the US and Russia); a significant number of former nuclear facilities across the world are now both HEU and plutonium free; more countries have adopted international requirements for nuclear security; and around 20 countries have launched a counter-nuclear smuggling initiative.
However, this effort still remains very much a work in progress. As of late 2013, for instance, some 30 states, including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Pakistan had at least 1kg of HEU in civilian stocks. Moreover, since 1993, it is reported that there have been some 16 confirmed cases of theft of HEU and/or plutonium documented by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Illicit Trafficking Database, most of them in the former Soviet Union.
While the conventional wisdom is that the probability of a major nuclear terrorism event is low, the consequences would be so dramatic that it is a major preoccupation of the international community. According to the Nuclear Security Governance Experts Group, detonation of even a small handful-sized amount of plutonium in a nuclear device could kill or wound hundreds of thousands of people in a densely populated area.
Given the hurdles facing terrorist groups obtaining weapons-grade material, perhaps the bigger danger is the possibility that a terrorist group could detonate a small nuclear weapon or a radiological dispersal device (a so-called ‘dirty bomb’), in a major urban area. Here, the complexity of the operation would be reduced as conventional explosives would be used to spread radiation from a radioactive source.
Given the continuing threat, a very significant body of work is needed in the next year before the potentially final NSS in 2016. This meeting will coincide with Obama’s last full year in the White House and he wants to ensure the strongest possible outcome so that nuclear security becomes a key part of his presidential legacy.
As well as initiating the NSS process, Obama has signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty which will see Moscow and Washington reducing their deployed nuclear arsenal. And the US administration and other world powers, also reached in recent weeks a final, comprehensive deal with Iran to curb the latter’s nuclear programme.
Going forward, the ultimate success of the NSS is likely to be determined by several factors, include international ‘buy-in’, resources, and whether the process can be institutionalised after Obama’s presidency.
On the first issue, it is clear that stronger international cooperation is needed, especially between key actors like Russia, China and the US. However, Moscow has pulled out of the 2016 NSS, having attended the previous meetings, following the chill in relations with Washington since the annexation of Crimea last year.
Russia’s withdrawal is highly unfortunate given that the country is such an important player in attempts to counter nuclear terrorism. Indeed, the issue of atomic terrorism first came prominently onto the international radar screen following the Soviet Union’s collapse, when major concerns were raised about safeguarding the former Communist state’s extensive nuclear weaponry.
Secondly, on the budgetary resources front, key US nuclear programmes have received significantly less funding in fiscal year 2015, which ends on September 31, compared to the previous 12 months, underlining the challenge of adequate international funding to confront the terrorism threat. Schemes that have been hit by these cutbacks in fiscal 2015 include the US International Material Protection and Cooperation Programme — focused on enhancing the security of vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material in “countries of concern” and for improving the ability to detect the illicit trafficking of those materials; and the US Global Threat Reduction Initiative — focused on identifying, securing, removing and/or facilitating the disposition of high risk vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials around the world that pose a threat to the United States and the international community.
Thirdly, given that the NSS agenda is unlikely to be fully realised in the next year, it is key to look beyond Obama’s presidency. Especially if the NSS process is not renewed beyond 2016, it will be important, where possible, to anchor ongoing efforts into other long-standing mechanisms, including potentially the IAEA, so that the successes of NSS are institutionalised as much as possible for the future.
Taken overall, nuclear terrorism may become only a growing threat to the international community. While the NSS is a welcome initiative to help tackle this problem, it needs greater international buy-in and institutionalisation beyond Obama’s presidency if it is to fulfil its significant long-term potential.
Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS (the Centre for International Affairs, Diplomacy and Strategy) at the London School of Economics and a Special Adviser in the UK Government.
