Nuclear proliferation, terrorism pose biggest threats to U.S. security

Nuclear proliferation is the single most important threat to the national security of the United States, said Robert Gallucci, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, reiterating a warning from President Barack Obama.

Gallucci and three other nuclear policy experts spoke at an April 6 National Press Club Newsmaker on global nuclear security and preventing nuclear terrorism.

The United States is living on borrowed time when it comes to a potential nuclear event, Gallucci said. The threat is growing, particularly because of improvised nuclear devices.

Designing and deploying such devices is not difficult, but preventing the acquisition of fissile materials such as uranium and plutonium is keeping us safe, he said.

Gallucci told the audience that fissile material can be acquired either by transfer or theft from such countries as Russia or Pakistan. He advocated that countries should forsake the future production of plutonium.

The recent Seoul summit got countries to the table and speeded up activities that were already underway, said Sharon Squassoni, director and senior fellow with the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The most important question that has not yet been addressed is how to focus attention on threats that are not visible, Squassoni added.

There has been a lack of enforceable standards that have come out of Seoul and previous nuclear summits, and the Seoul summit let several countries off the hook, Squassoni said.

In order for future summits to succeed, there must be leadership and a game plan that countries buy into, she said, adding that the issue of enforceable standards must be tackled.

Alexander Glaser, an assistant professor at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs, said that securing fissile materials is not a problem because the amount that exists today could be put in a small warehouse.

Countries that are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty could announce a moratorium on fissile material production as a way of reducing the current stockpiles, according to Glaser. He also advocated engaging Russia, China and India on the subject of reprocessing.

The Seoul summit was an underperforming event that didn’t demand attention, even though the Obama administration worked hard to put it together, said Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund and a former director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Plutonium didn’t get attention during the summit because South Korea wants to produce the material, he said.

Cirincione criticized the administration, saying it has a weak internal policy on plutonium and is not acting as if nuclear terrorism is the number one threat to the United States.

Even though the president has introduced the most comprehensive program to deal with nuclear terrorism, he is moving slowly on it, Cirincione said.