Nuclear Terrorism: Threat to the Public or to Credibility?

Jonathan Schachter, Yoel Guzansky, and Yoram Schweitzer During a recent trip to Prague, where he signed a new arms control treaty with Russia, President Barack Obama declared that nuclear terrorism is “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” Though the unique destructive power of nuclear arms justifies his concern regarding their spread and potential use, this grave assessment regarding the imminent threat of nuclear terrorism does not appear to stand up to scrutiny, and might even set the stage for weaker international non-proliferation resolve in the future.

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Threat comprises both intent and capability. Analysts are nearly unanimous in their evaluation that al-Qaeda has demonstrated the former through its public statements and its efforts to secure both nuclear materials and religious rulings supporting their nefarious use. Documentary evidence of the group’s interest reportedly was found in Afghanistan in the years immediately after 9/11. This is significant, for not only is the intent to cause large numbers of casualties consistent with the philosophy and modus operandi of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but very few other groups have ever demonstrated any interest in or willingness to acquire nuclear weapons and bear their real and potential associated costs.

No evidence that al-Qaeda has nuclear weapons or that it has the material or knowledge to make nuclear weapons

Capability is another matter. According to the RAND Corporation’s Brian Jenkins, who first wrote about terrorists “going nuclear” in 1975, “Usama bin Laden certainly wants a nuclear weapon. He’s been trying for the last 15 years to get a nuclear weapon. There’s no doubt that if he had one, he would use it. Al-Qaeda frequently talks about nuclear weapons….But the fact is there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has nuclear weapons or that it has the material or knowledge to make nuclear weapons.” If al-Qaeda has neither the weapons nor the ability to make them, the concern remains regarding the group’s acquisition of a weapon from a nuclear state, either through cooperation or following regime collapse. Here the question centers mainly on Pakistan, Iran and North Korea. For over 30 years Iran has provided shelter to and trained, equipped, and dispatched terrorists to strike at American and Israeli targets. Is it likely that a nuclear Iran would usher al-Qaeda or Hizbollah into the nuclear club as well? The evidence suggests not. First, despite reports of al-Qaeda members finding refuge and passing safely through Iran, the tensions and mistrust between Shiite Iran and Sunni al-Qaeda would almost certainly be a deal breaker. Second, and perhaps most importantly, we have seen no evidence that state sponsors of terrorism have ever provided terrorist groups with non-conventional weapons. The US has designated Iran and Syria, for example, as state sponsors of terrorism for more than a quarter of a century, and both states are known to have large stocks of chemical weapons (which they appear to be developing together; according to Janes, in July 2007 an accident at a joint Iranian-Syrian chemical weapons plant in Aleppo led to dozens of deaths). Nevertheless, none of the terrorist groups sponsored by these two states has ever carried out an attack using these weapons, nor is there evidence that they’ve been equipped to do so. The traditional and still quite convincing explanation for this non-phenomenon is that states are loath to share such deadly technologies because this in some ways dilutes their national power (this would be all the more so with nuclear weapons) and also causes them to lose control of when and where the weapons are used. In the worst case scenario, from their perspective, a terrorist group could even use the weapons against the sponsors or the sponsors' interests. Moreover, with regard to nuclear arms, while the forensic science is far from perfect, the weapons are largely traceable, meaning that a state’s ability to deny a connection to a nuclear terrorist attack is greatly diminished, particularly since the number of suspect states is small in any case. Thus while deterring terrorist groups carries its own particular challenges, state-to-state deterrence can help keep such weapons out of the hands of terrorists in the first place.

What, then, is the problem with President Obama’s efforts to focus attention on the terrorist threat?

History might or might not be a good predictor of future behavior, however, and the fact that states have not provided non-conventional weapons to terrorists in the past does not mean that they will not do so in the future. What, then, is the problem with President Obama’s efforts to focus attention on the terrorist threat? As Jenkins has pointed out, the spotlight on a nuclear al-Qaeda has created enormous fear, itself a terrorist goal, even in the absence of any nuclear capability. In addition, President Obama’s hyperbolic reference to an immediate terrorist nuclear threat can create a "crying wolf" dynamic similar to that created by the Bush administration vis-à-vis weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Unless there is some dramatic new evidence that suggests otherwise, which is of course possible, the US government’s assessments of adversary capabilities stand to lose credibility among allies, members of Congress, and perhaps most importantly in terms of terrorism, the public.

Crying wolf: loss of focus and credibility can make genuine threats more likely to succeed

Finally, the narrow focus on terrorism comes at the expense of focus on what should be the administration’s greatest concern – nuclear proliferation among states and the potential for arms races and the ensuing loss of control. It is not by chance that some of Iran's nuclear technologies appear to be based on the designs of Pakistani nuclear engineer A.Q. Khan, and that the Syrian nuclear reactor reportedly destroyed by Israel in 2007 was built with North Korean assistance. Addressing the issue of state-to-state proliferation carries the added benefit of being the best way to reduce the likelihood of nuclear weapons reaching the hands of terrorists as well, whether because of intentional sharing or regime failures. As in all instances of crying wolf, the loss of focus and credibility can make genuine threats more likely to succeed.