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Our End of the Nuclear Bargain

Nuclear weapons are still the gravest danger to the American people. Lee Hamilton argues that the U.S. must take bold action to stop nuclear proliferation, including taking a look at our own arsenal.

As the 9/11 anniversary approaches, people often ask me what the United States must do to make the American people safer. The most important answer is the same as before 9/11: protect them from nuclear weapons.

Since the dawn of the atomic age, the human race has faced the threat of manmade death on a staggering scale. This threat spiked at different times – notably, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, we are living through another age of heightened risk. Loose nuclear materials litter the globe. Terrorists seek nuclear weapons. An insecure Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and a dangerously unpredictable North Korea likely has a nuclear capability. Iran – with its support for terrorism and belligerent rhetoric – is poised to follow suit.

American policy cannot simply be to tell other nations that they cannot have nuclear weapons – that policy failed with India and Pakistan, has yet to stop North Korea and Iran, and is unlikely to deter other nations if nuclear technology continues to spread. To make advances against the nuclear threat, we must approach the issue comprehensively, and that means – among other things – looking in the mirror.

Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the U.S. committed in 1968 – along with other members of the "nuclear club" – to, "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament." The nuclear "have-nots" agreed to not seek nuclear weapons in return for assistance in seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. These have-nots argue, of course, that the U.S. is not living up to its end of the bargain.

The U.S. has never adopted a policy of nuclear disarmament – indeed, we are currently developing new nuclear weapons – and we are not going to simply give up our weapons. Serious national security threats remain, and huge problems of verification and accounting for weapons around the world exist. As other nations seek nuclear weapons, it makes it easier for the U.S. to keep – even expand – our arsenal. Other nuclear nations hold similar positions. Given this posture, some argue that we should ignore the NPT, build our nuclear weapons, and move on. But this would be dangerously unwise.

The better course is to move in the direction of our commitment under the NPT. We should not develop new kinds of nuclear weapons, and should reduce our arsenal to as low a number as feasible. The Treaty of Moscow reached between President Bush and President Putin in 2002 sets a goal of deploying no more than 1700 to 2200 strategic warheads by 2012. We should go further – for instance, by destroying weapons instead of merely storing them. By doing so, America can send a powerful message that we take the threat of nuclear proliferation seriously, while still maintaining a nuclear deterrent.

There are several other common sense steps that should be taken. We need stricter controls of nuclear materials that can be weaponized, some of which are guarded by little more than a fence. We need to bolster our technological, intelligence and law enforcement capability to detect and interdict nuclear materials in transit. And we need substantially more resources to find, secure, or destroy loose nuclear materials, particularly in the former Soviet Union.

If we do not change course, the chances of a nuclear weapon being used go up with each passing year. Already, we are moving toward ever-more nuclear weapons in ever-more dangerous hands. Even if we are able to cajole or coerce one country to cease its nuclear program, as we did with Libya, the trend is still toward more nuclear weapons. Resuming the consensus around nonproliferation is a must, but not enough, to turn the tide; we need concrete steps to implement the principles of the NPT, and more robust inspection and certification efforts by international agencies around the world.

There is no guarantee that we can stop proliferation, but the extreme difficulty of the task must not prevent us from making vigorous efforts to try. The change wrought by 9/11 has been severe, but it pales in comparison to the change that would be ushered in by the use of a nuclear weapon. None of us wants to wake up the day after one of these weapons is used. Preventing their use, and creation, should be government's top priority.

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