nuclear-news

Terrorism is in the news a lot these days. Beautiful European capitals like Paris and Brussels have been attacked. Historic cities in the Middle East like Baghdad and Aleppo have suffered carnage. A splinter group from the Taliban struck Lahore in Pakistan, once home of the Mughals, at the end of March. Even idyllic places in Africa have not been spared.

Paul Ashley, a retired professional from the British Armed Forces, has mused that 2016 could be the year of terrorism. Many worry about a “dirty bomb” that might combine conventional explosives with radioactive material. Two of the bombers involved in the Brussels attacks appear to have monitored a senior researcher who worked at a Belgian nuclear center.

This week, US President Barack Obama hosted the Nuclear Security Summit and fretted about mad men getting “their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material.” A 2014 report by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) estimated that “nearly 2,000 metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear materials remain spread across hundreds of sites around the globe.” The NTI report points out that some of these sites are poorly secured and that terrorists might have acquired the ability to build a bomb………

Pakistan’s nuclear material is at great risk of theft or misappropriation. –

…….As a state, India functions much better than Pakistan. Yet its nuclear material is not as safe as it seems. India’s military is in disarray, its intelligence is in shambles and the corruption of its bureaucracy is legendary. Its short-sighted elites care little for strategic matters and India’s nuclear material is not as safe as it seems.

North Korea makes India look good. Russia makes India look angelic. President Vladimir Putin did not even show up in Washington, DC. With the Pakistanis and the Russians not present, Obama’s summit did not quite have the oomph he desired.

The US itself is going through strange times. Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate, has suggested that South Korea and Japan could do well to have nuclear deterrents of their own instead of rely on the US. This flies in the face of nonproliferation efforts by the US for decades and did not leave Obama too pleased. To add to his woes, the summit might be living on borrowed time because no US presidential candidate seems interested in keeping it going.

In his early career in the US Senate, Obama worked with Dick Lugar, a Republican senator, to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. States like Ukraine and Azerbaijan participated. Things have changed since. As stated earlier, many states are declining and their writs are weakening. At some point, some crazy group will acquire the knowledge, ability and material to make a dirty bomb. Of course, states have a duty to prevent the making and using of such a bomb, but at some point they will fail. When this happens, the best response for all decent good people around the world has to be to keep calm and carry on.

Sadly, a nuclear terrorist strike is not merely possible or probable. It is inevitable. It is time to start preparing for it.

This article was first published on Fair Observer.

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