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The United States Congress will seek a resolution that the development of nuclear weapons by any non-nuclear weapons state will be considered a threat to international security and subject to a clearly articulated, pre-defined, escalating set of sanctions...
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Summary: This should be the top security concern of the United States and every civilized nation. If we want to shut down the threat of nuclear terrorism, it is essential to shut off as many sources of nuclear material and weapons as soon as possible.
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Increasing the number of countries with nuclear weapons is a direct threat to the United States and it make it easier for terrorists to acquire nuclear bombs or material. If more countries "go nuclear", there will be:
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A large number of countries either hostile to the United States or with unstable governments will acquire nuclear weapons.
As William Perry, the former Secretary of Defense stated on April 2, 2008, "If North Korea and Iran go nuclear - I state this with sober, careful judgment - there will be a cascade of nuclear proliferation in Asia and the Middle East." 1 For example, as Iran has grown closer to fully developing its nuclear program, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have publicly expressed interest in developing their own nuclear programs. Russia recently reached an agreement with Egypt to allow it to bid to construct Egypt's first atomic power station. 2
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More opportunities for terrorists to steal nuclear material and weapons.
Weapons-grade nuclear material has been stolen, and this problem would become much worse if the number of countries with nuclear materials increases. For example, many countries that would like to develop nuclear weapons already have a few small research reactors with weapons-grade nuclear material that was supplied by Russia or the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The Department of Energy has identified 128 civilian nuclear research reactors around the world that each have more than 44 pounds (20 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium.3 However, "most of these facilities have [only] very modest security - in many cases, no more than a night watchman and a chain-link fence." 4
If countries cannot carefully guard even these small research sites, imagine how much harder it will be for them if any of those countries "go nuclear." It will be much more expensive, time consuming, and difficult for those countries, since they will also have to guard manufacturing plants, storage facilities, and the nuclear weapons themselves. If this happens, it will be even easier for terrorists to not only steal nuclear material, but to steal more of it.
Another worry is that a country may collapse, have a revolution, or have a highly corrupt government. If such a country also became a nuclear power, the chance for nuclear material or weapons to be stolen or bribed away would be a terrible risk to the U.S. and the world. This was a significant risk when then Soviet Union collapsed, and is a significant concern with Pakistan's unstable government today5 - it is one of the biggest dangers we face.
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More opportunities for terrorists to simply buy nuclear material and know-how.
This has already happened in Pakistan over the past 15 years. In an effort to create an "Islamic Bomb," nuclear material and know-how was sold to the highest bidder by A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear program. Nuclear bomb equipment, designs, and material was sold to other countries (including Iran, Libya, and North Korea).6 Moreover, A.Q. Khan's scientists met with, and perhaps sold or provided information to, terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. As more countries "go nuclear", more are likely to repeat Pakistan's example of trying to sell nuclear secrets to terrorist groups (such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, see Section 3 of the petition). Moreover, as the technology becomes more widely accessible, it becomes less "taboo" to simply sell it.
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A greater likelihood of state-sponsored nuclear terrorism.
Several countries support terrorists. They pay salaries, pay for equipment, pay for training. Sometimes countries offer facilities and headquarters to terrorist groups. Often they give terrorist groups money. For example, Iran, providing $100 million a year,7 is the main supporter of Hezbollah, the best trained and one of the largest terrorist groups in the world.8 Hezbollah has repeatedly declared its intention to destroy the United States and kill Americans. Iran, Syria, Sudan are each state sponsors of terrorist organizations.9 If any of these countries "go nuclear" and develop or acquire nuclear weapons and materials, they could give them to the terrorists they support. This is a very dangerous situation. These countries and their governments might be hesitant to directly launch a nuclear attack against the U.S. since they would be destroyed in a counter attack. However, they could provide the nuclear material to the terrorists they support - and the terrorist groups could then sneak a nuclear bomb into New York City and kill over one million people without anyone able to determine who was responsible. And, consequently, these countries would not be as worried about a counter-attack from the U.S. Allowing such countries to "go nuclear" is a serious threat against America.
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It is critical to draw a clear line that says "Do not cross!"
Most importantly, acting now sends a strong signal to countries considering acquiring or building nuclear weapons that they would be provoking the most powerful country in the world if they pursue nuclear weapons. This makes it less likely they will "go nuclear" in the first place.
This resolution, if implemented, does not mean the U.S. would have to take military action against that country.
It does, however, make it easier for the U.S. and the rest of the world to immediately respond in the most appropriate manner if a rogue state does begin to acquire nuclear-weapons capabilities. It helps avoid bigger trouble down the road if a state developing nuclear weapons is left unchecked.
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For states with neither nuclear weapons nor nuclear power plants in 2004, "development of nuclear weapons" also includes the development of either uranium or plutonium enrichment technologies.
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Nuclear power plants run efficiently on low-grade uranium that is unable to be turned into a nuclear weapon. Therefore, there is no reason for a country to acquire either plutonium or highly enriched uranium is to make a nuclear bomb. (For concerns about the use of plutonium for commercial nuclear power, please see Petition Section 5.)
There is no reason to wait until a country tests a nuclear bomb as proof that they are trying to make a nuclear bomb. A non-nuclear country acquiring any plutonium or heavily enriched uranium is a clear warning siren. To ignore this is to deliberately close our eyes to the danger.
If we do not enact this type of rule, there is no stopping a country from developing everything needed for a nuclear weapon except the actual "testing" of the nuclear weapon itself.
Furthermore, this "stricter" definition of nuclear weapons development conforms with the U.N.'s Non-Proliferation Treaty.10
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1 Former Secretary of Defense William Perry, speech, The Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, California, 2 April, 2008. 
2 "Russia-Egypt nuclear deal signed," BBC News, March 25, 2008.
3 U.S. Congress, Government Accountability Office, Nuclear Nonproliferation: DOE Needs to Toake Action to Further Reduce the Use of Weapons-Grade Uranium in Civilian Research Reactors, GAO-04-807 (2004).
4 M. Bunn and A. Wier, Securing the Bomb; An Agenda for Action (Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, 2004), pg. 36.
5 K. Roberts, "Pakistan politicial instability raises nuclear risk," Reuters, 8 November, 2007. The article, for example, states, "A senior U.S. general this week said the Pentagon was worried about the security of Pakistan [sic] nuclear weapons after Musharraf declared a state of emergency on Saturday..." and "Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has concentrated control over the entire nuclear program. But a decline in his support within the military amid the current political crisis raises a risk that control over the weapons could weaken. That could open the door to theft or sale of weapons material to extremist groups, some experts say... 'This is a country that's leaked nuclear weapons designs, centrifuges,' said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security... 'It's a system that's leaked very dangerous information,' he said, 'you have to worry about the integrity of the system in a period of growing instability.' "
6 M. Laufer, "A.Q. Khan Nuclear Chronology," Proliferation Brief, vol. 8, no. 8 (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: 2005).
7 D. Byman, "Should Hezbollah Be Next?" Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003.
8 "[Hizbollah] may be the 'A-Team' [of terrorists] while Al-Qaeda may be actually the 'B-Team'," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, press conference at the American Embassy in Brussels, 5 September, 2002, and as quoted before the US Congress on 18 September, 2002.
9 U.S Department of State website. See also Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, "Chapter 6 - State Sponsors of Terror Overview," Country Reports on Terrorism, 28 April, 2006.
10 H. Sokolski and G. Perkovich, "It's Called Nonproliferation," The Wall Street Journal, 29 April, 2005.
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Quoting from the article: |
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"Iranian negotiators recognize the leverage that nuclear "rights" give them; so they say that the only issue is to establish the procedures under which they will exercise their rights to operate enrichment centrifuges. In February, Hassan Rohani, Iran's national security council secretary, offered to open up Iran's enrichment plants to even more intrusive inspections than those now currently allowed. If this was not acceptable, he suggested that Iran would be willing merely to run a pilot enrichment plant that he claimed would be too small to make even one bomb's worth of highly enriched uranium. He even offered to allow the U.S. to buy up to one-half of Iran's entire nuclear program to build confidence that Iran's program would only be used for peaceful purposes.
These offers are beguiling. They are also bad. The reasons why, though, are likely to remain obscure so long as our diplomats continue to agree with Mr. Kharrazi that all states that are not in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty have a right to make nuclear fuel and that such activity can be monitored to prevent quick diversions to make bombs. In fact, there is no such right and nuclear fuel-making of the sort Iran is planning to engage in still cannot be safeguarded in any meaningful way.
The NPT's history and common sense clarify why the right to peaceful nuclear energy is qualified. First, the NPT, to which Iran is a signatory, is a nuclear nonproliferation treaty, not a nuclear bartering tool. If it authorized states to get all they needed to come within days of having a nuclear arsenal, perversely it would be no more than a legal cover for proliferation. A state could be fully compliant with the NPT so long as it declared all of its nuclear activities and avoided taking the final step (which in extreme cases would take no more than hours or days) of assembling the nuclear weapons-usable materials it had into bombs.
Second, if there are different ways to interpret a contract, the one that lends the greatest support to its provisions and prime intent is the one any sound lawyer or judge must back. Unfortunately, nuclear promoters and diplomats have disobeyed this sensible rule. When it comes to the NPT, they read the treaty's "inalienable right" to develop "peaceful nuclear energy" as being absolute. This is what leads them to conclude that a state has a right under the treaty to get everything up to but not including a complete nuclear weapon so long as it continues to claim that its nuclear activities are peaceful and there is no clear international determination otherwise.
This reading of the treaty, besides making a hash of the NPT's intent to block bomb-makers, is simply wrong. Article IV of the NPT makes clear that non-nuclear weapons state members are free to exercise their right to develop peaceful nuclear energy, but only if they do so "in conformity" with the NPT's nonproliferation restrictions. Which restrictions are these? The first is the stipulation in Article II that nonweapons states are "not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons." The other is the requirement in Article III of the treaty that all nonweapons states must place all of their civil nuclear activities under International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear safeguards -- i.e., nuclear inspections geared "to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons."
Nuclear activities and materials that cannot be safeguarded, then, cannot count on being protected by the NPT. Centrifuge enrichment of uranium for power reactors, which can be switched to produce weapons-grade uranium overnight; chemical separation of weapons-usable plutonium from spent reactor fuel; and the fabrication of weapons-usable plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) reactor fuels, all fall into this category. "
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