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Council on Foreign Relations
New York, N.Y.
ROBERT GALLUCCI: Welcome. I’m Bob Gallucci. I’m dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and with me is Graham Allison, director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The format today, for those of you who may be like me and have not experienced this format before, is one in which I will ask Graham some questions for about 20 minutes, and then, with any luck at all, during that period he will answer the questions. And then we will open the forum for your questions and discussion.
Before we begin, I have some preliminary comments. The first is, if you would do what I’m about to do and check your cell phone and make sure that it is on stun or it is off, that would be good.
Second, unlike many meetings, this one is on the record.
Third, when we get to the question-and-answer period, all of you are free to ask questions today. When we do that, I would ask you to wait for the microphone to come to you before you frame your question, and that you state your name and affiliation before you do. And finally, in that connection, I’ve been asked to remind you that [we] would prefer you ask only one question, rather than five at a time.
Graham Allison, as I’ve said, is director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He was also an assistant secretary of defense in the first Clinton administration, and if you have read your bio, you know that he was responsible for a fair amount of genuine disarmament in the former Soviet Union. He was also one of the organizers of the Commission on America’s National Interests, which, of course, highlighted the threat of megaterrorism.
He has been at Harvard for 150 years or so. [Laughter.] He is an extraordinarily well-known academic and scholar and entrepreneur of academia. His first book, “ Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis”, I first read over 35 years ago, when it was a Ph.D. thesis in draft, and I thought it was the most influential thing I had read to that point. And most recently I read his new book, “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe,” and I thought that perhaps the most important book I had read. So I don’t know, Graham, what more I can say to endorse these books of yours. And the other thing about this, of course, is that I mean sincerely what I just said.
If I can borrow your book just for a minute, Graham, as we start here, there’s a quotable quote here. And if you’ll bear with me for a moment:
“The world’s most successful investor is also a legendary oddsmaker in pricing insurance policies for unlikely, but catastrophic events like earthquakes. Warren Buffett has described a nuclear terrorist attack as, quote, the ultimate depressing thing. It will happen. It’s inevitable. I don’t see any way that it won’t happen. Close quote. Given the number of actors with serious intent, the accessibility of weapons or nuclear materials from which elementary weapons could be constructed, and the almost limitless ways in which terrorists could smuggle a weapon through American borders, a betting person would have to go with Buffett. In my own considered judgment, on the current path, a nuclear terrorist attack on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not.”
Possible, Graham, yes, but probable? Is that an exaggeration?
GRAHAM ALLISON: Well, I hope so.
Let me first say thank you to Bob for chairing this session and for your kind introductory remarks.
But I would say it’s not meant— not expressed— as an exaggeration, or not meant to express an exaggerated view. Obviously, there’s a tendency to view with alarm any issue that you study for some period of time, and this certainly is one such issue. But I think, as I worked my way through the analysis, and in the part one of the book, which says “inevitable,” I take one through the who, what, where, when, how of the issue. I think that a reasonable conclusion at the end of that story is we’re living on borrowed time, and it’s more puzzling why it hasn’t already happened than why it could happen.
Other people who agree with this view— it may be crazy, but other people who agree with the proposition that, on the current track, a nuclear terrorist attack is more likely than not, soon, would include [former U.S. Secretary of Defense] Bill Perry, who’s not— certainly not often accused of being— having extreme views, or [former U.S. Senator] Sam Nunn [D-Ga.]
And I think, actually, when one works your way through the events, through the factors— the factors that would even lead one to think it might be imminent— [the] CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] is currently warning, as they have been, about another megaterrorist attack, even before the election. They don’t know that it’s going to happen, but John McLaughlin, the acting director, [inaudible] and even now said publicly that all the factors that led them to believe in the summer of 2001 that there was going to be an attack on the U.S.--[that] all those factors are stronger today— the signals— stronger today than [they were] then. And that was when, as the 9/11 Commission report reminds us, that [former CIA Director George] Tenet was going around Washington with his, quote, “hair on fire,” you know, trying to get people’s attention.
So [Osama] bin Laden— having challenged the al Qaeda movement to trump 9/11— you do the list of things that can do that, and it’s not too long. So, I think, when I go through the objective factors, I simply can’t see why this hasn’t happened already, and why it’s not going to happen if we leave them all, you know, as they are.
GALLUCCI: I’m going to press you here on this point, because we’re going to get to some rather extraordinary prescriptions at the end, and— which it’s kind of hard to take if you don’t buy into the initial proposition that this is real.
And you observed that you are struck by the fact this hasn’t happened yet, which indicates you have a certain capacity for surprise. So, I’m wondering whether, you know, you might not still be surprised. It has been at least a decade— more than a decade— that we’ve been aware of this problem. We’ve been talking about loose nukes. We’ve had Nunn-Lugar legislation [of 1991 to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction], cooperative threat reduction, International Science & Technology Center [ISTC]. We’ve had— and this administration has its own programs to deal with this problem. And yet, you think that the situation is that serious. And can you explain why we haven’t confronted it so far?
ALLISON: I don’t have a good answer to the question why this has not happened already. And I think it is the case that some of the factors that we worried about in 1991, when the Soviet Union disappeared, have actually gotten better. There are some elements of it that are better, but in the— if you give me a minute, I would say— in the introductory chapter, I go through an actual incident, just to make it plain this is not hypothetical, or an analyst’s scenario.
So it’s one month to a day after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Tenet goes in to the Oval Office and informs President [George W.] Bush that a CIA agent, code name Dragonfire, reports that al Qaeda has a 10-kiloton weapon. That would be a small warhead, less than half of the size of one of these tables, but that would make a blast of 10 kilotons, which is about Hiroshima-style— and that it has it in New York City.
So the question is, is this possible? So the questions ensue. One, did the Soviet Union have 10-kiloton weapons? Answer: Yes. Are all these weapons accounted for? Answer: No. Could al Qaeda have acquired one of these weapons? Answer: Yes. Could al Qaeda have brought such a weapon to New York City without our otherwise knowing about it? Answer: Yes.
So there was no basis in science, or technology, or logic, or politics, for dismissing this as a real possibility. That’s the occasion when [Vice President Dick] Cheney evacuated Washington, because such a weapon might just as well be in Washington, and we stood up this alternative government at the [inaudible], which went on for some period of time— in case Washington blew up, there would be “continuity of government,” as we used to call it in the Cold War. And NEST [Nuclear Emergency Support] teams, which are these nuclear ninjas, were dispatched to New York City to look to see if they could find any evidence of such a bomb.
After several days in which, interestingly, [New York City] Mayor [Rudolph] Giuliani was not informed— he was an unhappy camper when he learned about this after. But, in any case, I think they made the right decision, because that would have leaked, and then what sort of rumors? But after several days, other pieces of evidence that came in the Dragonfire report didn’t pan out, so it was put in the list of false alarms.
But just to repeat, here was an actual situation in which it was the basis for saying this wasn’t actually happening, and there was none.
Now, good news and bad news, just briefly. I would say the good news— in the book I offer a nice quote from Vice President Cheney when he was secretary of defense. This is in December, 1991. This is the quote that introduces Chapter 2. He’s on “Meet the Press,” December, 1991, and he says, quote, “If the Soviets do an excellent job of retaining control over their stockpile of nuclear weapons— let’s assume they’ve got 25,000, that’s the ballpark figure— and they are 99 percent successful, that would mean you could still have as many as 250 that they were not able to control.”
Was that a— did anybody say: Oh, no, no, no. Don’t worry, they’re going to do a lot better than 99 percent, you know, this is not an issue? No, absolutely not. Indeed, Cheney went on to say, and that would be— I mean, FedEx would have a hard time with that exercise, OK, but— [laughter]--the former Soviet Union when the place was falling apart.
In any case, this was a project I worked on, that I had the good fortune to be part of at the beginning of the Clinton administration. To the best of our knowledge, all those weapons, about 16,000 of them, which were in newly independent countries, got back to Russia. If you told me we found one today, I would say, “Well, OK, maybe they didn’t all get back. But we know for sure we hadn’t found one outside of Russia.” So I said that’s a big positive factor.
On the other hand, after the 9/11 attack, anybody who doesn’t get it that there’s somebody out there who wants to kill thousands of Americans, I think, is living in la-la land. This fellow did kill 3,000 people that day. He would like to kill a lot more. Again, in the introductory chapter, I give you a long discussion of his objective— bin Laden‘s objective for America— and it is to kill 4 million Americans, he says, quote, “Four million Americans, including 2 million children.”
And you think, Where in the world does somebody get such an estimate? As I point out, he puts it up on their website. This doesn’t come out of thin air. This is what he believes is required to balance the scales of justice for the Muslims who have been killed by what he calls the Jewish-Christian crusaders, by which he means Israel and the United States. And he goes through all the battles and incidents— Jenin, this many; Shatila, this many; sanctions against Iraq, this many— and gets this calculation. So I would say on the negative side, not only do we have the factors out there that there’s plenty of places where they might get a weapon, but if there’s any doubt— as there was in some people’s minds before— that there’s somebody out there who would like to kill large numbers of Americans, I would say that story should be concluded.
GALLUCCI: Graham, let me do what I asked others not to do and roll some questions together.
ALLISON: Please.
GALLUCCI: Because the scenario here is actually blending two things. We could be attacked with, I think, according to your book, with a weapon that somebody gets from, presumably, Russia. We could be attacked with a weapon that is fabricated from fissile material that someone gets from Russia or Pakistan, or eventually North Korea or Iran. So the question is, aren’t the weapons protected by things like permissive action links, and if someone got the weapon, wouldn’t it turn to spaghetti or something and not be usable?
And second, do you think that al Qaeda is capable of producing a nuclear weapon, as opposed to a dirty bomb that just disperses radioactive material, producing a real yield weapon?
And the third here, either way, haven’t we put a lot of effort into detecting the introduction of nuclear material into the United States? Wouldn’t we catch them?
So there are really three questions masquerading as one.
ALLISON: OK. Let me try to be brief about it because they’re complicated, but I think they go with questions…Lots of people have, I don’t know, I would say some myths or— about this— which is that, Well, these guys couldn’t get a nuclear weapon and they couldn’t make a nuclear weapon, and in any case, if they were bringing it into the U.S., it would pierce some magical shield that we have, the buzzer would go off, and we would know that it was here. All three of these [myths] are false.
So first, there’s ready-made weapons: the 10-kiloton weapon that al Qaeda might have had that Dragonfire said. But there’s also suitcase-size nuclear weapons, 84 of [which] General [Alexander] Lebed, who was [former Russian President Boris] Yeltsin’s national security adviser, acknowledged at one point were insufficiently accounted for. And I try to advance that story in the book, and Judy and I were just chatting about it a minute ago. In any case, there’s ready-made bombs.
If they got such a bomb, unfortunately such bombs work for a long time. Now, in the Soviet case, they used to recycle— they would basically do a retune of their weapons every seven years. So many of these would be beyond warranty, but— therefore, the size of the explosion might be less than what they were designed for, but the chances that they wouldn’t make a fission explosion is quite low.
And secondly, most of these weapons made by the Soviet Union right up through into the [19]80s did not have locks— these so-called “permissive action” ones. The U.S. only put locks on our weapons in the late [19]60s, after the Cuban missile crisis, and people discovered that, holy Moses, there are people sitting on airplanes with bombs that they could drop on the Soviet Union and there was no physical control, you know, system in between. Even if there’s a lock, hotwiring the weapon is not an overly difficult task for most such weapons, even.
So that’s for the ready-made bombs.
For the homemade bombs, there again the story is not encouraging. In the run up to the war with Iraq, President Bush said, quote, “If Saddam had a softball-size lump of highly enriched uranium, he could make a bomb within a year.” And that was one of the arguments for doing Saddam. The president’s statement was true, but it was a special case of a general proposition, which is that if virtually any group had a softball-size lump of highly enriched uranium, they could make a nuclear bomb within a year if they can recruit a master’s-level person— graduate in engineering— in nuclear engineering from an ordinary American school. So I describe in the book what’s involved with this.
The Hiroshima bomb was never tested. So the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima— that was the test. The design is so simple and so straightforward that people didn’t have any doubt that it was going to go off. And unfortunately, that design has been public information for 30 years. You can go on the Internet and find it in 10 minutes.
So, the trick has been getting the highly enriched uranium. Now, that’s impossible for a terrorist group to make. You can’t make this in your bathtub or your basement; it’s a multi-billion-dollar investment in a large facility over some significant period of time. But if you start with it, you can make a bomb.
Then on the third piece, detection, I have a chapter on how would people get the nuclear weapon here. The fact is about highly enriched uranium, lightly shielded— like put inside a camera bag— it is almost undetectable.
So, there is no magical shield that prevents things coming to New York City. Indeed, as I mention in the chapter, my former colleague and Richard’s, Al Carnesale, who I saw last week when I was out in Los Angeles— he’s now the chancellor at UCLA— always used to observe: If you have any doubt about the ability of terrorists to bring a nuclear bomb to New York City, they could always hide it in a bale of marijuana. And we know that comes here. [Laughter.]
GALLUCCI: On that cheery note, Graham, suppose we now— we accept the magnitude of this threat. You acknowledge that this is not new, that we have been struggling with this for— you know, several administrations have put a lot of programs in place. What do you think we should do that’s different to deal with it? I mean, apart from all of us moving to the Midwest, what’s a person to do?
ALLISON: Well, let me step back just a second, and then I’ll come to it in brief, and then we can go off in different directions.
The main message of this book is not doom and gloom with respect to nuclear terrorism. I mean, the part one says [an attack is] inevitable if the U.S. and the other governments just keep doing what they’re doing. But, if you concluded that, you wouldn’t live in New York City, because the two most attractive targets for al Qaeda are New York and Washington, and we know about al Qaeda’s MO [modus operandi]: that they go back after targets that they’ve been at before. So, I give the description and discussion of [retired Army General] Wayne Downing, who did this job for Bush in the White House until ‘93, when he got so angry about what was going on that he finally left. But he says— and you can look at the discussion of that— so this is inevitable only, I believe, if we just keep doing what we’re doing.
Now the main message of this book is part two. And part two says “preventable.” So the first thing to do is to get our minds around the proposition that, unlike other forms of catastrophic terrorist attack, of which there will be additional attacks on the U.S.--100 percent, whatever we do— but unlike other forms of nuclear— of catastrophic terrorist attack, nuclear terrorism is preventable. So the subtitle of the book is called “The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.”
And the main point of the book, and main point in trying to write the book, is to get us to appreciate something that’s largely been not appreciated: that— not that we can deal with every form of terrorism successfully— we can’t— but that, with respect to this one item, which just happens to be the worst, this is preventable. That is because this is a finite challenge in which there’s a finite list of actions— many of them rather difficult, but all affordable, and, I believe, all feasible— that if we took, the likelihood of this would be reduced to virtually zero.
Now how can this be? This problem, unlike bioterrorism, just to do the comparison, has a strategic narrow. The strategic narrow is highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Unless terrorists can acquire two— either one of two elements, highly enriched uranium or plutonium— they can’t make a bomb, and therefore they can’t conduct nuclear terrorism.
So, I say the happy fact of syllogism is: no fissile material, no fission explosion— that’s the vast release of energy that makes this mushroom cloud— no nuclear terrorism.
Now fortunately, highly enriched uranium and plutonium don’t exist in nature, so you can’t go dig it up, you can’t go make it in your backyard. Actually, they’d take a huge undertaking to make highly enriched uranium or plutonium— well beyond the capacity of a terrorist group. So, I would say the chance of a terrorist group making highly enriched uranium or plutonium is almost zero.
So now, then, we have the second problem, which is, there is a lot of highly enriched uranium and plutonium today, but all of [it] needs to be locked up so that terrorists can’t get it.
So I try to— and new production of such stuff needs to be stopped. So the strategy for trying to prevent, I organized under a doctrine of Three No’s. The first No is no loose nukes; the second No, no new nascent nukes; and third, no new nuclear weapon states. Let me just say a word about each. OK?
No loose nukes. That means locking down all current nuclear weapons and all material to a new gold standard.
How much gold does the U.S. lose from Fort Knox? None. Not an ounce. How— what about treasures from the Kremlin Armory? None. So, could you imagine locking down all nuclear weapons and all nuclear material as good as gold? I’ve had a debate with a senator about this of late, and I keep telling him, “Write it down.” You know, this person says, “You can’t be serious— locking down nuclear weapons as good as gold?” I say, “After the first nuclear terrorist attack, that’s going to seem a silly observation. I mean, what is gold? Gold is just worth, you know, money. Nuclear weapons, if you try to think about the consequence of that, could change the face of America as we know it. So, lock it all down as good as gold.”
And I’ve got a plan that I outline in the book, where you’d start with Bush and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, or whoever is the president, and Putin’s sitting down and agreeing on what the threat is, and agreeing on developing a joint standard, and then committing themselves, each personally, that they would secure all their weapons in their society to that— to that standard— on the fastest technically feasible timetable, and would even do so in a way that would be transparent to each other. I like the idea of having the Russians explain to us how they would steal an American nuclear weapon or material; and us explaining to them, in order to have some confidence that it’s not going to happen.
I think they would go around and sign with the other guys. This is a complex— [inaudible]--but that’s no— [inaudible].
Second one. No new nascent nukes. Nascent nuke is new term. Apologies for the convention, but it means the people don’t— it’s been a long time discussions of— Oh, well, you know, enrich it— having a fuel cycle to enrich uranium, or produce plutonium is okay. And actually, the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] in the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty allows Iran, as it’s currently arguing, that it’s entitled to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium. The answer is, You didn’t understand what we were doing when we wrote that treaty. People weren’t clear enough about it. That was a mistake.
If you could enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium, you’re within months of a bomb, and there’s no further bright police-able line between you and them. So, this no new nascent nukes— highly enriched uranium and plutonium are nascent nukes. That is, they are nuclear weapons just about to happen. So, no new nascent nukes— there’s just not going to be any new national production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. We’re going to draw a new line. The test case of this today is Iran. I outline a strategy which I think— I would say it has an 80 percent chance of success, which if we sat down with Iran for, in effect, a grand bargain for denuclearization, we only want one thing: No nuclear weapons in Iran, in my view. There’s a lot of other things we would want. We wish that a mullah-cracy would change. We don’t like their human rights record. We don’t like their relationship with Hezbollah. But I would focus on one thing, one thing only, and say, Here’s all the carrots, and here’s all the sticks, that at the end of that game, I believe you would walk away from the table with Iran having agreed to freeze where they are today and back down on a step-by-step basis.
And the third, finally, is no new nuclear weapon states. So, there’s eight, and then there’s North Korea sneaking across. I would draw a black line under the eight and say that’s how many there are, there’s not going to be more. And then you say, Well, that’s unfair, to which the answer is— John Kennedy once was asked about that, and he said, “Life is unfair.” There’s a lot of things that are unfair. We should work on the— on the problem with the eight, and I think, in the long term, we’ve got to work on that problem if we’re going to sustain, you know, preventing additional nuclear weapon states. But in the meantime, and in the short run, which is the next five years, we’ve got to stop North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons.
Bob and I have talked about this at length. We may be the only two people who believe that this is a task that is absolutely required of any witting responsible American government. But I go back to my old professor when I was a graduate student, [former U.S. Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger, who articulated a principle that I learnt in whatever graduate school, and that Henry writes about in diplomacy even today, which says the supreme test of statesmanship is to identify strategic transformations in a state’s environment that would have such negative consequences for the state’s interests that it has to prevent them— it has to use all the means at its disposal to prevent them, however legitimate such a transformation may seem in the eyes of other people.
If North Korea’s acquisition of a nuclear arsenal and completion of a production line that will allow it to produce another dozen weapons a year is not such a strategic transformation, then I don’t know what is. I actually believe that if this happens, which I think it will happen in the next year or so if we just keep doing what we’re doing, this will be judged by historians to be the worst failure in American foreign policy ever— ever, because I think a North Korea that’s a nuclear weapon state, and it is producing a dozen more weapons a year, will indeed sell some weapons to groups like al Qaeda and some of those weapons will make their way to cities like New York or Boston. And we will, after the fact, be dealing with a— with a situation that I think we’ll look back and say, What in the world did we do? Now, how to play out that hand, you and I talked about? I’ve got some thoughts about it, but you have some thoughts, too.
GALLUCCI: OK, Graham, I think what we should do is open this up so that others can get into the— into the fray. I do want to say one thing for the record, however. When General Downing left, he left in ‘93— he did not leave in ‘93, which would have been the Clinton administration, but ’03—
ALLISON: ‘03, excuse me—
GALLUCCI: --is the administration he left in frustration. Just wanted to note that.
ALLISON: Right. Sorry.
GALLUCCI: OK. OK. The floor is open. Remember, please wait for a microphone— wait for a microphone. Do we have a microphone? Oh, good. And— name and affiliation, please.
QUESTIONER: Marty Gross, Sandalwood Securities. If we were to have a nuclear event go off in this city or any other city, how likely would it be that we would at least be able to know who did it and where it came from?
ALLISON: Good— good question. Let me just answer, just creeping up on it, first. If a nuclear bomb went off in Times Square, what would happen? I’d give you a physical description of that because that’s actually in the debate that went on over Dragonfire in the report of the ten kiloton weapon. It was only one question that people were sure of the answer to, because in the Cold War we worked very hard on this. What would actually physically happen if the bomb went off? And you see, about a half-million people in New York would be killed instantaneously if it was a work day. And everything up to a third of a mile from ground zero would disappear within a second, and out to a mile, it would [be] like the federal office building in Oklahoma City. I mean, indeed, because it seems like so long ago, and most people can’t really get their head around nuclear weapons. There’s a website that goes with the book that’s called nuclearterrorism.org, and you can put in your zip code of interest, and see what the local consequences are of an explosion.
So, to your specific point, if a bomb went off, and we had no other information than the fact that it had exploded, we would not be able to identify either where it came from, or who did it. Nuclear forensics are a developing subject. But if we had a sample of the material in advance— and we should be collecting such samples— but if we had a sample in advance, then we would be able to get almost a— almost a fingerprint. But if the— if the materials showed up today, one wouldn’t have a basis.
With respect to who did it, the answer is, unless we have, again, independent information, or at the scene something was found, or somebody announced that they did it, we wouldn’t know. And finally, if bin Laden announced, let’s imagine— God forbid— somebody— [inaudible]--it, and we hear that there’s been a nuclear explosion in Washington, and then bin Laden puts up on a website, or whatever that he did it. The reason why nuclear terrorism is so different than what we thought about in the Cold War, is that there’s no return address. I mean, if we knew where bin Laden was today, we would be there now, already. So we’re not able to, you know, go find what to do.
GALLUCCI: If I could just pile onto that, because that turns out to be a key question, of course, and goes to issues of deterrence. Right? I agree with what Graham said, but with this modification. If there was a detonation, and we would— we would collect debris, and we would probably be able to tell something about the design of the weapon, and the material, and would be able to tell— there’d be an isotopic fingerprint of the material. Now, if we had something to match that with, we might know its origin. Without going, allowing follow-up questions, I’d say it’s possible we’d be able to figure out its origin. That wouldn’t tell us necessarily much more, because it could have gone through a number of places.
All right. From this side, over there.
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible.] I worked at KEDO [Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization] for four years on the North Korea project.
GALLUCCI: God bless you.
QUESTIONER: Ambassador Gallucci put us on to it. You’ve talked— you’ve set out a description in your book, which I thought was excellent, about what we have to do. But that assumes that all the allies, everyone on the other side of Iran or North Korea, can get together on this— the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia, in the case of North Korea, and the U.S. and the Europeans in the case of Iran— can get together. There are billions of dollars at stake in contracts. There are long-term alliances. The U.S. has had a lot of trouble to date getting its allies on board to have a united front towards Iran on this issue, or towards North Korea on this issue.
Aside from using logic, which hasn’t seemed to work to date, how do we get, on the political side, how do we get all our allies on board, other than trying to make the convincing argument you’ve made? And Ambassador Gallucci, you may remember I asked that question of you the last time you were here on a panel.
ALLISON: OK. It’s a— it’s a very good question. But I think, let me disagree just a little bit with the premise. I think, if we don’t have a strategy, it’s pretty hard to persuade other people to join in a common view. Even if we did, it might be very difficult, but we— since we haven’t, we don’t.
So, if you ask about the North Korean case, there’s the six-party talks that occur sporadically. Whose behavior in this exercise for the last three years has been the strangest? [Laughter.] I would say, from having talked to people, three of the other parties who were there, that is, representatives of their governments— the Chinese, the South Koreans, and the Japanese— all agree who has been strange, and it’s not North Korea.
In the Iranian case, again, we, during the Clinton administration, nor in the Bush administration, have we had any idea of what we were doing, in my view. So, we’ve wanted a lot of things, but never clear what the priorities were with respect to them. And we haven’t been prepared to provide much in the way of carrots, and we’ve had no serious discussion about sticks.
So, if you look at Iran’s incentives, I would say, again, in the Iranian game for the last three years, which of the parties has been the most— the most purposive, and which has been the most effective strategic player? I’d say Iran, and I’d say good for them, you know, in terms of their objectives. The U.S. has wanted episodically to make statements about them, so they’re named as part of the “Axis of Evil,” and [Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John R.] Bolton gives these barking speeches from time to time, and then we go away and ignore them.
So, we haven’t threatened them with anything plausible. We haven’t actually offered them anything, but we’ve told them, among other things, We want you to change your regime, because we don’t like the mullah-cracy. We don’t want you to have nuclear weapons. Bush says from time to time that’s intolerable. But what means intolerable? [New York Times White House correspondent] David Sanger keeps asking it, and he won’t answer. Maybe it just means, I’m not tolerating this. And then move on.
And we told them they shouldn’t complete this nuclear power plant at Bushehr, because we don’t want them to have a nuclear power plant, and we don’t want the Russians to complete the power plant. Again, in the Clinton administration, it was confused about this.
I think what we should do is say, What is it that you are most interested in? A lot of things we don’t like about Iran, but there’s one thing that’s absolutely unacceptable, that is an Iran that has completed its nuclear weapons infrastructure, and therefore can have nuclear weapons. That’s not— that’s too much. So, I would assemble a whole set of carrots for that. What would they get for the deal? They would get an assurance from us that we’re not going to attack them to change their regime. They would— which I think is a fairly implausible idea at this point anyhow, but which they worry about a lot— a lot. They’ve noticed what happened next door. And we’re not too good at rebuilding, but we’re not too bad at smashing.
So, secondly, they would get the completion of this nuclear power plant at Bushehr, which the Russians have been [inaudible]. Keep telling, Oh, well, it’s going to be completed next year, and there’s technical difficulties about the completion. They would get an internationally guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel for the reactor at half the price of what it would cost them to produce it. And, they would never have to worry about the waste— the spent fuel— because it would be returned to Russia as well [inaudible], and besides, they wouldn’t have the plutonium in it that we want to worry about. And they would get trade and investments from Europeans, which are eager— which they’re eager to do anyway.
And what they would not get, on the down side— and the sticks need to be very credible— are first, severe sanctions. And if you could get all the parties to go along with the sanctions, that would be great. I don’t think you can. I don’t think you can. So, you’ve got to have a really big stick, and a really big stick, I believe, is a credible military threat to destroy the facilities for enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium before they turn on.
And the right person to provide that threat, I think, is Israel. The Israelis have said that such a— such an action is beyond their red line. Israel has explored such options. It has even talked about them publicly from time to time. And it seems to me if you’re trying to play out a threatening hand here, because you’re not going to attack anybody, the objective is not to have an attack, and not to have a war— it’s simply to freeze Iran where they are today. You want the most credible threat you can, and I think an Israeli club in the closet, and if you said there’s a lot of things you can like or dislike about [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, but one thing that you can say is that he looks like a credible person to pull the trigger with respect to the [inaudible].
GALLUCCI: Just so we get everything on the table, would you say the same about North Korea? In the end, would you also pull the trigger there? You wouldn’t have the Israelis do that, presumably. That would be us?
ALLISON: And the North Korean case is much more complicated, as Bob knows very well. Let me just actually take a small section for an aside. I would say that one of the great accomplishments of the recent period with respect to nuclear danger was the [19]94 Agreed Framework [between the United States and North Korea to negotiate a resolution on the nuclear issue], which Bob was the architect of, and which was trashed in a manner that I find completely almost beyond the pale in terms of political argument by the neocons, which is why we’ve been in such a hole on North Korea in the Bush administration, because people simply, in an unrealistic fashion, said, Well gee, you froze six potential nuclear weapons and a line that would have produced enough additional material for another couple of dozen weapons by now, and you didn’t do everything else, and so we’re going to instead. And that’s it— that’s the end of the— [laughter]--that’s it: We’re going to instead.
So, I had— I have a good neocon friend who says the latest joke in neocon circles is people say, Puzzled about our strategy towards Iran? Oh, it’s easy. It’s the same as our strategy towards North Korea. Which is, no carrots, no sticks. That’s it. Change your regime. Well, I think this makes no sense to me. And so in the North Korean case, we may want to go through the details, but I think in the North Korean case, we need to go [to] them, mano a mano, sit down, here it is. I don’t think we’re going to have any allies with us. Maybe we get the Chinese if they really think we’re going to do it— if they don’t help along. Maybe we get the Russians if they— if they think we’re going to do it, if they don’t come along.
But we say, we’re going to give you— we’re going to assemble all the carrots that are available from the international community, the whole shebang. But we’re going to have some sticks on the down side, and the carrots ought to include all the bribes that the South Koreans and Japanese want to pay. They’re eager to give money. Let them give the money. That’s great. And indeed, the Brits, [who] when they were there recently, said they want to give money to North Korea. Fine. Be our guest. You are going to be able to get this, you’re going to get that.
We need to give an assurance, We’re not going to attack you to change your regime. Why do they think we might do that? Well, they have in mind that maybe we said that we were going to do it. We did this before. They worry about that. And so we give them assurance we’re not going to do that. They get even to become part of the international community on a step-by-step basis. Lot of European countries have actually recognized them. That was part of your deal that you gave them, that we never delivered on, if you remember.
So, I would say, they can join the WTO [World Trade Organization] if they behave. Terrible regime, yes. Horrible guy, yes. Bush loathes them? Yes. All those seem right, but one thing we care about most, is that North Korea not be a nuclear weapons state, producing more nuclear weapons.
On the down side, I think this has to include— now, here’s the part that I know our friend Gallucci and I who’ve talked about this— I think there’s only two people who would agree with this part of the argument. But I believe that, unless there’s a down-side stick that includes a credible military threat to do something that would be severely punishing, I don’t think we’re going to be able to make this deal.
So, because I think we can’t live with the world— in a world with a nuclear North Korea producing more weapons, I’m prepared to think of something quite severe now, not because you want to do it, but because you want the threat of it. But if you’re going to threaten it, then you have to have the capability to do it, and that threat would be to destroy the facilities we know we know— that we know— sorry— to destroy the facilities— the material, weapons, and facilities that we can identify— [inaudible]--implying to them that that’s everything, but it may be and it may not— a little bit dependent on the— [inaudible]--with the risk that they launch the second Korean War, but having explained to them in great detail why that would be a suicidal decision for their regime. A suicidal decision for their regime, that if they were to launch a second Korean War, it would be a horrendous— impose horrendous— [inaudible]--on us, but the one thing that [North Korean leader]Kim Jong Il wants most, which is to survive in power, will be denied him— denied him with 100 percent certainty if they should make such a choice. I think under those circumstance, and again it would depend [a] little bit on the facts on the ground in terms of the particular time this game played out. Then you might end up reaching a deal. But, I agree, that’s a— that’s an extreme proposition, and I would say justified only because, when I ask myself what is the world going to look life if North Korea succeeds in having nuclear weapons and a nuclear weapons production line, I think that world is going to be even worse.
GALLUCCI: Down in front, right here.
QUESTIONER: Thank you. Deroy Murdock with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. We spoke about bombs and explosives, but I’m wondering what you think of this scenario. Let’s say we have some terrorists who failed physics, don’t know anything about bomb-making. They get their hands on some uranium or plutonium and simply go to the Plaza Hotel [in New York City], check into a room on one of the upper floors, open the window and just shake a container full of uranium or plutonium dust out over Central Park on a sunny, breezy day. Should we worry about that sort of scenario? And even if we could clean up the nuclear waste in that area, what kind of a psychological blow would that exact on our country?
ALLISON: Very good— very good question. In the book, I try to deal with the whole spectrum of things nuclear that are dangerous. This would be a version of a dirty bomb. And actually, in the appendix, I’ve got a list of frequently asked questions which, you know, give you your road map, and also websites you can go to learn more about it.
A dirty bomb, which could be sprinkling this stuff, or, alternatively, putting it in a shoe box and blowing it up. Dispersed— in technical terms— it’s called a radioactive dispersal device, an RDD. All it does, is take whatever level of toxicity [of] the radioactive material, and spread it around. And if you and I are exposed to [it], we get an extra dose of rads [radiation], in effect, which can then affect our health, including things like the likelihood of our getting cancer, usually over decades.
So, if a— if a crude dirty bomb were exploded in this room— take a shoe box, and a stick of dynamite, and some radioactive materials, the only people who would be killed would be killed by the stick of dynamite. It wouldn’t kill any more people than the stick of dynamite killed. And the dose of radioactivity would be unlikely to have [inaudible] in the very short run, so it would be unlikely that that would have those consequences.
And then you would have a contaminated area that would have to be cleaned up. If it was sprinkled from the Plaza, depending on the plume and depending on how, you know, the quality of the stuff, you could get a broader element of— but if you want an analogy, it would be like anthrax, and I think that’s the— that’s the kind of example. Anthrax is a big deal. [It] actually killed a few people, but not very many. And it ended up created a mess that had to be cleaned up. Most people in the business, I say, would call this a weapon of mass disruption, so psychologically it would be very disruptive, but not of destruction.
GALLUCCI: Straight back, Gary.
QUESTIONER: Gary Sick, Columbia University. You— in talking about this, there was one element that in your discussion of solutions you didn’t talk about. If your logic is applied— I think it’s being applied today with regard to a missile shield. It seems to me that same logic that you’re talking: We need to spend whatever we need to spend to deal with this and so forth, is being done. And, I’m not asking you to compare that, necessarily, but it seems to me that it shows that the U.S. government can do something like this if it sets its mind to it, if it decides that that’s it.
But you didn’t say a word about a shield. You said lock up the nukes, lock down everything, and establish controls. Did you mean to leave that out, that you feel that the shield is an impossible task?
ALLISON: It’s a good— good question. I was just trying to be succinct. The— if you ask where is it most likely to be successful in preventing terrorists acquiring highly enriched uranium or plutonium or to bomb? The answer is at the source. So, locking it down at the source is the— is the point of greatest leverage. Sam Nunn has got a good sort of line about this— at the source, it’s easiest for the defenders and hardest for the terrorists, and every mile you get away, it gets easier for the terrorists and harder for the defenders.
Now, I’m a small-c conservative. I worked very happily as special adviser to [former Secretary of Defense] “Cap” [Caspar] Weinberger in the Reagan administration when we were doing Cold War things. So, I believe in defense. I believe in defense— all kinds. I believe in missile defense, if we had a technology that works. I’m not for the current program, because— not because I’m against it as a theological matter, but because I think the cost of trying to deploy something that doesn’t work technically doesn’t make sense to me. But for research on defense? Absolutely. And indeed, I’m even for borders. And I’m for the idea that the country, America, should have borders— a proposition that, in case you haven’t noticed, you know, we don’t.
So, if you had to choose between two first approximations, neither of which is true, but which is closer? The U.S. is a country that has borders and a few holes, or the second proposition, the U.S. is a country that has a few protected spots and then no borders? The second is much closer than the first. And if you wanted a pretty good summary of how that picture really looks, Time magazine, surprisingly, last week or the week before, did a cover story in which they did just a story on how— how does the borders work in the U.S. The three million people, according to Homeland Security, three million people came into the U.S. across the Mexican, Canadian, boats, and other borders last year, twice as many as before 9/11. So, these formidable borders just don’t work.
So, I think— I would be in favor, though, as a country, of having borders for a lot of reasons, but including that one would have a better chance of picking up some stuff. But the place where we’ve got the greatest opportunity to do something about it is at the source.
GALLUCCI: You said you had a softball question over here. Who was that?
ALLISON: Not a softball, but I saw [former aide to President John F. Kennedy] Ted Sorenson stand up. This is likely to be [an] impossible question, but—
QUESTIONER: Graham, as always, I agree with almost everything you say. Presumably, a government unilaterally, pre-emptively, preventively, attacking another country is not terrorism. Inasmuch as from your own description, it would take only an unexpected change of head of state or commander-in-chief of the military in Iran or North Korea for either of them to decide that some madman in New York is talking about Israel or the United States giving them a nuclear blast, they would launch a nuclear weapon against the United States. Why restrict— why restrict your book to terrorism, to terrorist attacks, and an equal danger of those governments?
ALLISON: OK. It’s an interesting observation. I— maybe I haven’t worked my way entirely through this, but I— I think that the— that the face of nuclear danger today that we can best— that we confront, and that we need to look— look in the eye, is nuclear terrorism. And I think the reason why this seems to me the most dangerous— and I think President Bush’s bumper sticker on this is exactly right. He says the real— the gravest threat Americans face is, quote, “the world’s most destructive technologies”--that’s nukes, “n the hands of the world’s most dangerous actors.” And I believe that’s terrorists.
And the reason why it seems to me is that if bin Laden exploded a bomb in New York, we don’t have a return address. So the question of what to do is, I mean, yes, we’d search for him even more vigorously, but I think we’re searching for him pretty vigorously today. So, if there’s additional things we could do, most people haven’t— haven’t identified them. Whereas, let’s imagine even somebody like Kim Jong Il, with nuclear weapons and missiles if he could have missiles that could deliver a nuclear weapon to the U.S. Then I’d take at least some comfort— I know it’s not— I mean, I don’t think it’s— we shouldn’t take too much for granted, but I take some comfort in the thought that he would know that a missile launched with a nuclear warhead against the U.S. would be a decision to commit suicide for his society, that the consequence of that— a missile leaves an unambiguous return address, and I don’t have any doubt that if that were to happen— so, North Korea launched a missile against the U.S. with a nuclear warhead, that within minutes, North Korea would cease to exist as a— as a state. That would be one— one big hole. And so, that concentrates his mind in a way that deterrence concentrated the minds of the Soviets, or indeed of the Americans in that— [inaudible].
GALLUCCI: Deterrence works better against people who value their life more than our death. And that doesn’t include the terrorists. Right there.
QUESTIONER: Thanks, Graham. I’m Roland Paul. Clear cut and convincing answers. Let me ask you quickly on the— on the first of your three tracks, the no loose nukes. We have— and I’m asking— as you have quantified— this question entails a quantifiable answer, not a political answer. We have Nunn-Lugar. You say you want a lock down— [inaudible]. What’s— how much— what do we got to do to Nunn-Lugar to get to where you are— where you want?
ALLISON: Let’s put it in context: Nunn-Lugar is the program that Senators Lugar and Nunn created in 1991 to try to work with Russia to secure their nuclear weapons and materials. It’s been running at about billion dollars a year of activity, and currently it’s just less than half of the nuclear weapons and materials have been secured after now, 13 years. On the current timetable, which has been accepted by the Bush administration, this’ll stretch out to a horizon that looks like about 2020 before the job would be completed at this pace. [Democratic presidential candidate] Senator [John] Kerry has, in his speech on this, said he would get that job completed in four years. In my view,--[inaudible]--lacking in this is to get the president of the U.S. and the president of Russia sitting down, talking about whether this is a real threat, to each to their own states, and if so, committing themselves that they were going to take a personal interest in causing this to happen on the shortest technically feasible timetable.
And I would think that particularly after the— after the Chechen attack on the kids, on the schoolchildren in Beslan, that it doesn’t require much of a leap of imagination for Putin and his government to come face-to-face with the proposition that if Chechens get a nuclear weapon, Moscow is their target, not the first target. So, we haven’t— I think we haven’t been able— we’ve been— the whole process has been one like they were doing us a favor. And I think the proposition needs to be, Wait a minute, if this is a real threat to your society as it is, how can it be the case that you’re proceeding, and that these obstacles are preventing you from proceeding at a much faster pace?
GALLUCCI: Ladies and gentlemen, I was asked to make sure that we ended on time. This is on time. But, as you all know, Graham is extraordinary generous with his time, so he’s agreed to stay until 8:30 tonight— [laughter]--to respond to any of you who have questions, though I’m sure he’d like to be called at home— [laughter]--when the interview is over.
Graham, thank you very, very much for this. This was terrific. And thank you all. [Applause.]
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