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Abstract
Nuclear proliferation, lax security standards in the storage of fissile materials, and international apathy in the prosecution of terrorists make nuclear terror a serious threat to the United States and its allies, yet no doctrine of retaliation has been established. To decrease the probability of terrorist use of nuclear weapons, a doctrine of retaliation—a negligence doctrine—should be considered. If the United States can distinguish whose fissile material was used for a nuclear terror event, a negligence doctrine would prescribe retaliation against that state. Where the proximate cause—terrorists—is unavailable for deterrent retaliation, deterring an accessible mediate cause—a state that has failed to adequately secure its fissile material—is one of a few effective alternatives. In the absence of such a negligence doctrine, the United States and its allies are increasingly vulnerable to a nuclear terror attack and the ensuing negative consequences.
Acknowledgments
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or those thanked in this acknowledgement. The author would like to thank Graham Allison, Matthew Bunn, Micah Zenko, and Philipp Bleek at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, as well as Scott Parrish, Lisa Donohoe and anonymous reviewers for the Nonproliferation Review.
Notes
1. As this viewpoint goes to press, the Harvard International Review has published an opinion piece by Robert Gallucci that supports the idea of expanded deterrence against negligent states. Robert Gallucci is Dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, served as a State Department official on the UN Special Commission on Iraq, and was the lead ambassador responsible for negotiating the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea on that country's nuclear weapons program. Robert L. Gallucci, “Averting Nuclear Catastrophe: Contemplating Extreme Responses to US Vulnerability,” Harvard International Review 26 (Winter 2005), p. 84.
2. “Bombs to ‘Split Spain from Allies,’” CNN.com, March 16, 2004, <http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/03/15/spain.invest/>.
3. Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier, and John P. Holdren, Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan (Washington, DC: Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, March 2003), pp. viii–ix.
4. Hugh Brogan, The Penguin History of the United States of America (London: Penguin, 1999); The Century Foundation, “Economic Impact of Terrorist Attack on New York City: A Fact Sheet,” Oct. 29, 2002), p. 1.
5. “Loose Nukes,” Terrorism: Questions and Answers web site, Council on Foreign Relations and the Markle Foundation, < www.cfrterrorism.org/weapons/loosenukes2.html>; Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier, “Preventing a Nuclear 9/11,” Washington Post, Sept. 13, 2004.
6. Bill Wallace, “Terrorists Shop in Russia for Nuclear 'Dirty Bombs,’” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 10, 2001.
7. Bunn and Wier, “Preventing a Nuclear 9/11”; David Albright, “Securing Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Complex,” paper commissioned and sponsored by the Stanley Foundation for the 42nd Strategy for Peace Conference, Strategies for Regional Security (South Asia Working Group), Airlie Conference Center, Warrenton, Virginia, Oct. 25–27, 2001.
8. U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO), Weapons of Mass Destruction: Additional Russian Cooperation Needed to Facilitate US Efforts to Improve Security at Russian Sites, report to the Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Financial Management, the Budget, and International Security, Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate, GAO-03-482, March 2003; Gabrielle Kohlmeier, “U.S. Seeks Expansion of G-8 Nonproliferation Aid,” Arms Control Today (June 2004), <www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_06/G8.asp>; U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, statement by Linton F. Brooks, June 15, 2004, <http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2004/BrooksTestimony040615.pdf>.
9. Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler, A Report Card on the Department of Energy's Nonproliferation Programs with Russia (Washington, DC: Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, 2001).
10. Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler, A Report Card on the Department of Energy's Nonproliferation Programs with Russia (Washington, DC: Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, 2001); Acronym Institute, “Bipartisan Push to Bolster US WMD Threat Reduction Efforts,” News Review Special Edition, International Developments April 1–May 10, 2003, <www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd71/71nr07.htm > ; Lisa Hale, Summary of Breakout Panel on Co-operative Threat Reduction, Nonproliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, <www.ceip.org/files/events/Conf2000panelctr.asp?p = 8>; Duncan Hunter, “Wasteful 'Threat Reduction' in Russia,” Washington Post, March 4, 2003.
11. Bruce Blair, “The Wrong Deterrence: The Threat of Loose Nukes Is One of Our Own Making,” Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2004; “Loose Nukes,” Terrorism: Questions and Answers web site; Kohlmeier, “U.S. Seeks Expansion of G-8 Nonproliferation Aid”; Wallace, “Terrorists Shop in Russia for Nuclear 'Dirty Bombs.’”
12. GAO, Weapons of Mass Destruction, GAO-03-482, March 2003. The United States will not perform security upgrades at weapons sites that are operational, as these serve Russia as offensive platforms against the United States.
13. For an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official's comment on Russian primary interest in “making money,” see Philipp Bleek, “Project Vinca: Lessons for Securing Civil Nuclear Material Stockpiles,” Nonproliferation Review 10 (Fall–Winter 2003), p. 7.
14. Monetary figures are based on $5 million from the Nuclear Threat Initiative given to Yugoslavia for disposal and cleanup of irradiated highly enriched uranium (HEU; not easy for terrorists to handle, and thus less of a threat), $720,000 given by the United States to Yugoslavia for relinquishing the HEU, $467,000 given by the United States to Russia for transportation of the HEU to Russia, and $1,312,000 given by the United States to Russia to blend the HEU into low-enriched uranium (LEU). The total cost to the United States for blending down enough Yugoslavian HEU for one gun-type bomb (48.4 kg) was about $7.5 million. For a full history of the removal of HEU from the Vinca reactor in Yugoslavia, see Bleek, “Project Vinca.” The figure on official development assistance (ODA) to Yugoslavia is from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Serbia and Montenegro, Top-Ten Donors of Gross ODA, 2001–2002 Average, 2004, <www.oecd.org/dataoecd/12/58/1883506.gif>.
15. Steven H. Gifis, ed., Barron's Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1996).
16. IAEA, The Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and Nuclear Facilities, INFCIRC/225/Rev.4 (Corrected), 1998.
17. Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism National Research Council, Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002); William J. Broad, “Addressing the Unthinkable, US Revives Study of Fallout,” New York Times, March 19, 2004.
18. The doctrine of negligent entrustment results in liability for an actor when he entrusts another he knows to be incompetent (e.g., a child) with a dangerous article (such as a car or a firearm), and harm results. To use an example from the U.S. legal system, according to a U.S. Fifth Circuit Court decision on negligent entrustment of a firearm, “To establish a claim for negligent entrustment of a firearm, a plaintiff must prove that the owner entrusted the firearm to a person who he knew, or had reason to know, would be likely because of his youth, inexperience, or otherwise, to use it in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical harm to himself and others whom the [owner] should expect to share in or be endangered by its use.” Morin v. Moore, 309 F.3d 316, 324 (5th Cir., 2002). The Court continues, “… an entrustment of a firearm is negligent if the defendant is aware that the entrustee is incompetent, reckless, or otherwise likely to act negligently with the gun.” Ibid. at 325.
19. The U.S. strategy on North Korea is from Ashton Carter, “Dealing with North Korea,” Speech to the NBER Economics of National Security Seminar, Harvard University, 2003.
20. Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, “The Unspoken Dimension of American Primacy, or, the End of Mutual Assured Destruction,” unpublished manuscript, 2004.
21. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961). For the viability of a nuclear first-strike strategy, see Lieber and Press, “Unspoken Dimension of American Primacy.”
22. For the history and formalization of strategies of credibility, see Robert Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
23. Lisa Martin, Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
24. Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory.
25. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963).
26. For security typical at foreign research reactors, see Bleek, “Project Vinca.”
27. For a formalization of the effect of a larger stake on the outcome of a conflict of nuclear brinkmanship, see Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory.
28. On the history of U.S. general war plans and nuclear targeting of China, see Lieber and Press, “Unspoken Dimension of American Primacy.”
29. Senate Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “The Operation of the Aum: Aum's CBW Program: Gas, Bugs, Drugs and Thugs,” Chapter IV, Section E in Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Case Study on the Aum Shinrikyo, Staff Statement, Oct. 31, 1995.
30. For the Yugoslavia negotiations, see Bleek, “Project Vinca,” p. 7.
31. See appendix for mathematical details.