What’s on Obama’s plate?
Dec 17, 2008
What’s on Obama’s plate?
We’re not talking chicken or fish, we’re talking more like nuclear terrorism and the war in Iraq.
When Obama gets sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009, he’ll have more than a full plate of items to deal with, addressing issues like the war in Iraq, the U.S. and now global economic crisis, global climate change, energy, terrorism, health care, the list – unfortunately – goes on and on, and on.
The Council for a Livable World’s research center has prepared – along with 60 leading national security experts – a transition report on how the Obama administration can effectively address the gravest threat to U.S. security: the spread of nuclear weapons and materials.
The executive summary and full report is available here.
The Council believes that given the rise of terrorist networks and the amount of unsecure nuclear weapons material worldwide, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism is one of the gravest threats to U.S. and international security.
“Every presidential candidate since 2000 has said that loose nuclear weapons are the most serious threat to international security. Yet for the past eight years we’ve done very little to address loose nukes seriously,” said John Isaacs, executive director of the Council and our research Center in a press release today. “What we need now is strong leadership as promised by President-elect Obama during the campaign.”
Besides unsecure nuclear weapons materials, we also have actual weapons to deal with. Almost twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States continue to maintain about 16,000 nuclear weapons. The arms control process has been stalled since the late 1990s when the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was rejected by the Senate.
The experts in the report recommend that Obama Announce intent to seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and begin working to build the bipartisan support in the Senate needed for approval.
Basically, the Bush administration was not only was sleeping (though we wish it was only that) on arms control issues, it actually reversed arms control gains made in the past 40 years. When Obama and the 111th Congress gets in office, they’ll have an historic opportunity to provide some real leadership on the most serious component of our national security.
Now you know our priorities, what are yours?
Our Biggest Threat?
Nov 20, 2008
In 2004, both Bush and Kerry called it the gravest threat facing the United States. This year on the campaign trail, President-elect Obama and Sen. McCain voiced their serious concerns on the issue of nuclear terrorism.
Our research Center recently produced a policy brief: "Understanding and Preventing Nuclear Terrorism."
Here's a few key excerpts:
Since the creation of the atomic bomb, government officials, scientists, and concerned citizens have been aware that weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of dangerous terrorist groups or rogue regimes. The rise of Al Qaeda and the events of September 11, however, brought the threat of nuclear terrorism into a whole new light for the United States. Suddenly, the detonation of a crude nuclear device in a major American metropolitan area no longer seemed like something out of a science fiction movie. Indeed, as President-Elect Barack Obama said during the 2008 presidential campaign, nuclear terrorism is “the gravest danger we face.”
[snip]
It is not the odds but the consequences of such an attack that propel nuclear terrorism to the top of the U.S. national security agenda. A March 2003 report by Harvard University’s Project on Managing the Atom found that if a ten-kiloton nuclear weapon, approximately the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, were detonated at Manhattan’s Grand Central Station in New York, it would instantly kill over 500,000 people, injure hundreds of thousands, and cause over $1 trillion in direct damages.
[snip]
If the United States and countries around the world are serious about preventing a nuclear attack by a terrorist group, efforts to contain the threat at its source need serious attention. According to the Partnership for a Secure America, the biggest problem is the lack of coordination on counter-nuclear terrorism efforts across federal agencies. Congress tried to remedy this shortcoming in 2007 with H.R. 1, the 9/11 Commission Act, which created a White House Coordinator for the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. Unfortunately, the Bush administration chose to ignore the law and never filled the position. Failures in coordination are similarly reflected at the international level, where bilateral and multilateral engagement to prevent nuclear terrorism is equally fragmented.