http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/28/opinion/28FRI1.htmlThe biggest danger point remains Russia, where huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons and materials usable in weapons became vulnerable to theft and smuggling with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Although the United States and Russia are cooperating on a program to safeguard dangerous materials and have fixed some of the most glaring vulnerabilities, only a fifth of the dangerous nuclear material not in weapons has been protected by comprehensive security upgrades, an appallingly sluggish performance. The effort has been slowed by clashes over American access to critical sites and arguments over who would be liable in an accident. Meanwhile, an ambitious campaign begun by the G-8 nations to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction has been slow to get off the ground, despite pledges of $10 billion from the United States and $7 billion from other nations.
http://www.coopcomm.org/nonukes/library/weinberg_on_nuclear_danger.htmThe danger is not that the Russians will get angry with us, or plan to attack us. The danger is that they will quietly adopt a cheap and easy defense against a preemptive American attack, by keeping their forces on a hair-trigger alert. This presents the US with the threat of a large-scale Russian attack by mistake during some future crisis; for instance, the Russians may receive misleading warnings of an imminent American attack and launch their own nuclear weapons before they can be destroyed on the ground. (According to Russian sources, it now takes fifteen seconds for the Russians to target their ICBMs, and then two to three minutes to carry out the launch.)
This danger is exacerbated by the gradual decay of Russia's capabilities for surveillance of possible attacks and control of their own forces, a decay that has already led them on one occasion to mistake a Norwegian research rocket for an offensive missile launched from an American submarine in the Norwegian sea.
Even though the threat of a large Russian mistaken attack is not acute, it is chronic. It is also the only threat we face that could destroy our country beyond our ability to recover. Compared with this threat, all other concerns about terrorism or rogue countries shrink into insignificance.
Such cuts would also reduce the danger that Russian nuclear weapons or weapons material could be diverted to criminals or terrorists. Instead of seeking the maximum future flexibility for both sides in strategic agreements with the Russians, we should be seeking the greatest possible irreversibility on both sides, based on binding ratified treaties. We ought also to be spending more on the program, originally sponsored by former Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar, that assists the Russians in controlling or destroying their excess nuclear materials. At this moment, when the Russians are eager to improve relations with the West, when considerations of economics provide them with a powerful incentive to reduce their nuclear forces, and when for the first time they have a president powerful enough to push such reductions through their military and political establishments, we have an unprecedented opportunity to begin to escape from the risk of nuclear annihilation. It is tragic that we are letting this opportunity slip away from us.
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