John Wohlstetter - Sleepwalking with the Bomb

The more gradually a radioactive substance decays, the less lethal the instant exposure. Fissile Pu-239 has a half-life of 24 thousand years, and this is one of the reasons that it is more dangerous than U-235, with a 700- million -year half-life, or U-238, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years—roughly the age of the Earth and one-third the age of the universe.

The bad news is that fashioning a dirty bomb is a relatively simple exercise. Simply lace a conventional explosive with radioactive material. A terrorist would want to use something that releases its radiation more rapidly than fissile plutonium, and is thus more quickly harmful. The half-life of cesium-137 and strontium-90 is a couple of decades, while cobalt-60’s is just over five years, and Iodine-131’s is eight days. Unfortunate for terrorists, but good news for their intended victims, is that one can’t turn radioactivity on and off. Dirty bombs are thus more hazardous to the bomb maker than to their targets (except those killed by the explosion itself). As physicist Richard Muller writes in Physics for Future Presidents (2008):

[A]ll dirty bombs have the same problem: intense radioactivity from the unexploded bomb that can kill the terrorists, and diluted radioactivity after it is exploded that drops below the threshold for radiation illness, unless the area attacked is very small.

Evidence of the hazards of working in close proximity to nuclear material was provided by the deaths of two Manhattan Project scientists who accidentally generated a supercritical mass by momentarily merging two spheres of beryllium around a plutonium core, unleashing a lethal dosage of radioactive neutrons.

That no radiological device has been detonated despite the many radioactive materials available (cesium-137, for example, is found all over the world in unsecured or poorly secured medical facilities) suggests that it remains too dangerous for too little payoff.

So much for a stateless entity making a radioactive bomb. What about just stealing a real nuclear bomb? Top nuclear security experts believe that Pakistan has fairly sophisticated devices to prevent unauthorized use of its arsenal (as does India). Even without terrorists, a situation with two hostile, nuclear-armed, countries facing each other is extremely dangerous. Is the solution for America, a veteran of such situations since 1949 and a pioneer of nuclear safety devices since the late 1950s, to share command safeguards with nuclear weapons states, as it did with the Soviet Union after the Cuban Missile Crisis?

At first blush it may seem like a good idea. But sharing with the former Soviet Union was a safer proposition than sharing with a highly unstable country like Pakistan, an Islamic rogue state. It was safer still than sharing with a pure rogue state like North Korea or a revolutionary Islamic regime like Iran. At issue is what may occur if a nuclear device is stolen, sold, or given away.

Consider if Pakistan, after an Islamist takeover, transfers a weakly secured device to al-Qaeda (or if Iran transfers a weapon to Hezbollah). Perhaps, as a demonstration of terrorist power, the transferring state decides to target Germany. But instead—because of some action the French government takes at the time, like banning headscarves—the terror group manages to compromise the inadequately secured device and detonates it in France.

From the viewpoint of the terrorist group, which has no physical return address of consequence (caves in Yemen, let us say), either country works fine. But the state sponsor has a return address—and thus detonation in nuclear-armed France versus in nonnuclear Germany can prove a fatal difference.

Better safety devices enable a sponsor state to transfer a weapon with greater assurance that it will be used at a time and place of its choosing, rather than used at the discretion of the terrorist group. Hostile powers that sponsor terrorism would thus highly value command and control safeguards not only for safer handling, but also for offensive strategic reasons.

For the United States, the Indo-Pakistani case illustrates the extreme difficulty of pursuing a purist anti-proliferation policy given other compelling foreign policy goals. For countries we assist, it shows that determined states can conceal clandestine nuclear programs. What it shows above all is that whether a recipient of nuclear material initially intends to fashion a nuclear bomb is irrelevant, because the decision to pursue a bomb can be made at any time. Once on the cusp of nuclear-club membership—i.e., in possession of a sufficient quantity of highly enriched nuclear material to make a bomb—a nuclear-capable state can cross the weaponization threshold rapidly enough to preclude preventive action.

India and Pakistan each have perhaps a hundred nuclear warheads pointed at each other. These provide, besides potential for nuclear catastrophe on the Asian subcontinent, stark evidence of the futility of the United States trying to induce others to reduce their arsenals or end their nuclear programs by “setting an example.” Both countries deploy a varied arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles and aircraft.

America’s 1967 decision to freeze its nuclear warhead numbers and then begin reducing them—and its 1992 unilateral decision to end qualitative improvements—has not in any way encouraged India or Pakistan to do the same. To the contrary, Pakistan aims to double its already sizeable nuclear arsenal within a few years.

There is one more major proliferation frontier for Pakistan, which it may soon enter: the Gulf Arab states. Pakistan would reap a huge petro-dollar bonanza if Arab states, fearing a nuclear Iran, decide to purchase bombs from the world’s only Islamic nuclear power. This prospect is far from theoretical.

Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Feisal, warned several times in late 2011 that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon capability his country would have no choice but to go nuclear. Saudi petrodollars funded Pakistan’s renegade nuclear program. As it takes most countries that pursue nuclear weapons a decade or more to achieve them—Iran’s post-Shah program began in 1984—the Saudis will not wait. They will purchase bombs over a barrel (of oil, literally). They need not, initially, rely on Pakistani missiles, as setting up a ballistic missile infrastructure requires years. Instead, they can take bombs and put them on the F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers that they have purchased from the U.S.

It is important to keep in mind what America calls “nuclear capable” for America’s inventory. It denotes making necessary hardware modifications to physically carry specific nuclear hardware, plus putting in a set of intricate command and control protocols with sophisticated control hardware and software. From a safety standpoint this is valuable. But a nation at grave national risk may pass on these. Put bombs in a jet aircraft, then authorize the pilot to release them and—presto. A Rolls-Royce nuclear capability standard is preferable, but hardly an absolute necessity. When facing imminent obliteration a nuclear Chevy will do.

Saudi Arabia is not the only Gulf Arab state that can afford to pay for bombs and has F-15s and F-16s to carry them: add Kuwait and Qatar. That a nuclear Iran will create a Mideast arms race is a matter of indifference to Pakistan. Its growing ties with Iran are a contrary foreign policy consideration, but enough petrodollars can swing the balance of national interest for Pakistan in favor of aiding the Arab Gulf states over closer ties with Iran. For Pakistan, an obsessive focus on India remains the top priority. As the two sides carry out ballistic missile tests of growing sophistication, the need for funds will dictate Pakistan’s choice.