A world without nuclear weapons: Ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson says we need to make it real

By Valerie Plame Wilson
Global Zero
Thursday, July 22, 2010


As a former CIA covert operations officer specializing in nuclear counterproliferation, I believe that nuclear terrorism is the most urgent threat we face - and that the only way to eliminate this danger is to lock down all nuclear materials and eliminate all nuclear weapons in all countries: global zero.

We know that terrorist groups are trying to buy, build or steal a bomb and that top nuclear scientists have offered to help them - Osama Bin Laden met with some just before 9/11. There is enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) in the world to build more than 100,000 weapons. There have been at least 25 incidents of lost or stolen nuclear explosive material. Rogue individuals are selling technology on the black market - A.Q. Khan of Pakistan did it for years before my group at the CIA exposed him in 2003.

If terrorists get hold of HEU, they could not be prevented from smuggling it into a targeted city, building a bomb and exploding it. A hundred pounds of HEU could fit in a shoebox - and 100,000 shipping containers come into the United States every day. Radiation sensors at the docks stand almost no chance of detecting such a cache.

The only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear terrorism is to drain the swamp. Terrorists don't have the capacity to produce nuclear weapons or material themselves - they need to buy or steal them. Eliminating all nuclear weapons and locking down all nuclear material is the only way to ensure that terrorists do not get the bomb. This will take years of painstaking work. But the alternative is continued proliferation and, sooner or later, an act of nuclear terrorism.

Many who supported nuclear weapons as a deterrent in the Cold War now believe that we need to move toward global zero. They recognize that the world has changed. The Cold War ended 20 years ago. The threat today is not Russia, but the spread of nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear terrorism. Ending these present-day threats by eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide outweighs any benefits in retaining nuclear arsenals.

The U.S. and Russia, with more than 95% of the world's nuclear weapons, need to begin with reductions in their Cold War stockpiles. Then major powers like China will need to join them in leading a global nuclear arms reduction process, establishing this as a global imperative and building overwhelming international pressure that allows no exceptions, including North Korea and Iran.

We will also need to strengthen monitoring systems, allowing international inspectors to inspect any facility in the world without restrictions. We have a strong track record to build on - since 1945, no nation has produced enough nuclear material to build a bomb without being detected by foreign intelligence.

We can get to global zero. We've already reduced arsenals from their Cold War zenith of approximately 70,000 to the 23,000 in the world today. And political support is growing. Presidents Obama and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia endorsed the goal of global zero and signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty - the first significant arms reduction agreement in decades. The UN Security Council declared its unanimous support for the goal. And the global zero movement (of which I am a leader) is growing fast, with more than 250 political, military, religious and civic leaders, and more than 400,000 citizens worldwide. (To learn more, go to globalzero.org). We will get a boost this week when "Countdown to Zero" - the chilling new documentary from the producers of "An Inconvenient Truth" - opens in theaters.

In the 20th century, America rose to the greatest challenges of the age - defeating Hitler, rebuilding Europe through the Marshall Plan, enshrining civil rights for all citizens, sending a man to the moon. As a great nation, we must again lead the world to conquer the gravest danger of this young century - nuclear terrorism.