School of Foreign Service Dean Robert Gallucci and Center for Peace and Security Studies Director Daniel Byman went head to head on the danger of nuclear terrorism in a debate last night.
While both agreed that several terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, have shown the intention to acquire nuclear weapons, Byman, an expert on counterterrorism, said that it is unlikely that terrorists would use them because they follow fairly predictable patterns and do not generally seek excessive casualties.
“In terms of tactics, terrorists are surprisingly predictable,” he said. “Terrorists want a lot of people watching, a lot of people listening, not a lot of people dead.”
High casualties lead those who might otherwise support the terrorist organization to sympathize with the victims instead, he said. Very few people have both the intention and the capability to orchestrate a nuclear attack. But Gallucci, an expert on nuclear weapons, said that al-Qaeda has demonstrated very clear intentions, even going so far as to advertise for nuclear scientists. If al-Qaeda acquired a nuclear weapon, they would very likely detonate it in an American city, with immediate casualties exceeding 100,000 and doubling in subsequent weeks, he said.
Gallucci said that the threat posed by nuclear terrorism is the greatest challenge facing the United States, and that the U.S. is now more vulnerable than it has been since 1814. Since then, the U.S. has been able to deny access to enemy militaries or to deter attack through the threat of reprisal.
“The terrorist threat is different,” he said. “It for the first time presents us with a threat that cannot be prevented through defense by denial or defense by deterrence.”
Byman disagreed with Galllucci, saying that while nuclear terrorism is not implausible, it should not receive the overwhelming attention of the U.S. government. According to Byman, the nuclear threat has been overstated, and it would be extremely dangerous to lose sight of more conventional dangers.
“I am tremendously worried about distracting from other concerns,” he said.
Byman said that when he was working on counterterrorism for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1990s, the preeminent focus was on weapons of mass destruction, leaving open the threat of more conventional and equally lethal attacks.
He also said that though the individual steps necessary for the development of a nuclear weapon are individually very simple, the network necessary for putting each step together would be extremely vulnerable.
Gallucci agreed it would be hard to put a weapon together, but said it would not be hard enough.
Fissile uranium and plutonium has gone missing in the past, he said, and a simple nuclear device would not be difficult to construct, even for inexperienced scientists.
Gallucci said that he is not completely confident that the nuclear material can still be prevented from reaching terrorist hands.
