Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe by Graham Allison

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A leading strategist opens our eyes to the greatest terrorist threat of all-and how to prevent it before it's too late

Americans in the twenty-first century are keenly aware of the many forms of terrorism: hijackings, biological attacks, chemical weapons. But rarely do we allow ourselves to face squarely the deadliest form of terrorism, because it is almost too scary to think about-a terrorist group exploding a nuclear device in an American city.

In this urgent call to action, Graham Allison, one of America's leading experts on nuclear weapons and national security, presents the evidence for two provocative, compelling conclusions. First, if policy makers in Washington keep doing what they are currently doing about the threat, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is likely to occur in the next decade. And if one lengthens the time frame, a nuclear strike is inevitable. Second, the surprising and largely unrecognized good news is that nuclear terrorism is, in fact, preventable. In these pages, Allison offers an ambitious but feasible blueprint for eliminating the possibility of nuclear terrorist attacks.

The United States once relied on the threat of mutually assured destruction to deter the Soviet Union from launching a nuclear strike. But in today's fragmented world, a new strategy is needed, especially with nuclear material vulnerable to theft or sale through black-market channels.

The choice is ours: to grab this beast by the horns or to be impaled on those horns. We do not have the luxury of hoping the problem will go away, and Allison shows why.

The Washington Post - John Tirman

In Nuclear Terrorism, Allison paints a picture of potential calamity by describing what the detonation of nuclear bombs would do to various cities -- Washington, New York, Chicago -- in a litany that calls to mind a Helen Caldicott speech circa 1980. He points out where and how nuclear weapons and materials are unsatisfactorily safeguarded, and how groups like al Qaeda are working hard to acquire them. So much of what Allison imparts is familiar -- analysts such as Paul Leventhal have been writing about these threats for years -- that it would be easy to overlook a compelling message: We are courting colossal disaster, and we need to take action now.

The New York Times - James Hoge

Allison's comprehensive but accessible treatment of this vital subject is a major contribution to public understanding. In turn, an informed public could spur the government to complete the counterterrorism agenda. Only then, as Allison argues, will nuclear terror against America prove preventable.

Publishers Weekly

A founding dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Allison applies a long, distinguished career in government and academia to this sobering-indeed frightening-presentation of U.S. vulnerability to a terrorist nuclear attack. While he begins by asserting such an attack is preventable, the balance of his text is anything but reassuring. Allison begins by describing the broad spectrum of groups who could intend a nuclear strike against the U.S. They range from an al-Qaeda with its own Manhattan Project to small and determined doomsday cults. Their tools can include a broad spectrum of weapons, either stolen or homemade from raw materials increasingly available worldwide. Once terrorists acquire a nuclear bomb, Allison argues, its delivery to an American target may be almost impossible to stop under current security measures. The Bush administration, correct in waging war against nuclear terrorism, has not, he says, yet developed a comprehensive counter strategy. Arguing that the only way to eliminate nuclear terrorism's threat is to lock down the weapons at the source, Allison recommends nothing less than a new international order based on no insecure nuclear material, no new facilities for processing uranium or enriching plutonium and no new nuclear states. Those policies, Allison believes, do not stretch beyond the achievable, if pursued by a combination of quid pro quos and intimidation in an international context of negotiation and a U.S. foreign policy he describes as "humble." A humble policy in turn will facilitate building a world alliance against nuclear terrorism and acquiring the intelligence necessary for success against prospective nuclear terrorists. It will also require time, money and effort. Like the Cold War, the war on nuclear terrorism will probably be a long struggle in the twilight. But no student of the fact, Allison asserts, doubts that another major terrorist attack is in the offing. "We do not have the luxury," he declares, "of hoping the beast will simply go away." Agent, John Taylor Williams at Kneerim & Williams. (Aug. 9) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Al Qaeda promises that four million Americans are slated to die in its jihad. Such numbers mean dirty bombs and worse-and, we're warned here, the government is doing too little to deal with the threat. "If the United States and other governments keep doing what they are doing today," writes former assistant secretary of defense Allison (Government/Harvard Univ.), "a nuclear terrorist attack on America is more likely than not in the decade ahead." Never mind those other governments; what is ours doing? Many things, and badly, according to Allison. One is failing to assess the whereabouts and to control the flow of extant stores of nuclear materials; at least 84 suitcase-sized bombs once kept by the KGB, for instance, have gone missing since the fall of the Soviet Union, and American intelligence agencies seem to have no idea where they are, to say nothing of homegrown supplies of uranium and plutonium that seem to have fallen off the truck. This failure is perhaps understandable, Allison acknowledges, but it speaks to systemic weaknesses; after all, Western intelligence as a whole failed as well to put Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult on its radar, and the group "spent half a decade building weapons of mass destruction without arousing concern." Another failure is that of squashing Third World powers that have acquired the bomb; Allison proposes a "Three No's" program that begins "with an unambiguous bright line: no nuclear North Korea," even if North Korea may now have more than half-a-dozen tactical nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Still another failure is the war on Iraq, which has diverted attention from North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan-and, of course, from al Qaeda and all its terribleambitions, which "can make 9/11 a footnote." And so forth, in a somber but unfailingly attention-getting litany. We can stop the nuclear threat cold, Allison argues-but only by taking it seriously. His criticisms seem eminently well founded and deserving of discussion and debate. Author tour. Agent: Ike Williams/Kneerim & Williams

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Product Details

• ISBN: 0805078525
  
• ISBN-13: 9780805078527
• Format: Paperback, 288pp
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated
• Pub. Date: August 2005
• Edition Description: New Afterword Edition
• Sales Rank: 39,928

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