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When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was told on the morning of Sept. 11 that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, he paused, then continued his morning intelligence briefing, according to the 9/11 Commission.
If last week’s startling explosion in North Korea were really a nuclear test, it is certain that the world would know it by now. Thanks to a combination of technological advancements and international cooperation, there are both national and international monitoring systems in place that can detect nuclear tests worldwide. These systems are able to tell us, with scientific precision, whether or not an atmospheric, space-based, underground, or underwater explosion was nuclear in nature.
This book assesses today's Russian military and analyzes its possible future direction.
The Russian Atomic Energy Agency announced on September 1 that additional troops had been dispatched to guard nuclear facilities throughout Russia.The troop move is a sign that Russia recognizes that the threat to its nuclear facilities. US programs to assist Russian nuclear security also need to recognize that the threat has changed and move to accelerate and expand ongoing efforts.
Last year, after European Union ministers won a freeze in Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment activities, U.S. officials had an opportunity to exploit this breakthrough and negotiate an end to a potentially hostile program. The right combination of force and diplomacy might have worked to allow Tehran to build nuclear reactors, but not the nuclear fuel-fabrication processes that keep Iran’s nuclear bomb-making capabilities alive. Administration hardliners prevailed, however, and the United States pursued a more confrontational approach. They apparently believed that they had solid evidence of Iranian violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that would allow them to bring Iran before the UN Security Council, or provide justification for military strikes against the regime. But, it was no slam dunk.
Vice presidential nominee John Edwards affirmed that the highest national security priority of a Kerry-Edwards administration will be to prevent nuclear terrorism.
A little common sense shows that a Niger uranium sale--even if attempted--was always highly improbable and was never a serious threat.
Although detailed information about reprocessing was declassified by the United States and France in the 1950s and is generally available, it is still a complex procedure from an engineering point of view. Almost every nation that has tried to develop nuclear-weapons via the plutonium route—India, Iraq, Israel, and Pakistan—has sought outside help from the advanced nuclear-supplier countries.
Any long-term solution to ending the Iranian nuclear program will have to include limits to other national programs to enrich uranium, including that in Brazil. No nation will willing agree to a policy it sees as discriminatory; there will have to be one standard acceptable to all nations.