 |
|
     |
|
|
In the minutes between noon and 1:00 p.m. on May 17, 2009, a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon explodes in the back of a small truck parked against one of the walls surrounding Red Square in the heart of Moscow. Nearly 150,000 people die instantly; between 50,000 and 100,000 more will die within hours. The Kremlin, almost every major Russian ministry, and the nation’s military headquarters are vaporized. The United States Embassy is severely damaged, with survivors unlikely. A large, powerful, but marginally stable nation has been decapitated. Before sunset, the entire world is in shock. But the following chain of events can determine the survival or destruction of the globe. Tallying the prospects or consequences are what thermonuclear game-planner Herman Kahn called “thinking about the unthinkable.” During the first 100 days following the attack, Russia and the rest of the world suffer extreme to moderate anxiety as a culprit is sought through the arcane and highly secretive science of nuclear forensics. Conspiracy theories swirl through mass media. Nearly every existing international relationship is tested. Old grudges are revisited and new ones arise. Awareness seeps into human consciousness that the nuclear taboo has been broken. And stateless terrorists possibly possess the wherewithal to detonate another bomb at will, almost anywhere they choose. Experts give this scenario at least an even chance of coming true within the next five to ten years. For the past year, a Berkeley interdisciplinary team, in consultation with outside nuclear physicists, political scientists, military planners, and prominent Russian citizens, has spun the scenario up into a detailed thousand day aftermath. Their final report, entitled International Ramifications of Nuclear Terrorism, the first of its kind by a U.S. civilian scientific team, anticipates various national and international responses, describes the gut-wrenching decisions that will face world leaders, and offers some post-attack opportunities, while laying bare a host of best- and worst-case outcomes. The report was done under a contract with the Department of Defense and sent to the DOD this summer. It proposes steps that should be taken immediately to reduce negative consequences to global security in the wake of this increasingly probable event. Most long range planners have come to agree that the consequences of such an attack could be worse than the attack itself. The “Big Bang Project” (BBP) is the brainchild of former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Harold Smith, who named it as he did to draw attention to a situation he believes to be “highly lethal and impossible to deter.” With a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from MIT, Smith began his career at Berkeley in 1960 as a hopeful proponent of the peaceful atom. During five years with the Pentagon (1993-98), he worked in Washington, D.C. and Sergeyev Posad, a small town north of Moscow, overseeing nuclear disarmament and anti-proliferation programs. He is back at Berkeley, as a distinguished visiting scholar at the Goldman School of Public Policy. A 2003 Smith project at Berkeley produced a candid assessment of nuclear threat reduction in Russia. The findings were not encouraging. The nuclear detritus of the Cold War remains scattered about the country in poorly guarded military bases, and U.S.-Russian collaborative attempts to secure it have had limited success. So the BBP was a natural follow-up. But the details of this detonation scenario—a 10-kiloton nuke exploding without warning in Moscow—is just the introduction to the exercise, says the project’s co-principal investigator Steve Weber, professor of political science and director of the Berkeley-based Institute of International Studies. He says, “The point is what we learn from playing the details out.” The scenario, Weber says, is merely a window into the larger problem of nuclear terrorism, which Weber calls a “non-negligible possibility.” Many military planners, including former Secretary of Defense William Perry, who consulted on the project, are firm in their belief that a nuclear terrorist attack could occur somewhere in the world within the next five to ten years. “People who worry about this sort of thing are very worried,” says Weber, acknowledging that the U.S. government has spent a lot of time trying to prevent nuclear terrorism. “Defense intellectuals in and out of the military are feeling it’s time to assume the worst and prepare as best we can for something like this,” he says. The project’s goal, long an objective of arms control negotiators, is to limit the damage from a terrorist nuclear incident, not only to human life and infrastructure but also to international relations, U.S. national security, the global economy, and indeed, the stability of the planet. Most long-range planners have come to agree that the consequences of such an attack could be worse than the attack itself. “A 10-kiloton bomb detonated in the heart of any city will not be the end of the world,” says Weber, referencing the Cold War scenarios of an all-out thermonuclear exchange between the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R., “but it could easily lead to something very much like the end of the world—or at least the world we know and value, of globalizing economies, freer trade, open societies, and the hope for peace.” That’s a worse-case scenario that Smith and Weber and their colleagues believe can be prevented with foresight and preparation. One thing was stressed. Moscow is a feasible target for a terrorist nuclear attack. It is the capital of a fractious nation with a ruthless interior enemy, the Chechens, who have more than once proven their willingness to kill large numbers of Russian civilians. The country has had difficulty containing its own fissionable material. And a domestic terrorist in possession of a nuclear device would not have to cross an international border to reach Moscow. Moreover, Chechen rebels are mostly Muslim and aligned with al-Qaeda, which has expressed interest in obtaining a nuclear device. Moscow also was chosen over other major international capitals because it presents a more nuanced and complicated international relations challenge than the others. Having been at cold war with the West for half a century, Russia still is considered somewhat distrustful of the United States.
Why not American cities? That scenario would have presented obstacles such as requiring security clearances that few on the Berkeley campus possess, and it would have likely required time-consuming interaction with government bureaucracies. On the other hand, when asked if he thought a longterm aftermath study had already been completed for an American target, and classified, Smith answered, “No. If one had been done, I’m sure I’d know about it.” (The Pentagon did not respond to California Monthly inquiries.) Early thought was given to targeting an imaginary city, but team leaders decided it would be too abstract. So Moscow finally was chosen because its destruction would engage a unique set of crises that are important to consider now rather than after an attack. The bomb of this scenario is relatively simple. It contains just over 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HEU) that, based on intelligence reports, could have been stolen from a nuclear subma-rine refueling station by one man driving a small forklift. It’s about the size of a bowling ball and the equipment around it is assembled from 1966 Chinese blueprints obtained and distributed through the Mideast and North Africa by convicted Pakistani nuclear smuggler Abdul Q. Khan. The whole weapon fits in a sphere about 34 inches in diameter. It is coated with a thin veneer of lead to prevent detection of radioactivity. Detonation of this small device creates a force equal to the simultaneous explo-sion of 100 freight train cars packed to their ceilings with TNT. Although a ground burst in a crowded urban setting has never been tested, the Big Bang report assumes the blast would leave a crater of dust and rubble about 2/3 of a mile in diameter and set fire to every flammable item another half mile out from the center. Severe radiation burns and poisoning would occur much farther out. Moscow would be in chaos for months and in ruin for years. Because terrorists tend to be stateless and well hidden, immediate retaliation in kind is almost impossible. But some nuclear explosions do leave an isotopic signature, a DNA-like fingerprint that allows forensic physicists such as Naval Postgraduate School weapons systems analyst Bob Harney to possibly determine the origin of the fissile material in the bomb. Nuclear forensics is not a precise science, Harney warns. Post-attack sites are almost certain to be contaminated with unrelated or naturally occurring radioactivity, and there are numerous, highly enriched uranium stashes in the world with unknown signatures. But there is no question, according to Peter Huessy, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger and consultant to the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., that Russian forensic experts could quickly detect Russian isotopes, and that highly enriched uranium (HEU) from, say, France could readily be differentiated from American HEU. But, Huessy warns, distinguishing post-blast residues of Pakistani uranium from North Korean uranium would be more challenging, probably impossible. Because neither country is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA inspectors have been unable to collect from their facilities reliable isotope samples that could be compared to post-attack residues. Even if the uranium were traced, the source nation could claim that the material had been stolen. Nonetheless, the BBP’s report to Washington recommends that the U.S. government put the world on notice that nuclear forensic experts are trained and available, and any country found to be the source of uranium or plutonium used in a terrorist WMD attack might be held partly responsible for the attack. This implies in-kind retaliation. To contend with the uncertainty surrounding the forensic tracing of uranium and placing blame, Smith and Big Bang Project colleague William Dunlop of Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory notes in a supplemental paper, “the credibility of the nuclear forensic information would be significantly enhanced if provided or corroborated through a multinational or, at least, a bilateral nuclear forensic team.” At this point, no such team exists. In the scenario presented by the BBP team, Vladimir Putin survives the attack. He is traveling in southern Russia when it happens and returns to find his entire military high command and most of his key ministries annihilated. He immediately institutes martial law, although most of the officers prepared to administer it are gone. In public briefings, Putin struggles to persuade his country and the world that there remains a chain of command, although that’s unlikely to be the case. He is by all indications a confident, thoughtful, and level-headed leader, unlikely to lash out. But many officers in the Russian military, and more than a few powerful civilians, harbor deep, residual post-Cold War distrust of America. More than a few surviving Russian military leaders still believe that the August 2000 sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea somehow involved the United States Navy. Such people could be persuaded with relative ease that America was complicit in a nuclear attack, which almost certainly will surface as a conspiracy theory in Russia and elsewhere in the world. If we didn’t set it off, we knew it was coming and could have stopped it. Adding fuel to the scenario of a possible Russian reprisal against the United States has been the recent decline of relations between the two nations as the Bush administration has castigated Putin for human rights violations. Russia, in turn, has leaned more heavily toward China in trade and the two nations have been conducting joint military operations. Putin will be pressed to subdue suspicious military leaders, many of them in distant reaches of the country and in virtual possession of loaded nukes. If Putin were killed by the Big Bang, a question one member of the BBP posits, the post-attack likelihood of political instability and nuclear retaliation becomes even greater. One goal of the BBP team was to search for ways to quickly convince surviving Russian leaders that they would have no grounds for retaliating against the West. With that danger in mind, Harold Smith made a strategic decision. He brought two well-known Russians into the project’s deliberations—Nobel Laureate Zhores Alferov and Alexei Arbatov, a popular member of the Duma and, according to Smith, “the smartest man in Russia.” Their presence was meant to counteract a Russian general from waving the Big Bang report as “proof’’ that the U.S. Department of Defense had foreknowledge of just such an attack. If they are not too near ground zero when the Big Bang occurs, one or both of them could assure their fellow citizens that the BBP report is what it is—the product of an essential, collaborative exercise in theoretical, long-range, post-terrorist planning, in which they participated. The Berkeley team also stressed concerns about profiteering from collapsed markets, exploiting “holes of ungoverned spaces’’ by terrorist organizations seeking sanctuary, starting other wars between longtime adversaries, or taking advantage of Russia’s weakened international position. But positive opportunities also were highlighted, such as the chance to leverage geopolitical uncertainty into improved international alliances. Chief among these opportunities would be to advance global nuclear non-proliferation, something that has so far fallen short of success. Smith hopes for “an immediate opening (for disarmament) created by worldwide revulsion against the attack, even in Islamic countries.” Whether that opening is pursued aggressively will depend on who is in power in powerful countries, he cautions. Will al-Qaeda boast of having more weapons and threaten repeat performances, setting off world panic? Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar foresaw this problem in 1991 and together drafted legislation creating a Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program between the United States and Russia. The goal of CTR, which Harold Smith managed during the Clinton years, was to decommission nuclear warheads in wobbly former Soviet Republics such as Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, and tighten the security around all fissile materials. But critics of the so-called Nunn-Lugar initiative cited inefficiencies, and the program recently has been under investigation for alleged mismanagement of its $288 million fund. Further, the implementation basically fell into neglect, according to Naval Postgraduate School defense analyst John Arquilla, although he says, “it has recently been taken more seriously, and with the cooperation of the Russian government, has contained a lot of dangerous material.” The question the Berkeley team asks is whether the enhanced security came soon enough to prevent that theoretical man with the forklift from stealing a few hundred pounds of submarine fuel for his comrades in Chechnya. Another major quandary facing Russia would be what to do with Chechnya and its rebels. Almost any reaction would create a propaganda opportunity for al-Qaeda, intent as it is on precipitating friction between Islam and Christendom. One scenario has Putin expelling the Chechens from Chechnya and settling the evacuated state with Muscovites left homeless by the attack. A diaspora of angry Chechen refugees wandering though the wilds of Kazakhstan is certain to produce a number of trained jihadists who would join al-Qaeda, the team points out. Al-Qaeda is the wild card of any aftermath and is extensively considered in the BBP report. Al-Qaeda members have proven themselves to be disciplined communicators and deft at exploiting terrorist aggression whether they initiated it or not. But the question posed by the Berkeley team is how much credit al-Qaeda would take for an attack on Moscow. They might say they inspired the explosion, even claim to have been privy to its planning. The bigger question the team asked was whether al-Qaeda will boast of having more weapons and threaten repeat performances, an announcement that could set off worldwide panic and mass evacuations from major cities. But, if they were bluffing, and no attacks followed, al-Qaeda would gradually lose credibility and respect in the Muslim world. Perhaps, as Michael Nacht, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy and a member of the Big Bang Project team, suggests, they would "make predictions of Western retaliation and use any fulfillment of those predictions to rally support to their cause.” Any large-scale terrorist attack involving a weapon of mass destruction associated with Islam, regardless of the target, will have profound and lasting effects on all the world’s great religions. But according to Ron Hassner, assistant professor of political science, who contributed a paper for the BBP, entitled Rumors of War: Fundamentalism, The Bomb and the End of Days, fundamentalists in each religion will make the most noise and threaten the most violence against people of “religious minorities.’’ Most disconcerting to Hassner are “the pre-millennial groups that will interpret the Big Bang as the sign of a coming apocalypse.” And isolated Christian fundamentalist sects in America, he warns, will not reserve their animus for Muslims alone. Jews, Freemasons, and Catholics also will be targeted. These hate groups “are likely to take actions,” he says, “either because they believe that the apocalypse has removed existing obstacles or constraints (such as the authority of secular government and the rule of law) or because they believe that drastic action is required to accelerate the progress of the apocalypse.” A 1984 survey found that 39 percent of Americans equated End Time, as predicted in “Ezekiel’’ and “Revelations,’’ with thermonuclear war. And many who think that way believe that Russia was the divinely ordained prime target. So a nuclear explosion in the heart of Moscow will fulfill millennial prophecies. How millennial visionaries respond, and the extent of their damage, Hassner advises, will depend entirely on the awareness and due diligence of government at every level. This likely will involve a coordinated global communication network to counter dissemination of millennial propaganda. Weber is concerned about whether or not the BBP’S report will be taken seriously in the capital, where ambivalence about distant voices abounds. Will its identification with California or Berkeley affect the report’s credibility or reception in the Pentagon, which receives and reviews scores of think tank studies every day? Smith is confident the report will be taken seriously. Although the military employs scores of defense intellectuals who are, according to Weber, “much smarter than any of the civilians I know doing the same work,” the Pentagon and other federal agencies tend to trust contracted analyses more than their own. Outsiders’ work, it is assumed, comes uncompromised by governmental bureaucratic imperatives and in-fighting. Whether performed by consultants or insiders, post-crisis prediction is a very tricky business. The possibilities following an incident like the Big Bang are almost unlimited. One false assumption, one single factor, one miscalculation alters many other assumptions. But even if it’s a terribly inexact science, gaming the aftermath of nuclear terror at a time when it becomes increasingly likely to happen must quickly evolve into essential national research, the Berkeley team concludes. The minds and communication skills of surviving world leaders will save the world from Armageddon, hopefully with some forethought, which must include thinking the unthinkable. Some 43 years ago, U.S. intelligence learned that Russian-built nuclear missiles were pointed at the United States from Cuba, just 90 miles away. President John F. Kennedy ordered an immediate naval blockade of the island, and threatened an invasion. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered his field commanders to launch their tactical weapons if an invasion occurred. For seven days, Kennedy and Khrushchev stared each other down while the two nations teetered on the brink of a thermonuclear war. On October 28, 1962, Khrushchev blinked and ordered the sites dismantled. Looking back, one is tempted to observe how simple nuclear brinksmanship was then, during the Cold War, when two nations, the United States and the U.S.S.R., had isolated the threat of nuclear war to preemptive strikes and retaliation against each other. Even then, Herman Kahn, former RAND Corporation futurist and founder of the Hudson Institute, in his classic diatribe On Thermonuclear War, argued that the clear immorality of using nuclear weapons would not prevent their use. Instead, their very existence makes nuclear exchange almost inevitable. He then created a scenario for a post-nuclear world. Any nuclear attack, he said, wherever it happens, will be horrible for its victims, who will descend into chaos and misery. But they will get through it. They will rebuild their society “with a somewhat fanatic intensity,” Kahn predicted, and if their “government has made at least moderate prewar preparations… most people whose lives have been saved will give some credit to the government’s foresight.” With that notion in mind, Harold Smith has recommended a parallel Big Bang study in Russia; same scenario—a 10-kiloton nuclear explosion in central Moscow. The project will comprise a similar team of experts, all Russian, with a few Americans consulting. He looks forward to comparing their findings with the Berkeley Big Bang report. Mark Dowie teaches science at the Graduate School of Journalism. He has won numerous professional citations, including four National Magazine Awards. Act now The Berkeley interdisciplinary team drew from the Goldman School of Public Policy; the Haas School of Business; Departments of Political Science, Sociology, Slavic and Eastern European Studies; and the Institute of International Studies. The team produced 16 white papers proposing steps that should be taken immediately by the United States to minimize damage to national security. 1International forensics. Form a bilateral U.S.-Russian Federation forensics team to identify the source of weapons and deter potential suppliers of fissile material. 2 Evacuation plan. Have in place procedures for evacuating major urban centers for populations fearing a second attack. This would include identifying areas most susceptible to nuclear fallout from a lethal plume. 3 Redouble training. Aggressively develop relationships between experienced first responders at the local, state, and federal executive level and professional experts across countries. Note that evacuations of unattacked, but threatened, cities require a new and unique form of training. 4 Seize the moment. Engage in aggressive counterterrorism and counter-proliferation action without appearing to take advantage of a terrorist attack on another nation. 5 Prosecute the source. Adopt a policy announcing that the United States will “hold responsible” the state from which the fissile material originated. 6 Put on notice. Consider a strategy to deter predatory actions through a declaratory policy of "prohibiting" opportunistic behavior in the wake of a nuclear terrorist event. 7 Deploy diplomacy. A well-planned, tightly coordinated U.S. public diplomacy campaign should seek to reassure the American public that the situation is in hand. The president or his designee should provide hourly updates on the situation, in which they candidly admit the limits of U.S. intelligence gathering, measures being taken to find out more, and any government plans for managing the crisis. 8 Monetary aid. The U.S. Federal Reserve should consider buying foreign currency to underpin the national economy in countries victimized by nuclear terrorism. 9 Make new allies. U.S. policymakers can leverage geopolitical uncertainty in the wake of an attack to broaden or transform international alliances. 10 Help weak leaders. Be prepared to provide political support to leaders with a tenuous hold on power in countries with radical Muslim populations before seizing opportunities to escalate the war on terror. 11 Defuse rumors. Develop steps to discredit the inevitable accusations and mass rumors that the United States was responsible for, complicit in, or otherwise behind the attack. 12 Keep ports open. If possible, ports should be closed only for an announced and predetermined period, e.g., 48 hours. 13 Plan. Consider in advance and in a scenario or war-gaming environment how the United States can leverage nuclear terrorism to most effectively counter ideological support for terrorism—and to make that effect last. |
| ||||||||||
| About
CAA Contact
Us
Update
your Address CAA Career Opportunities Privacy Policy |
©2009 California Alumni
Association. All Rights Reserved For questions about CAA: info@alumni.berkeley.edu Technical inquiries: web@alumni.berkeley.edu
|
Alumni House Berkeley, CA 94720-7520 Toll-Free: (888) CAL-ALUM Phone: (510) 642-7026 Fax: (510) 642-6252
|
