Intelligence Report Sees Higher Nuclear Risk as Technology Spreads

By Elaine M. Grossman

WASHINGTON -- The risk that terrorists will acquire and use atomic weapons will increase in coming decades as nuclear technology and expertise proliferate, according to a U.S. intelligence report released yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 19).

While the risk of a nuclear attack in the next 20 years remains "very low" -- probably lower than the possibility of a chemical or biological weapons strike -- it is "likely to be greater than it is today," according to the projection, published by the National Intelligence Council.

The panel, an arm of the national intelligence director's office, issued Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World to "stimulate strategic thinking about the future by identifying key trends, the factors that drive them, where they seem to be headed, and how they might interact," commission Chairman Thomas Fingar, U.S. deputy national intelligence director, said in a foreword to the report.

The 99-page document -- the fourth such report on long-term trends that the council has issued in recent years -- warns of the perils the United States might expect from the steady expansion of nuclear capabilities worldwide.

"The spread of nuclear technologies and expertise is generating concerns about the potential emergence of new nuclear-weapon states and the acquisition of nuclear materials by terrorist groups," according to the document.

The national intelligence director's office laid out the risks in a statement released yesterday.

"The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over scarce resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons," according to the DNI statement. "The likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used will increase with expanded access to technology and a widening range of options for limited strikes."

Of particular concern is the "growing risk of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East," where a number of states "are already thinking about developing or acquiring nuclear technology useful for development of nuclear weaponry," reads the global trends report.

A Middle East nuclear arms race tops the panel's list of dangerous developments that could threaten political or economic globalization. An act of terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction could have a similarly traumatizing effect, according to the assessment.

Fingar emphasized at an event this week that the publication is not meant to be predictive or inevitable. In fact, he said Tuesday, "even the word 'projection' is a little more determinative than we intend this to be."

Experts note that a number of nations have come close to gaining -- or actually acquired -- nuclear arms by masking illicit activities under the cloak of internationally permitted development of civil nuclear energy. For a time, Libya and Iraq maintained clandestine efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and Iran and Syria are now widely suspected of doing the same (see GSN stories on Iran and Syria, Nov. 19).

The global trends report "pulls its punch on exactly ... why the spread of nuclear power is a problem, said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. "The way they describe the problem, it's not clear that you need to do very much to solve it other than to say something like, 'Well, we have diplomatic pledges or IAEA inspections to guard against these possibilities,' and then it just goes away."

The trend lines in the Middle East are discouraging, according to a February essay he wrote about the international community's challenges in verifying the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

"Since 2005, more than 15 countries have announced a desire to acquire large reactors of their own by 2020," wrote Sokolski, who serves on the U.S. Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (see GSN, Nov. 19).

"Nine of these states -- Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen -- are located in the war-torn region of the Middle East," he explained. "Most are interested in developing a nuclear program capable of more than merely boiling water to run turbines that generate electricity. At least four have made it clear that they are interested in hedging their security bets with a nuclear weapons option." ....