Deterring Nuclear Terrorism

摘要

Has terrorism made deterrence obsolete? President Bush articulated the prevailing view in his June 2002 West Point address: "Deterrence―the promise of massive retaliation against nations―means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies." Debate over missile defense aside, U.S. foreign policy thinkers have largely accepted his reasoning, though they argue on the margins over how unbalanced most dictators are. Yet in confronting the prospect of nuclear terrorism―and there is no more dire threat facing America today―this logic is flawed. Its purported truth in addressing nuclear terror relies almost entirely on its assumption that rogue states could provide nuclear weapons "secretly" to terrorists. But were such now-secret links to be exposed, deterrence could largely be restored. The United States would threaten unacceptable retaliation were a state to provide the seeds of a terrorist nuclear attack; unable to use terrorists for clandestine delivery, rogue states would be returned to the grim reality of massive retaliation.