Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Harvard professor Graham Allison spoke yesterday in Cohen Auditorium about the threat caused by expanding access to nuclear materials.
The event, entitled "Nuclear Proliferation: A Race Between Cooperation and Catastrophe," was sponsored by the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) in collaboration with Fletcher's Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy.
Aside from members of the Tufts community, high school students from various schools also filled the auditorium as the event marked the commencement of the 2006-2007 Inquiry, which is the Institute for Global Leadership's secondary school global issues simulation program.
The event began with a seven-minute clip from the 2005 docu-drama "Last Best Chance," produced by the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Although technically a fictional work, all the facts portrayed were "consistent with the real world," said Allison, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The clip focused on a Russian organized crime syndicate obtaining a nuclear bomb and getting it into the United States.
Former Republican Senator from Tennessee Fred Dalton Thompson portrayed the president of the United States and said, "Nuclear terrorism is the greatest threat facing the world," a statement with which Nunn would agree.
Nunn, who served as a senator from Georgia for over 20 years and is now the co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, believes that the best way to combat this threat is to prevent groups from obtaining the enriched uranium and plutonium needed to make a nuclear weapon.
"Over 40 countries around the globe have enough highly enriched uranium to make a weapon," he said. "Much of it is not secured."
While weapons themselves are currently protected, the same efforts are not made to secure materials that can be made into weapons, he said.
According to Nunn, technological advances and widespread knowledge of how to make weapons make this situation so much more troubling than it used to be.
"There is a wide consensus ... that a group of people could find out how to make a weapon if they [have] reasonable intelligence and access to some technical expertise," he said.
Due to this change, Nunn believes the hardest job for terrorists is not the construction of a bomb, but finding the materials. "From that point on it gets easier and easier for them, and harder and harder for us," he said.
Therefore, protecting these nuclear materials is the most important task facing the world community, and one which "requires cooperation and leadership from around the globe," Nunn said. "It needs a lot more focus than we are seeing right now. We're doing more than anyone else, and we're not doing enough."
Both Allison and Nunn pointed to the 2004 presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry, when both candidates were asked what the most the most serious security challenge facing the world was.
Kerry answered the question first and said nuclear terrorism. When it was his turn, Bush responded, "I agree with my opponent," Allison said. "[There] was almost a gasp from the moderator," he said.
Allison cited the incident as the "only time in a rather bitter campaign" when the two candidates completely agreed, indicating the importance of the problem.
According to Nunn, terrorist groups are more likely than other nations to attack the United States. "Countries with a return address would be much less likely," he said. These countries are aware that the United States, knowing where to send a weapon, would retaliate.
Nunn finds that cooperation, particularly with Russia, is a necessity in combating nuclear proliferation. "We can only deal with these problems with cooperation," he said. "And the cooperation has to start with Russia."
When Allison asked Nunn what the actual likelihood of a nuclear attack on the United States is, Nunn admitted that while others may "set odds on it," he is unsure.
"I don't know," he said. "I have no idea what the odds are. What I do know is we've got to reduce the risk. The stakes are enormous."
According to Nunn, a nuclear attack would not just destroy a single city, but would also obliterate the confidence and affect the economy of the entire world.
Even so, the situation now is better than it was during the Cold War. Then, he said that any kind of "conventional non-nuclear war" would have escalated into nuclear war. "We are much safer now from all-out war than we have been in the last 50 years," he said.
Before speaking yesterday, Nunn received the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, named after the renowned nutritionist and 10th president of Tufts. This award is given to "outstanding individuals" who are "dedicated to solving the most pressing problems facing the world today," said freshman Raoul Alwani, who presented the award with senior Craig Kunkes.
