Reducing Nuclear Threat

President Bush and Sen. Kerry didn’t agree on much during their debate last week, but both said nuclear proliferation – “weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network,” as the president described it – was one of the most serious threats the nation faces. Three years after 9/11 and more than 15 years after members of Congress began seriously talking about the possibility of a suitcase-sized nuclear device destroying whole cities, the steps taken still don’t match the talk.

Not to say there hasn’t been progress. Since 1991, when the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programs were approved (Sen. Kerry was a co-sponsor), the United States has overseen the safeguarding or destruction of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of the former Soviet Union. But only a fraction of that material has been safely disposed of – thousands of missiles and hundreds of tons of nuclear material remain in the former Soviet Union.

During the debate, Sen. Kerry accused the president of cutting the funds to reduce that threat; President Bush said he had increased them by 35 percent. The funding has increased somewhat, though barely over what President Clinton had supported spending in the 1990s and it was Congress that insisted on the increases, according to news reports. However, the president has been a supporter of moving ahead with the CTR; Congress has added requirements for the administration to first certify Russia has complied with political, financial and technical conditions for its nuclear, chemical and biological non-proliferation programs. Last year, the president waived those conditions to get the program moving.

The other major issue in the effort to protect against the nuclear devices is homeland security – port and rail protection to sound alarms against a terrorist smuggling a nuclear weapon into the United States. Though there are U.S. inspectors with nuclear-detection devices at major ports worldwide, there aren’t nearly enough of them – they inspect perhaps 5 percent of the containers shipped. A similar percentage is checked when they reach here. And though rail systems in some major cities have some detection devices, most don’t.

A useful bill on rail security, which passed the Senate last week, includes a provision by Sen. Olympia Snowe that instructs the Government Accountability Office to review how Europe, which often has a higher level of security, keeps its trains safe. (Or safer, with Madrid in mind.) That study is expected to be completed next spring. Also in the next budget is the doubling of funds for overseeing cargo shipped here, with an emphasis on high-risk shipments.

Sen. Kerry says sensibly he would make reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation a priority by rapidly increasing the rate of securing nuclear material in the old Soviet Union, building agreements to stop the production of this material and reducing stockpiles worldwide. The issue is complex and not one to stir the voters to the polls, but it is also crucial. With luck, the agreement between the two candidates last week will provoke a far greater discussion – and more action – on this horrible possibility.