Introducing The New Nuclear Pandemic

By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service

Americans should be more concerned by the proliferation of nuclear weapons from North Korea to other states or non-state actors, rather than focus on a direct N.Korean nuclear attack on the Western World.

Such was the conclusion of former Secretary of Defense William Perry when addressing the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on U.S nuclear weapons policy today.

“When we are concerned about proliferation, for example from N.Korea to Iran, we are concerned with the possibility that nuclear terrorists might be a bomb… The greater danger is that the bomb or the fissile material leak from one of these countries.” said Perry.

On Monday, N.Korea announced that it had successfully detonated and underground nuclear bomb, and on Tuesday, it launched two short-range ballistic missiles. As a result, the Obama administration may be facing an unexpected turn in the nuclear debate.

The topic is gaining momentum as talks between the U.S and Russia on the renewal of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) are feared to be unsuccessful.

That N.Korea has nuclear capabilities and is testing missiles has fanned the flames on the necessity to reconsider the reduction in the Department of Defense FY2010 budget.

Perry was joined by Brent Scowcroft, former assistant to the President for National Security Affairs who explained that “a great danger in nuclear terrorism lies with the civilian nuclear power and the loose fissile material that comes with that.”

Scowcroft appealed to the security dilemma to provide a link between N.Korea or Iran acquiring a nuclear power and nuclear terrorism.

“If we don’t put a cap on proliferation now, we could easily face 30 or 40 countries with that capability, That is not a better world,” said Scowcroft, adding that “If [Iran and N.Korea] are free to enrich uranium to weapons grade, then you have others who want to do it just for protection or whatever and then you have a tremendous danger of terrorists getting hold of fissile material and then its relatively easy.”

The U.S government had already started to deal with this problem under the Bush junior administration, as Perry explains: “For one thing I support the initiative of the previous administration called the Proliferation Security initiative (PSI) and the recent moves to strengthen this initiative.”

Former President George.W. Bush said that PSI’s aim is “to keep the world’s most destructive weapons away from our shores and out of the hands of our common enemies.”

The initiative is limited to controlling alien ships in one’s waters to search for weapons. Airways are however not part of the PSI.