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From the Board of Directors
March/April 2002, pp. 4-7 (vol. 58, No. 2). © 2002 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Chicago, February 27, 2002: Today, the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the minute hand of the "Doomsday Clock," the symbol of nuclear danger, from nine to seven minutes to midnight, the same setting at which the clock debuted 55 years ago. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, this is the third time the hand has moved forward.
We move the hands taking into account both negative and positive developments. The negative developments include too little progress on global nuclear disarmament; growing concerns about the security of nuclear weapons materials worldwide; the continuing U.S. preference for unilateral action rather than cooperative international diplomacy; U.S. abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and U.S. efforts to thwart the enactment of international agreements designed to constrain proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; the crisis between India and Pakistan; terrorist efforts to acquire and use nuclear and biological weapons; and the growing inequality between rich and poor around the world that increases the potential for violence and war. If it were not for the positive changes highlighted later in this statement, the hands of the clock might have moved closer still.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by a group of World War II-era Manhattan Project scientists, has warned the world of nuclear dangers since 1945. The September 11 attacks, and the subsequent and probably unrelated use of the mail to deliver deadly anthrax spores, breached previous boundaries for terrorist acts and should have been a global wake-up call. Moving the clock's hands at this time reflects our growing concern that the international community has hit the "snooze" button rather than respond to the alarm.
Troubling trends and missed opportunities
More than 31,000 nuclear weapons are still maintained by the eight known nuclear powers, a decrease of only 3,000 since 1998. Ninety-five percent of these weapons are in the United States and Russia, and more than 16,000 are operationally deployed. Even if the United States and Russia complete their recently announced arms reductions over the next 10 years, they will continue to target thousands of nuclear weapons against each other.
Furthermore, many if not most of the U.S. warheads removed from the active stockpile will be placed in storage (along with some 5,000 warheads already held in reserve) rather than dismantled, for the express purpose of re-deploying them in some future contingency. As a result, the total U.S. stockpile will remain at more than 10,000 warheads for the foreseeable future. Russia, on the other hand, seeks a verifiable, binding agreement that would ensure retired U.S. and Russian weapons are actually destroyed, a position we support.
Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no steps to significantly alter nuclear targeting doctrine or reduce the day-to-day alert status of U.S. nuclear forces. If Russia is no longer an adversary, what is the rationale for retaining the ability to incinerate more than 2,000 Russian targets in as little as 30 minutes (or at all)?
Meanwhile, the U.S. national weapons laboratories, with the support of some in Congress, are hard at work refining existing warheads and designing entirely new weapons, with a special emphasis on those able to attack and destroy hardened and deeply buried targets. And to ensure that such new designs can be tested, the U.S. administration seeks to shorten the time required to resume testing to as little as twelve months--a move that can only encourage other countries, including India, Pakistan, and China, to consider resuming testing. Although the United States has not conducted a full-scale test since 1992--and the administration says it has no plans to resume testing at this time--it refuses to recognize the overwhelming international support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and refuses to participate in international meetings to discuss implementing the treaty. Should the required signatories, including India and Pakistan, fail to ratify the CTBT, thus jeopardizing its entry into force, the world will lose an essential tool in halting the further development and spread of nuclear weapons.
Russia and the United States continue to maintain enormous stockpiles of fissile material. Russia has more than 1,000 metric tons of weapon-grade uranium and about 140 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium, and the United States has nearly 750 metric tons of weapon-grade uranium and 85 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium. (Just 55 pounds--25 kilograms--of weapon-grade uranium, or 17.6 pounds of plutonium--8 kilograms--are needed to construct a rudimentary nuclear weapon.)
Fortunately, of the hundreds of attempted smuggling transactions involving radioactive materials that have been thwarted since 1991, the vast majority involved materials that were not weapons usable or were of insufficient quantity to construct a nuclear weapon. Only 18 of these cases involved the theft of weapon-grade uranium or plutonium from facilities in the former Soviet Union. At the same time, Al Qaeda operatives were actively seeking to acquire radioactive materials to fashion either a crude nuclear weapon or a radiological dispersion device, commonly known as a "dirty bomb."
The increase in the number of smuggling attempts in recent years serves as a clear warning that surplus nuclear weapons and weapons materials may not be entirely secure. Yet since 1991, successive U.S. and Russian administrations have failed to push for either a full inventory of weapons and materials, or for measures to confirm their destruction. As a result, it is now essentially impossible to verify whether all materials in the United States and Russia are accounted for or whether all weapons are secure. This squandered opportunity has enormous security ramifications.
The U.S. administration's decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty is a matter of great concern. The administration's rationale--that the treaty is a relic that endangers U.S. security interests--is disingenuous. Regrettably, the United States was unwilling to consider any compromise that would have preserved the basic framework of the treaty, and therefore blocked pursuit of a compromise that would have allowed additional testing but maintained some limits on defenses. Abandoning the treaty will have serious repercussions for years to come.
The crisis between India and Pakistan, touched off by a December 13 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, marks the closest two states have come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the hands of the clock were moved forward in 1998, to nine minutes to midnight, it was in part in anticipation of just this sort of scenario.
Nuclear proliferation continues to pose dangers, both regionally and internationally. Of the countries most often described as seeking nuclear weapons and/or ballistic missiles--Iraq, Iran, and North Korea--North Korea has repeatedly signaled its willingness to turn back, including a decision last year to extend its unilateral moratorium on missile flight tests through 2003. Yet the U.S. administration has abandoned negotiations with that country, and in his State of the Union message, President George W. Bush lumped all three countries together as an "axis of evil," warning that, "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." The preference implicit in this statement for preemptive force over diplomacy, and for unilateral action rather than international cooperation, is likely to complicate efforts to defeat terrorism and strengthen global security.
The confluence of the rise of extremists who sacrifice their lives for their cause combined with weapons of mass destruction is an especially worrisome development. So too is the increased awareness since September 11 that terrorists need not manufacture or purchase fissile materials to fashion a crude nuclear weapon or release dangerous amounts of radiation. They need only attack poorly guarded nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons facilities, which contain sizable quantities of these materials. Significantly, President Bush acknowledged on January 29, 2002, that diagrams of U.S. nuclear power plants were found among Al Qaeda materials in Afghanistan.
When resetting the clock we have often noted that the growing disparities between rich and poor increase the potential for violence and war. Poverty and repression breed anger and desperation. Charismatic leaders with easy answers prey on the dispossessed and disaffected, channeling their anger into dangerous and destructive activities. The global community must recognize these facts and do much more to address them. The success of the war on terrorism depends not only on disrupting and destroying terrorist organizations, but also on eradicating the conditions that give rise to terror.
We therefore fully support the statement circulated by Bulletin sponsor John Polanyi and signed by 110 Nobel laureates last December, which reads in part, "The only hope for the future lies in cooperative international action, legitimized by democracy. . . . To survive in the world we have transformed, we must learn to think in a new way."
