Forget Iraq. Forget Afghanistan. The most pressing issue in international affairs is nuclear proliferation.
That was the message in separate talks on campus recently by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei. In appearances a week apart sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation, both men warned that more nations, not to mention terrorists, are closer than ever to having the capacity to produce and deliver a nuclear weapon. They blamed a leaky system of controls on materials needed to produce a bomb, and a lack of focus on the issue because of events in Iraq and elsewhere.
“The most disturbing insight to emerge from our work in Iran and Libya has been the revelation of an extensive illicit market for the supply of nuclear items,” ElBaradei said, referring to IAEA efforts to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
McNamara painted a stark image of the potential for damage if even one small nuclear weapon were in the hands of terrorists. “If the airplane that hit the Twin Towers had been equipped with a 10-kiloton bomb, 100,000 people would have died,” he said.
He pressed for incremental cutbacks, stricter controls and the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons. “Events will always slip out of our control when nuclear weapons are involved,” said McNamara, recalling the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis when he advised President John Kennedy. “We must move promptly toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.”
