As prepared
Introduction
Over the last 15 years, the nuclear threat to the United States and our friends
and allies has changed dramatically. We no longer face a single adversary with
thousands of missiles threatening our national existence. Rather, we now live
in a world where transnational terrorist networks, motivated by violent and
extreme ideologies, have declared their intent to use nuclear weapons against
us. We also confront a growing nuclear threat from state sponsors of terrorism,
who either possess a nuclear capability or are in the process of developing
one. And finally, we are confronted with the prospect of non-state networks
that are willing to sell nuclear technology and material to the highest bidder,
and through whom terrorists may seek a nuclear weapon.
In addition, we are living in an era of globalization, which has yielded gains
in economic prosperity and efficiency, as private enterprises have outsourced
business functions, made investments abroad, and developed global supply chains.
These trends have, at the same time, exposed us to new risks, such as the potential
for terrorists to exploit cyberspace, financial networks, and the shipping and
air transport industry to plan and carry out attacks against our population
centers, including with weapons of mass destruction.
We must act to counter these emerging threats. On Saturday in St. Petersburg,
Presidents Bush and Putin announced the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear
Terrorism, an effort that will establish a partnership among nations committed
to developing their individual and collective capabilities to detect and defeat
the most dangerous threat we face--nuclear weapons in the hands of a terrorist.
The Threat Today
Let me take a moment to outline our assessment of the threat from nuclear terrorism.
The attacks of September 11 taught us that terrorists will stop at nothing to
attack us and our way of life. Not satisfied with the killing of thousands of
innocent civilians, Osama Bin Laden has declared his intention to acquire and
use nuclear weapons against the United States with the potential to kill hundreds
of thousands. Prior to 9/11, one member of Al Qaeda spoke directly to this point:
"It's easy to kill more people with uranium."
Along with the nuclear threat from terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, we are
confronted with a growing nuclear threat from state sponsors of terrorism like
Iran and North Korea who violate their obligations under the nonproliferation
regimes. In addition, we know that non-state actors such as A.Q. Khan have entered
the black market to sell nuclear technology to the highest bidder. The coming
together of these trends--on the one hand, the increasingly lethal goals of
today's terrorists and on the other, the illicit trafficking in nuclear material
and technology--makes nuclear terrorism both the most serious international
security challenge of our time, and the most urgent.
Many American leaders have called attention to the threat of nuclear terrorism.
President Bush has described this threat as the central national security challenge
of our era. Other leaders have voiced similar views. 9/11 Commission Chairman
Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton pointed to nuclear terrorism as the
most dangerous risk we face, and urged more focused action against the threat.
The President's WMD Commission also emphasized that more must be done to improve
our intelligence capabilities to combat this urgent threat. Both of these commissions
concluded that Al Qaeda has taken concrete steps to acquire a nuclear weapon
by attempting to buy nuclear material on the black market. Fortunately, Bin
Laden's agents likely fell victim to a scam.
Many academics and authors have also identified nuclear terrorism as the preeminent
threat requiring more focused efforts to counter. All agree that, to defend
against this threat, we cannot afford to wait until after an attack before we
take corrective action. The consequences could be catastrophic. To be wrong
once is to have lost one of our cities. We do not have a second chance; we must
take steps now to avert that dark future.
The Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism is the first initiative of
its kind, one that takes a comprehensive approach to dealing with all elements
of the challenge. The Initiative is consistent with, and builds on, existing
legal frameworks such as the Nuclear Terrorism Convention and UN Security Council
Resolutions 1540 and 1373. It provides a flexible framework that will enable
sustained international cooperation to prevent, detect, and respond to the threat
of nuclear terrorism. It offers an opportunity for the United States, Russia,
and our international partners to speak--and to act.
Our National Strategy and Record of Accomplishment
The Global Initiative builds on the Bush Administration's unprecedented record
of accomplishment to combat the threat of weapons of mass destruction. For example,
in 2002 the President launched the Global Partnership Against the Spread of
Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction at the G8 Summit. In December 2002,
the President approved the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,
the first comprehensive strategy of its kind.
The National Strategy outlined the importance of integrating the traditional
tools of nonproliferation with next generation counterproliferation efforts.
Since the promulgation of that strategy, focused efforts have produced results
and led directly to operational successes in the field. For example, the Proliferation
Security Initiative (PSI), launched by President Bush in 2003 to strengthen
international cooperation to disrupt the trade in WMD proliferation now counts
over seventy-five partner nations and has played a key role in helping to interdict
more than 30 shipments, including the interdiction of centrifuge parts that
led to Tripoli's decision to abandon its chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
Under the President's leadership, a number of departments and agencies are taking
a leadership role in implementing the National Strategy to Combat WMD. The Department
of Defense promulgated its National Military Strategy to Combat WMD in February
of 2006 and assigned U.S. Strategic Command with the responsibility for the
combating WMD mission. Strategic Command, in turn, has established a Combating
WMD Center at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to
bring together the expertise and resources in the Department of Defense to combat
this urgent threat. Earlier, as recommended by the WMD Commission, President
Bush signed a new Executive Order to ensure that we have the tools to stop the
financing of proliferation related activity, a mission led by the Department
of the Treasury in consultation with the Department of State. And the Departments
Homeland Security and Energy have been active in establishing detection capabilities
at ports abroad and at key land borders. At the Department of State, Secretary
Rice spearheaded a reorganization of the bureaus under my direction to focus
attention on the entire combating WMD mission, as well as the nexus of WMD and
terrorism.
Finally, the standing up of the National Counter Terrorism Center, as well as
the National Counter Proliferation Center, are bringing additional vigor to
our planning and intelligence efforts. We are now ready to take the next step--to
build the partnerships abroad that are necessary to achieve our strategic goal
to protect the American people and citizens of partner nations against nuclear
terrorism.
Fostering a Global Network of Partners
The central objective of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism is
to establish a growing network of partner nations that are committed to taking
effective measures to build a layered defense-in-depth that can continuously
adapt to the changing nature of the threat. While many individual programs and
efforts have approached one element or aspect of the nuclear terrorism threat,
the Global Initiative provides a capacity building framework for establishing
new partnerships with those nations that wish to take similar action. In carrying
out this new initiative, we will also cooperate with the IAEA and invite them
to participate.
The approach begins with protecting material at the source. Here, the Global
Initiative will build on activities underway through the Cooperative Threat
Reduction (CTR) and International Counterproliferation Programs and the Department
of Energy's many nonproliferation assistance programs. Our goal is to galvanize
our partners to invest greater resources in their own capabilities to protect
nuclear material on their territories. We will also seek to develop new partnerships
with the private sector to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism, including through
innovative DHS programs such as the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism
(C-TPAT).
Since our efforts to secure nuclear material can never be fail-safe we must
develop a robust international detection architecture. Here the Global Initiative
will build on and sustain the successes of the Megaports Program and the Domestic
Nuclear Detection Office, and catalyze new partnerships between these programs
and their counterparts among partner nations. Our architecture must enable fixed
and mobile detection across the air, land, and maritime domains and be flexible
enough to ensure that our partners can develop interoperable and complementary
capabilities.
A comprehensive architecture must also include capabilities to detect the movement
of funds and the growing threat posed by terrorists seeking to procure nuclear
technology through cyberspace. Here the Global Initiative will build on efforts
underway at the Department of the Treasury to block the assets of terrorists
and proliferators. To protect cyberspace, we must build on efforts underway
in the Department of Homeland Security to protect our critical cyber infrastructure,
including the relationship to critical nuclear facilities. We must develop new
approaches to stop terrorists from using the virtual safe haven of cyberspace
for planning attacks with nuclear weapons.
The Global Initiative will also strengthen our response capabilities to stop
imminent attacks and mitigate their consequences should they occur. In this
area, we must build on the capabilities of the Department of Energy's emergency
response teams. At the same time, we must acknowledge that U.S. capabilities
alone cannot meet this challenge. Rather, through the Global Initiative, we
will foster partnerships with counterpart programs among Global Initiative partner
nations, and develop cooperative concepts of operations for emergency response
and consequence management. By joining the Global Initiative, partner nations
will have the opportunity to participate in joint exercises that support the
development of their own capabilities, and under certain circumstances, call
on the assistance of partner nations for emergency response, consequence management,
and criminal justice functions.
Transforming Our Diplomacy to Combat WMD Terrorism
In launching the Global Initiative, we will also be taking an important step
to implement transformational diplomacy outlined by Secretary Rice. Through
new,
flexible partnerships, as well as stronger bilateral and regional ties, the
Global Initiative will ensure that our strategies for combating nuclear terrorism
are tailored to the conditions prevailing with our partner nations. In bringing
to bear all instruments of national power against this threat, the Initiative
will bring diplomats together with first responders, forensic and technical
experts, law enforcement officers, the military, and others in the public and
private sectors who shape the present and future risks of nuclear terrorism.
The Global Initiative will not only reinforce our national efforts, but it signals
to all participating nations the importance of developing comprehensive approaches
to combat the threat of WMD terrorism. The Initiative can help partners improve
their understanding of the intentions of terrorists seeking to carry out attacks.
It can help us develop the tools to prevent terrorists from gaining access to
nuclear and radiological materials. Through the Initiative, we will employ in
partnership with others new concepts of denial that are tailored to the specific
facts, circumstances, and motivations of nuclear terrorists and their facilitators.
The Global Initiative can also serve as the necessary platform for implementing
the provisions of the Nuclear Terrorism Convention to ensure that we bring terrorists
seeking to carry out nuclear attacks to justice, including through enhanced
forensics techniques, as well as through strengthened legal processes.
As we proceed, we will build on the success of the Proliferation Security Initiative
and the flexible partnerships it has established. However, we will also fill
important gaps. For example, while PSI has focused on the interdiction of all
WMD and related delivery systems, the Global Initiative brings a special focus
to the operational and technical challenges associated with combating the nuclear
terrorism threat. While PSI focuses on the proliferation trade among state actors,
the Global Initiative will be focused on those pathways of nuclear proliferation
that lead to terrorist end users. While PSI has strengthened our interdiction
capabilities, the Global Initiative will move beyond interdiction within the
nuclear and radiological area, to cooperation on tasks related to material protection,
detection, emergency response, consequence management, attribution, and criminal
justice.
Establishing Robust Interagency and Public-Private Partnerships
While the announcement of the Global Initiative shows diplomatic leadership
by the United States and Russia, this effort must extend beyond the diplomatic
realm to achieve success. In detecting nuclear material coming into our ports
and urban areas and sharing best practices with foreign port operators, the
Department of Homeland Security and its foreign counterparts must play a central
role. In protecting our nuclear facilities from sabotage and exercising such
capabilities with foreign partners, the Department of Energy and equivalent
agencies abroad must play a central role. In stanching the flow of funds to
terrorists seeking to buy nuclear material on the black market, the Department
of Treasury and its fellow finance ministries must work closely. In all these
areas, all departments and agencies participating in the Global Initiative will
have to improve their sharing of information, whether law enforcement, operational,
or technical.
There is also a large role for the private sector to play in mitigating the
risk of nuclear terrorism. In the United States as in other countries, a substantial
portion of the nuclear infrastructure is controlled by private sector utilities,
laboratories, or university research centers or institutes. By working closely
with these private entities, as well as those that supply and insure them, we
can stimulate the development of best practices, risk management approaches,
and codes of conduct.
Getting Results
As we move forward to implement the comprehensive vision of the Global Initiative,
we must take care to identify specific ways to assess our efforts and measure
our success. The Initiative offers the United States and other partners committed
to taking a leadership role in combating nuclear terrorism an opportunity to
raise the bar, to hold ourselves accountable for results, and in turn, to expect
results from our partners. Building on the example set by the United States
and Russia at the Bratislava Summit regarding nuclear security, we believe it
will be useful to report every six months on the implementation of the Global
Initiative.
Let me suggest four initial questions we should ask, as we seek to judge the
success of the initiative from now until the end of 2008:
1) How many countries will have joined the initiative as partners? PSI has secured
the endorsement of nearly eighty partners, and its capabilities have improved
as its partnership has expanded.
2) How many multinational training exercises involving operational, technical,
or other forms of global or regional cooperation will the Global Initiative
have sponsored among its respective partners?
3) What specific steps will we have taken to improve the security of nuclear
material at the source? We will expect partner nations to field a nuclear materials
information database capability with inventory information regarding all material
subject to their jurisdiction and to cooperate with information sharing requests
from partners through Global Initiative activities.
4) To what extent will Initiative partner nations have expanded their nuclear
and radiological detection or scanning of cargo coming to and leaving their
ports and airports, as well as crossing their borders? Increasing the amount
of total cargo scanned could serve as a worthy goal. We should also take steps
to ensure that all partners exchange detection information in a near real-time
manner with other partners.
Let me emphasize that we are still in the early stages of developing more precise
performance measures of success for the Initiative, and some measures may ultimately
be adopted by some partners, while they are not by others. This flexibility
can be a valuable strength in an initiative, when it allows those partners who
seek to do more to run ahead, while acknowledging the important contributions
of others that are not as fully capable. In the coming months, Global Initiative
partners will convene an initial meeting to agree not only to the guiding principles
for this initiative, but also to establish a specific Plan of Work to implement
these principles.
Conclusion
With the launch of the Global Initiative, the United States and Russia have
taken a critical step toward developing a global network of like-minded partners
to prevent terrorists from acquiring and using a nuclear weapon. Presidents
Bush and Putin have provided us with the leadership and vision we need to confront
the growing threat of nuclear terrorism. Now we must act to meet the threat
of nuclear terrorism, and turn intentions into results.
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