On Nuclear Terrorism »

Michael Levi is David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.

Nuclear terrorism is such a disturbing prospect that we shy away from its details. Yet as a consequence, we fail to understand how best to defeat it. Michael Levi takes us inside nuclear terrorism and behind the decisions a terrorist leader would be faced with in pursuing a nuclear plot. Along the way, Levi identifies the many obstacles, large and small, that such a terrorist scheme might encounter, allowing him to discover a host of ways that any plan might be foiled.

Surveying the broad universe of plots and defenses, this accessible account shows how a wide-ranging defense that integrates the tools of weapon and materials security, law enforcement, intelligence, border controls, diplomacy, and the military can multiply, intensify, and compound the possibility that nuclear terrorists will fail. Levi draws from our long experience with terrorism and cautions us not to focus solely on the most harrowing yet most improbable threats. Nuclear terrorism shares much in common with other terrorist threats--and as a result, he argues, defeating it is impossible unless we put our entire counterterrorism and homeland security house in order.

As long as we live in a nuclear age, no defense can completely eliminate nuclear terrorism. But this book reminds us that the right strategy can minimize the risks and shows us how to do it.

Simen A. Ellingsen - Nonproliferation Review

Levi offers a system of thought on how to deal with the threat of nuclear terrorism that is probably the most complete and thoughtful published to date. In grasping a vast and complex topic and making sense of it in the light of a lucid and comprehensible framework, On Nuclear Terrorism is a paramount contribution to the effort to understand and minimize the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Preface ix

List of Abbreviations xi

Prologue 1

1 Principles for Defense 4

2 Security at the Source 15

3 Building Blocks 27

4 The Beginnings of a True System 65

5 Warning 98

6 A Wider Universe of Nuclear Plots and Defenses 124

7 The Way Forward 139

Appendix: Radiation Detection and Weapons Effects Calculations 155

Glossary 165

Notes 175

Acknowledgments 205

Index 207