Loose Nukes

Loose Nukes: A Concern That Never Goes Away

I lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Bush 41 administration, and I remember vividly the very real concern that nuclear weapons might fall into the wrong hands. The Soviet empire didn't dissolve neatly—it fractured chaotically across multiple time zones, leaving thousands of nuclear warheads scattered across newly independent nations with uncertain loyalties, untested governments, and unpaid military personnel.

The 1997 film "The Peacemaker" starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman dramatized exactly this nightmare scenario—terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon from the post-Soviet chaos. That movie wasn't science fiction. It was ripped from genuine intelligence assessments and policy debates happening in Washington. Nuclear scientists going unpaid for months. Security guards abandoning posts. Inventory systems in disarray. The potential for a warhead or fissile material to simply vanish into the black market was terrifyingly plausible.

We avoided catastrophe largely through quick action. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program—often called Nunn-Lugar after its Senate sponsors—poured hundreds of millions of dollars into securing warheads, consolidating fissile materials, and giving weapons scientists legitimate work so they wouldn't sell their expertise to the highest bidder. It worked, but it required cooperation from the very states we had opposed for half a century.

Now consider Iran. The same dynamics that made the Soviet collapse so dangerous apply here, potentially worse. Highly enriched uranium stockpiles. An operating nuclear power plant at Bushehr. Research reactors. Radiological sources scattered across medical and agricultural facilities. If the regime fractures, who secures these assets? The lessons from Iraq after 2003—where the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted for days before anyone thought to guard it—demonstrate what happens when planning fails.

The Dictator Problem

Here's what keeps serious people awake at night: we now live in a world where China, Russia, and North Korea are all run by dictators. Forget the political labels—communist, socialist, whatever. These are authoritarian regimes with concentrated power and opaque succession mechanisms.

Putin emerged from Soviet chaos. Xi Jinping has eliminated term limits and consolidated power unlike any Chinese leader since Mao. Kim Jong Un inherited a nuclear-armed hermit kingdom. Each controls nuclear arsenals. Each operates without transparent continuity-of-government protocols that outside observers can verify.

Yes, intelligence agencies have sources. Spies do their work. Analysts study satellite imagery and intercept communications. But the fundamental question remains unanswerable with certainty: what happens when one of these leaders dies unexpectedly? Who controls the nuclear codes during a power struggle? What happens to command-and-control systems when factions compete for supremacy?

During the Cold War, we at least understood Soviet doctrine and had established communication channels. Today's multipolar nuclear environment is far more complex. Three nuclear-armed dictatorships with three different decision-making cultures, three different military traditions, and three different internal political dynamics—all operating simultaneously.

Interesting Times Indeed

The ancient curse supposedly says "may you live in interesting times." We certainly do. Iran's potential instability adds another layer of complexity to an already dangerous nuclear landscape. The international community must plan for contingencies that nobody wants to contemplate publicly.

The Soviet experience proves proactive planning works. The Iraq experience proves reactive improvisation fails. The question is whether today's fractured international order—with Russia and China unlikely to cooperate on much of anything—can muster the coordination necessary to prevent proliferation disasters.

We navigated the Soviet collapse successfully. Whether we can repeat that success in an era of great power competition and diminished cooperation remains to be seen. The stakes, as always with nuclear materials, couldn't be higher.