Is the human race safe from nuclear annihilation? Yes. Are humans safe from nuclear bombs? No.
So believes former U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin, who told a University of Utah audience Wednesday that while the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the former Soviet Union will greatly decrease the number of nuclear weapons in the world, down by 80 percent over 10 years - it only opens a new nuclear challenge: How do we protect ourselves against terrorist states and/or groups that get their crazy hands on nuclear bombs?Aspin, who served as defense secretary for two years in the Clinton administration, doesn't have a foolproof answer. That's because the new people trying to get nuclear weapons may well be fools - and very dangerous ones.
"Lord knows, the people who ran the old Soviet Union were thugs," said Aspin. "Ronald Reagan was right; it was an evil empire. But as bad as they were, they weren't crazy, not nuts. They saw the real world and made, for them, rational decisions."
But Aspin said he's not so sure about the sanity of Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq, or "that crowd in North Korea."
In the 40 years of the Cold War, America's nuclear strategy - deterrence, arms control and nonproliferation - worked, although the world averted a nuclear war "more on luck than skill."
But the old strategy doesn't work today. How do you deter a terrorist from planting a single bomb, the size of a briefcase, in downtown New York? "You can't strike back against his country. What country?" You can't work on arms control, the terrorist has only one, two or a handful of bombs and isn't developing any new tech-nol-o-gies.
You can try nonproliferation - keeping the bomb out of his hands in the first place.
"But look at the problem. You have thousands of former Russian nuclear scientists who know how to build a bomb - they've done it - out of work and available to go to Iraq, North Korea, anywhere. With that expertise you have the ready technology and materials. People say North Korea is 40 years behind the U.S. in technology and economy. Well, 40 years ago we were building nuclear weapons."
South Africa had six nuclear bombs, but as the change in government approached white leaders destroyed them. Taiwan and South Korea started nuclear development programs, but under pressure from the United States gave up. So did Argentina and Brazil.
Yet thousands of bombs still reside in Russia. "The Russian military is selling its equipment to feed its soldiers. Will they sell nuclear weapons? We hope not."
But there are no assurances. As chaos spreads through Russia, priorities change. "The old Soviets agreed with us on nonproliferation. They didn't trust the bad guys in the world any more than we did." But the Russian military is a troubled institution today.
Two things U.S. leaders should do now concerning the changing nuclear threat is to draw "from our political right and left." Some kind of strategic nuclear defense program will likely have to be started. Not Star Wars, for the bombs won't be coming via intercontinental missiles. But maybe some kind of anti-missile technology - to shoot down a short-range missile like the ones Saddam had in the Persian Gulf War.
"And we need to take from the (political) left the idea of no first strike - America won't start any nuclear exchange," said Aspin.
Think about this, said Aspin. What if Saddam had a couple of nuclear bombs before he invaded Kuwait? He couldn't have attacked New York or Washington with them. But he could have bombed Tel Aviv or Saudi Arabia. Or U.S. troops massed on his border. "Would we have even entered that conflict knowing he had nuclear weapons and he'd use them," or would the world just have let him take Kuwait? Those are the tough choices in the new nuclear age, says Aspin.