OPINION: New START is key to thwarting nuclear terrorism

Sharon Squassoni is the director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

It's been almost 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union. In that time, the United States has done much to reduce the nuclear threats facing this country - including implementing two treaties and negotiating two more with Russia to reduce strategic nuclear weapons. The latest strategic arms reduction pact with Russia is now sitting in the Senate, waiting for a few key Republicans to agree to vote on it.

To some, arms control negotiations should have ended with the Cold War. After all, the threat against which the United States defended itself for decades - an all-out Russian nuclear attack - is largely gone.

This is both a blessing and a curse. While the blessing is obvious, the curse may not be. And the curse is what makes the immediate ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty absolutely imperative.

The very weapons that were produced with the aim of enhancing U.S. and other countries' security now create targets of opportunity for terrorists. The risk is that terrorists could gain access to nuclear weapons or to nuclear material to make weapons. It's not a far-fetched idea, given that there are 22,500 nuclear weapons in nine countries across the globe and tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium - materials that can be used in these weapons - scattered in many more countries.

Evidence of terrorist-group interest in nuclear targets grows each year. Attacks on nuclear facilities in Pakistan and South Africa and mishandling of nuclear weapons in the United States point to the urgency of the problem. To add to this, the surge of interest in nuclear power by more than 60 countries could increase the risks if growth isn't managed in the safest, most secure way to minimize proliferation.

President Barack Obama told crowds in Prague last year that "The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. . . . In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up."

The president is not alone in his assessment. In January 2007, four senior American statesmen concluded in The Wall Street Journal that the risks of nuclear weapons outweighed their benefits. In their article "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry concluded that the threats posed by nuclear arsenals in the form of proliferation into the hands of dangerous states or terrorists may ultimately be greater than the risks posed by their abolition. They argued that "reliance on nuclear weapons . . . is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective."

The surest way to reduce nuclear dangers facing the United States is to eliminate opportunities for terrorists. This entails a global campaign to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in national security strategies, to verifiably reduce nuclear weapons arsenals and eventually eliminate them, to reduce stockpiles of materials that can be used in these weapons, and to strengthen controls on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy to provide assurances against further proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Some steps have already been taken. In April, Obama approved a Nuclear Posture Review that calls for a narrower role for nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy than in the past. The review concluded that thousands of nuclear weapons have little relevance to today's most pressing security challenges - nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation. The president also hosted a first-of-its-kind Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in April, to address the dangers of nuclear material. South Korea will host the next summit in 2012.

The next step in reducing nuclear dangers should be approving New START. Signed in April by Presidents Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, the treaty would reduce U.S. and Russian long-range arsenals by 30 percent below current limits. It also would re-establish an effective joint inspection and monitoring system.

After eight weeks of hearings and 900 questions for the record, objections among Republicans in the Senate are largely limited to the price of ratification. Some Republicans believe there is a $10 billion gap in spending to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, despite a proposed $80 billion hike in such spending over the next 10 years.

Without this New START, the United States and Russia cannot begin to talk about additional reductions. Yet both sides each have more than a thousand strategic nuclear weapons that are ready to launch, and Russia has thousands of short-range, tactical nuclear weapons.

Not only is the treaty critical to talks with Russia - and not just on strategic weapons, but also on Iran and nuclear security - it is also a prerequisite for strategic nuclear talks with China.

Although only 40 of China's 300 nuclear weapons can reach the United States, China is modernizing its arsenal. Future U.S. nuclear security will depend on ensuring that our relationship with China does not go down the path of a strategic confrontation. Engaging China in a dialogue on reducing nuclear threats cannot wait for a distant point in the future, despite China's preference for delay.

In the long run, eventual elimination of nuclear weapons will, of course, have to include negotiations with U.S. allies, the United Kingdom and France, as well as India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. This is not a short-term project; it will take decades. Other tasks include reducing stockpiles of materials that can be used in nuclear weapons and strengthening controls on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, to provide assurances against further proliferation of nuclear weapons.

These will require all countries - nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states alike - to make compromises and tough choices. Nonetheless, they are necessary elements of a safer, more secure global environment.