ArgumentsWould Terrorists Set Off a Nuclear Weapon If They Had One? We Shouldn’t Assume So
For decades, the nightmare of nuclear terrorism has haunted the corridors of power in Washington and the imagination of Western popular culture. While this was true even before September 11, 2001, in the days since, a consensus has formed from which few dare deviate: Terrorist organizations are trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and if they are successful, they will use them in an attack as soon as possible. But how valid is this “acquisition-use assumption,” Christopher McIntosh and Ian Store ask.
For decades, the nightmare of nuclear terrorism has haunted the corridors of power in Washington and the imagination of Western popular culture. While this was true even before September 11, 2001, in the days since, a consensus has formed from which few dare deviate: Terrorist organizations are trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and if they are successful, they will use them in an attack as soon as possible.
Christopher McIntosh and Ian Store write in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that in a recent paper, they referred to this principle as the “acquisition-use assumption.”
They add:
The underlying consensus around this is now virtually sacrosanct. It orients US strategic posture around the proposition that, as President Obama expressed it, nuclear terrorism is “one of the greatest threats to global security,” and “there is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material, they most certainly would use it to kill as many innocent people as possible.”
The idea that terrorist organizations see value in trying to obtain nuclear weapons is fairly well-documented, and we don’t intend to question that here. But the assumption that terrorists only want those weapons in order to immediately attack Western capitals and local rivals deserves more scrutiny. In our work, we ask: How would a nonstate actor behave if it acquired a nuclear weapon? Is the working assumption of the policy and academic community that “acquisition equals use” a good one? We think this assumption deserves to be questioned because, if nothing else, holding it requires ignoring the long and rich history of deterrence and nuclear strategy, nearly all of which operated without a hostile detonation. And getting to the bottom of the matter will have important consequences. Assuming that use is a foregone conclusion holds world leaders hostage to only a single, worst-case version of a threat, while jettisoning the assumption enables planning for more tailored responses for a range of outcomes.
