Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material (BCSIA Studies in International Security)

"I cannot think of a more important book . . . The time to read it is now." -- A.M. Rosenthal, The New York Times "Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy grapples with one of the most immediate and most pressing threats to U.S. security interests today: the risk of rampant nuclear proliferation fueled by 'nuclear leakage' from the former Soviet Union. There has never been a more important time for this analysis by some of our nation's leading national security specialists. This book deserves to be widely read and carefully considered." - Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat, Georgia "Expected to have a profound impact on the nuclear debate in Washington. . . the most extensive assessment yet of the nuclear dangers in the post-cold war world." - Financial Times "Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy. . . makes a fundamental contribution to understanding and addressing the problems that have come from the break-up of the Soviet nuclear arsenal." - Rose Gottemoller, Deputy Director, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London What if the bomb that exploded in Oklahoma City or New York's World Trade Center had used 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium? The destruction would have been far more vast. This danger is not so remote: the recipe for making such a bomb is simple, and soon the ingredients might be easily attained. Thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from the weapons complex of the former Soviet Union, poorly guarded and poorly accounted for, could soon leak on to a vast emerging nuclear black market. This study by Graham Allison and three colleagues at Harvard's Center for Science and International Affairs warns that containing the leakage of nuclear materials--and keeping them out of the hands of groups hostile to the United States--is our nation's highest security priority. As the most open society on a shrinking planet, the United States has no reliable defense against smuggled weap