The Four Faces of Nuclear Terror

Graham Allison was among the first scholars to sound the alarm about the risks of Russian loose nukes, and in How to Stop Nuclear Terrorism (January/February 2004), he continues to warn of this underappreciated danger. He is right to highlight the inadequacy of current U.S. and international efforts to deny terrorists access to fissile material. And he makes a compelling case for the need to develop a more coherent and multilateral strategy for stopping them. Unfortunately, Allison's article is less successftil in describing the full scope of the problem and recommending a nuanced response. In particular, it fails to distinguish among four distinct types of nuclear terrorism, the relative risks posed by the main two types of fissile materials used in nuclear weapons, and the means necessary for keeping such weapons from nonstate actors as well as states

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