Limiting financing prevents nuclear terrorism, which otherwise causes extinction.

Nuclear terrorism post-cold war: trigger for inadvertent nuclear war?

The possible catalytic effect of nuclear terrorism on the risk of state-based nuclear war is not a simple linkage. The multiple types and scales of nuclear terrorism may affect state-nuclear use decisions along multiple pathways that lead to inadvertent nuclear war. These include:

Early warning systems fail or are “tripped” in ways that lead to launch-on-warning

Accidental nuclear detonation, including sub-critical explosions.

Strategic miscalculation in crisis, show of force

Decision-making failure (such as irrational, misperception, bias, degraded, group, and time-compressed decision-making)

Allied or enemy choices (to seek revenge, to exploit nuclear risk, to act out of desperation)

Organizational cybernetics whereby a nuclear command-control-and communications (NC3) system generates error, including the interplay of national NC3 systems in what may be termed the meta-NC3 system.

Synchronous and coincident combinations of above.[4]

Exactly how, where, and when nuclear terrorism may “ambush” nuclear armed states already heading for or on such a path to inadvertent nuclear war depends on who is targeting whom at a given time, either immediately due to high tension, or generally due to a structural conflict between states. Nuclear armed states today form a complex set of global threat relationships that are not distributed uniformly across the face of Earth. Rather, based on sheer firepower and reach, the nine nuclear weapons states form a global hierarchy with at least four tiers, viz:

Tier 1: United States, clear technological supremacy and qualitative edge.

Tier 2: Russia, China, global nuclear powers and peers with the United States due to the unique destructive power of even relatively small nuclear arsenals, combined with global reach of missile and bomber delivery systems, thereby constituting a two-tiered global “nuclear triangle” with the United States.

Tier 3: France, UK, NATO nuclear sharing and delivery NATO members (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey) and the NATO and Pacific nuclear umbrella states (Japan, South Korea, Australia) that depend on American nuclear extended deterrence and directly and indirectly support US and US-allied nuclear operations even though they do not host nor deliver nuclear weapons themselves.

Tier 4: India, Pakistan, Israel, DPRK.

The first two tiers constitute the global nuclear threat triangle that exists between the United States, Russia, and China, forming a global nuclear “truel.” Each of these states targets the others; each represents an existential threat to the other; and each has a long history of mutual nuclear threat that is now a core element of their strategic identity.

Tier three consists of states with their own nuclear force but integrated with that of the United States (even France!) that expand the zone of mutual nuclear threat over much of the northern and even parts of the southern hemisphere; and states that host American nuclear command, control, communications, and intelligence systems that support US nuclear operations and to whom nuclear deterrence is “extended” (if, for example, Australia’s claim to having an American nuclear umbrella is believed). The fourth tier is composed of smaller nuclear forces with a primarily regional reach and focus.

Between most of these nuclear armed states and across the tiers, there are few shared “rules of the road.” The more of these states that are engaged in a specific conflict and location, the more unpredictable and unstable this global nuclear threat system becomes, with the potential for cascading and concatenating effects. Indeed, as the number of nuclear states projecting nuclear threat against each other increases, the notion of strategic stability may lose all meaning.

The emergence of a fifth tier—of non-state actors with the capacity to project nuclear threat against nuclear-armed and nuclear umbrella states (although not only these states)—is a critically important possible catalytic actor in the new conditions of nuclear threat complexity that already exist today. Such a layer represents an “edge of chaos” where the attempts by nuclear armed states to exert absolute “vertical” control over the use of nuclear weapons confront the potential of non-state entities and even individuals (insiders) to engage in “horizontal” nuclear terrorism, presenting radically different control imperatives to the standard paradigm of organizational procedures, technical measures, and safeguards of various kinds. This tier is like the waves and tides on a beach that quickly surrounds and then causes sand castles to collapse.

In 2010, Robert Ayson reviewed the potential linkages between inter-state nuclear war and non-state terrorism. He concluded: “…[T]hese two nuclear worlds—a non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchange—are not necessarily separable. It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack, and especially an act of nuclear terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more of the states that possess them.”[5] How this linkage might unfold is the subject of the next sections of this essay.

Are non-state actors motivated and able to attempt nuclear terrorism?

A diverse set of non-state actors have engaged in terrorist activities—for which there is no simple or consensual definition. In 2011, there were more than 6,900 known extremist, terrorist and other organizations associated with guerrilla warfare, political violence, protest, organized crime and cyber-crime. Of these, about 120 terrorist and extremist groups had been blacklisted by the United Nations, the European Union and six major countries.[6]

Some have argued that the technical, organizational, and funding demanded for a successful nuclear attack, especially involving nuclear weapons, exceeds the capacity of most of the non-state actors with terrorist proclivities. Unfortunately, this assertion is not true, especially at lower levels of impact as shown in Figure 1; but even at the highest levels of obtaining authentic nuclear weapons capabilities, a small number of non-state actors already exhibit the motivation and possible capacity to become nuclear-armed.

Ellingsen suggests a useful distinction that nuclear terrorists may be impelled by two divergent motivations, as shown in Figure 2, creating “opportunistic” and “patient” profiles.[7] The requirements for an opportunist non-state nuclear terrorist tend towards immediate use and the search for short-term payoffs with only tactical levels of commitment; whereas the patient non-state nuclear terrorist is able and willing to sustain a long-term acquisition effort to deal a strategic blow to an adversary in a manner that could be achieved only with nuclear weapons.

[Figure 2 omitted]

In turn, many factors will drive how a potential nuclear terrorist non-state organization that obtains nuclear weapons or materials may seek to employ them, especially in its nuclear command-and-control orientations.

Blair and Ackerman suggest that the goals, conditions, and capacity limitations that shape a possible nuclear terrorist’s posture lead logically to three types of nuclear terrorist nuclear command-and-control postures, viz: pre-determined (in which the leadership sends a fire order to a nuclear-armed subordinate and no change is entertained and no capacity to effect change is established in the field, that is, the order is fire-and-forget); assertive (in which only the central command can issue a nuclear fire order, central control is maintained at all times, with resulting demanding communications systems to support such control); and delegative (in which lower level commanders control nuclear weapons and have pre-delegated authority to use them in defined circumstances, for example, evidence of nuclear explosions combined with loss-of-connectivity with their central command).[8] An example of such delegative control system was the November 26, 2008 attack on Mumbai that used social media reporting to enable the attacking terrorists to respond to distant controller direction and to adapt to counter-terrorist attacks—a connectivity tactic that the authorities were too slow to shut down before mayhem was achieved.[9]

Logically, one might expect nuclear terrorists oriented toward short-term, tactical goals to employ pre-determined nuclear command-and-control strategies in the hope that the speed of attack and minimum field communications avoids discovery and interdiction before the attack is complete; whereas nuclear terrorists oriented toward long-term, strategic goals might employ more pre-delegative command-and-control systems that would support a bargaining use and therefore a field capacity to deploy nuclear weapons or materials that can calibrate actual attack based on communications with the central leadership with the risk of interdiction through surveillance and counter-attack. These differing strategic motivations, timelines, and strategies in many respects invert those of nuclear weapons states that rely on large organizations, procedures, and technical controls, to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used without legitimate authorization; and if they are used, to minimize needless civilian casualties (at least some nuclear armed states aspire to this outcome). The repertoire of state-based practices that presents other states with credible nuclear threat and reassures them that nuclear weapons are secure and controlled is likely to be completely mismatched with the strengths and strategies of non-state nuclear terrorists that may seek to maximize civilian terror, are not always concerned about their own survival or even that of their families and communities-of-origin, and may be willing to take extraordinary risk combined with creativity to exploit the opportunities for attack presented by nuclear weapons, umbrella, and non-nuclear states, or their private adversaries.

For non-state actors to succeed at complex engineering project such as acquiring a nuclear weapons or nuclear threat capacity demands substantial effort. Gary Ackerman specifies that to have a chance of succeeding, non-state actors with nuclear weapons aspirations must be able to demonstrate that they control substantial resources, have a safe haven in which to conduct research and development, have their own or procured expertise, are able to learn from failing and have the stamina and strategic commitment to do so, and manifest long-term planning and ability to make rational choices on decadal timelines. He identified five such violent non-state actors who already conducted such engineering projects (see Figure 3), and also noted the important facilitating condition of a global network of expertize and hardware. Thus, although the skill, financial, and materiel requirements of a non-state nuclear weapons project present a high bar, they are certainly reachable.

[Figure 3 omitted]

Along similar lines, James Forest examined the extent to which non-state actors can pose a threat of nuclear terrorism.[10] He notes that such entities face practical constraints, including expense, the obstacles to stealing many essential elements for nuclear weapons, the risk of discovery, and the difficulties of constructing and concealing such weapons. He also recognizes the strategic constraints that work against obtaining nuclear weapons, including a cost-benefit analysis, possible de-legitimation that might follow from perceived genocidal intent or use, and the primacy of political-ideological objectives over long-term projects that might lead to the group’s elimination, the availability of cheaper and more effective alternatives that would be foregone by pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the risk of failure and/or discovery before successful acquisition and use occurs. In the past, almost all—but not all—non-state terrorist groups appeared to be restrained by a combination of high practical and strategic constraints, plus their own cost-benefit analysis of the opportunity costs of pursuing nuclear weapons. However, should some or all of these constraints diminish, a rapid non-state nuclear proliferation is possible.

Although only a few non-state actors such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have exhibited such underlying stamina and organizational capacities and actually attempted to obtain nuclear weapons-related skills, hardware, and materials, the past is not prologue. An incredibly diverse set of variously motivated terrorist groups exist already, including politico-ideological, apocalyptic-millenarian, politico-religious, nationalist-separatist, ecological, and political-insurgency entities, some of which converge with criminal-military and criminal-scientist (profit based) networks; but also pyscho-pathological mass killing cults, lone wolves, and ephemeral copy-cat non-state actors. The social, economic, and deculturating conditions that generate such entities are likely to persist and even expand.

In particular, rapidly growing coastal mega-cities as part of rapid global urbanization offer such actors the ability to sustain themselves as “flow gatekeepers,” possibly in alliance with global criminal networks, thereby supplanting the highland origins of many of today’s non-state violent actors with global reach.[11] Other contributing factors contributing to the supply of possible non-state actors seeking nuclear weapons include new entries such as city states in search of new security strategies, megacities creating their own transnationally active security forces, non-states with partial or complete territorial control such as Taiwan and various micro-states, failing states, provinces in dissociating, failing states that fall victim to internal chaos and the displacement effects of untrammeled globalization, and altogether failed states resulting in ungoverned spaces. To this must be added domestic terrorist entities in the advanced industrial states as they hollow out their economies due to economic globalization and restructuring, adjust to cross-border migration, and adapt to cultural and political dislocation.

In short, the prognosis is for the fifth tier of non-state actors to beset the other four tiers with intense turbulence just as waves on a beach swirl around sandcastles, washing away their foundations, causing grains of sand to cascade, and eventually collapsing the whole structure.

Observed non-state nuclear threats and attacks

In light of the constraints faced by non-state terrorist actors in past decades, it is not surprising that the constellation of actual nuclear terrorist attacks and threats has been relatively limited during and since the end of the Cold War. As Martha Crenshaw noted in a comment on the draft of this paper:

We still don’t know why terrorists (in the sense of non-state actors) have not moved into the CBRN [chemical,biological, radiological or nuclear ] domain. (Many people think biosecurity is more critical, for that matter.) Such a move would be extremely risky for the terrorist actor, even if the group possessed both capability (resources, secure space, time, patience) and motivation (willingness to expend the effort, considering opportunity costs). So far it appears that “conventional” terrorism serves their purposes well enough. Most of what we have seen is rhetoric, with some scattered and not always energetic initiatives.[12]

Nonetheless, those that have occurred demonstrate unambiguously that such threats and attacks are not merely hypothetical, in spite of the limiting conditions outlined above. One survey documented eighty actual, planned attacks on nuclear facilities containing nuclear materials between 1961-2016[13] as follows:

80 attacks in 3 waves (1970s armed assaults, 1990s thefts, post-2010, breaches)

High threat attacks: 32/80 attacks posed substantial, verified threat of which 44 percent involved insiders.

All types of targets were found in the data set—on reactors, other nuclear facilities, military bases leading Gary Ackerman and to conclude: “Overall, empirical evidence suggests that there are sufficient cases in each of the listed categories that no type of threat can be ignored.”[14]

No region was immune; no year was without such a threat or attack. Thus, there is a likely to be a coincidence of future non-state threats and attacks with inter-state nuclear-prone conflicts, as in the past, and possibly more so given the current trend in and the generative conditions for global terrorist activity that will likely pertain in the coming decades.

Of these attacks, about a quarter each were ethno-nationalist, secular utopian, or unknown in motivation; and the remaining quarter were a motley mix of religious (11 percent), “other” (5 percent), personal-idiosyncratic (4 percent), single issue (2 percent) and state sponsored (1 percent) in motivation.

The conclusion is unavoidable that there a non-state nuclear terrorist attack in the Northeast Asia region is possible. The following sections outline the possible situations in which nuclear terrorist attacks might be implicated as a trigger to interstate conflict, and even nuclear war. Particular attention is paid to the how nuclear command, control and communications systems may play an independent and unanticipated role in leading to inadvertent nuclear war, separate to the contributors to inadvertency normally included such as degradation of decision-making due to time and other pressures; accident; “wetware” (human failures), software or hardware failures; and misinterpretation of intended or unintended signals from an adversary.

Regional pathways to interstate nuclear war

At least five distinct nuclear-prone axes of conflict are evident in Northeast Asia. These are:

US-DPRK conflict (including with United States, US allies Japan, South Korea and Australia; and all other UNC command allies. Many permutations possible ranging from non-violent collapse to implosion and civil war, inter-Korean war, slow humanitarian crisis. Of these implosion-civil war in the DPRK may be the most dangerous, followed closely by an altercation at the Joint Security Area at Panmunjon where US, ROK, and DPRK soldiers interact constantly.

China-Taiwan conflict, whereby China may use nuclear weapons to overcome US forces operating in the West Pacific, either at sea, or based on US (Guam, Alaska) or US allied territory in the ROK, Japan, the Philippines, or Australia); or US uses nuclear weapons in response to Chinese attack on Taiwan.

China-Japan conflict escalates via attacks on early warning systems, for example, underwater hydrophone systems (Ayson-Ball, 2011).

China-Russia conflict, possibly in context of loss-of-control of Chinese nuclear forces in a regional conflict involving Taiwan or North Korea.

Russia-US conflict, involving horizontal escalation from a head-on collision with Russian nuclear forces in Europe or the Middle East; or somehow starts at sea (mostly likely seems ASW) or over North Korea (some have cited risk of US missile defenses against North Korean attack as risking Russian immediate response).

Combinations of or simultaneous eruption of the above conflicts that culminate in nuclear war are also possible. Other unanticipated nuclear-prone conflict axes (such as Russia-Japan) could also emerge with little warning.

Precursors of such nuclear-laden conflicts in this region also exist that could lead states to the brink of nuclear war and demonstrate that nuclear war is all too possible between states in this region. Examples include the August 1958 Quemoy-Matsu crisis, in which the United States deployed nuclear weapons to Taiwan, and the US Air Force has only a nuclear defense strategy in place to defend Taiwan should China have escalated its shelling campaign to an actual attack; the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when a US nuclear armed missile was nearly fired from Okinawa due to a false fire order; the March 1969 Chinese-Soviet military clash and resulting consideration of nuclear attacks by both sides; and the August 1976 poplar tree crisis at Panmunjon in Korea, when the United States moved nuclear weapons back to the DMZ and the White House issued pre-delegated orders to the US commander in Korea to attack North Korea if the tree cutting task force was attacked by North Korean forces.