The administration has not leveled with Congress about the limited effectiveness of programs to date and the huge task ahead. And that, says Bunn, could spell nuclear disaster. The United States has started programs in Russia to transport and process weapons-usable nuclear material, he explains, which are activities that can increase the risk if you aren t careful about securing them, until there s stringent and effective security and accounting measures for those new activities in place. If something got stolen, if nuclear material got stolen from a program that was only under way because the United States was paying for it, and ended up in the hands of a hostile state or terrorist group, it would not only be a gigantic security disaster, but it would be a giant political disaster. After all, the whole point of these programs is to reduce the risk of proliferation, not to increase it.
Nobody is in command.
If you really want to pull together an integrated program and make it work, there needs to be somebody in charge, argues Bunn. Such a person does not exist in the U.S. government. To this day, the United States has no strategy for tackling the problem. That question was not being asked. And that question needs to be asked.