The fact that the destruction wrought by the attempted use of these materials was not more massive owes more to luck than to prevention, deterrence, or consequence management. With the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian command and control society, a vast potential supermarket of weapons and materials of mass destruction has become accessible. Rogue states and terrorist organizations can now attempt to buy or steal what they previously had to produce on their own. The prevailing view that there is today no direct threat to U.S. national security is dead wrong. When the Soviet Union crumbled, four new independent countries emerged from the ashes as nuclear powers.
Today there is only one.
Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are nuclear free. The Nunn-Lugar program helped persuade them to give up nuclear weapons. I held a series of hearings over the past two years dealing with the threats posed by the proliferation of weapons and materials of mass destruction. Domestically, we here in the United States are not equipped to manage the crisis posed by the threatened use of such weapons or to manage the consequences of their use against civilian populations. This threat is real and we must be prepared.