A lot of people from the United States believe they live their lives in an impenetrable bubble, free of harm from the outside world. This ignorance is not the fault of the people, just a direct consequence of living in a country with a weak, central governing structure where the well being of the individual citizen is more important than that of the communities. According to the Brooking Institute, the United States spends $35 billion annually building, delivering and defending against the nuclear bomb. The prevailing view that there is, today, no direct threats to United States national security is dead wrong. Though the United States has strong and effective capabilities to combat domestic and international terrorism, we have many enemies who, like us, have weapons of mass destruction. Namely nuclear weapons. With that in mind, our challenge as a country has been and will continue to be to create and maintain essential capabilities to detect and combat threats to our nation's security without wasting scarce resources, chasing false threats or compromising our liberties.

When researching counter-terrorism, two names consistently seem to come up. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind) and Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA). According to Indiana representative, John Hostettler (R), and apparent to the whole Congressional Military Research and Development subcommittee, Senator Lugar is one of the world's most respected voices on the issue of nuclear proliferation and on the urgency with which the United States must address the threat of nuclear terrorism. Senator Lugar and Senator Nunn have devoted much of their time working to reduce the risks of a nuclear attack on the United States.

Let's look at a little background into the acts of terrorism as a whole. International terrorist incidents have fallen more than 50% since 1987. Domestic terrorist incidents have fallen 80% since 1981. Research studies have shown that Latin America and Europe, not the Middle East have been the regions with the most terrorist incidents. The perception that most acts of terrorism have been carried out in the middle east is wrong but could possibly be explained by the fact that the majority of all terrorist casualties have occurred there. Simply, though there have been significantly fewer acts of terrorism in the middle east, the ones that have occurred are the result of weapons of mass destruction. Another misconception about terrorist involvement in the middle east is that most groups practicing terrorism (which has significantly declined) are Marxist-Leninist inspired rather than Islamic Radical Fundamentalist. The number of terrorist groups have declined so much that in 1996, 51% of all international terrorist acts were carried out by only five different terrorist groups.

The United State's counter-terrorism policy (as of 1987) has been proven effective and sound. There are four basic pillars of the policy:

1) Intelligence Collection and Analysis

2) Law Enforcement and Prosecution

3)Diplomacy and Coordination

4)Operations and Training

In order to track and defeat terrorist groups there must be a collection of as much information about them as possible. Information crucial to demise consists of the members' identities, how they get their money and who provides them with training and support. The task goes beyond simply gathering facts. Raw intelligence also must be assembled, analyzed and used for operational purposes.

Arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating terrorists has been an effective mainstay in the United States' counter-terrorism policy in the last decade. Law enforcement is a critical tool to implement counter terrorism policy because it produces several benefits. First, it has a clear deterrent effect. At a minimum, it sends a clear signal to all terrorists that attacks against the United States will not go unpunished and that if caught and identified they will personally pay a heavy price. Second, it provides a clear demonstration of separates us from terrorists and that is our goal as a country is to seek justice rather than vengeance.

Because finding and arresting terrorists outside of the United States is so difficult, the use of diplomacy has been a proven ally to the policy. In order to arrest and extradite a suspect in another country, one must receive permission of foreign governments. This means that the United States must be on good terms with this country.

It would be foolish for one country to wait until an act of terrorism occurs before it figures out how it is going to collectively respond. Through this policy, the United States has improved its domestic readiness by providing training and preparation to conduct multi-agency operations. These operations give agencies like the FBI, CIA, DOE and the State Department, an opportunity to test their readiness to handle future contingencies. They also allow the various departments and forces to become familiar with each other and learn how to coordinate and work together in a stressful condition.

Nuclear warfare is a very lucrative business available only to those who have the money to alter the natural forms of uranium and plutonium to weapons grade. Since terrorist's nowadays have shifted from having a national identity to just belonging to a smaller group or faction, there is less money to spend on such sophisticated weaponry. The delivery systems alone-- missiles, aircraft, and submarines-- have added $3.2 trillion to the United State's weapons grade nuclear materials Today, a terrorist's threat to national security does not come from ballistic or cruise missiles because most terrorist groups do not have the financial resources to fund these delivery units. Due to extensive technological developments in the past decade, the delivery vehicle of choice has switched to the likes of moving vans; even suitcases. The smallest nuclear bomb ever deployed was the W54. A 51 lb bomb with a variable explosive yield of 0.01 kilotons (equivalent to 10 tons of TNT, or two to four times as powerful as the ammonium nitrate bomb which destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995).

During the 1980's, groups linked directly and indirectly to states opposed to the United States were a major source of international terrorist activity. This includes the Soviet Union. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in late 1991, four suddenly independent republics inherited thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons. The abrupt decentralization of control over the Soviet nuclear arsenal, together with well-founded concerns about the leadership and stability of the newly independent states, greatly alarmed Washington. Senator Sam Nunn (D) of Georgia said of the situation, "I know of no more urgent national security challenge confronting our nation, nor do I know of any greater opportunity . . . to reduce the dangers confronting us." Led by Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana, Congress passed the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991. The Senate voted 86 to 8 in favor of the legislation--which came to be known as the Nunn-Lugar Act--because even the strongest opponents of U.S. foreign aid saw the value of the emergency effort to help the former Soviet republics secure and destroy their excess weapons of mass destruction.

Consequently, when the Soviet Union disintegrated in late 1991, Soviet nuclear weapons were in the hands of four immediately sovereign republics--Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus--whose leadership appeared confused and wobbly. This was not the ideal situation for the United States to be in. At that point we had, more or less, just won the cold war and communism was defeated. Rampant and increasing organized crime and a disaffected Russian military reeling from lack of pay and loss of pride was just a couple of the threats facing the triumphant United States. We didn't just have one nation to deal with but now four inexperienced, possibly angry nations were involved. One can only imagine the national sentiments towards the United States within those four countries. In addition, these four potentially hostile countries shared the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world. In response to that threatening turn of events, Senators, Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) persuaded Congress to pass the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program to provide assistance for dismantling or safely storing the weapons in the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

If the United States is to have any chance of stopping the detonation of a weapon of mass destruction on our soil, it simply must follow the three main ideas behind the original Nunn-Lugar Act (NLA):

•Prevention: Prevention must start at the source; the weapons and material depots and research institutes in all terrorist and rogue countries

•Deterrence and Interdiction: This involves efforts to stem the flow of illicit trade in nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction

•Crisis and Consequence Management: This involves greater efforts at domestic preparedness in and after a possible attack.

With the breaking up of the Soviet Union, prevention and deterrence became the United States' main focus in the fight against nuclear terrorism. As explained above, a plethora of nuclear arms were split up, three-fourths of them going to three especially weak, national security-wise, possibly hostile countries; the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Along with the Department of Defense's Nunn-Luger Act, Congress was able to set aside moneys for the Department of Energy to form the Materials Protection, Control and Accounting program (MPC&A). Specifically, in the former Soviet Union, MPC&A was sought to secure hundreds of tons of weapons-usable materials that were inadequately stored. The Russian inventory system was so primitive and inefficient that the Russians did not have an accurate count of their nuclear weapons or materials. That may have been the reason why after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the military had lost track of 84 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs, any one of which could kill up to 100,000 people. This problem was greatly helped by the MPC&A which replaced the existing system of manual accountability, hand-written and decentralized, with a more sophisticated and secure one. The fact that these potentially lethal weapons of mass destruction were not stored with the highest security caused global unrest. In this condition, the nuclear weapons were at risk of falling into the wrong hands; namely those of criminals, terrorist organizations and rogue states. Increases in crime , corruption and competence and institutional decay are so advanced in Russia that the theft of nuclear weapons, unthinkable in the Soviet war machine of the Cold War, seems entirely plausible in the Russia of today. By implementing the MPC&A program in the former Soviet Union, the United States was able to free the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus of all its nuclear weapons. This is one way how the Nunn-Lugar Act is helping to prevent a threat to the American people at the source. Along with prevention at the source, this cooperative threat reduction program has accomplished its second goal which is to deter the weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

Domestically, we here in the United States are not equipped to manage the crisis posed by the threatened use of nuclear weapons. We are also not equipped to manage the consequences of their use against civilian populations. Integrated defense in depth tells us that only by maintaining the first two lines of defense abroad (prevention and deterrence) can we hope to successfully prepare for the threat at home, effectively employing our domestic preparedness programs, the third line of defense.

In closing, we should be proactive in handling threats from terrorists and preparing for the its aftermath in case an incident does occur. But the United States government anti-terrorism policies must reflect reason and prudence.Prevention and preparation can pay important dividends when the unexpected occurs. "Whatever we do we must safeguard our best defense against terrorism-- freedom."