For more than 30 years Jenkins has been advising the military, government, and prestigious think tanks on the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Now he goes beyond what the experts know to examine how terrorists themselves think about such weapons.

"Nuclear terrorism is such a disturbing prospect that we shy away from its details. Yet as a consequence, we fail to understand how best to defeat it. Michael Levi takes us inside nuclear terrorism and behind the decisions a terrorist leader would be faced with in pursuing a nuclear plot. Along the way, Levi identifies the many obstacles, large and small, that such a terrorist scheme might encounter, allowing him to discover a host of ways that any plan might be foiled. Surveying the broad universe of plots and defenses, this accessible account shows how a wide-ranging defense that integrates the tools of weapon and materials security, law enforcement, intelligence, border controls, diplomacy, and the military can multiply, intensify, and compound the possibility that nuclear terrorists will fail. Levi draws from our long experience with terrorism and cautions us not to focus solely on the most harrowing yet most improbable threats. Nuclear terrorism shares much in common with other terrorist threats--and as a result, he argues, defeating it is impossible unless we put our entire counterterrorism and homeland security house in order. As long as we live in a nuclear age, no defense can completely eliminate nuclear terrorism. But this book reminds us that the right strategy can minimize the risks and shows us how to do it."

The very mention of nuclear terrorism is enough to rouse strong reactions, and understandably so, because it combines the most terrifying weapons and the most threatening of people in a single phrase. The possibility that terrorists could obtain and use nuclear weapons deserves careful analysis, but discussion has all too often been contaminated with exaggeration, even hysteria. For example, it has been claimed that nuclear terrorism poses an ‘existential threat’ to the United States. This Adelphi Paper develops a more measured analysis of the risk of terrorists detonating a true fission device. The problem is attacked from two perspectives: the considerable, possibly insurmountable, technical challenges involved in obtaining a functional nuclear weapon, whether ‘home-made’ or begged, borrowed or stolen from a state arsenal; and the question of the strategic, political and psychological motivations to ‘go nuclear’. The conclusions are that nuclear terrorism is a less significant threat than is commonly believed, and that, among terrorists, Muslim extremists are not the most likely to use nuclear weapons.

"But Allison does more than weave a tale of doom, because his second proposition is that nuclear terrorism is preventable. He outlines an ambitious but feasible strategy by which we can essentially eliminate the danger of nuclear terrorism."--BOOK JACKET.

The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism, a new book from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, assesses the motivations and capabilities of terrorist organizations to acquire and use nuclear weapons, to fabricate and and detonate crude nuclear explosives, to strike nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, and to build and employ radiological weapons or "dirty bombs."

John Mueller argues how our obsession with nuclear weapons is unsupported by history, scientific fact, or logic. Examining the entire atomic era, Mueller boldly contends that nuclear weapons have had little impact on history.

This volume presents the papers and summarizes the discussions of a workshop held in Goa, India, in January 2004, organized by the Indian National Institute of Advanced Science (NIAS) and the U.S. Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC). During the workshop, Indian and U.S. experts examined the terrorist threat faced in both countries and elsewhere in the world, and explored opportunities for the U.S. and India to work together. Bringing together scientists and experts with common scientific and technical backgrounds from different cultures provided a unique opportunity to explore possible means of preventing or mitigating future terrorist attacks.