Nuclear Terrorism: The ‘Other’ Extreme of Irregular Warfare

Although nuclear terrorism has always been a concern of nuclear weapons states, the issue has long been overshadowed by the more prominent problems associated with possible nuclear exchanges between the nuclear weapons states themselves. While the latter problem has not disappeared, nuclear weapons have, in recent years, acquired an ‘irregular’ quality and have become of greater interest to terrorists. Moreover, the concurrent proliferation of nuclear weapons states (some with questionable ability to provide absolute security for their nuclear assets) and the rise of terrorism (including the stated desire of some terrorist organizations to employ nuclear weapons in pursuit of their ideological aims) have combined to produce a vexing challenge for moral philosophers. The question of how to respond to terrorist use of a nuclear weapon is one to which there are no easy answers, but which at the same time can no longer be avoided except at potentially grave peril. This article attempts to frame the problem of nuclear terrorism and to identify the logically possible responses to terrorist use of a nuclear weapon and the moral challenges associated with each possibility.