1335) As voltas da História - Martin Wolf

No dia 10 de fevereiro de 2010, eu postei neste blog o link para um podcast do jornalista econômico Martin Wolf, sobre os desafios de nosso mundo pos-crise:

The challenges of managing our post crisis world (December 29, 2009)

Bem, continuei, nas noites seguintes, aproveitando as promenades philosophiques avec mon chien, para ouvir outros podcasts do Martin Wolf, certamente um dos melhores comentaristas da economia global, obviamente do Financial Times (FT) que, junto com o Wall Street Journal e a Economist, não é apenas um dos melhores jornais econômicos do mundo, mas um dos melhores jornais, tout court.

Foi assim que ouvi mais um podcast que recomendo vivamente aos meus habituais visitantes, este aqui:

How the noughties were a hinge of History (23 December 2009)

A despeito do que pedem os editores do FT (Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web), vou contrariar essa recomendação e não apenas dar o link para o podcast, como transcrever o teor do mesmo.

Antes, porém, cabe esclarecer por que o estou fazendo, já que não pretendo me converter em promotor publicitário do jornalista em questão.
A razão é que encontrei inúmeros pontos de contato e alguma similaridade conceitual entre esse podcast, ou esse ensaio de natureza histórica, e um trabalho meu já concluido desde o final de 2009 -- portanto, na mesma época em que Martin Wolf escrevia o seu texto -- mas que não foi ainda publicado.
O trabalho é este aqui:

O Bric e a substituição de hegemonias: um exercício analítico
(perspectiva histórico-diplomática sobre a emergência de um novo cenário global)
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
(Brasília, 31 dezembro 2009, 32 p.)
Trata-se de um ensaio preparado para um livro sobre o Brasil e os outros Brics e que, se não encontrar objeção de certas cabeças iluminadas, deveria, em princípio, ser publicado em meados de 2010, sob a coordenação de um economista conhecido.

Transcrevo o sumário e os dados de indexação:

1. Introdução: por que o Bric e apenas o Bric?
2. Bric: uma nova categoria conceitual ou apenas um acrônimo apelativo?
3. O Bric na ordem global: um papel relevante, ou apenas uma instância formal?
4. O Bric e a economia política da nova ordem mundial: contrastes e confrontos
5. Grandezas e misérias da substituição hegemônica: lições da História
6. Conclusão: um acrônimo talvez invertido

Resumo: Exercício analítico de caráter histórico-prospectivo sobre o grupo Bric a partir de um exame sobre os fundamentos conceituais da iniciativa diplomática e de uma discussão acerca de suas peculiaridades econômicas e políticas, nos contextos regionais e mundial. Argumentos reflexivos e considerações de natureza histórica sobre as implicações diplomáticas do processo de substituição de hegemonias globais.
Palavras-chave: Bric, Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China, G7, Ordem global, Governança mundial, Substituição de hegemonias.
(quem tiver curiosidade em lê-lo, pode me pedir em mensagem particular)

Agora, Martin Wolf:

How the noughties were a hinge of history
By Martin Wolf
Financial Times, December 23 2009

The only truly global power was in rapid relative decline. Not long before, it had won a pyrrhic victory in a costly colonial war. New great powers were on the rise. An arms race was under way, as was competition for markets and resources in undeveloped areas of the world. Yet people still believed in the durability of the free trade and free capital flows that had nurtured prosperity and, many believed, had also underpinned peace.

That was how the world looked to many at the end of the “noughties” of the 20th century. Yet catastrophe lay ahead: a world war; a communist revolution; a Great Depression; fascism; and then another world war. The world order – built on competing great powers, imperialism and liberal markets – proved incapable of providing the public goods of peace and prosperity. It took calamity, the cold war and the replacement of the UK by the US as hegemonic power to re-establish stability. That then facilitated decolonisation, unprecedented economic expansion, the collapse of communism and yet another epoch of market-led global integration.

“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes,” as Mark Twain is supposed to have said. The noughties of the 21st century now have the same fin de regime feeling as those of a century ago. Then the US, Germany, Russia and Japan were on the rise; now it is China and India. Then it was the Boer war; now it is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then it was an arms race between Germany and the UK; now it is the military build-up in China. Then the protectionism of the US undermined liberal trade; now conflicts between the US and China undermine our ability to tackle climate change. Then the US was isolationist; now China and other rising powers demand untrammelled sovereignty.

The noughties of the 21st century were marked by historic changes.

First, we are seeing at least the beginning of the end not just of an illusory “unipolar moment” for the US, but of western supremacy, in general, and of Anglo-American power, in particular. The UK was the only power with global reach in the 19th century. The US held the same role in the second half of the 20th. The transition between these two eras was a catastrophe. Now we have a possibly even more difficult transition of power to manage.

Second, the west, in general, and the US, in particular, have suffered a disastrous loss of authority. Assertion of an unchecked right to intervene destroyed trust in the US. The chaos that followed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, far more, the financial crisis have destroyed the west’s reputation for competence. The rest of the world was inclined to believe that the west, whatever its faults, knew what it was doing, particularly where running a market economy was concerned. But then the teacher failed the examination.

Third, globalisation has also fallen into difficulty. Thirty years of surging growth in private sector leverage, in the balance sheets of the financial sector and in notional profitability of the financial sector in the US and other high-income countries has ended in calamity. The emergence of massive global current account “imbalances” has proved highly destabilising. Friction over exchange rates threatens even the maintenance of liberal trade.

Fourth, the provision of basic global public goods now demands co-operation between the established powers and emerging countries. This was shown in the inability to complete the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations; in the rising influence of the Group of 20 leading countries and the parallel decline of the Group of Seven high-income countries during the financial crisis; and in the centrality of China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases, in the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.

Yet, quite rightly, the world also demands the provision of far more public goods than a century ago. Then a modicum of peace, monetary stability and open markets was all that was expected. Now the world demands that leaders not only sustain peace and prosperity, but also promote development and environmental sustainability. All this is to be achieved via co-operation among some 200 states of vastly different capacities. Meanwhile, a host of non-state actors, some benign and many malign, impose conflicting pressures. Sometimes, they subvert states entirely.

The good news is that the world has not made mistakes as big as those that followed the noughties of a century ago: thanks, partly, to nuclear weapons, direct conflicts among great powers have been avoided; a liberal world economy has survived, so far; the lessons of the 1930s were applied to the financial crisis of the 2000s, with at least short-run success; climate change negotiations remain open; and many developing countries – though far from all – have made economic progress. While the movement towards democracy of the early 1990s has slowed, the number of grossly malign totalitarian regimes is now small, at least by the worst standards of the 20th century.

So where should we go in the next decade? For all its difficulties, the US is not the UK of 1910. Its economy remains the world’s most productive and innovative and its military capacity remains unmatched. The western world, as a whole, remains potent, with about 40 per cent of global output, at purchasing power parity. But other countries and forces are now on the rise, while the challenges ahead are also more complex and global than ever before.

“We must all hang together or assuredly we shall hang separately.” All countries – above all, incumbent and rising great powers – must recognise this truth, enunciated by Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the US declaration of independence. History has hardly been dominated by the benign spirits of co-operation, foresight and self-restraint. I would at least give Barack Obama credit for trying to provide the right sort of leadership. But will the world produce sufficient followers, at home or abroad? Alas, I rather doubt it.

To comment on Martin Wolf’s column, please visit his Economists’ Forum
Send your comments to martin.wolf@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/martinwolf

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. You may share using our article tools.

1334) Sitemeter: estatisticas do blog na semana

Toda sexta-feira recebo um pequeno relatório do Sitemeter -- o medidor de visitas neste blog -- com a movimentação da semana, como transcrevo mais abaixo.
Mais interessante do que os número em si, que só podem sensibilizar estatísticos ou outros fanáticos por dados, são as indicações complementares, que se referem a links de entrada e links de saída, suscetíveis de denotar os interesses específicos dos visitantes. Transcrevo alguns mais abaixo.
Como se pode ver, tem muita gente preocupada com a questão dos salários dos "conselheiros" da Petrobra: ou são funcionários ou prepostos da firma, tentando detectar o que se publica de bom a favor, e de mau contra, a dita estatal, ou são simples cidadãos interessados numa das "intransparências" desse paquiderme.

Diplomatizzando -- Site Summary ---
Visits
Total ........................ 4,586
Average per Day ................ 335
Average Visit Length .......... 2:24
This Week .................... 2,346

Page Views
Total ........................ 6,977
Average per Day ................ 494
Average per Visit .............. 1.5
This Week .................... 3,458

http://www.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s33allbooks

--- Visits this Week ---
Day
Hour 2/5 2/6 2/7 2/8 2/9 2/10 2/11 Total
---- ----- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ -------
1 12 11 13 12 16 15 18 97
(...)
24 12 18 14 13 17 18 14 106
------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ -------
316 260 264 381 385 389 351 2,346

--- Page Views this Week ---
Day
Hour 2/5 2/6 2/7 2/8 2/9 2/10 2/11 Total
---- ----- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ -------
1 34 12 19 15 16 25 18 139
(...)
24 16 25 23 21 20 21 20 146
------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ -------
509 382 407 544 598 534 484 3,458

Links de entrada:
1 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
4 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
5 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...ura-de-alunos-de-relacoes.html
7 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...como-fazer-um-bom-parecer.html
8 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...samuel-pinheiro-guimaraes.html
11 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...como-fazer-um-bom-parecer.html
12 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...-informaes-sobre-carreira.html
13 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...de-desculpaspaises-coreia.html
14 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...o-e-carreira-do-diplomata.html
15 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...para-carreira-diplomatica.html
16 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
17 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...de-desculpaspaises-coreia.html
20 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...a-publica-deterioracao-no.html
(...)
81 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...uador-avante-para-tras-na.html
82 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...rofisso-internacionalista.html
83 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
84 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...ida-dois-textos-otimistas.html
85 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...-do-concurso-do-itamaraty.html
86 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
87 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...onomist-constata-falta-de.html
88 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
89 http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html
92 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
95 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...onferencia-de-ialta-11-de.html
96 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
97 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
99 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html
100 http://diplomatizzando.blogspo...eiros-da-petrobras-76-mil.html

Vários outros cliques se interessam pela carreira diplomática.
Por "location", tenho uma predominância de localidades brasileiras, mas algumas internacionais também. Não é o caso de fazer estatísticas ou copiar os dados.
Até a próxima sexta...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida (12.02.2010)

1333) Japao pede desculpas a Coreia pela ocupacao colonial

Leio, no excelente blog do colega acadêmico Jefferson Tolentino, esta nota, pequena em palavras, mas extraordinariamente importante em sua dimensão política e histórica:

Japão pede desculpas à Coréia do Sul por ações coloniais

Desculpas sempre são bem vindas, não é?
Pois bem, o Ministro de Relações Exteriores do Japão, Katsuya Okada pediu desculpas nesta quinta-feira a Coréia do Sul por mais de três décadas de submissão. Segundo o diplomata, esse período é descrito como um “tragic incident“
Okada fez esse pedido, inusitado, durante uma conferencia de notícias ao lado do Ministro de Relações Exteriores da Coréia do Sul, Yu Myung-hwan.

“I believe it was a tragic incident for Koreans when they were deprived of their nation and their identity,” Okada said, according to the Yonhap news agency.
“I can fully understand the feelings of (Koreans) who were deprived of their identity and nation. I believe we must never forget the victims,” he added.

Para relembrá-los, o incidente trágico descrito ocorreu entre 1910 e 1945.
Esse período de expansão militar nipônico é marcado pelos relatos de mulheres que serviram de escravas sexuais para os soldados japoneses. Cerca de 200.000 mulheres, entre chinesas e coreanas, foram escravizadas e até hoje tentam ver reconhecidas essas barbaridades e indenizadas.

1332) Construindo o atraso educacional do Brasil

Desconstruindo a educação no Brasil
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Sou terrivelmente pessimista quanto ao itinerário presente E FUTURO da educação no Brasil. Alguns diriam que sou excessivamente pessimista. Acho que não, inclusive porque não sou do setor, não acompanho em detalhes todas as bobagens que vem sendo cometidas pelas pedagogas "freireanas" (e delirantes) que atuam supostamente em nome do MEC para deformar as orientações curriculares do ensino nos dois primeiros graus da educação pública no Brasil e por todos os demais responsáveis pelo setor no Brasil.
Impossível não ser pessimista, mesmo não sendo especialista da área, apenas sabendo daquilo que se proclama como obrigatório aqui e ali.
O Brasil, na verdade, é o país das coisas obrigatórias, das leis que tornam compulsório aquilo que poderia (ou deveria) ser apenas voluntário, funcionar como sugestão, enfim, abrir uma oportunidade de ampliação das oportunidades educacionais, mas que acaba sendo um peso nos orçamentos de estados e municípios e que serve apenas para afundar ainda mais o nível de conhecimento médio dos alunos dos ciclos básicos.

Bem, toda essa introdução, para dizer que estou cada vez mais impressionado como as autoridades educacionais (Ok, autoridades é apenas uma deferência indevida) se empenham em deteriorar cada vez mais as chances de as crianças brasileiras aprenderem o que é verdadeiramente essencial, desviando-as para matérias absolutamente secundárias e até "desviantes" em relação ao que deveria ser um ensino adequado aos desafios da globalização.

Digo isto porque acabo de ler numa propaganda de uma grande editora educacional -- que obviamente ganha muito dinheiro com as exigências e obrigatoriedades inúteis que o governo impõe às escolas estaduais e municipais -- que o Espanhol passou a fazer parte do currículo escolar do ensino médio.
Permito lembrar que a língua espanhola já era obrigatória, desde o início da presente administração do currículo escolar do ensino fundamental, isso por uma suposta preparação para a integração com os vizinhos do Mercosul (sendo que NENHUM vizinho do Mercosul tornou o Português obrigatório, ou sequer opcional, nas suas escolas fundamentais ou de nível médio).

O Brasil, que vai ser obrigado a formar alguns milhares -- não sei quantos, talvez dezenas de milhares -- de professores de "Portunhol", oferece uma chance única, estupidamente auto-assumida, de desviar ainda mais os estudantes brasileiros de uma real concentração naquilo que é, ou deveria, ser, o foco essencial dos estudos: língua nacional, matemáticas elementares, ciências básicas, sendo todo o resto opcional e voluntário, inclusive estudos sociais e matérias afins (Ok, concedo em que história e geografia poderiam ser obrigatórias, mas não tenho muita certeza).

O Brasil continua a afundar mais um pouco seu sistema educacional, depois de outras medidas igualmente deletérias para a boa sanidade mental dos alunos.
Na presente administração, já se tornou obrigatória no ensino primário uma coisa chamada "estudos afrobrasileiros", que provavelmente vai ser uma mistura de reconstrução ideológico-mistificadora de um suposto passado glorioso africano que faz parte de nossa herança cultural e social. Certo, mas os imigrantes europeus também construíram este país, e eles não tem direito a "estudos eurobrasileiros".
Na presente administração, também foi tornado obrigatório -- sempre compulsório, não opcional, ou voluntário -- o ensino de sociologia e filosofia no ensino médio, o que nada mais é do que uma reserva de mercado para marxistas desempregados.

Em face de todos esses exemplos de má administração educacional, eu só posso prever um itinerário desastroso parda o ensino no Brasil, pelos próximos 25 anos, talvez um pouco mais.
Espero estar errado, mas temo que não...

Brasília, 11.02.2010.

1331) Terrorismo e armas de destruicao em massa

The Jihadist CBRN Threat
Global Security and Intelligence Report
By Scott Stewart
STRATFOR, February 10, 2010

In an interview aired Feb. 7 on CNN, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she considers weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of an international terrorist group to be the largest threat faced by the United States today, even bigger than the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. “The biggest nightmare that many of us have is that one of these terrorist member organizations within this syndicate of terror will get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction,” Clinton said. In referring to the al Qaeda network, Clinton noted that it is “unfortunately a very committed, clever, diabolical group of terrorists who are always looking for weaknesses and openings.”

Clinton’s comments came on the heels of a presentation by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In his Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community on Feb. 2, Blair noted that, although counterterrorism actions have dealt a significant blow to al Qaeda’s near-term efforts to develop a sophisticated chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) attack capability, the U.S. intelligence community judges that the group is still intent on acquiring the capability. Blair also stated the obvious when he said that if al Qaeda were able to develop CBRN weapons and had the operatives to use them it would do so.

All this talk about al Qaeda and WMD has caused a number of STRATFOR clients, readers and even friends and family members to ask for our assessment of this very worrisome issue. So, we thought it would be an opportune time to update our readers on the topic.

Realities Shaping the Playing Field

To begin a discussion of jihadists and WMD, it is first important to briefly re-cap STRATFOR’s assessment of al Qaeda and the broader jihadist movement. It is our assessment that the first layer of the jihadist movement, the al Qaeda core group, has been hit heavily by the efforts of the United States and its allies in the aftermath of 9/11. Due to the military, financial, diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement operations conducted against the core group, it is now a far smaller and more insular organization than it once was and is largely confined geographically to the Afghan-Pakistani border. Having lost much of its operational ability, the al Qaeda core is now involved primarily in the ideological struggle (which it seems to be losing at the present time).

The second layer in the jihadist realm consists of regional terrorist or insurgent groups that have adopted the jihadist ideology. Some of these have taken up the al Qaeda banner, such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and we refer to them as al Qaeda franchise groups. Other groups may adopt some or all of al Qaeda’s jihadist ideology and cooperate with the core group, but they will maintain their independence for a variety of reasons. In recent years, these groups have assumed the mantle of leadership for the jihadist movement on the physical battlefield.

The third (and broadest) component of the jihadist movement is composed of grassroots jihadists. These are individuals or small groups of people located across the globe who are inspired by the al Qaeda core and the franchise groups but who may have little or no actual connection to these groups. By their very nature, the grassroots jihadists are the hardest of these three components to identify and target and, as a result, are able to move with more freedom than members of the al Qaeda core or the regional franchises.

As long as the ideology of jihadism exists, and jihadists at any of these three layers embrace the philosophy of attacking the “far enemy,” there will be a threat of attacks by jihadists against the United States. The types of attacks they are capable of conducting, however, depend on their intent and capability. Generally speaking, the capability of the operatives associated with the al Qaeda core is the highest and the capability of grassroots operatives is the lowest. Certainly, many grassroots operatives think big and would love to conduct a large, devastating attack, but their grandiose plans often come to naught for lack of experience and terrorist tradecraft.

Although the American public has long anticipated a follow-on attack to 9/11, most of the attacks directed against the United States since 9/11 have failed. In addition to incompetence and poor tradecraft, one of the contributing factors to these failures is the nature of the targets. Many strategic targets are large and well-constructed, and therefore hard to destroy. In other words, just because a strategic target is attacked does not mean the attack has succeeded. Indeed, many such attacks have failed. Even when a plot against a strategic target is successfully executed, it might not produce the desired results and would therefore be considered a failure. For example, the detonation of a massive truck bomb in a parking garage of the World Trade Center in 1993 failed to achieve the jihadists’ aims of toppling the two towers and producing mass casualties, or of causing a major U.S. foreign policy shift.

Many strategic targets, such as embassies, are well protected against conventional attacks. Their large standoff distances and physical security measures (like substantial perimeter walls) protect them from vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), while these and other security measures make it difficult to cause significant damage to them using smaller IEDs or small arms.

To overcome these obstacles, jihadists have been forced to look at alternate means of attack. Al Qaeda’s use of large, fully fueled passenger aircraft as guided missiles is a great example of this, though it must be noted that once that tactic became known, it ceased to be viable (as United Airlines Flight 93 demonstrated). Today, there is little chance that a flight crew and passengers of an aircraft would allow it to be seized by a small group of hijackers.

CBRN

Al Qaeda has long plotted ways to overcome security measures and launch strategic strikes with CBRN weapons. In addition to the many public pronouncements the group has made about its desire to obtain and use such weapons, we know al Qaeda has developed crude methods for producing chemical and biological weapons and included such tactics in its encyclopedia of jihad and terrorist training courses.

However, as STRATFOR has repeatedly pointed out, chemical and biological weapons are expensive and difficult to use and have proved to be largely ineffective in real-world applications. A comparison of the Aum Shinrikyo chemical and biological attacks in Tokyo with the March 2004 jihadist attacks in Madrid clearly demonstrates that explosives are far cheaper, easier to use and more effective in killing people. The failure by jihadists in Iraq to use chlorine effectively in their attacks also underscores the problem of using improvised chemical weapons. These problems were also apparent to the al Qaeda leadership, which scrapped a plot to use improvised chemical weapons in the New York subway system due to concerns that the weapons would be ineffective. The pressure jihadist groups are under would also make it very difficult for them to develop a chemical or biological weapons facility, even if they possessed the financial and human resources required to launch such a program.

Of course, it is not unimaginable for al Qaeda or other jihadists to think outside the box and attack a chemical storage site or tanker car, or use such bulk chemicals to attack another target — much as the 9/11 hijackers used passenger- and fuel-laden aircraft to attack their targets. However, while an attack using deadly bulk chemicals could kill many people, most would be evacuated before they could receive a lethal dose, as past industrial accidents have demonstrated. Therefore, such an attack would be messy but would be more likely to cause mass panic and evacuations than mass casualties. Still, it would be a far more substantial attack than the previous subway plot using improvised chemical weapons.

A similar case can be made against the effectiveness of an attack involving a radiological dispersion device (RDD), sometimes called a “dirty bomb.” While RDDs are easy to deploy — so simple that we are surprised one has not already been used within the United States — it is very difficult to immediately administer a lethal dose of radiation to victims. Therefore, the “bomb” part of a dirty bomb would likely kill more people than the device’s “dirty,” or radiological, component. However, use of an RDD would result in mass panic and evacuations and could require a lengthy and expensive decontamination process. Because of this, we refer to RDDs as “weapons of mass disruption” rather than weapons of mass destruction.

The bottom line is that a nuclear device is the only element of the CBRN threat that can be relied upon to create mass casualties and guarantee the success of a strategic strike. However, a nuclear device is also by far the hardest of the CBRN weapons to obtain or manufacture and therefore the least likely to be used. Given the pressure that al Qaeda and its regional franchise groups are under in the post-9/11 world, it is simply not possible for them to begin a weapons program intended to design and build a nuclear device. Unlike countries such as North Korea and Iran, jihadists simply do not have the resources or the secure territory on which to build such facilities. Even with money and secure facilities, it is still a long and difficult endeavor to create a nuclear weapons program — as is evident in the efforts of North Korea and Iran. This means that jihadists would be forced to obtain an entire nuclear device from a country that did have a nuclear weapons program, or fissile material such as highly enriched uranium (enriched to 80 percent or higher of the fissile isotope U-235) that they could use to build a crude, gun-type nuclear weapon.

Indeed, we know from al Qaeda defectors like Jamal al-Fadl that al Qaeda attempted to obtain fissile material as long ago as 1994. The organization was duped by some of the scammers who were roaming the globe attempting to sell bogus material following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Several U.S. government agencies were duped in similar scams.

Black-market sales of military-grade radioactive materials spiked following the collapse of the Soviet Union as criminal elements descended on abandoned Russian nuclear facilities in search of a quick buck. In subsequent years the Russian government, in conjunction with various international agencies and the U.S. government, clamped down on the sale of Soviet-era radioactive materials. U.S. aid to Russia in the form of so-called “nonproliferation assistance” — money paid to destroy or adequately secure such nuclear and radiological material — increased dramatically following 9/11. In 2009, the U.S. Congress authorized around $1.2 billion for U.S. programs that provide nonproliferation and threat reduction assistance to the former Soviet Union. Such programs have resulted in a considerable amount of fissile material being taken off the market and removed from vulnerable storage sites, and have made it far harder to obtain fissile material today than it was in 1990 or even 2000.

Another complication to consider is that jihadists are not the only parties who are in the market for nuclear weapons or fissile material. In addition to counterproliferation programs that offer to pay money for fissile materials, countries like Iran and North Korea would likely be quick to purchase such items, and they have the resources to do so, unlike jihadist groups, which are financially strapped.

Some commentators have said they believe al Qaeda has had nuclear weapons for years but has been waiting to activate them at the “right time.” Others claim these weapons are pre-positioned inside U.S. cities. STRATFOR’s position is that if al Qaeda had such weapons prior to 9/11, it would have used them instead of conducting the airline attack. Even if the group had succeeded in obtaining a nuclear weapon after 9/11, it would have used it by now rather than simply sitting on it and running the risk of it being seized.

There is also the question of state assistance to terrorist groups, but the actions of the jihadist movement since 9/11 have served to steadily turn once quietly supportive (or ambivalent) states against the movement. Saudi Arabia declared war on jihadists in 2003 and countries such as Yemen, Pakistan and Indonesia have recently gone on the offensive. Indeed, in his Feb. 2 presentation to the Senate committee, Blair said: “We do not know of any states deliberately providing CBRN assistance to terrorist groups. Although terrorist groups and individuals have sought out scientists with applicable expertise, we have no corroborated reporting that indicates such experts have advanced terrorist CBRN capability.” Blair also noted that, “We and many in the international community are especially concerned about the potential for terrorists to gain access to WMD-related materials or technology.”

Clearly, any state that considered providing WMD to jihadists would have to worry about blow-back from countries that would be targeted by that material (such as the United States and Russia). With jihadists having declared war on the governments of countries in which they operate, officials in a position to provide CBRN to those jihadists would also have ample reason to be concerned about the materials being used against their own governments.

Efforts to counter the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology will certainly continue for the foreseeable future, especially efforts to ensure that governments with nuclear weapons programs do not provide weapons or fissile material to jihadist groups. While the chance of such a terrorist attack is remote, the devastation one could cause means that it must be carefully guarded against.