As the Cold War ended and new counterterrorism priorities took root in the 2000s, the threat of nuclear terrorism cemented itself as the ultimate catastrophic scenario. Dick Cheney famously stated shortly after September 11, 2001, “If there was even a [one] percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction, and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time, the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.”
Deterring Nuclear Terrorism in the Era of Great Power Competition
