"The nexus between terrorism and nuclear weapons, or even nuclear material, is obviously a current concern"
About this Quote
“Obviously” is doing a lot of diplomatic work here. Mitchell Reiss frames the “nexus” between terrorism and nuclear weapons not as a speculative fear but as a settled baseline, something any serious person should already grant. That single adverb quietly polices the conversation: if you question the premise, you risk sounding naive, unserious, or worse, complacent. It’s a classic technocratic move - establish urgency without sounding alarmist.
The phrasing is deliberately bureaucratic. “Nexus” abstracts away the messy specifics (which groups, which pathways, which states, which failures) into a clean conceptual bridge. “Current concern” cools the temperature just enough to keep policy options on the table: sanctions, interdictions, cooperative threat reduction, tighter export controls, intelligence sharing. Reiss isn’t selling panic; he’s normalizing a security agenda.
Notice the hedge embedded in the escalation ladder: “nuclear weapons, or even nuclear material.” That “or even” widens the threat aperture from the nightmare scenario (a stolen warhead) to the more plausible one (smuggled fissile material, dirty-bomb components, or trafficking networks that erode control). It’s a subtle recalibration toward what diplomats and nonproliferation officials can actually influence: stockpile security, accounting, and global norms around custody.
Contextually, this sits in the post-9/11 security ecosystem, where terrorism became the lens through which older nuclear anxieties were re-sorted and re-funded. The intent isn’t merely to warn; it’s to justify sustained attention, budgets, and international cooperation by making the risk feel both self-evident and administratively actionable.
The phrasing is deliberately bureaucratic. “Nexus” abstracts away the messy specifics (which groups, which pathways, which states, which failures) into a clean conceptual bridge. “Current concern” cools the temperature just enough to keep policy options on the table: sanctions, interdictions, cooperative threat reduction, tighter export controls, intelligence sharing. Reiss isn’t selling panic; he’s normalizing a security agenda.
Notice the hedge embedded in the escalation ladder: “nuclear weapons, or even nuclear material.” That “or even” widens the threat aperture from the nightmare scenario (a stolen warhead) to the more plausible one (smuggled fissile material, dirty-bomb components, or trafficking networks that erode control). It’s a subtle recalibration toward what diplomats and nonproliferation officials can actually influence: stockpile security, accounting, and global norms around custody.
Contextually, this sits in the post-9/11 security ecosystem, where terrorism became the lens through which older nuclear anxieties were re-sorted and re-funded. The intent isn’t merely to warn; it’s to justify sustained attention, budgets, and international cooperation by making the risk feel both self-evident and administratively actionable.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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