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Sam Nunn fears the United States could win the battle against terrorism but still lose the war. Nunn, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Georgia Tech Advisory Board in November that the United States can quickly dominate any military conflict or prevail over the terrorist threat.
But the nation’s policy has to be in line with a global effort, Nunn told about 50 advisory board members during an hour-long presentation in the Wardlaw Center.
"It is absolutely necessary to have multinational cooperation," Nunn says. "No matter how strong America is — and we are the strongest in the world — we cannot protect ourselves against international terrorism without cooperation from other countries in the world."
Nunn says it is essential to get Russia’s cooperation because the country has huge stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological materials not properly protected and thousands of underemployed scientists and technicians with the knowledge to build weapons of mass destruction.
"We’ve got to get them on the team if we have any hope of containing violence and danger on a massive scale," Nunn says, stressing the need for any U.S. military effort, including an invasion of Iraq, to be carried out with global support.
"The bottom line is we can’t afford to alienate 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. We’ve got to separate those who are violent from the vast majority who are basically peaceful," he says. "If we don’t do that, we will win the battle but lose the war."
Nunn is director of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a hands-on organization financed by Ted Turner to remove nuclear weapons material from vulnerable locations. He also is chairman of the board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a group in Washington, D.C., seeking practical ways to deal with the threat of international terrorism. And he is a distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech.
The focus on terrorism and the weapons inspections in Iraq have brought these roles and institutions to new levels of relevancy and urgency.
He says this is where Georgia Tech will find itself involved in increasingly
important roles. Technology is a tool for combating terrorism on all fronts — biological, chemical, nuclear and economical. "That is vital to the country’s future."
©2003 Georgia Tech Alumni Association
