Nuclear Security Summit made the world leaders play war games
After the media had been ushered out of the room at the beginning of the meeting on the second day, the 53 world leaders and ministers at the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague this week were presented with a novel game — a war game.
A plot had been uncovered. Terrorists were in the process of getting their hands on fissile material to build a nuclear bomb. They planned to use it to bring down the global financial system.
The challenge to the leaders: what are you going to do about it? Sitting around a large oval table, the US President, Barack Obama, the President of China, Xi Jinping, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron and other leaders were given a series of multiple-choice responses. The tense scenario was played out on giant screens, complete with dramatic music, set in a land called Blinia. But while it was safely fictitious, it was precisely the sort of event the Nuclear Security Summit was created to prevent. The leaders were prompted to answer questions such as how they would deploy their intelligence services, how they would try to lock down movements of nuclear materials and when they would inform the public of an emergency.
International gatherings of ministers and officials have been asked to participate in such war games or roleplays in recent years in a range of forums. But experienced diplomats and politicians could not think of any occasion where such war games have been presented to an international gathering at the leader level.
The Nuclear Security Summit was first convened in 2010 by Mr Obama. This week’s summit heard that some progress has been made – the number of countries with enough material to build a nuclear bomb has fallen from 39 to 25 since the summit’s first meeting.
The good news from the Hague meeting is that the terrorists were foiled in the war game and the world was kept safe. The bad news is that the risk remains live in the real world.
At the end of the summit, Mr Obama was asked whether Russia was a threat to the US. “I continue to be much more concerned,” he replied, “about the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.”
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
