>"...making it hard to acquire enough fissile material to make a weapon."
Which may stop becoming hard if country like Russia decides thar it has nothing to loose and will start selling.
Which may stop becoming hard if country like Russia decides thar it has nothing to loose and will start selling.
They've already demonstrated a willingness for its materials to be used obviously on foreign soil with the barest pretense of deniability. I can't imagine they'd sweat too much if somebody set off a dirty bomb, and the willingness to take direct action in response isn't guaranteed by NATO.
I suppose it's somewhat up to how willing China and Iran are to ignore such an obvious act. The thing that actually keeps me up isn't their real response, but Russia's assumption of what it will be. Russia's predictive powers seem to err towards 'what we want is the right idea' more than 'we can actually get away with this', and they've simply taken advantage of tolerance more than weakness/fear.
If Russia decides to start selling nuclear material again, the US will buy it. Again. And will pay far more than any other nation is willing to pay for the stuff.
I do not think Russia will sell it to the US as the whole point of such exercise would be some form of strategic nuclear alliance with other countries. This way they can be protected from being bombed / invaded into "democracy" / "petrodollar" / whatever else.
IIRC they were left with a large amount of weapons-grade material and finished pits even after those programs concluded, and it wouldn't come as a big surprise to hear they've restarted production at some point. Even if they were that tight on material, they have around 6000 warheads and each of those has a Pu pit that could be proliferated, and a regional nuclear power wouldn't need that many to be viable.
> If Russia decides to start selling nuclear material again, the US will buy it
If Russia were to do so, chances are they'd want to prop up a regional nuclear power somewhere for a geopolitical advantage, not primarily cash. The US would certainly not get to make an offer like they used to back in the 90s.
If you have one nuclear weapon, you can probably get away with setting up an enrichment framework to produce more without sweating too much.