Earlier this week the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, an extension of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, reported on efforts to protect America from terrorists that seek nuclear weapons and materials.  Their verdict was not a happy one.  Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton cited “insufficient progress” in the race against time to prevent the world’s most dangerous people from getting the world’s most dangerous weapons.  In short, they wrote, “the size of the problem still dwarfs the policy response.”

Kean and Hamilton reported that less than half of Russia’s nuclear material has received security upgrades.  In real terms, this means that more than 300 tons of loose nuclear material remains unguarded in Russia and the former Soviet states.  That is enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium for tens of thousands of crude nuclear bombs.  In the past year, moreover, security improvements were completed twice as slowly as expected.  The Department of Energy’s nuclear security administration now estimates that this work will not be complete until 2020.  Securing nuclear material in the former Soviet Union is an essential front in the war on terror.  We must progress at a faster rate. (Read More)

Today’s nuclear threats come not only from these massive arsenals, but also from the newest and smallest contributors to "nuclear numbers." The emergence of new nuclear states could set off a "cascade of proliferation" and increase the likelihood of terrorists obtaining nuclear capability.

The Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, "Sixty Years Later," will be held on November 7- 8, 2005. Below is the second in a series of analyses on proliferation milestones.

"We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business…If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of fear."

With these dramatic words on June 14, 1946, Bernard Baruch, the United States representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission, introduced America’s plan to avert a state of permanent nuclear terror. The Baruch Plan was revolutionary. It also failed, and his fearful prophecy proved all too accurate. As nonproliferation experts and political leaders struggle today to control the spread of nuclear technology and weaponry, revisiting the Baruch Plan can teach us much about where we have come and where we may be going. (Read More)

As envoys from around the world meet this month in New York to review the NPT, this important security system is mired in such discord that it is in danger of crumbling.

The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) is a good program that has been puffed up out of proportion. While the initiative is a valuable extension of export control implementation, it is not and cannot be a silver bullet to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons-related materials and equipment to terrorists or states.

23 top non-proliferation experts and former government officials have endorsed an agenda to strengthen the NPT. The group agrees that the NPT's future success depends on "universal compliance with tighter rules to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, more effective regional security strategies, and renewed progress toward fulfillment of... disarmament obligations."

Three years after the September 11^th attacks and the U.S counter-attack in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden remains at large, his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, continues to taunt struggling American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and warnings of attacks here at home routinely spike into high alert. By most indicators, we are losing the war with al Qaeda. And not just the military war. We are losing the war against Islamist terrorism in its entirety, as anti-American passions spread like wildfire throughout the Muslim world.

It has been called the forgotten war. What seemed two years ago to be a shining example of American military power and international leadership is now a growing morass. The Taliban is back, Al Qaeda roams the countryside and Osama bin Ladin mocks America from his mountain redoubt. Assassins in the last week barely missed killing both the president and the vice-president in separate attacks on this fledgling democracy’s government.