Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The 9/11 commission concluded that any strategy to combat terrorism must be combined with a comprehensive effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
The last few decades have witnessed an effort by the 'puritanical' view of Islam from the Arabian heartland to penetrate the syncretist Asian periphery. There is a need to reverse the flow of Islamic ideas. Because Islam is not a political or economic ideology, the U.S. cannot get involved in intra-Islam discourse. It should only provide support to moderate Muslims to move forward on their own.
President Bush fails to appreciate how all of the diplomatic, economic and political tools can be used to pursue an even more effective set of proliferation policies. The U.S. needs to use all of the tools at its disposal, now more than ever.