The events of September 11, 2001, opened America's eyes to the horrors that could be brought upon it by those who hate the country. Since then, America's main purpose in foreign policy has been to prevent events similar or worse than the suicide bombings of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and rural Pennsylvania.

In a recent New York Times column titled "A Nuclear 9/11," Nicholas Kristof cites a Harvard report that describes a frightening scenario in which a small, crudely produced nuclear weapon is used in a terrorist attack on New York City, killing 500,000 and causing $1 trillion in direct economic damage.¹ To many, this may seem like a pessimistic and unrealistic prediction, but taking into account some recent events in the international community, this scenario seems to be more and more plausible every day.

Since September 11, 2001, the US, led by the Bush Administration's aggressive foreign policy, has undertaken a War on Terror in order to secure the US and the world from terrorists. One of the objectives of this war on terror has been to prevent the use of nuclear weapons on the US and its allies by terrorists or other states. The fear of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, which has since been proven to be questionable, if not nonexistent, was given as one of the primary reasons for the war in that country.

While the US has been executing the war and subsequent occupation of Iraq, events that should seem far more troubling to Americans, especially given potential scenarios such as the aforementioned nuclear attack on New York City, have taken place in other parts of the Middle East. At the forefront of this frightening news has been the recent admission by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the engineer responsible for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, that he had sold nuclear secrets and blueprints to Iran, Libya, and North Korea, and that he had at least been in contact with Syria and Iraq.² This only adds to the already troubling fact that a rogue state in such disarray as Pakistan has nuclear weapons at all.

One obvious reason that Khan's selling of nuclear secrets is so troubling is that, given the politics and culture of Pakistan, there is no real reason to believe that if terrorist groups like Al Qaeda had wanted to purchase nuclear secrets, blueprints, or the weapons themselves that they would have found any great trouble in doing so.

Another scenario that is even more likely, and thus far more frightening to consider, is the opportunity for economically strapped states such as North Korea to profit from the sale of nuclear weapons on the black market.² While the US toils in Iraq, a state that now appears to have had very little capability to attack the US or its allies with weapons of mass destruction, North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons. The Bush Administration's hard-line stance and refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations with the poverty-stricken nation has allowed its maniacal leader to develop nuclear weapons without the US or the international community impeding.¹ Should they choose to, North Korea could very easily sell these weapons to terrorists, who could then use them against Western targets.

One of the other troubling areas in the war against nuclear proliferation is Russia. It is well known that Russia has nuclear weapons and materials that are not sufficiently secured or guarded. This is a sad, but understandable fact given the depleted state of Russia's economy. A 2001 report by the Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction stated, "The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home."³

What is truly disturbing, however, is the lack of funding the US has given to securing this nuclear material from Russia in order to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. Inexplicably though, the Bush Administration seems to feel the current funding is unnecessarily high, intending to cut the amount spent on securing Russia's nuclear material by $41 million.

Finally, the US itself is coming up short in its efforts to control the proliferation of its own nuclear materials. In the past fifty years, the US has lent large quantities of weapons-grade uranium to states. It is now reported that much of this material has not been recovered and is unaccounted for. There is enough of this missing material to create up to 1,000 bombs.⁴ It is difficult to ask countries like Pakistan and Russia to control their nuclear material when the world's greatest superpower is unable to do just that.

These are just the largest examples of the US's failing efforts to stop nuclear proliferation. "We are losing the war on proliferation," Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a military expert and executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says bluntly.¹ In a time of terrorism and 9/11's, this seems like an unreasonable state of affairs. It would seem that the US, who has been willing to spend billions in Iraq, should be eager to fi ght this war on proliferation, which presents a real threat to citizens of America and the world. Mohammed El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, states, "If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction."⁵

There are ways for the US and the international community to effectively fi ght nuclear proliferation. Failure to improve the current situation could lead to mass death and destruction--which the world has not been at such high risk for since the end of the Cold War.

The first step that must be taken is to properly fund the effort. This year, the US pledged $1 billion to the anti-proliferation cause, far short of the $3 billion requested by the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction.⁶ By not meeting its financial responsibility to the global community in the war against proliferation, the US is sending a signal to the rest of the world about the importance of these efforts.

The second step to fighting proliferation is to stop undermining the importance of international institutions and governing bodies. The IAEA has stated that a universal system controlling the export and import of nuclear materials and technology, more intensive inspections of non-proliferation states, and outlawing withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (which North Korea has done), are the keys to fighting proliferation.⁵

All of these steps require a great deal of international cooperation. This type of cooperation is very difficult to obtain when the most powerful player in international relations, the US, cooperates with the international community only when convenient. "...by adopting a policy of unilateralism and preemption, by undermining international law and institutions, and by increasing US reliance on nuclear weapons, the Administration may actually encourage the proliferation we seek to prevent," stated Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein last May.⁷ This belief needs to become national policy. By taking the path of unilateralism, as it did in Iraq, the US undermines the authority of international institutions that are vital to the war on proliferation.

Finally, the US needs to make itself an example in the anti-proliferation and disarmament movement. The IAEA has called for nuclear powers like the US, Russia, Great Britain, France, and China to "move towards disarmament."⁵ The US however, is currently moving forward with its own nuclear proliferation. In the Nuclear Posture Review that the Bush Administration submitted to Congress on December 31, 2001, the Department of Defense was called upon, not to proceed with nuclear disarmament, but to improve our nuclear crop through the development of new weapons and weapons systems, citing a Cold War-like deterrence policy as an excuse.⁸ How does the US expect to be taken seriously when asking for international non-proliferation when it is the largest producer of nuclear weapons in the world? The answer is simply that it cannot.

In the War on Terror, the fight against nuclear proliferation is the front line. Unfortunately, judging by the current policies of the Bush Administration, it does not seem that they place enough value on this important aspect of their fight against terrorism. Frighteningly, the answer to this mistake (to steal a phrase from the Administration) "could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."