Nuclear Mondays

Part of President Obama's European vacation was talking about diminishing the threat of nuclear terrorism, which we know is the greatest possible threat to civilization - right up there with asteroids the size of Texas.

PRESIDENT BARACK Obama’s announcement that he will host a nuclear security summit next March reflects his conviction that nuclear terrorism is not only the most immediate and extreme threat to global security, but one that must be addressed multilaterally.

Mr Obama hopes the summit will galvanise an international effort to secure loose nuclear materials by 2012, break up black markets in nuclear materials, detect and intercept materials in transit, and disrupt the trade in these materials.

National Security Council chief of staff Mark Lippert said the list of participants had yet to be finalised, but he expected between 25 and 30 countries to be represented.

“Essentially what we want to do is develop steps that really we can work together on to secure vulnerable materials and combat nuclear smuggling. The other piece is, I think, sort of a communique on best practices that we want to get everybody up to a certain standard,” he said.

Nuclear terrorism has not been a new topic of this president. Multilateral talks are always a good thing. I'm not convinced that terrorists can develop improvised nuclear devices or get their hands on actual nukes, but whatever. I've heard all the arguments before, but they all end up sounding like Darth Cheney's "one-percent" solutions. The fact is that PSI hasn't interdicted any nukes, all the smuggled nuclear material hasn't shown up in radiological dispersal devices, and we still are dealing with hundreds of civilian radiological material storage sites - instead of one nuclear repository - here in the United States. 

But hey, it always makes for good speeches. We'll see where Obama goes in March 2010.

Comments

[NVH]

Come on J, put on your conspiracy hat...less nukes means less to hurl at incoming asteroids which are planning to hit the planet in 2012, coinciding with the end of the world on the Mayan calendar...don't you see? Obama is the harbinger of death, not Starbuck, keep an eye on his schedule...

[J.]

NVH, you're making my head hurt.