A U.N. Khan Job

WMDs: Blueprints for a nuclear weapon compatible with the ballistic missiles of Iran, North Korea and other rogue states were found on computers of the notorious Khan smuggling ring. Will a complacent world wake up?

It's unacceptable to find — four years after their seizure — that computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities housed sophisticated electronic designs for a Pakistani atomic bomb, in a form easy to reproduce.

David Albright, former chief arms inspector for the United Nations who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security, will issue a report this week revealing that the designs were found on computers in the possession of Swiss smugglers linked to nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is considered the father of Pakistan's bomb.

What's easy to reproduce? The bomb itself, the electronics (triggers), or the computer files containing the designs?

Given the relative ease of manufacturing nuclear weapons today, trying to prevent proliferation just won’t work, so an alternative is needed.

In past, the most successful technique to prevent the use of nuclear weapons was Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD. So what we need today is an equally effective tool for preventing the *use* of these weapons.

The logical thing is for the major nuclear powers to agree that first use by a minor power against their hated enemy will result in a national “death penalty” for the aggressor.

That is, if little country ‘a’ attacks its hated enemy, country ‘b’, with a nuclear weapon, then the US makes it very clear ahead of time that *we* will attack and annihilate aggressor country ‘a’.

And in a very specific way. The United States will detonate neutron weapon airbursts over the aggressive nation that will kill *all* lifeforms, with no survivors, but without destroying buildings or other goods.

Then everything that belonged to country ‘a’ will be given to country ‘b’, their hated enemy, as reparations for country ‘a’s nuclear attack.

This will be beyond horror, as far as country ‘a’ is concerned. Their hated enemy will have all their lands, all their buildings and monuments, their cities, their rivers, and everything else precious to them.

Truly an incentive not to use nuclear weapons. Because it is a guarantee that if you do, you WILL lose, and lose what is most precious to you.

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