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“If you are a state sponsor of terror, with or without a WMD research base; or are an avowed enemy of the U.S., and you have a public policy that espouses the hope and bent for the destruction of the U.S.; you clandestinely proliferate (buy or sell) WMD technologies outside international agreements and inspection regimes, then you are subject to being immediately held strategically culpable should there be a catastrophic WMD event inside the U.S.."

All the critics of the Bush Strategy have it wrong, the basic strategy is sound; where it needs to be strengthened is in the area of deterrence. The Bush strategy statements in Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction really fail to warn others, whether they are friend or foe, from proliferating technologies to second or third parties that may result in a catastrophic event on U.S. soil. Needless to say a nuclear detonation in a major U.S. city would have incalculable, far-ranging global reverberations beyond the direct physical destruction. Therefore, what is required is a new statement of U.S. proliferation deterrence...

I don't know about the rest of America, but as a former intelligence analyst, what we don't know right now about nuclear proliferation in the world scares the hell out of me. Let's review just some of the news reports over the last several weeks... Many have probably heard of A.Q. Khan... Osama Bin Laden who has already declared it a Muslim duty to acquire nuclear weapons, recently received a Fatwa, or religious declaration, approving his use of one.... CIA Director Porter Goss... "It may be only a matter of time before al-Qaida or other groups attempt to use chemical,...

Back in the days of the Cold War, the U.S. had a nuclear-weapons doctrine called Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD for short. This doctrine held that if the U.S. were attacked with weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, we would immediately and without debate counter-attack the homeland of the perpetrator in such a way and with such overwhelming nuclear force as to make the cost of the initial attack too much to bear. For instance, if the Soviet Union or the Chinese would have attacked us with WMD in the Cold War, we would have counter-attacked at the very least...

"Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and a man I respect immensely for his intelligence insights, says the United States faces an "inevitable" al-Qaida attack with weapons of mass destruction. "What would be the U.S. response to such an attack? "Now is the time to think about the unthinkable. "Contingency plans need to be made. And those plans, at least some of them, need to be known to the whole world to serve as a deterrent against such an attack. …" "… * The Islamist world and its allies need to know there...

Moammar Gadhafi has proclaimed[1] that Libya will disclose and abandon plans to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. This deal, which could lift United Nations sanctions and allow Libya to purchase and arm with conventional weapons, namely, missiles, aircraft, tanks, etc., was negotiated by the British. Guess who will be first in line to sell these conventional weapons to Gadhafi? Clearly, eliminating NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) weapons held by rogue nations is all to the good. Except that Libya has never been known to successfully develop such materials internally - so far. They always tried to purchase finished, ready-to-go...

Japan has asked the United States to maintain its 'nuclear card' in negotiations with North Korea in a bid to prevent Pyongyang from using nuclear weapons against Japan, a newspaper report said Friday. A US promise not to use nuclear weapons against North Korea would plunge Japan's security into great danger if six-nation talks fail to stop Pyongyang's nuclear drive, the mass-circulation Yomiuri newspaper said. Mitoji Yabunaka, head of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau, conveyed the request to US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly in Washington last week,...

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea (news - web sites) threatened on Monday to build nuclear weapons as a deterrent to what it calls a "hostile" U.S. policy — the communist government's first public declaration of its nuclear ambitions. AP Photo   The statement marked a sharpening of the North's tone in its standoff with Washington. U.S. officials say the North Koreans told them privately that the country already has nuclear bombs and plans to build more — but until now Pyongyang had not openly stated its intention to develop an arsenal. "If the U.S. keeps threatening the DPRK with...

Summary: It may not be possible to deter fanatical terrorists, but members of terrorist systems may be amenable to influence. The U.S. counterterrorism strategy should therefore include political warfare, placing at risk things the terrorists hold dear, a credible threat of force against states or groups that support acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, and maintaining cooperation with other nations engaged in the war on terror, while also preserving core American values. The research described in this report was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. All contents below are free, downloadable PDF files. (go to the link to...

Some Say Deterrence Is Enough… …but two can play at the deterrence game. By Saddam Hussein Dear Madam President Clinton: As you may have gathered by now, the nuclear device exploded over the Nevada desert today came from the mighty arsenal of the Republic of Iraq. We sincerely hope that the device did not injure anyone; its purpose was simply to show that Iraq has acquired a nuclear capability. In fact, we are proud to say that we have manufactured many such weapons. Nearly a dozen of them are now in place in major American cities. We certainly do not...

What would happen if we woke up one day to find that a nuclear bomb had destroyed the heart of Washington, D.C.? Over 100,000 would be dead. The White House, Congress, the offices of the Cabinet, museums, and precious and irreplaceable historic monuments, would all be gone, and our capital rendered uninhabitable for years. Our legislators would have died in numbers sufficient to precipitate a constitutional crisis. If the president were killed, the vice president might still be alive in his secure location, along with bureaucrats sufficient to keep the wheels of government turning (barely) in a crisis-ridden and...

President George W Bush's newly released document, The National Security Strategy for the United States of America, issued on September 20, declared in no uncertain terms that the doctrine of deterrence - the bedrock of superpower relations during the Cold War years - is history. Instead, the dual doctrines of "preemption" and "proactive counterproliferation" will guide America's national security policy (rogue states, your time is up). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will be expanded to the hilt (Russia beware), and the People's Republic of China will be negotiated with on adjustments in its policy of political pluralism, human rights and,...

NY TIMES SELF-PARODY WATCH. From Tuesday's editorial page:"During the Truman administration, some strategists suggested attacking the Soviet Union while it was still militarily weak to prevent the rise of a nuclear-armed Communist superpower. Wiser heads prevailed, and for the next 40 years America's reliance on a strategy of deterrence preserved an uneasy but durable peace." Yeah, it's great that millions of people got to live under Soviet tyranny, die in gulags, and boil their shoes for soup for four decades while the rest of us in the West did duck-and-cover drills. Thank Christ the United States didn't swagger in there...

What will deter a Saddam Hussein or an Osama bin Laden from using chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons? he Iranians are apoplectic. The New York Times is indignant. The Arms Control Association is in a dither. And the Russians and the Chinese are demanding answers. What has gotten so many parties riled up? Why, the leak of portions of the Bush administration's highly classified Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), of course. Most of the anger has centered upon the allegation that the United States is developing contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against seven states — China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea,...