In the recent past the issue of covert trade in nuclear material gained public prominence when it was erroneously claimed by British intelligence sources that the former Government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. The far reaching consequences of such assessments for society were clearly demonstrated by U.S. President George W. Bush in his speech on January 28, 2003, using this incorrect information as one of the reasons why terrorists and countries belonging to the "Axis of Evil" posed a potential nuclear threat. In view of the occurrence of such significant errors even in the intelligence community, it is not surprising that information in the media on the topic of illicit trafficking of nuclear material is frequently flawed by errors.

In order to avoid the pitfalls of evaluating important security-related decisions from questionable sources of information, this paper discusses only the most reliable currently available data on illicit trafficking of weapons-usable nuclear material, contained in the Database on Nuclear Smuggling, Theft, and Orphan Radiation Sources.

Fifty years ago this month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" address to the UN General Assembly. He proposed to share nuclear materials and information for peaceful purposes with other countries through a new international agency. That speech led to negotiations which, several years later, created the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, the IAEA gained authority for policing the nuclear activities of member countries to ensure that those without nuclear weapons did not acquire them. The worldwide treaty bans all members except the United Kingdom, China, France, Russia, and the United States from having nuclear weapons and commits those five states to eventually eliminating their atomic arsenals. The treaty provides the norm and the foundation for an international regime to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. Yet, many believe that the NPT regime is battered and in need of strengthening. Given the more difficult nonproliferation and security challenges of today, it is vital that U.S. leadership be used to strengthen, not to weaken or abandon, the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

Imagine a scenario in which terrorists begin attacking urban centers. The government responds with widespread detention; extended powers of arrest, search and seizure; increased surveillance capabilities; and the creation of a special court to try terrorist suspects. Before long it is sanctioning inhumane treatment of prisoners and the use of military force.

That is how the British government responded in the early 1970s to the start of Northern Ireland's Troubles. The effect was devastating. The new measures alienated the minority Catholic population and breathed life into a near-defunct Republican movement. More than 3,600 people died in the decades of violence that ensued. The provisions also carried heavy economic and political costs, both at home and abroad. Most critically, they undermined the state's political legitimacy at a time when an avowedly violent movement sought to destabilize the government.

The erosion of individual rights carries significant domestic and foreign-relations consequences. Beyond this, a more fundamental question arises: Has America remained true to its founding principles?

PALO ALTO, CALIF.
A year ago, a group of terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked the United States using box cutters as their weapons and citing extremist versions of Islamic fundamentalism as their cause.

Today, the Bush administration and Congress are focused almost solely on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction, with almost no reference whatsoever to his ideology.

This narrow focus has only a loose relationship to the grander vision of "securing freedom's triumph" that President Bush has outlined as the mission of American foreign policy in the new millennium.

As currently framed, the debate about Iraq has produced three dangerous distortions. First, the discussion has confused the means-ends relationship between weapons of mass destruction and regime change. Suddenly, both hawkish Republicans and antiwar Democrats now have asserted that the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is the new paramount objective in the war on terrorism.

For the hawks, regime change is the means to achieving this objective. Those less eager to go to war assert that this same goal can be achieved by other means, such as sending in the weapons inspectors or even by a surgical strike against weapons facilities.

Both sides of this debate are focused on the wrong objective. Regime change – democratic regime change – must be the objective. If over the next years and decades, a democratic regime consolidates in Iraq, then it will not matter to the United States if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or not.

Does anyone in the United States know how many weapons of mass destruction the British or French have? Does anyone even lose much sleep over the fact that Russia still has thousands of nuclear weapons and launch vehicles capable of reaching the US in a matter of minutes?

Specialists are rightly worried about the safety and security of Russian weapons, but most Americans no longer make plans for what to do in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack. It was not a robust nonproliferation regime, coercive weapons inspections, or a preemptive war against the Soviet Union that produced this shift in our attitudes about Russia's weapons of mass destruction. Rather, it was regime change in the Soviet Union and then Russia.

Someday, the same will be true in Iraq. Israel already destroyed Iraq's nuclear weapons program once in 1981, delaying but not eliminating the threat. The real objective of any strategy toward Iraq, therefore, must be the creation of a democratic, market-oriented, pro-Western regime.

The singular focus on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction – not unlike the misplaced focus on arms control during the cold war – prevents the US from pursuing a grander strategy that could secure the more important objective of democratic regime change. Moreover, many of the means for achieving this objective are nonmilitary by nature, an aspect forgotten in the discussion.

A second distorting consequence of the current debate is that we have become obsessed with one leader, one country, and one category of weapons, none of which were involved directly in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Iraqi dictatorship (and not simply President Hussein) is certainly part of the problem, but Iraq cannot be the only front of the war on terrorism. In fact, victories on other fronts could create momentum for the Iraqi regime's demise. Ronald Reagan's strategy for defeating communism did not begin with a military invasion of the Soviet Union, but rather aimed first to roll back communism in peripheral places like Poland, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua. Imagine how isolated Hussein would be if democratic regimes took hold in Iran, Palestine, and Afghanistan.

A third distortion of the debate is the near silence about the kind of regime the Bush administration plans to help build in Iraq after the war. The Bush administration is busy making the case against Hussein, but has devoted much less attention to outlining the plan for a new regime in Iraq. Will it be one state or three, a federal or unitary state, governed by the US or the United Nations? How many decades will occupation last?

We need to have the same "frenzied" debate about Iraq's reconstruction that is now being devoted to Iraq's deconstruction. A serious discussion of the postwar regime in Iraq will help inspire support in Congress, the international community, and within Iraq. Now is the time to be concrete about future blueprints.

To be credible, the message of change must also be directed at other dictators in the region. The probabilities of fanatics coming to power in Pakistan and using weapons against American allies are greater than the probabilities of Hussein doing the same.

Without reform, revolution in Saudi Arabia is just as likely as an Iranian attack on American allies. Failure to define a grand strategy of transformation in the region will condemn American soldiers to fighting new dictators like Hussein over and over again.

Background: In the 1980s, many medical organizations identified the prevention of nuclear war as one of the medical profession's most important goals. An assessment of the current danger is warranted given the radically changed context of the post–Cold War era.

Methods: We reviewed the recent literature on the status of nuclear arsenals and the risk of nuclear war. We then estimated the likely medical effects of a scenario identified by leading experts as posing a serious danger: an accidental launch of nuclear weapons. We assessed possible measures to reduce the risk of such an event.

Results: U.S. and Russian nuclear-weapons systems remain on high alert. This fact, combined with the aging of Russian technical systems, has recently increased the risk of an accidental nuclear attack. As a conservative estimate, an accidental intermediate-sized launch of weapons from a single Russian submarine would result in the deaths of 6,838,000 persons from firestorms in eight U.S. cities. Millions of other people would probably be exposed to potentially lethal radiation from fallout. An agreement to remove all nuclear missiles from high-level alert status and eliminate the capability of a rapid launch would put an end to this threat.

Conclusions: The risk of an accidental nuclear attack has increased in recent years, threatening a public health disaster of unprecedented scale. Physicians and medical organizations should work actively to help build support for the policy changes that would prevent such a disaster.

The renewed American debate over ballistic missile defenses (BMD) echoes loudly in NATO, in Europe, and in France. This issue will be decisive for the future of European political organization and its security and defense. The issue will also be important for the future of relations between Europe, the United States, and Russia.

Faced with the potential threat of ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads (or biological and chemical payloads) that could strike French and European territories, deterrence is sufficient and offers the greatest cost-effectiveness. In this analysis, the question of the broadening of the French and British deterrent and the political organization of a possible European anti-missile defense system will be discussed. Then, a new transatlantic strategic partnership, the robustness of which lies in counterbalancing the vulnerabilities of its members, will be described.