Posted by Michael Cohen
If you live in a major American city and are the slightest bit fatalistic you may want to skip
this piece that appeared over the weekend about the latest in the A.Q Khan investigation - in case you've forgotten Khan is the Pakistani nuclear scientist accused of selling nuclear secrets to the highest bidder:
Four years after
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the leader of the world’s largest black market in nuclear technology, was put under house arrest and his operation declared shattered, international inspectors and Western officials are confronting a new mystery, this time over who may have received blueprints for a sophisticated and compact nuclear weapon found on his network’s computers.
The blueprints are rapidly reproducible for creating a weapon that is relatively small and easy to hide, making it potentially attractive to terrorists.
Stories like these, besides serving as an important reminder about the threat that potentially exists from jihadist terror networks, are further evidence of the futility of the Iraq war and its supposed focus on stamping out the threat of WMDs being used against the United States.
The nuclear threat from state actors is certainly not insignificant; but it pales next to the threat of a rogue non-state actor developing the capability to produce a nuclear weapon or radiological device. Unlike rational state actors these folks may actually decide to use it! Indeed, that is the whole point of developing it; the same cannot be said of states. Since investigators still remain unclear on who exactly Khan was selling to, it may be impossible to determine into whose hands these plans may have fallen.
For all the focus on Iran's uranium enrichment program (or the ultimately non-existent Iraqi WMD program) this is the greatest immediate threat to America - and where the greatest systematic change in how America's assesses its foreign threats must lie. When the threat from a former nuclear scientist and his ring of conspirators may be more significant than the threat from a rogue nation like Iraq or Iran you know the world is changing. The fact that the Bush Administration has short-changed efforts to secure nuclear material, through programs like Nunn-Lugar is indicative of a flawed international mind-set that continues to wrongly view the world through a state-centric prism.
The threats of the 21st century are not going to come from foreign armies, but instead the netherworld of non-state actors armed with the information and tools to wage great destruction. Instead of our seemingly single-minded focus on Iran's nascent nuclear program, securing all nuclear material across the globe, particularly in the former Soviet Union, where hundreds of tons of nuclear materials remain vulnerable, would seem a bit more pressing.
In addition, ensuring that folks like AQ Khan never see the light of day might not be a bad idea. It's interesting, for all our focus on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda's top leadership, ensuring that Pakistan does not release Khan (as they are hinting they might) may ultimately do more to protect America in the long-run. "Keep Khan in Prison" may not be the most stirring slogan, but in the global climate of the 21st century, it ultimately could be most important.
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