This week's Fareed Zakaria: "Tackle the Nuke Threat"

Bin Laden has called it a 'duty' for Al Qaeda to get a nuclear bomb. But policies to prevent nuclear terror have hardly changed since 9/11.
http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/articles.html

The G8 Summit in Sea Island, Ga., produced no new cooperation on Iraq. No surprise there. The rifts over it are deep, and though the United States has changed course, it will take time before other countries jump in. What is less excusable is that there was no real progress on a crucial issue to which the G8 pays lip service: preventing nuclear proliferation.

President George W. Bush has often said that the greatest danger we face is that "the world's most dangerous people" will get their hands on" the world's most dangerous weapons." He's right. Osama bin Laden has called it a "duty" for Al Qaeda to acquire a nuclear bomb. But the truth is that our policies to prevent nuclear terror have not changed much since 9/11.

This is particularly surprising when you consider that the problem of nuclear terrorism is actually solvable. Making a nuclear bomb requires fissile materials and weapons-grade plutonium or uranium. To produce either, you need reprocessors, reactors and enrichment facilities. These are out of the reach of even a large, well-funded terrorist organization. Terrorists can get such materials only by buying them from states. So, if all fissile material around the world were locked up and monitored and no new material were made, it would eliminate the worldwide threat of nuclear terrorism.

Obviously it's easier said than done, but it can be done. We lack not the means but a clear goal and the determination to get to it. In a recent speech John Kerry proposed setting out this objective, comparing it to putting a man on the moon. Actually it would take less time and would certainly be much less expensive...