Sunday, July 03, 2005

Some Good News, As We Near the Fourth

I've previously written about the reason my support for John Bolton went from half-hearted at best to completely apathetic, or even hostile: the stories that his bullheadedness prevented agreement on the securing of 4,000 nuclear warheads from the former U.S.S.R. I've also noted, as many others have, that nuclear terrorism as the greatest threat facing our nation was one of the rare points of agreement between Bush and Kerry in Election 2004.

Thankfully, there is some good news on this front, as Graham Allison tells it in the Boston Globe (hat tip to RealClearPolitics):
At Gleneagles, the two presidents [Bush and Putin] will be able to announce that they agreed on a list of specific Russian nuclear sites that need upgrades, are improving their countries' emergency response capabilities to track down missing nuclear material, are conducting a series of workshops in Russia to address nuclear security culture, and are steadily cleaning out research reactors that use high-enriched uranium.
It's easy to forget the nuclear threat, as it has been hanging over our heads for so many years without incident. Simply put, though, almost any nightmare scenario pales in significance next to the thought of the return of the mushroom cloud.

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