Frontiers of free enterprise

I've been trying of late to go with something closer to my original notion of this blog, that is, to do more commentary than simply going "Hey - look at this!" But some items speak too clearly for themselves. I've got a few of those piled up, so I figured today was a good day to get some of them out of my way. Here's one, from the International Herald-Tribune for January 24, quoting a New York Times article.

The head of the United Nations' watchdog agency on atomic weapons said Friday that the illicit trafficking of nuclear-related material and equipment had grown so widespread that it amounted to a Wal-Mart for weapons-seeking countries.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he was taken aback during a recent trip to Libya by the scale and complexity of the black market, through which Libya obtained material and blueprints for nuclear weapons designs.

"All of that was obtained abroad," ElBaradei said in an interview during the World Economic Forum meeting here. "All of what we saw was a result of the Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation.

"When you see things being designed in one country, manufactured in two or three others, shipped to a fourth, redirected to a fifth, that means there's lots of offices all over the world," he continued. "The sophistication of the process, frankly, has surpassed my expectations."

Something he didn't say, which has been observed for years to no avail, is that one of the things driving proliferation has been the utter and complete failure of the major nuclear powers to curtail their own arsenals. It's true that of late the deployed US nuclear force has shrunk some in numbers, but it's also become "leaner and meaner," more, you'll pardon the expression "efficient," more aggressive. Numbers are not the only issue.