Things that Keep me up at Night

It occurs to me that what this election is really all about is whether we should stick our heads into the sand, and obsess about Janet Jackson's breasts and Michael Jackson's paedophilia; or whether we should attempt to prevent our people and civilization from falling into ruin. The media has made it's choice: please ignore the man behind the curtain.

The nuclear proliferation containment regime is over. At this point, any country that wants one can get a nuclear weapon within a few years, at small cost, so long as it keeps its nose clean in other ways. In other words, short of overwhelming American pressure on or occupation of places like Iran, Syria and Egypt (possibly Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as well), the timeframe for a terrorist organization to have at least one nuclear weapon can now be definitively measured in years, not decades. We're probably less than 20 years away from a nuclear attack on a major western city. What are we prepared to do to stop it? What are we prepared to do if it happens? We're all soldiers now.

Let's take it as a given that most people want to hide their heads in the sand. It has, after all, been more than 2 years since the 9/11 attacks, and sometimes it seems like the President and a few bloggers are the only ones paying attention to the world at large in an adult way. OK, given that, will it take the destruction of a major American or European city to force people to once and for all leave their naive illusions behind, or can the people be convinced to act in aggressive preemption of serious threats to the existence of the West?

I believe that the American people, while they would by and large not like to think about it, are happy to have the government taking care of threats without bothering us much with it. Since Kerry would almost certainly fold our cards and act French (that is, surrender now in the hopes that we'll be treated kindly when the Mullahs sit in the White House), I guess we'll see in November, at least for the US. I'm guessing that for most Europeans, it will take a radioactive crater in a major European city to make them realize their danger.

UPDATE (2/13): Steven Den Beste has a post responding to Belmont Club. I believe that Steven misses the critical part of the proliferation pipeline: it's not that designs are getting out, but that centrifuges are getting easier to make and more efficient designs are getting out. This will make the acquisition of fissionable material much easier for a state actor. Steven makes excellent points about whether or not a state would trust al Qaeda with a nuclear weapon (though Iran would likely trust Hizballah with one). Then, however, we get into intentions vs. capabilities. I'd like to see the acquisition of the capability prevented (and I'm sure Steven would, as well).