Nuclear posturing, part deux

There was something oddly disproportionate about the just-concluded nuclear summit to which President Obama summoned 46 world leaders, the largest such gathering on American soil since 1945. That meeting was about the founding of the United Nations, which 65 years ago seemed an event of world-historical importance.

But this one? What was this great convocation about? To prevent the spread of nuclear material into the hands of terrorists. A worthy goal. Unfortunately, the two greatest such threats were not even on the agenda.

The first is Iran, which is frantically enriching uranium to make a bomb, and which our own State Department identifies as the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world.

Nor on the agenda was Pakistan's plutonium production, which is adding to the world's stockpile of fissile material every day.

Pakistan is relatively friendly, but it is most unstable of the nuclear states. It is fighting a Taliban insurgency and is home to al-Qaida.

So what was the major breakthrough at the end of the two-day conference? That Ukraine, Chile, Mexico and Canada will be getting rid of various amounts of enriched uranium.

Sequestering nuclear material is a good thing. But, it is a minor thing, particularly when Iran is off the table, and Pakistan is creating new plutonium. Obama proudly announced that the U.S. and Russia were disposing of 68 tons of plutonium. Unmentioned was the fact that this agreement was reached 10 years ago - and, under the new protocol, doesn't begin to dispose of the plutonium until 2018. Feeling safer now?

This parade of world leaders in Washington was an exercise in misdirection - distracting attention from the looming threat from Iran. Obama's 15 months of terminally naive "engagement" has achieved nothing but the loss of 15 months.

Indeed, the Washington summit was part of a larger misdirection play - Obama's "nuclear spring." The number of warheads in Russia's aging nuclear stockpile is an irrelevancy now that the U.S.-Soviet struggle is over. One achievement, from the point of view of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, is that it could freeze deployment of U.S. missile defenses - constraining the greatest anti-nuclear breakthrough of our time.

This followed a softening of the U.S. nuclear deterrent posture - a change so bizarre that even Hillary Clinton couldn't get straight what retaliatory threat remains on the table.

All this during a week when top U.S. military officials told Congress that Iran is about a year away from acquiring the fissile material to make a nuclear bomb. Then, only a very few years until weaponization. At which point the world changes irrevocably: the regional Arab states go nuclear, the Non-Proliferation Treaty dies, the threat of nuclear transfer to terror groups grows astronomically.

A timely reminder: Syria has just been discovered transferring lethal Scud missiles to Hezbollah, the Middle East's most powerful nonstate terrorist force. But not to worry. Canadian uranium is secured. A nonbinding summit communique has been issued. And a "Work Plan" has been agreed to.

Oh yes. And there will be another summit in two years. The dream lives on.

© 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group