It’s the ultimate nightmare, a plot thread out of a Tom Clancy novel or a story arc out of the Fantastic Four: terrorists obtaining and using a nuclear weapon against the World at large.  It’s a scary prospect that seems far-far away in a scary world, but the reality of it is it’s very possible.  All it takes is a little unrest in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union (as we’re seeing with the storming of the capitol building in Kyrgyzstan).  Disgruntled immigrants from the South, or even homelanders, become alienated, they see the poverty around them as a product of the West, they get involved with some bad people, boom.  Technically, it’s only Russia that’s supposed to have nukes.  They have a whopping 12,000 floating around, claiming only about half of them are “active” (meaning they could be detonated now).  Even that number holds up as the world’s forerunner of nuclear arms.  But something about it doesn’t feel right.  The Soviet Union’s first nuke test was in 1949 – the RSD-1 — and the nation state expanded their programs well into the 80′s right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent breaking of the Union.  It’s simple logic: with all that arms expansion throughout the Empire (it’s a bold faced lie to say all the development took place in Moscow), how could ALL the nukes have been rounded up and brought back to Russia in that couple year stretch.  Even if they were, the threat of terrorism in Moscow is just as large and unpredictable (just look at a story we broke a couple weeks ago, where 2 suicide bombers hit the subway).  One thing Obama should be given credit for is his attempts at nuclear disarmament by ALL countries, including the Cold War powerhouses like Russia and the USA.  The world is dangerous enough already even without these weapons.

-D