U.S.-Russian nuclear security initiative.

On July 15, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, "a new global program to track nuclear terrorists, detect and lock up bomb-making materials and coordinate their responses if terrorists obtain a weapon," reported the New York Times. The initiative is an outgrowth of the administration's Proliferation Security Initiative, a 70-nation program to seize "illicit weapons as they move across oceans or are transported by air."

The new U.S.-Russian nuclear terrorism program "would operate inside the borders of countries with nuclear weapons and materials, setting standards for protection and detection, and develop common strategies aimed at terror groups," explains the Times. It is expected that China, Japan, Australia, the major European powers, and some nations in Russia's "near abroad" will join the program within a few months.

This new initiative, significantly, bears a familial resemblance to U.S.-Soviet proposals created in the 1950s and early 1960s for invasive arms inspections and UN-supervised disarmament. Those proposals coalesced into State Department Document 7277, entitled Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World. The Freedom From War blueprint called for a three-stage campaign to disarm all nations down to militarized "internal security" forces, with the UN enjoying an effective military monopoly over a disarmed world.

The new proposal would pursue a similar objective from a slightly different direction, using fears of nuclear terrorism to win large-scale acceptance.