December 22, 2003

Another "Bush Revolution�under the radar" story

Bryan Preston writes:

...The Telegraph said a top US State Department official confirmed last week that the Proliferation Security Initiative, an international, US-led scheme to halt the spread of banned weapons by seizing them in transit, had "netted several seizures."
Nice how they call a major new alliance a "scheme," but I'll pass over that bit of editorial comment buried in a news report to talk about why this is so important. As I've noted before, the PSI is one of the most underreported stories of the year. Most journalists don't know anything about it, and liberal commentators like Josh Marshall have simply elected not to mention it since it gets in the way of their "Bush is an unrepentant unilateralist" critiques of administration policy. The PSI is extremely important to the future of weapons proliferation and to the world community generally. It not only acts as a de facto blockade against Kim Jong-Il, but the PSI unites 11 of the world's most powerful states, all democracies, in an anti-proliferation alliance that operates outside the aegis of the UN to perform a function that the UN has clearly failed to do--stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And it's the brainchild of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton, one of the more maligned figures in the Bush administration....

Posted by John Weidner at December 22, 2003 10:32 PM
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