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A five-point plan for making the world safer.

When I moved to a neighborhood known as the "murder capital" of New York City, I figured it was only a matter of time before someone held a knife to my throat and demanded my wallet. I would hand it over, of course. It's only money, right? But it didn't happen like I thought it would. I left a Christmas party late one night and heard someone running behind me as I approached a subway entrance. When I whirled to look, I was struck with a heavy object. I tumbled down the staircase and scrambled to my feet -- still in possession of 30 cents and two subway tokens.

The combatants in Syria are pointing fingers at each other. Syrian officials claim that the rebels used chemical weapons in a March 19th attack against Khan al-Assal, a town near Aleppo; the rebels say the Syrian government was the culprit. Whichever is the case, at least 25 people died and many others were wounded in the assault. The UN has decided to investigate: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom, a former weapons monitor for the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), to lead the investigation.

It has been 30 years since US President Ronald Reagan called for development of a missile defense system that was supposed to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) launched by Reagan's famous "Star Wars" speech in March 1983 has survived to the present day, but with ever-lower expectations.

Since the early 1990s, the nonproliferation community has obsessed over the annual appropriations to programs at the US defense, state, and energy departments that are designed to keep weapons of mass destruction (WMD) out of the wrong hands. While the budgets of individual programs have fluctuated, the unmistakable trend in US nonproliferation spending was upward. Program managers could generally count on this year's budget being higher than last year's, and next year's being higher still.

Four years ago, President Barack Obama called preventing nuclear terrorism a top security priority. But even though he said in his State of the Union speech last week that Washington "would continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands," the United States is only marginally safer from that threat today than it was at the beginning of his first term.

After launching a rocket in December and vowing to conduct a third nuclear test, North Korea followed up last week by saying it would take measures "stronger than a nuclear test" and releasing a bizarre YouTube video that appeared to depict a rocket attacking an American city. (The video has since been removed from YouTube; excerpts and commentary can be watched here.)

In January the World Wildlife Fund released a report asserting that Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh could meet 100 percent of their projected electricity needs in 2050 by installing solar photovoltaic power plants on less than one percent of their total land area. Which would be excellent news if all anyone needed to make electricity was land and sunshine.

As the Obama administration contemplates further changes to US nuclear policy and posture in its second term, it will no doubt encounter opposition from those who argue that the world is too dangerous and complex to permit further reductions in US and global nuclear force levels. Critics will make many assertions in support of their case, but two claims in particular are likely to underpin their defense of the status quo.