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In my last column, as well as in a column for Foreign Policy, I expressed reservations about Project Minerva--a $50 million Pentagon initiative to mobilize anthropologists and other social scientists to do research in aid of the "war on terror." I argued that such research should be sponsored by a civilian agency such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) rather than by the Pentagon

The objective of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which President George W. Bush unveiled in 2006, is to enable the global expansion of nuclear energy while limiting the spread of uranium enrichment and reprocessing technologies.

Given the rapid increase in the number of laboratories around the world that do research on diseases of bioterrorism concern, such as anthrax and plague, and emerging infections, such as SARS and avian influenza, there is an urgent need to prevent pathogenic microbes from escaping accidentally from a lab or being stolen by terrorists and criminals. With a few exceptions, dangerous bacteria and viruses can be isolated from nature, but different strains tend to vary widely in virulence, or the ability to cause illness and death.

Few U.S.-Russian cooperation efforts are more popular and less controversial than the "Megatons to Megawatts" program, also known as the HEU-LEU deal, which converts Russia's highly enriched uranium (HEU) from nuclear weapons into low-enriched uranium (LEU) for U.S. nuclear power reactors. Under the agreement that the countries signed in 1993, Moscow made a commitment to eliminate 500 metric tons of HEU--probably more than one-third of the total HEU stock that the Soviet Union produced during the Cold War.

Both presumptive presidential nominees--Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama--have called for strengthening and/or increasing the number of international treaties and institutions to combat proliferation should they be elected president. An important new pact for them to consider is an agreement that restricts the weaponization of space. Not only are space weapons expensive and provocative, they're also useless: They simply cannot protect us.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union weaponized plague bacteria for possible use against the United States. Earlier this year, the deadly bacteria finally made its way into the country--albeit under peaceful circumstances. After five years of negotiation between U.S. and Kazakh officials, a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane transported samples of bubonic and pneumonic plague bacteria from laboratories in Kazakhstan to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colorado. U.S.

When Unit Four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in the middle of the night on April 26, 1986, the resulting radioactive fallout contaminated the territory of three countries--Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. Belarus in particular bore a heavy burden, as cesium and iodine particles spread across 23 percent of the country. The devastation forced the resettlement of thousands of Belarusian families and left a legacy of persistent medical and psychological problems, leading to a national allergy to all things nuclear.