News you've probably never heard

There's been so much criticism of Bush's "unilateralism", and the press has been so focused in on that issue, that they have completely missed a major story that's happening right under their noses - the PSI. What's the PSI you say? It's the Proliferation Security Initiative, and it's already made some significant achievements.

It is playing a key role in curbing and caging North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. It played a key role in disarming Libya, discovering and rolling up the Pakistani A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network, and has become a framework for international military and police exercises organized by the United States. Its membership includes most of the world's largest economic powers, most of the world's largest military powers, and most of the most influential states on earth. The United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Russia, the Netherlands, France, Australia and Germany are among its 15 member states, and it is one of the pillars of the Bush administration's strategy to both win the war on terrorism and halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As an organization set up to perform a mission that the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency have jointly failed, halting the spread of nuclear weapons, it has the potential of becoming an alternative to the UN itself in coming decades. Notably, all of its members to date are democracies.

The work of the much maligned Under Secretary of State for Arms Proliferation and International Security John Bolton, PSI is already a great success in bringing nations that disagreed bitterly over the Iraq war together under one flag to deal with larger weapons proliferation issues, especially those relating to the Korean Peninsula.

How It Works

The PSI is a bit of a strange bird, neither pure military alliance nor economic consortium nor intelligence agency, though it bears some of the features of all three. There is no guarantee among PSI members to come to the defense of any other member attacked by another party, for instance, such as exists in the NATO charter. It has no operating budget or swank headquarters building, and no jet-setting General Secretary or Supreme Commander. But most of the world's great navies -- America's, the UK's, Japan's, Australia's, and Russia's all play key roles. Many of the world's best intelligence assets, from spy satellites to human intelligence sources to financial investigators, are devoted to working with the PSI at some level.

What has PSI accomplished, you ask?

PSI's role in the disarmament of Libya has been poorly explained by the Bush administration and therefore poorly understood by the American public, with the media playing an assisting role in fostering ignorance.

Intelligence gathered mostly by the US and UK last summer indicated that North Korea was shipping a large amount of nuclear weapons manufacturing gear -- centrifuge parts to be exact -- to Libya via several ships. Acting on that information, US and UK warships stopped, boarded and seized those ships, discovering the expected gear on board. Confronted with those findings and the recently successful military operation to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- and undoubtedly mindful of his own unhappy experiences with President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s -- Libya's dictator, Col. Muammar Ghaddafi, who had connections to terrorists going back a few decades, decided it was no longer healthy to pursue nuclear weapons.

By now you're probably wondering why the media hasn't covered this. After all, an organization that could potentially replace the UN and the IAEA is important news, isn't it?

Well, the media just can't cover everything you know. (Do you practice "iceberg journalism"?)

Hat tip to Instapundit.