We live in a world and in a city where rumblings of warning blend into a familiar background, where fluency in the language of crises is widely shared, where doomsayers and Cassandras readily ply their trade. Some alarms are of an immediate nature and are drawn from the empirical world; others are distilled from more abstract projections. But I can think of no scenario more frightening, more disastrous, than that of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction, of which nuclear weapons are the transcendent example.

Few would disagree that combating this threat must be among our highest national priorities. And yet that resolution has not always been matched by concrete action.

I speak here not as a partisan, for the successes and failures in this area can be widely distributed among parties, factions, individuals, and schools of thought. But none would maintain that all that could be done, all that should be done to avert this unparalleled disaster, has in fact been done.

Over the decades, a number of policies, actions, programs, and efforts have been advanced to address the many challenges of this hydra-headed problem. The collective result of these labors constitutes an enormous success, but, nevertheless, our current defenses remain far from perfect. And yet our goal must be perfection. For our vessel is a leaky one, where even a single hole can be an opening to the Apocalypse.

Our regime of safeguards has taken shape in piecemeal fashion, often in a reactive response to correct problems that have been unexpectedly unearthed. Perhaps the best example is the revelation, in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, of the scale of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, including the bone-chilling discovery that his nuclear ambitions were within an estimated six months from being realized. This and other providential discoveries underscored the gross inadequacy of the existing inspection procedures and led to the crafting of the so-called Additional Protocol which mandates far more intrusive measures than those of the original Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But even these much-strengthened measures cannot compensate for other fatal shortcomings which may become evident only in retrospect. The sudden and recent exposure of Iran's longstanding efforts to acquire a nuclear capability, and its success in assembling key elements of a weapons program, have once again demonstrated the harvest of deadly consequences that complacency may sow.

This being an election year, the contest is joined on all fronts. To its detractors, this Administration has been guilty of any number of sins in its foreign policy, a criticism that sometimes extends to the limits of geography and propriety. However, what I find most surprising is that little or no attention has been devoted by either detractors or supporters to what is undeniably a major success, namely the crafting of an innovative, comprehensive, and - this is of crucial importance - action-oriented strategy of preemptive nonproliferation.

Methodically, piece-by-piece, the Administration has reinvented the nonproliferation regime it inherited, crafting policies to fill gaping holes, reinforcing earlier patchwork fixes, assembling allies, creating precedents, setting new limits, changing perceived realities. It is an enormous achievement, worthy of universal praise. And it is still building.

To this Administration must go the credit for many long-delayed but indispensable actions to reverse our slide toward the chasm. I will cite only a couple of examples, with counter-trafficking measures taking pride of place.

Among the most prominent innovations is the Proliferation Security Initiative, the cooperative arrangement among a growing number of countries that is aimed at taking direct action to intercept the illegal transshipment of WMD weapons, components, and materials. This is a muscular enhancement of our ability to halt trafficking in the components of these weapons. I confess that, once it was announced, my immediate response was, "Why weren't we doing this thirty years ago?" Nevertheless, I am very thankful that it is being done at last.

Despite this program's infancy, there have already been notable successes. It was the interception of a vessel loaded with nuclear components for Libya that helped convince Khaddafi that the days of his undisturbed accumulation of the instruments of destruction were over.

Much attention has been focused on the revelations of the stunningly extensive nature of the trafficking in nuclear technology and materials by members of Pakistan's nuclear programs. These revelations, combined with invaluable information from Libya's program, have torn the cover from the international black market in nuclear technology and know-how, which, prior to this inside information, had been only sketchily understood.

What is usually overlooked, however, is the Administration's success in persuading the leaders of Pakistan to take active measures to interrupt the proliferation of nuclear materials and assistance that has metastasized unchecked from that country for many years. We are now in the process of unraveling that network and preventing the horrors its commerce would otherwise help bring into being.

Despite its caricatured image of being oblivious to potential support from the international community, the Administration will shortly announce success in its efforts to prod the United Nations to greater endeavors in nonproliferation, having crafted what is likely to be a unanimous resolution by the Security Council mandating that all member countries adopt effective measures to prevent the illegal trafficking in WMD-related goods, with the prospect of establishing universal adherence to these rules.

There are many other elements deserving mention, but I will refrain from doing so in order to focus on the central innovation which I believe is indispensable for any successful nonproliferation effort, namely the demonstrated credibility of action. For this represents nothing less than a transforming precedent.

Now making the rounds is the view that the United States has lost credibility around the world due to our policy in Iraq. I suggest that the exact opposite is true: We have, in fact, gained enormous, immensely valuable, even decisive credibility from our actions there. For the next time the United States, or at least this President, warns some foreign despot to cease actions that we believe are threatening to our security, my hunch is that he will listen, and listen carefully. The fact that we went into Iraq virtually alone, excepting our courageous partner Great Britain, not only without the sanction of the international community but in blunt defiance of its strenuous efforts to stop us, is far from the ruinous negative it is often portrayed as. In fact, it is all to the good, for it is unambiguous proof that absolutely nothing will deter us, that the entire world arrayed against us cannot stop us. The message to those on the receiving end could not be clearer, and unless they are suicidal, they will understand that their options have been radically narrowed.

This is not theory. Already, the Administration has won another victory in Muammar Khaddafi's decision to surrender his WMD programs in direct consequence of our actions in Iraq. And it is a powerful precedent, for it is the first time that a state has surrendered these weapons without a regime change. If Khaddafi makes good on his promise, and if we can in confidence readmit him fully to the international community, the effect on others cannot be but salutary. For we can then offer offenders a stark choice of the sword or the olive branch, of destruction or the rewards of cooperation, with all ambiguity torn away, and thereby refocus their cold calculations of self-interest away from ambition and toward survival.

Our intervention in Iraq has made this seminal message both possible and credible for the first time. Can anyone cognizant of the threats we face doubt its value?

The benefits of this new mode of interaction are evident in the current stand-off with Iran. The recent and unexpected exposure of Iran's massive nuclear weapons program has startled that regime into a hastily constructed policy of stalling and superficial cooperation. Only a fool would believe that the Iranians will voluntarily abandon their nuclear ambitions, but their coerced cooperation has been helpfully motivated by their fear of U.S. action against them.

Here as well, Iran's adherence to the deal it cut with Britain, France, and Germany for a "suspension" of its programs has been made more likely by the existence of the U.S. threat, a source of real-world leverage that even the Europeans privately acknowledge to be useful. That situation is far from resolved, but does anyone actually believe that the possibility of halting Iran's march would even exist without Saddam's sobering example?

None of this has been lost on the North Korean regime. Our demonstrated willingness to use force to remove a threat, paired with the possibility of reward for cooperation, provides the decision-makers in Pyongyang with useful instruction in the rules of this new world. Once again, this bracketing of the regime's options was made possible by our actions in Iraq.

Clearly, the Administration's actions regarding nonproliferation are of a sweeping nature. But even with all that has been done, much more remains, as the Administration is the first to point out. In his recent speech, the President laid out an agenda listing several areas in which additional action is urgently needed, including addressing the proliferation problems inherent in countries seeking to acquire the complete nuclear fuel cycle and the need for expanded export controls worldwide, among others. Some of these problems have no ready solution and will require increased attention.

Each of these many actions and policies should be celebrated in themselves. But their true importance emerges only when they are arrayed together and seen as a whole, for they demonstrate the extraordinary effort by this Administration to craft and put in place a far-seeing, comprehensive, and action-oriented strategy focused not merely on the limited task of defense, but on preempting our annihilation.

Of course, the Administration inherited some very valuable initiatives, such as the Nunn-Lugar program that continues our massive effort to secure the vast WMD arsenal left in the wreckage of the Soviet empire. But its strategy moves well beyond merely embracing and modifying this inheritance to aspiring to nothing less than a dramatic and ambitious reinvention that seeks to address all areas of this fatal menace and do so for the first time. If there is fault to be had with this Administration in this area, it is that they have been remiss in not shouting their success from the rooftops.

Action long dreamed of is finally being taken, but there is still much to do. We must make up for decades of stillborn plans, of wishful thinking, of irresponsible passivity. We are already late, but we are no longer bystanders wringing our hands and hoping that somehow we will find shelter from gathering threats, no longer dispirited by difficult problems that have no immediate answer, no longer waiting for some international court to issue a reluctant warrant or grudging permission to allow us to take measures to protect ourselves.

This President has begun to lay the foundation for a comprehensive, multi-layered, root-and-branch approach to the mortal danger of the proliferating instruments of our destruction. A global system of overlapping levels of international, multilateral, and unilateral measures is being erected, each using different tools and methods, but all sharing a common purpose: the putting in place of a Strategy of Preemptive Nonproliferation.

We are only at the beginning. But it is an extraordinary beginning. Everyone in this room, everyone in this country, owes this Administration their thanks for the fact that we are not only meeting this ultimate of threats on the field, but that we are also advancing on it, battling not only aggressively, but successfully. For the outcome of this battle may be nothing less than a chance to survive.