Having spent another refreshing night in the flesh-eating bacteria wing of the Davos Dermatological and Allergy Clinic, I have arrived at the Congress Hall refreshed if a little bit worried about the first signs of a strange rash. (Not really. And I am sure the place has not been a clinic for months.  There are signs all over announcing that it is not only a hotel, but a Grand Hotel. I harbor a bit of a sense that were I to peel the signs away it would say "biohazard" underneath, but why tempt fate?)

Even more frightening, one of the themes that came up several times yesterday was nuclear terrorism. A very senior Wall Street banker with whom I spoke said the session he attended on the subject made him want to run screaming into the night. One panelist on that session was the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz, who had early in the day been on the terrorism panel I chaired. In both sessions, he displayed both articulate aplomb and a deft ability to sidestep any question that he felt was uncomfortable.

JOEL SAGET/AFP

"Everything is fine with Pakistan's nuclear facilities, everything is safe," he assured unconvinced observers. One such man, a former foreign minister who now heads a well-respected NGO, noted to me (in the men's room of the Congress Hall, where polite urinal chit-chat inevitably turns to WMD proliferation) that he emphatically disagreed, asserting that "Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world." It's a refrain I have heard several times in the past few days, as the precariousness of the broader Middle East situation reminds observers that Pakistan's nuclear stockpile is only a coup away from falling into the hands of radical elements who might well be allied with al Qaeda. (more after the jump)

This is not to deny the seriousness with which Aziz, himself a survivor of an al Qaeda plot, and his government approach these issues. But listening to him and to the other members of the terror panel—which included U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, EU terror coordinator Gies de Vries and U.K. opposition leader David Cameron—one came away more worried than before. As Chertoff noted, whatever strides have been made in enhancing security, as the ability of terrorists to wreak havoc through new technologies grows, so does the likely impact of the one plot that slips through the net.  

Prompted by a question from the head of Amnesty International, De Vries passionately argued that we do ourselves great damage when we trample on our principles in order to prosecute that war, no matter the stakes, and the crowd responded. Chertoff, otherwise very thoughtful in most of his responses (he did duck the urgent need for a new nuclear non-proliferation regime), was uncharacteristically weak in defending the the Bush administration's detainee policies, asserting that there are always matters of interpretation in the enforcement of the law. These words fell flat. One cannot help but wonder, however, if the failure to make containing the threat of nuclear proliferation a higher priority will not come back to haunt all the participants in these discussions. Eliminating the threat of loose nukes in the former Soviet Union would cost about $2 billion on top of the $1 billion we are spending each year over the next four or five year—about five weeks worth of what the U.S. is currently spending in Iraq. 

Speaking of Iraq, whereas in past years, the U.S. misadventure in the Middle East was all anyone could speak (or fume) about, this year, comparative silence. Do they have Iraq fatigue?  Is the outburst coming later today? Has the way of world truly been reversed with the important actually overtaking the urgent for a moment? It remains to be seen. And if I see it, I'll be sure to let you know.

[Editor's note:  To learn how easy it would be for terrorists to explode a nuclear bomb in the United States, check out The Bomb in the Backyard from FP's November/December 2006 issue.]