The greatest danger to America is, without question, the spread of nuclear weapons. And the only semi-legitimate body staunching that spread was the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which created a framework that most participants and powers bought into, and could be used to govern the spread of nuclear materials. But according to Robert Farley, the Bush administration may have killed that too:
The strike [on Syria], and especially the apparent acquiesence of the United States in its planning and execution, means that the NPT is pretty much a dead letter. The treaty has always been open to charges of unfairness, since it legitimized the nuclear programs of a select number of states while delegitimizing similar programs in other states. This was a deal worth upholding, based on the principle that fewer nuclear states is better than more nuclear states. The deal also ensured that signatories would have the capability to engage in peaceful nuclear activity, some of which is indistiguishable from the opening steps of a long term weapons program. American complicity in this strike means that the deal is as good as dead, and has been replaced by a de facto arrangement in which states that the US approves of are allowed to have nuclear power, while states we dislike get airstrikes. I think this is a tragedy; the NPT has, in my view, worked to minimize the spread of nuclear weapons across the international system through a combination of moral suasion and legal inspection for the last forty years. It only works if the states involved agree that it's legitimate and of some benefit to all; as I said before, that concept is pretty much dead now. Combine this with the recent nuclear deal with India, and I'd have to say that the Bush administration's effort to kill a legal cornerstone of international stability have been remarkably successful.
The apparent successor to the NPT, at least in the neocon vision, is a sort of anarchical situation in which various countries are secretly racing to achieve nuclear capabilities while more powerful countries subjectively decide which efforts they support, and which they should try to disrupt through military force. The fun cycle of this will be that as America becomes more likely to launch unexpected attacks on countries seeking fissile material, more and more countries will look at the experiences of India, Iraq, and North Korea and decide that the only way to protect themselves is to achieve nuclear weaponry before American can act.
