[en] The Non-Aligned Movement and others question non-proliferation for preserving an unfair world order, and export restrictions as aimed to protect lucrative technical monopolies. They repeatedly argue that the assurances of all states should be taken at face value, and national sovereignty outweighs access for inspections or convincing concrete answers to serious compliance questions. They privilege Westphalian Opacity over technical accountability. But recent events show how far deception, denial and defiant opacity have created the global WMD landscape. One example is the Iranian nuclear compliance crisis: Iran refuses questions, denounces evidence as 'false', and declines worthwhile investigatory dialogue. This autistic behaviour would hollow out any system of global control. Other countries have also apparently enriched small quantities of uranium or deny IAEA inspectors control of specific installations at enrichment facilities. As regards terrorism and WMD related materials, the 2006 Litvinenko case involved state-enabled radiological murder. A new UK judicial enquiry is announced, but normalisation will continue, to facilitate relations with the impenitent Russian state. Similarly no effective further enquiry is expected into Soviet BW research. Yet a major new book (Leitenberg and Zilinskas, 'The Soviet Biological Weapons Program') concludes that 'whatever genetically engineered bacterial and viral forms were created (...) remain stored in the culture collections of the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense', As for Syria, the Assad regime adopted tactics like Iran's to build a 'ballistic-chemical-biological nexus'. Now fears grow that Syria's chemical stocks cannot be safeguarded during a Civil War and that the nexus will spread to Hezbollah. Yet developing states most driven to acquire WMD turn out to be similar unstable autocracies. Syria joined the NPT but refused investigations or plausible answers over the radioactive facility bombed by Israel in September 2007. Nuclear Capable States' indefinitely planned possession of nuclear weapons has also been reconfirmed. Recently, India's Foreign Minister called nuclear weapons '[an] integral part of our national security and will remain so, pending nondiscriminatory and global nuclear disarmament'. Pakistan will not disarm until India does, so their competitive vertical proliferation will continue indefinitely, and spread to the oceans. A.Q. Khan, thief of secrets and national hero, is kept from questioning by international investigators. The size and reach of the DPRK's nuclear arsenal, to which he is nevertheless linked, demand maximum wary constraint. Effective technical accountability is a major precondition for stability or disarmament. WMD will never disappear without greater confidence about states' capabilities, behaviour and intentions. Strong, globally accepted technical accountability, applied through focused and empowered expert questioning, supported by a united, non-partisan UNSC, will be needed to reverse, or even contain, their spread. It is not a cunning Western plot-but appeasement of Westphalian Opacity is a major blockage on movement towards disarmament. Somehow this must be made better globally understood. (author)