| Topic Name: |
In your opinion |
| Message Name: |
State Action |
| Date Posted: |
02/15/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
when i wrote, "weapons proliferation," i was including iran. you are right, they are right up at the top of the threat list for sure. but guys like khan are even riskier, because they bring their services to the highest bidder and don't really answer to a state. but i think small nukes from the former soviet union are much riskier than state-held ones like iran may someday have. if iran uses a nuke, we know where to retaliate. if a non-state actor uses one, it's a little harder. they have no incentive NOT to use them whereas some would argue nukes made the world safer in the cold war because there was such a strong incentive to avoid war. |
| Message: |
Exactly. The biggest concern is the suitcase nuke that is delivered without a trace into a major metropolitan area and detonated. Unlike missiles, which can be traced to their origin, this delivery system makes retaliation poticially difficult, if not impossible. Because you cannot tell what they intend to do with their nukes, unstable regimes like Iran, which have threated Israeal, invite pre-emptive attacks (as in Iraq before), which then raise the prospect of a conflict arising out of that strike (to say nothing about the chaos to the energy markets).
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