On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 04:39:40PM -0800, Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > On Fri, 11 Feb 2005, Matthew Hunter wrote: > > I can, however, easily separate out a list of nations that I > > would not under any circumstances trust with nuclear weapons. > > I can make an even shorter list of nations for which I would put > > my life on the line in a military action to prevent their > > acquisition of a nuclear weapon, or to destroy such capability > > already in existance. > While I applaud your willingness to risk death for the good of your > country, I doubt we will see any more military actions aimed at > states. Pakistan is there - probably NK; Iran (assuming that's on > your list) seems likely to develop nukes whatever we do. > I'm much more concerned about non-state actors - the flourishing > and metastasizing al Qaeda, or Hamas, or some unknown group biding its > time. Actually, I'm primarily worried about certain nation-states getting nukes due to the risk that they would then deliver one or more nukes to terrorists. Nation-states have generally demonstrated a knowledge of consequences that allows them to be intimidated. Not necessarily a well-developed one, but enough to understand the fundamental nuclear deterrance equation: "If you use a nuclear weapon upon us, you might get one or two cities, but in return your entire nation will become a smoking pile of radioactive glass." Non-state actors aren't vulnerable to that kind of retaliation, but they have a much harder time putting together the resources to construct a weapon. The nightmare scenario is a nation-state with the capacity to build nuclear weapons and the willingness to sell or give them to terrorists. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/weblog/index.jsp