here is some food for thought......
"On the NK/Iran nuke question, I think we have learned that it's not nukes that kill, it's the leaders who threaten to develop them. The lesson we need to send every thug to be is that the last thing you want the US to think is that you are developing nukes. That's the real shame of letting Saddam get away or at least not being able to identify his remains.
Thus, I would not be surprised to see a combined USA/ROK SOF take out the majority of the NK leadership. This would be much more effective than taking out the nukes and leaving the leadership in place. Sort of like Liberia without the golden parachute for Charles Taylor.
Both Iran and NK are making a gamble of their own. What they're hoping is that they can obfuscate and delay long enough so that they actually have nukes. (Saddam actually hoped the same.)
By taking that elevated risk for a short term, they hope they can reduce the long term threat from us. Once they have nukes, they're far better able to deter us from any kind of operation against their interests; not just to deter us from invading, but also the try to perform various kinds of nuclear blackmail to cause us to interfere less with other kinds of things they do.
So they're betting the farm on their ability to deny their intentions, cover up their progress, and in general muddy the waters, in hopes that they can manage to win the game by developing nukes before we make the decision to destroy their factories, or otherwise respond in a final way.
Like any other big decision, it's a balance of risk and reward, and based on their calculation of how likely it is that we'll step in and do something. Right now I think both nations think the chance of us making such an attack is acceptably low, or that the overall consequences if we do are acceptably small.
As you say, what's now needed is some sort of demonstration to other nations considering the same thing that changes that calculation. It has to make clear that the chance of success is low because we're willing to directly attack such facilities in order to prevent them from coming online. Israel did that to Iraq in the 1970's, and our attack on Saddam this year was partly motivated by our clear understanding that he hadn't yet given up his ambition to develop nukes. Nor is it clear yet that he had. It may be that there was no active program in place in the last year, but there's significant evidence that information was mothballed and that there was a clear intention to restart the nuclear program once the heat was off." |
