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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (115128)	9/18/2003 11:06:35 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Jacob Snyder; Re: "Saudis consider nuclear bomb" This shouldn't be a surprise. Bilow, December 23, 2002 ... It's an inevitable fact of economics and manufacturing that the nuclear cat is quite out of the bag. The original Manhattan Project cost $5 billion per bomb (qty 4) in 1996 dollars: If nukes were still that expensive, a dirt poor country like Pakistan (military budget $2.5 billion per year) wouldn't be able to even dream of affording them. But the inevitable march of technology continues to lower the cost barrier. I thought that the list of nations with nukes was interesting. What I noticed was that the big countries that don't have nukes are precisely those that can depend on an alliance with another, bigger, country that does have them. The very little countries can't have nukes because they can't afford them, whether they feel they need them or not. The little countries with nukes are the ones that feel threatened by external forces that are larger than them, are big enough to afford nukes, and do not have a nuclear armed power that they are certain is willing to back them up in a war. ... Saudi Arabia used to be well supported by the US, but we've drifted a bit apart since the WTC attacks. Therefore, with the high level of military expenditures by the country, I'd expect them to be seriously considering nukes as a natural next step. They have to worry about attacks from the US, Iraq, Iran, Israel and God knows who else. #reply-18368268 -- Carl