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

To: carranza2 who wrote (151867)	11/17/2004 8:28:19 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Respond to of 281500

It would not surprise me to learn that the US has already privately told the leaders of the more prominent Islamic countries that a terrorist nuclear attack on the US would result in unspecified consequences should a link to their countries be established. Let them imagine the nature of the response. I've thought the same thing; although there are problems with that. For one, such a threat - perhaps even an unspoken one but imagined - would all but guarantee that states work to develop their own nuclear weapons. They don't have to be aimed at the US to be effective (more or less the point of my jabs at Michael today). We were discussing this a week or so ago in the context of Iran. I don't see any reason why such a state would willingly stop working on nuclear weapons. Since the neutering of Colin Powell, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that some states actually stepped up work. I can't blame them. I may not like proliferation, but the illegal war on Iraq has shown that only the weak get attacked -- for countries such as Iran who are already in the targetting sights of this administration, the Iraq experience provided such states the clearest incentive to develop such weapons.