Do I honestly think W is on the verge of launching anywhere?
Shrub doesn't have to Launch to Use. Anytime he says "we reserve the right...." he is using nukes, but nukes are not the only weapon in his arsenal for "give me what I want or else" demands. W is pretty cavalier, more nakedly petulant than many predecessors, about "give me what I want or else ..." demands in LOTS of fora. That, and his utter contempt for many many processes of international negotiation, is the evil I see.
(True confession: in college I got to participate in a couple simulated crisis negotiation scenarios in one class. In college I could not negotiate my way out of a wet paper bag--I am only marginally better now. I always wound up in the group that got to nuclear war the fastest, just because we could not negotiate. One can reserve judgment about the "E" word, evil, and still definitely observe the same tendencies in Shrub.)
I also think W and company are callous enough about the costs of lots of things to figure they actually have less to lose than Kim Il Sung, relatively speaking. If Kim Il Sung launches his nukes, he will be destroyed. If Shrub launches one or two nukes, he will not necessarily be destroyed in retaliation. No matter how appalled other people might be,I think he is more capable of deciding some loss is worth the price of achieving some objective.
I am guessing without thinking too deeply that India and Pakistan are probably closer to stable bilateral deterrence than the US and anyone else, but it's hard to say without more study what their nukes would mean in other conflicts.
Unless Sharon has some of those spiffy neutron bombs that are supposed to kill people but not destroy property, I think he would be an idiot to try nukes for his "ethnic cleansing" exercises with the Palestinians just because the occupied territories are right on top of him (or ther reverse if you like.) And I won't speculate about the likelihood of attacks on his neighbors without more info. Sadly, much as I personally would love to cut Sharon off from his $5billion / year slurping at the trough of the US taxpayers, I suspect that doing that with no finesse would make him MORE trigger happy with his nukes for regional enemies.
So yeah, I DO actually think Shrub and Sharon are more likely to deliver nukes than, say, North Korea. But this is enough provocative rant for one message.
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