Dear C.'s,
Nobody seems to remember this but we hammered out the "suitcase nuke" question with the Soviets. We decided that we would treat a suitcase nuke just like any other nuclear weapon. That is, we would assume it came from them and retaliate accordingly. There is really no other answer. Anybody who allows a suitcase nuke to be developed or acquired by anybody should be considered as having launched a slow-motion missile against us. If that missile hits us, all those proliferators responsible should expect retaliation, singly or all at once. Of course that leaves the problem of people who actually want to encourage retaliation, but that's requires judgment in the actual event.
Otherwise, all this talk of jihadists getting nukes is nothing but hysteria. It is really very stupid to worry about such a thing. Isn't it far, far, more likely that some disgruntled nutcase at a modern, Western physics laboratory would develop such a bomb? People who live in Afghanistan have very little access to centrifuges, last time I looked. Is it a risk that some jihadists could, without our getting wind of it, develop their own weapons of mass destruction and release them in America?
Yeah. So what?
That's an irreducible risk of technology and you can't put the genie back in the bottle any more than you can un-invent dynamite.
Jihadists with nukes are the grown-up version of the bogeyman.
peace,
boddi