Well, you said “attacked militarily”; you should have been more specific if several kinds of military attack don’t qualify.
I don’t think it’s fair to compare the current world to world war II and its aftermath.
It’s not as though Hitler deciding to invade france (within the context of already fighting the allies in a world war) is anything like a country just out of the blue deciding to invade france today.
nm
Many Westerners do “accept” that - because they are looking for excuses to demonize the Iranians. That doesn’t make it true.
Nonsense. Iran isn’t anywhere near that crazy or that extreme. It’s no liberal democracy, but Nazi Germany? Ridiculous.
Not a chance. Nobody gives nukes to loose cannons like terrorists; for one thing, there’s no guarantee that the terrorists wouldn’t use it to nuke Iran. And they are well aware that if they had terrorists set off a nuke in the US, we’d use it as an excuse to genocide them. There’s no such thing as “plausible deniability” here; no one would care. We didn’t give our terrorists nukes, the Soviets didn’t give their terrorists nukes, the Iranians won’t give their terrorists nukes.
They could have done that a long time ago if they wanted to; they haven’t because that’s not the point. The point is that if they have nukes America won’t invade and kill a million or two Iranians and the leadership, and leave the rest to squat in the ruins.
What Iran are you talking about? The same Iran that want to execute a Christian pastor for not converting back to Islam?
And? I didn’t say the government was nice or tolerant; but executing religious dissidents is a long way from national suicide. Nor does killing one or a hundred or even a thousand people put them in the same category as Nazi Germany. Or the Soviet Union, for that matter; they killed an awful lot of people, they had nukes, yet they failed to hand them over to terrorists or launch them in a suicidal attack.
It’s a deterrent. If Saddam Hussein had been in possession of working nuclear weapons in 2003, and had credibly and explicitly threatened to nuke Israel if the US launched an invasion of Iraq, do you think the invasion would have gone ahead? Almost certainly not, unless the US thought it could nullify that threat first. It’s a trump card that changes the dynamic of military and political calculations, not a weapon you’re going to be using regularly.
You do know that quite a few U.S. Presidents had served in the military, right?
Looking at wiki, Kennedy, Ford, Bush the Elder, and LBJ got shot at (WW2). (Don’t know how close Ike came to the shooting.)
IMHO, Blake pretty much hits it on the head. The example that comes to mind of a nuclear weapons owning power (NWOP) being invaded in an existence-threatening war is the already mentioned Yom Kippur War of 1973. This war nearly sucked in the Soviet Union and United States, as the Soviets were not pleased at the prospect of their Egyptian client state falling and the U.S. was going to stop any proposed Soviet intervention. I don’t believe it was widely known at the time that Israel possessed nuclear weapons, which is certainly a failure of Dr. Strangelove’s observation on the Doomsday Device.
All other cases of armed conflict involving a NWOP, really falls into the category of armed disagreement, rather than an existence-threatening war. I think you can include clashes like the Sino-Soviet border fights of 1969, the periodic sparring India and Pakistan have over Jammu/Kashmir (Though note that they haven’t fought a “serious” war, like the 1965 or 1971 versions, after India tested its first nuclear device in 1974. The Kargil War of 1999 only began after Pakistan acquired its own nuclear weapons.), the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, and the already mentioned Falklands conflict. None of those conflicts were going to threaten the existences of the involved NWOPs.
I’m not sure how to characterize the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then again, I think the full story still remains to be told of how command and control was maintained of the various nuclear weapon assets of the Soviet Union and its satellites.
I would tend to agree that nuclear weapons work as a deterrent but this line of argument is poor. How many countries that could conceivably have a nuclear weapons program, have had their existences threatened since WWII?
Off the top of my head: Iraq, Libya, Syria (potentially), North Korea, South Africa (from within, and they gave up their program shortly before the transition from apartheid-rule), and perhaps Iran. For a given value of ‘threatened’, the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War. If the Able Archer 83 worry or the Cuban Missile Crisis had coincided with one of NORAD or PVO-Stratny’s computer screwups…it could have gone down real bad.
We don’t invade the ones that have demonstrated that they actually have weapons. We have invaded the ones that might, or that are close to getting them.
How would having nuclear weapons stop airstrikes from a nation that isn’t reachable by their nuclear devices?
So of the eight countries you’ve listed, 3 have or had nuclear weapons at the time. Straight away those stats don’t look too good.
And of the rest? Somehow I doubt Syria in 1948 or Korea in 1950 could have had a nuclear programme (note: I didn’t add that condition as a fudge; countries that could conceivably have a nuclear programme generally require a degree of wealth and organisation. And I’m saying countries that are wealthy and organized are far less likely to be involved in “threats to their existence”)
And again: I’m sure nuclear weapons work well as a deterrent; it’s this line of argument which I don’t think works.
It’s what people have already said. A country that has nuclear weapons can draw a line and say “don’t cross this.” A country that doesn’t have nuclear weapons is ultimately subject to whatever bigger countries want to do to it.
The precedents Iran are probably looking at are Iraq and North Korea. Iraq didn’t have nuclear weapons; Iraq was conquered and the Saddam regime was ousted from power. North Korea has nuclear weapons and the Kim regime is still in power.
Why people don’t understand this or take it more seriously is beyond me. I’m not saying it should be the top consideration in foreign policy decisions and negotiations, but you can never put this fact too far in the back of your mind. It should be considered the canvas on which every move they make is to be understood.
What’s really scary about this, the real destabilizing part, is that they’re the less likely actor to fuck things up. See, there are nuclear powers out there—powers with confirmed nukes—that make a wider claim. In Iran, the claim is that you get sent to heaven if you die in the act of martyrdom. In some of these other countries, that’s not a requirement at all. America is run by people who think they will all be sent to heaven if they die in any act, as long as they believe in a particular phrasing and depiction of a sky-fairy.
That’s some pretty scary shit right there, almost as scary as how specious reasoning still persists on the Dope despite fighting ignorance since ’72.
No true Scotsman would attack a nuclear-armed country.
A concise thread about the Apartheid-era South African nuclear weapons program that may be of interest: Who was South Africa's Nuke aimed at? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
I’m not sure where either of you are going with this. It seems very unlikely that, even if they had nukes, they would use them in a civil war. I think that knocks Libya and Syria off the list. South Africa was with invasion by its neighbors (who also supported SA’s inter resistance movements), and it may be that deterrent worked in this case, but they got rid of their program because of the threat in internal revolution (they didn’t want a majority rule, i.e. black, controlled government having nukes. Iraq and Iran went to war with each other, and both were developing nukes, but AFAIK never actually got them, or don’t yet have them.
Leaving the US, Russia and North Korea, all of whom have (arguably) been successful with nuclear deterrence. Personally, I don’t think an of them were ever genuinely threatened with invasion or destruction, but they plan and operate as much for potential as for reality.
I must add though, that if it is known that a country is developing nukes but doesn’t yet have them, that country is putting itself at considerable risk. There’s some actual history to back this up.
Oops: forgot note on Syria. Though it might have had its existence threatened in the 1973 war, I doubt very much if it could possibly have developed nukes by that time, and since then there has not been any similar threat.
Show me some support for this, because I think it’s total bullshit.
The Whiskey Rebellion probably doesn’t count, but George Washington personally rode at the head of the troops sent to suppress the armed rebels. There was no fighting and everybody went home. The rebellion is credited with being one impetus behind the development of political parties in the US, however, so we are still paying the price today. 
He’d get kilt!
My post is my support. You may want to keep reading