WWIII

Great Debates
1

Form a world coalition of anti terrorist countries. Give a position in Afghanistan 24 hours to evacuate. Take American nuke, place it on a British bomber flown by a Saudi Pilot. Destroy the target with said nuclear weapon.

Notify next terrorist host nation. Repeat.

Far feched? Not really, what happens if one of those old soviet nukes shows up in a major city, especially outside of the US?

I posted that in another thread.

I am looking for other scenarios.

Here’s one,

Nuclear weapon detonates in Tel Aviv

Any way we could keep a lid on that?

2

Well, I could see that first scenario having terrible implications, but not for the reasons you’ve given. Drop a nuclear weapon in Afghanistan and the US would immediately lose every country’s support for their actions. Even Britain would, likely as not, cease supporting the US. The US would be forced into an increasingly hostile world.

3

Nuke somebody and you kill alot of their people including non combatants , women and children (is this still valid since women are considered equal now?) and support for the current mess is conditional , such as only if civvie deaths are kept down , its why the coalition is looking a bit flaky
since US bombing prevents food and rather than people dying quickly say from a bomb they starve to death slowly instead
any why would England supply you a bomber? , UK or rather its government maybe the US bus boy , but they’d never get their hands THAT dirty , and a massive JIHAD would occur

the thing is , all these terrorists want is for the US to keep to itself ,

nuking Telaviv would be risky as Israel is small and it would destroy Holy relics possibly for muslims and Jews , so its a small case of mutually assured destruction of property , but then if they did they may fight over holy glass , the way to probably diffuse the situation is to mix the population a bit more and educate children on both sides together

4

Er, slight nitpick here. I think you’ll find that the RAF no longer has any nuclear-capable manned bombers (perhaps some Tornados could be modified for this mission, but it’s not as simple as drilling new holes on the launching rails).

That aside, it is highly unlikely that Britain and more particularly Saudi Arabia (or any other countries currently in coalition with the US) wopuld agree to participate in the use of a weapons of mass destruction on a country that does not possess them.

Next, who delivers this supposed ex-soviet nuke that obliterates Tel Aviv in the OP’s scenario? To even speculate on what happens next would require this key bit of knowledge.

In any event, why would the explosion of one stolen nuke by terrorists (if that’s who does it) necessarily result in WWIII, no matter where it were set off? Which other countries besides Israel and the terrorist’s host country would be involved to make it a “world” war, and where would they be fighting?

5

Well, Israel has stated that it will respond with nuclear weapons if they are ever attacked with biological/chemical weapons. That would bring all the Arab nations against them and a large part of the West with them.

Also, say the U.S. does do something in Iraq to topple Hussein. My opinion is that the tide of anti-Americanism would drastically rise in the Arab/Muslim world so far as to have a coalition of Arab countries fighting against us. Our alliances would then kick in and spread this war over several continents.

Third, Al-Qaeda could attack other Western nations (not just American interests) and spread the fire.

Just a few scenarios I can envision.

6

The most likely scenario for a nuclear weapons exchange, IMO, lies in Pakistan. The Pakistani government is facing a ton of internal pressure, and there are realistic scenarios under which it could fall to extremists. Pakistan has roughly 30-40 nuclear missiles.

Now, if Pakistan falls, and nuclear weapons land in the hands of extremists, what does India do? They are already fighting over Kashmir, and it’s not far-fetched to presuppose that India might launch a pre-emptive attack on Pakistan.

If extremists gain control of nuclear weapons, and they know that their control is temporary, what do they do? Just sit on them? Or do they fire them all in a big blaze of glory against their enemies, including the U.S. and other Western powers? I don’t think Pakistan’s weapons have intercontinental range, but this is the type of scenario that has caused the Bush administration to lobby so hard for SDI.

Another risk of escalation comes from China. If the U.S. gets seriously embroiled in a major campaign in the Middle East, might China decide to use the opportunity to attack Taiwan? Then what?

And finally, there’s Israel. The Israeli government is under immense pressure to do something about the continual terrorist attacks, and it has lost patience with Arafat, who has been playing a game for decades in which he sponsors terrorist attacks against Israel until they are at the point where they are about to retaliate. Then he makes peace overtures, declares a cease-fire, and promises to negotiate a lasting peace. After everything has calmed down, he violates the cease-fire and starts killing Israelis again.

Last year, he was offered a phenomenally generous agreement - a Palestinian state, Israeli withdrawal from 97% of the occupied territories, and joint control over Jerusalem. This is the best offer he will EVER get, and everyone knows it. And he rejected it and the terror attacks started again.

So in my opinion, Israel is going to do something, and it’s going to do it fairly soon. It may be holding off right now out of deference to the U.S. to keep the coalition together, but certainly Israeli action of some sort is in the cards, and that’s going to change everything. Bush knows this, which is why this whole issue of the U.S. guaranteeing a Palestinian state has come up recently. He’s trying to defuse the situation. But don’t count on it.

7

I suppose it’s just dueling opinions here, but I don’t buy any of the arguments in the above post.

In particular, the likelihood that, say, any Western European country would take military steps against Israel for any retaliation it made in the Middle East, is unlikely in the extreme.

As for neighboring Arab countries, they don’t have nukes (except for this hypothetical ex-Russian one set off by terrorists), Israel does. End of story.

There remains no love lost between most Arab leaders and Saddam, so their support in such a case would probably stop at lip service. If fighting in this (again unlikely) scenario would take place, it would happen in the Middle East, not “on several continents”, and no Arab country has the resources to project a serious amount of military power much beyond its borders.

Bulletin: it’s already happening. According to news reports, at least four terrorist plots that may have links to al-Queda have been broken up in Europe since 9/11.

al-Queda’s actions, while spectacular so far, have been carried out with very limited personnel and resources. There is no reason to believe that they can carry out successful actions at a higher frequency or effectiveness than they have already.

I lean more towards Sam Stone’s post as a likely sequence of events.

8

I have one WWIII scenario right here. Or, maybe just a huge regional war. Or, maybe nothing. Hell, how should I know? I know news links sometimes die, so, what it says is that Israel has launched one of its largest attacks in years in response to the Minister of Tourism assasination.

I am not saying Israel has no justification, to the contrary. It looks like the kind of thing that could inflame the whole Muslim world. [sub]as if it wasn’t pissed already[/sub]