John Kelsey wrote: > I wasn't thinking of Al Qaida. There are a *lot* of people who might like > to have a last-ditch deterrent against a US invasion or other action.
I can think of a few workable deterrents against US invasion: - ICBMS - an army with a reputation of fighting nastily when attacked - a serious US-based political lobby friendly to the country Russian, China, and Britain have all three. France has one and two halves these days. The logic is that Israel should join the permanent membership of the Security Council - and India is a candidate as well. That's all the permanent members are really, a gang of countries who agreed not to fight each other because they had the nukes, so had to be sure to tell the others when they were going to pick on third-party country in case two of them picked on the same victim and ended up fighting each other by accident. The Security Council was nothing to do with the rule of international law (bye-bye Richard-Might-is-Right-Perle, I hope the rest of the warmongers take the pension-reducing plunge soon) and everything to do with the logic of MAD and carving up the world into spheres on influence. (And North Korea is in the Chinese sphere of influence, which is why the US leaves policing their nukes up to China.)
