Compared to Israel, other nations are highly successful. Encouraged by Pakistani nuclear proliferation, scores of countries are racing toward the bomb. Nuclear proliferation is unstoppable because the sixty-year-old technology is simple. Two hundred years ago, no one could have imagined terrorists owning Stinger missiles. Decades from now, no one will be able to imagine terrorists without nuclear bombs.

The price tag for nuclear weapons is within the reach of terrorists and poor states. With Pakistan’s still-growing arsenal of fifty nuclear weapons, someone like A.Q. Khan wouldn’t charge more than $50 million for a weapon. Khan got paid even less for transferring major nuclear know-how to Libya, knowledge which would cost it billions of dollars to develop in-house.

Deterrence can only work on the basis of numbers: a country with 200 bombs deters a country with five weapons. Deterrence only works if practiced consistently: nuclear attacks on the enemies’ nuclear sites are a must, and they must be a routine event rather than a mind-boggling exception.
The difference between terrorists and large rogue states in terms of deterrence is insignificant: just like terrorists, North Korea—and to a large degree, Iran—don’t fear nuclear retaliation. They lost millions of people in previous wars and wouldn’t lose larger number in a nuclear strike.

Nuclear damage is not apocalyptic. The weapon cannot be carried into Israel by a missile: even if Iran improves its ballistic missiles, risking a precious weapon to Israeli air defenses would be reckless. Besides, a ballistic missile attack would reveal the aggressor and subject it to considerable retaliation. Instead, nuclear weapons will be delivered into Israel on board a commercial aircraft or in a sea container. The suicide bomber aircraft, probably a private jet, would detonate shortly before landing in an Israeli airport. A sea container can be detonated at the port before inspection. Especially in the later case of a ground-level explosion, the damage wouldn’t be great; it would be less than Israel’s losses in the Yom Kippur War.

Nuclear proliferation makes annexing Judea and Samaria feasible. Significant numbers of Arabs in Israeli towns might discourage terrorists from nuclear attacks. True, Arabs are a nuisance just marginally more tolerable than a nuclear explosion, but they can be molded into acceptable citizens by a heavily nationalist French-type policy: Arabs who served in the IDF, are banned from commemorating Nakba, are denied contacts with the enemy states, and other things ina similar vein would make acceptable neighbors. The annexation would also allow dispersal of the Jewish population from large cities to make nuclear attacks unfeasible—at least as long as the terrorists have more tempting targets in the United States, whose porous border allows for much simpler logistics than Israel’s.

In several months of his unfortunate presidency, Obama has managed to destroy the fragile understanding the Bush administration reached with North Korea over the years. With senseless rhetoric against North Korea’s missile test, Obama gave the communists the sought-after pretext for a nuclear test. By failing to aid them according to the agreement, Obama made nuclearization a no-lose gamble for the communists: their situation vis-à-vis America could not become any worse.

In the short term, Obama’s failure to deal with North Korea increases the regional allies’ reliance on America for protection. In the long term, they will develop their own nuclear shields and start ignoring America.

The Pakistani nuclear program broke ground in a way more important than the military: it was, in a sense, the proverbial garage basement nuke. The Pakistani nuclear weapon was devised and implemented by a single man, A.Q. Khan, without major political support. A.Q. Khan’s nuclear empire was a commercial enterprise of the same type, though of a different magnitude than Osama Bin Laden’s nut-selling corporation. Khan received venture financing from the Saudis in return for the Wahhabites’ share in the nuclear bombs; several are stored away in Saudi Arabia. The Americans turned a blind eye to Khan’s international espionage and his quest for nuclear secrets because the Soviets openly abetted India in its nuclear development. The British-trained Pakistani engineers proved capable of producing a bomb despite the Pakistanis’ characteristic dullness. Khan’s lesson is more important to your life than anything you’ve learned in school: nuclear weapons are technologically simple, no major financing is required, and they can be produced secretly without a major country’s sponsorship. In short, nukes are available to terrorists.

To underscore the point, Khan immediately started selling nuclear technology to cash customers: Libya, Algeria, Iran, Syria, and North Korea, among others. Joint efforts by these world outcasts honed an optimal technology: suitable for low-scale production, highly secretive, inexpensive, and with abundant raw inputs. In short, reprocessing spent fuel rods from peaceful power stations. The North Koreans used a small number of outdated centrifuges to harvest weapons-grade plutonium very slowly, enough for about one bomb a year. The Iranians concentrated on developing advanced centrifuges: with the best type, enough material for a bomb can be harvested in two or three months; unable to maintain secrecy, the Iranians poured on the speed. Their newest implementation is plasma-extracting, which allows fuel rods to be reprocessed even in an apartment.

Spent rods are buried in many places around the globe, and guarded loosely. Time and again, intelligence services report intercepting cargos of stolen rods. Presumably many more slip away. There is no practical way to guard them in remote places in poor, corrupt countries.

The NATO pretends to be the leading force in the world, though it has lost even in tribal Afghanistan. In the meantime, nuclear proliferators are building an alliance of their own. Pakistan sold nuclear technology to North Korea, which reciprocated with missile blueprints. Iran supported North Korea with $2 billion for transferring nuclear know-how to Syria. Iran diversified its nuclear activities into Venezuela, which also looks for an ostensibly peaceful reactor. In the most direct challenge to the world’s security, North Korea shipped weapon-grade uranium to Iran; that’s the closest thing to selling nuclear bombs. The five or six Korean nuclear bombs are certainly up for sale: the communists are desperate for cash and could not care less about Western sanctions or precision bombing. North Korea holds its Southern counterpart hostage against a major American attack.

A strike on North Korea cannot succeed because that country hid enough plutonium and would use the attack as a pretext to sell it openly. As usual, tactical approaches exist: one is to bomb the known nuclear facilities and immediately offer the communists billions of dollars for plutonium; America can always overbid Iran or the terrorists.

Tactical solutions cannot solve strategic problems. A.Q. Khan took the djinn of nuclear secrets out of the bottle, and now too many countries will be developing nuclear bombs. Some of them will exchange their military potential for aid, but others will stick to political goals. The development will feed on itself. South Korea cannot rely on American protection against the nuclear-armed North when the United States is embroiled in two lost wars and headed by a negotiations-minded administration. Seeing that America is not eager to save Israel from nuclear Iran, the South Koreans will proceed to build their own bombs. So will Japan, which sees North Korea as a rival (quite irrationally, since the North has no way of conducting a war against Japan). Vietnam cannot lose its regional dominance to Korea, and will reciprocate with nuclear development. On another part of the globe, Iranian nukes would spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, pitting nuclear-armed Israel, Syria, and Egypt against each other. Latin America can nuclearize in a flash: Venezuela first, then Brazil, Argentina, and then everyone.

Terrorists need not act alone; a hostile state can hire them. Suppose Syria decides to nuke Tel Aviv with Iranian bombs, and does so through Hezbollah—what would Israel do? Probably, nothing. A retaliatory nuclear strike requires hard evidence, and Syria would deny its involvement, Iran would claim the uranium was stolen from it, and Lebanon would declare that it does not bear responsibility for a terrorist group. Retaliation would be still more problematic if the terrorists used biological weapons: they could use an advanced Anthrax strain of Russian origin, stolen in Ukraine, modified in Iran, and received from Syria, which would bet on Israel quarantining Tel Aviv promptly enough that the epidemic wouldn’t spread to the Golan Heights.

On the positive side, nuclear weapons are not apocalyptic. Missile defenses are strong enough, and ground-level explosions are not immensely devastating. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are vibrant towns today despite the fact that their bombings were much more devastating than any ground-level attack likely to be perpetrated by terrorists. Human losses in the range of 20,000 people from a single explosion are not catastrophic. Losses can grow exponentially, though, if terrorists put their nuclear bomb on a commercial aircraft and detonate before landing.

Nuclear proliferation signals the return to the historically standard situation of the absence of large-scale security, where every man is for himself. For some centuries, nation-states bought their subjects’ loyalty with promises of police security and defense against external enemies, often created by the nation-states themselves. No more. States are a fraud which endangers rather than protects their citizens.

The nuclear threat will force sensible people to abandon cities in the supposition that terrorists won’t expend nuclear bombs on villages. Such a development would probably take place after one or two bombings. The dissolution of the mega-cities would be an extremely positive process which would bring back the bonds of neighborhood. People will know their neighbors and exist in culturally homogenous, and thus morally comfortable communities. People will become more normal, less susceptible to government or consumerist propaganda and mental conditions. The technology allows for unhindered economic cooperation through virtual networks.

In the meantime, the diplomats must be happy to see nuclear proliferation, as it takes the power out of the hands of their rivals, the military. Leftists love the crumbling world order, which clears the scene for their great designs. The American administration welcomes the countries which lean toward it for last-resort protection against their nuclear neighbors.

And so we cannot expect any strong measures against North Korea and Pakistan.

Nuclear weapons have several uses. They can provide a radiological barrier for defense. For example, Israel could have bombed empty areas of the Sinai on the opening day of the 1973 war to preclude an Egyptian advance over the contaminated areas. Such use of nuclear weapons is hardly objectionable. It can extend to nuclear blasts a few dozen miles before the enemy troops to secure the path against their advancement and terrorize the enemy. Low-yield nuclear weapons, detonated on the Syrian downhill of the Golan Heights, could blockade Syrian troops without noticeably contaminating Israeli Galilee.

Like chemical weapons, nukes are tactically defensive. Their offensive capability is limited to home-front attacks. A tactical nuclear explosion over enemy troops would make one’s own advancement impossible, and the radiological cloud would pose an immediate danger to the soldiers. So the battlefield use of nuclear weapons, even of micro-charges, is very limited. Nukes are inherently intended for politically incorrect actions against civilians, who should properly be called voters.

In any major war, we must nuke the enemy’s population centers. That’s what war is about—crushing the will to fight. In any case, civilians in modern war have a tendency to be attacked because they are engaged in war-making to an unprecedented degree: they pay taxes, vote for militant governments, send their children into the army, and work at military factories. On other hand, there are signs of decreasing manpower on the battlefield as the battles come to be waged by machines, such as rockets and drones.

Few voters protest their government’s war effort by refusing conscription, hiding or maiming their children to keep them from army service, or refusing to pay taxes. In democratic and semi-democratic states, voters are an integral part of war-making. In any modern economy, popular support is indispensable to war: people pay taxes and work at factories which produce military and dual-use supplies.

Terrorism—fighting by soldiers without insignias who are indistinguishable from the population—is the latest step in the deterioration of the standards of romantic war. Ancient armies rolled over towns, but at some point in the Middle Ages fighting became a specialized occupation with limited harm to noncombatants. Knightly warfare deteriorated into warfare conducted by mass armies (mercenaries, then serfs, then conscripts). The knightly manner of marching under fire in brightly colored uniforms gave way to trench warfare in khaki uniforms. The shift to terrorism, state sponsorship of terrorism, and proxy wars is only logical: the aggressors retain their war-making capability, but limit their liability by refusing to acknowledge their involvement. Aggressors have moved all the way back to the ancient standard, which lacked moral conventions during wars, and defenders can only survive by similarly refusing moral conventions. We don’t reject the legitimacy of moral restraints, but recognize their conflict with our survival.

Nuclear war is not meant to conquer territory or economic resources because the contamination makes them non-viable. The nuclear option is based on fear and hatred. Arabs will see any restraint in employing nukes on Israel’s part as a sign of fear—which provokes hatred. In human cognizance, it is safe to hate a fearful opponent. Israel’s reluctance to use her nuclear weapons moves Arabs to strike at her.

Nuclear credibility depends on one’s madness. A rational government, so the reasoning goes, won’t employ such a horrendous weapon (as if the Truman Administration was crazy). Nuclear doctrine is inherently irrational, and only a mad government can maintain nuclear deterrence. A legalistic government, too, can be credible if it establishes a system of automatic triggers for nuclear attack, such as was done in the Egyptian re-militarization of Sinai. Israel’s politicians, widely known for dishonesty, lack that option. Israel would be best served by the doctrine of mutual nuclear suicide, where one side fires a single weapon first with the purpose of achieving only minimal casualties; essentially a demonstration. If the other side fails to hang up, it is presumed ready for an all-out war, and the nuclear power of both sides is directed toward total destruction.

Nuclear weapons are most effective as a first-strike option. After the enemy army has moved to the front, even tactical nukes involve a considerable risk of friendly casualties. The enemy should be attacked preferably at the time of his mobilization, when a nuclear strike wreaks the most havoc on the still disorderly troops, and the enemy is not yet mobilized for large-scale retaliation. The necessity of first strike became manifest after Pakistan obtained nuclear weapons and probably passed some of them to Saudi Arabia. In any conventional war with Israel, Muslim troops might nuke the front, sacrificing their own troops along with Israel’s entire force. That assumption isn’t far-fetched: in 1973, the Egyptian Minister of War clashed with Sadat over bombing Sharon’s troops, who had crossed the Suez along with Egyptian soldiers. In any confrontation, populous and rogue Muslim states would be more eager than Israel to sacrifice their citizens and infrastructure. In a near-equal balance of terror, Israel would always lose. Thus the objective is to devastate the opponent before he has fully prepared the threat.

The existence of a nuclear arsenal along with political restraint on its use provokes terrorism. Consider an Arab country such as Syria. It knows that in a major military confrontation Israel might use the Samson Option, and so is very cautious about attacking Israel. Or at least is cautious about attacking so massively as to possibly overwhelm Israel’s conventional forces, forcing her to use nuclear ones. On other hand, Syria knows that Israel won’t nuke it over minor incidents, and so resorts to low-intensity warfare through guerrilla proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Nuclear deterrence hinges on second-strike capability: being able to absorb the enemy’s first or retaliatory strike and still being capable of a devastating nuclear attack. Large countries achieve that capability by secretly positioning mobile launchers of nuclear ballistic missiles. Israel, a very small country, inherently lacks the second-strike capability, and therefore is under great pressure to launch the first strike. In a war with Syria in which Israel is pounded by hundreds of missiles simultaneously, there would be no guarantee that Israeli nukes could be hidden safely. The survival of just one or two nuclear bombs is not enough to deter the subsequent Syrian invasion. Israel must use her nukes first, even to the extent of nuclear preemption against a major conventional attack.

The fewer nuclear weapons our enemies possess, the more dangerous they are. Countries with many nuclear warheads plan their strategies based on the possibility of absorbing the first strike and still retaining their nuclear capability. Small nuclear players (such as Pakistan, probably Saudi Arabia, and soon other Muslim countries) cannot afford to suffer the first strike, which could leave their nuclear potential destroyed. They therefore are tempted to use their few nuclear weapons first. They will also imagine such a strategy to be viable: nuking a major Israeli city and threatening to nuke others if Israel switches from conventional to nuclear retaliation. Starting a war with a nuclear strike and then switching to conventional war with a demoralized opponent is a likely and viable strategy.

Conventional weapons are employed on the presumption, “It seems that I’m stronger than you.” With nuclear weapons, the decision-making is different, “I know that you know that I know and therefore you will and therefore I must.” The difference is due to any country’s reluctance to risk being attacked with nuclear weapons. Large countries can absorb the first conventional blow, but remain hysterical about a nuclear one. But a major conventional blow is too much for small Israel. The Israeli attitude toward suffering the first conventional strike is akin to the American attitude toward absorbing a first nuclear strike: it is to be prevented at all costs. In the war of 1973, Egypt was four days from Jerusalem.

Possessing a vast depth of defense in the Sinai, Israel was able to play by the rules in 1973, and failed to preempt. In any present-day war, Israel’s only chance of survival would be to preempt, landing the first blow and taking the war deep into the enemy’s territory. At such distance from Israeli population centers and military bases, nuclear weapons are the only feasible ones, the only ones safe enough for the Jews.

For the entire history, things were allowed to run their course. Time and again, great leaders intervened and caused ripples on the ocean of human society. A few years later, the things returned to their normal order. Alexander the Great’s empire did not survive a day after the butcher’s demise.

With ever-increasing speed, the last three centuries show the two developments: deliberate intrusion into social framework and the global reach of such intrusions. For thousands of years, Plato’s monster ideas of reshaping societies lay dormant because no one had the sufficient power. It is impossible to reshape a society of the town size: faced with major inconveniences, its members would simply move to a nearby location. The monopoly on human souls is essential for leftists whose raison d’etre is changing the naturally established order.

The modern leftism was jump-started by Rousseau. Unsurprisingly, he sought to do away with the dissenters in his Utopia. Leftists cannot afford a dissent which challenges their policies. Since the policies are often detrimental to many individuals and certainly to the smartest and the most productive ones, the right to live freely would allow the most lucrative subjects to escape the leftist paradise. Besides draining it of resources, the escape would set a dangerous precedent to others. For that reason, the Soviets banned emigration.

The leftist drive to all-permissiveness is unrelated to freedom, but a typical nihilism. Leftists deny the majority the most basic freedom: to live in a consensual society. The rights of homosexuals are weighed against the majority’s right to live without them. Leftists push their nihilist agenda for an immensely important reason: to destroy the societies’ traditional framework. In the process, they train the majority in submission to their ideas. “Their” is a keyword: the commoners become used to accepting whatever policy is urged upon them.

The Soviet Union was a bit premature: people resent brute force but readily submit to nicely packaged policies. Marx predicted correctly that free societies will be transformed to communist ones on their own, slowly and nicely. Russians resented the KGB oppression, but Americans fell into the net of nice slogans. Who can oppose freedom for gays? It is unthinkable to oppose freedom.

The Soviet Union also failed on another count, the scale. Better life was lurking from outside its borders. But where would an American escape? Europe is liberal, the Muslim world is barbaric, and the islands are economically backward. For the first time in history, leftists have the global reach to assure than no significant group can escape their jurisdiction. Sensing their advance, many otherwise hostile groups choose to cooperate: large entrepreneurs who must be hostile to leftism supported Obama.

Leftists support no one out of compassion: millions slaughtered in Iran-Iraqi war or the civil war in Afghanistan received little media coverage. But every leftist supports Afro-Americans and Palestinians who also receive indulgence for whatever crime and atrocities they commit. Why? Because they break the established world order based on whites, Jews, and imperialism. Expansion is associated with power; contraction, with weakness. The advance of Afro-Americans and Palestinians means contraction of the Western world order.

Leftists need to take one final step before they triumph. Stalin, an evil genius, sensed that step correctly. Just like in any revolution, in order for leftism to triumph the old order must be destroyed. The centuries-long advance of leftism was relatively soft, but the final touch involves an open war.
Leftists found a way to eat their cake and keep their hands clean. They need not wage the war themselves; Muslims can do it for them. Here come the rogue nukes.

The United States waged massive wars in Korea and Vietnam, and continues significant operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Taking out Pakistani and North Korea’s nuclear facilities is no problem in military terms. American diplomats are not clinically stupid: everyone realizes that talking to North Korea is a dead-end approach as the communists can get more respect by having nukes and more money by selling them. Taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities is a still simpler affair with no side effects: America’s Arab allies clamor for the action. Ignoring the Pakistani nuclear stocks in Saudi Arabia which 100% depends on the United States for protection cannot be justified on any grounds. Letting Egypt pass with its low-profile nuclear program at the time when Mubarak would accept any compromises to assure the West’s complacency is transferring the power to his son cannot be explained away in any rational terms.

The explanation is before those who wish to see it: leftists need a major nuclear war away from the West’s borders. The Middle East’s annihilation would end the power of militaries which can do nothing about terrorist nuclear threats and the power of oil corporations which would lose their base. Western countries will remain intact while their societal order is destroyed.

And leftists will rule over the ruins.

Destroy Iranian oil refineries, bomb pipelines, stop gasoline deliveries. Strain the Iranian economy to the extreme. Security build-up for Sistan, Baluchistan, and Kurdistan cost Iran a lot of money. Iran had to scrap long-term economic programs.

Why not hit Ahmadinejad’s plane on one of his trips to Belarus? General Doolittle similarly objected to bombing the emperor’s house during the war with Japan.

Iran is not the biggest nuclear threat. The biggest is Pakistan. It supports nuclear development programs in many Muslim countries. Muslim radicals heavily influence Pakistan’s policies and are strong in its military, especially due to the close security-military-religious cooperation with the Kashmir insurgency. Pakistan enjoys Saudi Arabian political and financial backing. Pakistan is basically a front for Saudi Arabian nuclear proliferation activities.

Other Muslim countries are also dangerous. Islamists purchased nuclear waste in Kazakhstan and Albania; some got caught, but probably many other shipments went through. It is unknown whether Libya ended its nuclear program or transferred it to a safer location. Algeria and Morocco have nuclear programs. Jordan intends to build a nuclear reactor under Israel’s nose, and with the fall of the Jordanian monarchy Palestinians will get a lot of radioactive material for dirty bombs. Egypt will be able to develop nuclear weapons in a matter of years, and Saudi Arabia most likely stocks some Pakistani nuclear bombs; the Saudis have also received state-of-the-art aircraft from the US, capable of delivering nuclear bombs into Israel.

Some naive souls harbored the dream of North Korea abandoning its nuclear program in return for $300 million in foreign aid. The unveiled North Korean nuclear cooperation with Syria dispelled such nonsense. Nuclear weapons are too profitable in strategic and financial terms to part with them. The North Korean ship which delivered nuclear cargo to Syria made two conspicuous stops in Egypt and Lebanon; North Korea cooperates with those countries, too. A ballistic missile strike against North Korean nuclear facilities is the only proper response to its nuclear proliferation efforts. Israel can safely launch the missiles when no hostile satellite watches the area.

Just about every Muslim country, from the dangerously large to the irrelevantly small, is pursuing some sort of nuclear program, ostensibly peaceful. There are no peaceful nukes. Any nuclear reactor can be used to harvest weapon-grade uranium, and most reactors produce plutonium. These reactors are traditionally thought of as peaceful because harvesting enriched fissile material requires stopping them for weeks or even months, leaving the electric power supply short. Muslim regimes, however, can live with power shortages. The Soviet Union built its peaceful reactors with an eye toward using them as a backup source of plutonium. Peaceful nuclear proliferation will give Muslim regimes easy access to radiological weapons.

Whatever Israel does to stop nuclear proliferation, the nukes will proliferate. Muslim regimes will be happy to nuke Israel. The only policy that can perhaps prevent that scenario is the threat of retaliation against all major Muslim targets: Mecca and Medina, Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Islamabad, and so on. There are of course Christian countries, notably Russia, which would be equally happy to fry the Jews in a nuclear mushroom; they deserve a similar response. When Tel Aviv is annihilated, Israel should not seek to save Haifa but to avenge Tel Aviv.

Israel must deal a crushing blow to Islam. Just like the destruction of Jerusalem in CE 135 signaled a change of Judaism from a state-oriented religion into a purely spiritual one, so the nuclear destruction of Mecca and Medina, with the concomitant radiological contamination, will render the concept of jihad senseless. The idea of ripping out the heart of Islam is ambitious but doable and feasible.

Jews are smarter and braver than the Arabs. In a short limited war, we would defeat the Muslim enemy. In a longer or total war, Israel stands no chance. There is no alternative to the first use of nuclear weapons.

The news of Georgian police catching a smuggler of weapons-grade uranium are suspicious. The smuggler was caught and sentenced months ago, but no information was leaked to the public. That’s incompatible with very talkative nature of Georgians. Local law does not provide for closed trials, and smuggler would have an attorney who would surely talk. Uranium is usually easy to trace to a particular production facility; Georgians claim they cannot. The embattled Georgians possibly framed the hostile Russia. Nevertheless, Russian nuclear stocks are leaking. Security services of various countries intercepted stolen weapons-grade uranium on occasion. While many labs could enrich small quantities of uranium to over 90%, the black market uranium and plutonium is likely Russian. Most of the intercepted sales involved small quantities, but about 3kgs of uranium were caught in 1994. Hardly all sales were stopped, many certainly went through. It takes only 16kgs of uranium or 5kgs of plutonium to build a high-end 15kt nuclear bomb. Russian, Ukrainian, and Pakistani physicists and mathematicians could design sophisticated bomb for nuclear aspirants. And so Zawahiri’s threat of reprisal far worse than anything the Americans have seen sounds credible.

China is somewhat active about the North Korean nuclear program which threatens Chinese regional hegemony. Russia and China lack truly global interests and do not feel threatened by the Iranian nuclear development. Russia and China, pushed out of the major Muslim markets, bet their Middle East influence on Iran. Russia tried that policy in Iraq shortly before the US invaded. The Russians supplied Iraq with weapons and protected it in the UN. In return, they entered the Iraqi political focus and received oil concessions.

The Chinese excuses for not acting against Iran are that its nuclear program is ostensibly peaceful and that Iran is a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty member. No reasonable country would announce that it is developing nuclear weapons illegally; peaceful intentions are the standard ruse. NPT membership is irrelevant: non-members have developed nuclear weapons, and members like China have transferred nuclear technology to others.

The Russian position on Iran is even emptier: the Russians declared it wrong to call Iran to negations on one hand and to impose sanctions on the other. How about the stick and carrot doctrine? Hadn’t the similar approach just been applied to North Korea? Didn’t the Russians destroy Chechnya before negotiating with it?

Why would Russia and China oppose sanctions against Iran? They won’t oppose any against, say, Djibouti. Their protection of Iran is mercenary, and the West should not bow down to it.

Too many states have or can develop the bomb rapidly. Proliferation is easy, aided by the ostrich attitude: trusting Libya to dismantle its nuclear program, imagining trade measures could reverse the Iranian or North Korean programs, ignoring the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and unaccounted for Soviet nuclear weapons.

Societies exist in flux and only dynamically stable. The stability of chaotic systems depends on all impacts being statistically minor. The introduction of high-energy objects destabilizes chaos. Civilization withstands large-scale wars with moderately destructive weapons. Such weapons are applied gradually, and expectations, defenses, and responses are adjusted. Nuclear weapons cause large damage immediately and potentially destabilize social systems beyond their ability to adjust.

Huge countries like the US could survive a couple of nuclear explosions. One or two explosions would cement the nation: people would look to the government for aid and still believe the army protects them. Many explosions—like in the Soviet attack scenario—would still leave large parts of the country intact and habitable but destroy the framework of the state. People submit to states mostly for security, and nuclear attacks discredit a state in its citizens’ eyes. Worse, the citizens see that the state’s policies caused the attack. America will survive repetitive nuclear attacks as territory, though not as a state. The attacks need not be massive, only repetitive. Half a dozen North Korean bombs delivered one per month in containers to various US destinations and detonated in Customs would bring the state down no less than a massive Soviet attack. Similarly, several nuclear bombs could solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem amicably for other Muslims.

Beside a few stolen bombs, Russian arsenals will degrade peacefully in relative safety. North Korea won’t attack Japan or China with nuclear warheads. Pakistan has barely enough bombs to deter India. Iran only has regional ambitions. The European powers would shrink from nuking each other. Nuclear weapons will be employed in the near future only as terrorist devices and won’t spell the end of civilization, except perhaps the Jewish civilization recklessly concentrated in Israel.

The US is a good empire. Bad empires barely outlive their creators. Empires, like states, depend on more or less extorted consent and have to be nice. Rome was culturally and politically attractive to its protectorates, and so is the US. It would be a pity if the Americans, like the Romans, succumbed to barbarians.

The Asian nuclear arms race is good. If Asians used nuclear weapons in their wars, Europe and the US will get used to reports of nuclear attacks, and nuclear explosions in America won’t destabilize society very much.

Have no fear: a nuclear blast will happen. The destruction won’t be great: a Hiroshima-size bomb kills effectively only in about a 1,500ft radius, even less if exploded at ground level. Minimize the damage by promoting low-rise reinforced concrete buildings and dispersing the population and offices into suburban areas. Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ashdod, New York, and Washington (also Las Vegas if the terrorists with nuclear weapons are fundamentalist) are likely targets, and people must be suicidal to live there.

The 9/11 attacks left the US establishment wondering about a proper response. Contingency plans should be made for nuclear terrorism as for any other military scenario. Make clear that the US will not search futilely for the particular perpetrators but will hold proliferators collectively responsible. The West should destroy proliferators’ major nuclear facilities to make the contingency threat credible.

The warning immediately followed the North Korean nuclear test. The Korean communists acted unreasonably and predictably angered China, their main sponsor. North Korea could ask the world community for endless aid in return for abandoning the nuclear test; it didn’t—perhaps because it has a better offer.

The North Koreans exploded an unusually small bomb, too small to build up their military image. The test could be intended for a customer.

Would North Korea risk selling nuclear weapons to terrorists? After the attack, the seller would be obvious. North Korea’s rulers need cash and don’t care about retribution against their people. Quite possibly, North Korea undertook to sell nuclear weapons in exchange for A.Q. Khan’s assistance in their nuclear program. Khan, ousted from the Pakistani nuclear conglomerate under US pressure, definitely wants revenge.

Al Qaeda first warned of massive attacks about the same time North Korea produced its first enriched uranium or plutonium. Bin Laden offered himself as spiritual guide to convert the Americans to Islam. He asked the US to withdraw from Muslim territories. Later, he offered a truce. Finally, he told his fellow Muslims to flee. Bin Laden has exonerated himself before a major attack.

Given a chance of nuclear attack against the US, what is to be done? Analysts are probably checking C-130 plane flights from Pakistan to North Korea in recent days. The customers took a plane. The major thing, however, is a counter-threat.

The United States must issue an ultimatum: in case of nuclear attack, it won’t seek out the perpetrators but inflict reciprocal damage. Mecca is America’s best defense and the dream hostage. Pass a law or at least issue an executive order than the US will annihilate Mecca after any terrorist nuclear attack on American soil. Including a couple other cities, like Hyderabad and Teheran, would be useful but not essential. Mecca is critical for both shiites and sunnis, Saudis and Pakistanis. Muslim terrorists could not afford to be blamed for annihilation of Mecca.