The world survived Mao having nukes during the Cultural Revolution, North Korea having nukes in the midst of a famine which has lead to the reinvention of stone soup, Stalin having nukes during the most clinically paranoid part of a very paranoid life, India and Pakistan fighting a shooting war when both were nuclear powers, Israel having nukes when they were getting suprise attacked by four neighbors, France having nukes while losing Algeria and the 4th republic over the loss of Algeria, and South Africa in the tail end of the apartheid system, when they were convinced every black person in the world was part of a conspiracy to kill them and distribute their land. I fail to see the unique threat that the Taliban having access to the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

Sorry I resent the post above accidentally. Anyway, warsprite, you said:

"All above were nation states with a clear chain of command for one. None thought that they would be rewarded with heaven for killing non believers."

Well, leaving aside some of the wackier elements of the South African National Party in the 70's and 80's with decision making power both civil and military, I will concede your second point. Although assuredly both Stalin and Mao thought that their efforts to liquidate the bourgeoisie and deviationists from their own interpretation of Marxist-Leninism would be praised and revered by future generations. Your first point is both false and inapplicable, however. The chain of command was completely meaningless during the Cultural Revolution, when it basically just took a denunciation from an ambitious underling to end or paralyze any bureaucrat's career. Stalin was busily firing up the mechanisms of purge when he died, and the only military figures with even a modicum of safety from the NKVD and the stukaches planted throughout the Red Army were Zhukov and Konev. France wound up having a near civil war over DeGaulle's withdrawal from Algeria. South Africa in the 80's was a snake pit of secret cliques and factions that bore little relation to any organizational chart. So, there have been many instances where the CoC has been dubious at best with a nuclear power in crisis.

Additionally, India was and remains about the farthest thing from a nation state imaginable. Same with the Soviet Union. I'll give you the PRC because of Han dominance within the culture, but clearly, not all nuclear powers in crisis have been nation states.

Now, on to the part where your point is more or less moot. The Pakistan Taliban is more or less an expression of Pashtun nationalism. Assuming, for a moment, that the Pashtuns can beat the Panjabis and take control of Pakistan, do you think the control over the nuclear arsenal is going to pass to any but the most reliable elements within the Pashtun-dominated government? I mean, the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan would be the greatest guarantee of the continued independance of a Pashtun-dominated state. You really think they're going to use that for anything other than guaranteeing their own control over Pakistan? Of course, this leaves aside any issues of sabotage that the essentially exclusively Panjabi Strategic Arms Division might commit when faced with the prospect of losing control of their nuclear warheads to a bunch of what Panjabis universally perceive as a tribe of goat fuckers.

the thing with pakistan is that if they went into civil war like youre talking about china and india would swoop in and take as much of the country as possible

and the reasons america fights so much is a) to protect its citizens and b) to protect its allies. No one ever complained about america during world war 2

How? At least for China, it's a logistical impossibility. India might be able to hold the plains regions of Pakistan, but they'd have to be deranged to attempt it, given the difficulties they have with their native Muslim population to try and digest 100 million more Punjabis and a few million more Biharis and Bengalis who have spent generations despising India.

im just stating they have tried it multiple times over the years and and the moment they kashmir region is divided into three chunks and the chinese, pakistanis, and chinese just sit there and stare at each other

The reason that nobody complained about America during WWII was because we weren't invading countries (well, other than Germany, Italy, and Japan). We are now, and have been since the middle of the 50's at least.

we are the only country that has ever sailed across two thousand miles of ocean to fight for the freedoms of others. is all im saying

Kashmir is populated by about 600 goatherds trying to find grass in a glacier. Prestige-wise, it's an issue for roughly the same reason the government in Kinshasa likes to pretend it has jurisdiction over Goma and the Lake Kivu region in central Africa: because no politician wants to acknowledge that they are less powerful than the colonial powers were 150 years ago. But in terms of strategic control of the resources of south central Asia, Kashmir is a drain, not a gain.

"we are the only country that has ever sailed across two thousand miles of ocean to fight for the freedoms of others. is all im saying"

And maybe two percent of the world's population was alive the last time we did that. Since then, it's been more or less one war of US aggrandizement after another.

we got attacked on 9/11 those responsible must be taken down, that is why we are in afghanistan, we are in iraq because saddam was thought to have wmds, korea was a defensive operation to protect the republic of korea from the communists and it was the same thing in vietnam. In the balkans back in the 90's we were there to stop genocide, all the wars we fought were for the benefit of the people in the countries we were helping

Shep, re 9/11, you would've better off attacking Saudi Arabia, as most of the perpetrators were Saudi, instead the US government went into Afghanistan to fix old mistakes. I'm guessing you haven't looked at the South Vietnamese and South Korean governments before those wars, have you? Both were fascist, oppressive regimes; not much better than their 'communist' neighbours.

Bob, you are wrong about Kashmir. It is a vital pass through the Himalayas, with Control, Pakistan has easy access into India (ignoring that India has thrashed them in the last few wars). It is a bit more than national pride. But you are right, at this stage, it is a large drain.

No you're in Afghanistan for the rare earth elements that they just happened to trip over

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-26/afghanistan-s-helmand-holds-rare-earths-official-says.html

http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2009/09/the-real-reason-for-the-war-in-afghanistan-control-of-rare-earth-metals-in-afghanistan.html

Bin Laden is already dead. These are the real reasons for the "yes we can" american political movement.

I'll give you the need to slap Afghanistan with the force of the pimp hand of God. I'll give you Korea as, at least initially, as a defensive operation. Vietnam? Nope. Vietnam started as a war between the French and the natives to keep it a French colony or to liberate it as an autonomus state. Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap initially thought the US would aid them in their war of liberation, but they forgot that they weren't white, and the French were. After we backed the French to the hilt, the Vietminh turned to the only power that would supply them, the Soviets. However, with Soviet weaponry comes Soviet ideology. South Vietnam was just a rump state run for the benefit of a few families of prominent collaborators with the French, and was always hated by 80+% of the Vietnamese people who wanted their entire country.As regards the Balkans, if we were interested in stopping genocide, don't you think we would have gotten involved when Bosnians and Croats were getting massacred instead of waiting until the Kosovars were at risk? Or for that matter, if genocide was something we weren't cool with, where was our massive aid for the Tutsis, or a generation earlier, the Biafrans? And your explanation of the Iraq War was our fear that Saddam would have weapons of mass destruction? Really? Even accepting that flimsiest rationale for an invasion offered since the heyday of European colonialism, it was so thoroughly abused as an opportunity to drain the federal kitty that maybe 3% of the world's population can see even a hint of altruism in the prosecution of the war.

Well done Bob, you managed to not mention oil when talking about Iraq.

Well, I don't really buy into Iraq as a war for oil. Saddam would have leapt at possibility of selling us oil cheaply enough to undercut the Saudis. I do buy into Iraq as an opportunity to distribute a ton of federal dollars on no-bid contracts to big Republican donors, however.

Rather than a war, I think it's very likely that there's another coup in Pakistan where the military takes control. Sad as it is, civil society in that country is badly frayed and the military is the only institution with its act together. That act happens to include blatantly supporting the Taliban in many instances, but at the very least it's organized. A future coup might even have some broad popular support.

If other, more nihilistic factions take over the Pakistani government (such as the Taliban, though that term seems to be getting vaguer by the week if you follow real news) then by all means the US should barge in and steal Pakistan's nukes. It's probably illegal, but the chance of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists and actually being used is far too dangerous to ignore. Let the world howl at this one, if nothing happens and one day New York or Tel Aviv or Moscow (Chechnya's going all jihad-y) or Paris or Shanghai (because of the hilariously named but terribly oppressed Uighurs) is gone then there will be an unimaginable amount of carnage.

So barring going in to catch Bin Laden there will be no "war" in Pakistan. Lots of shady involvement, sure, but Pakistan's a bit like Humpty Dumpty. All the world's horses and all the world's men couldn't put that artificial construct of a nation together again.

About why the US can't quickly defeat the Taliban. while we ARE the strongest military on earth, doing what we COULD do with the loads of tanks and artillery we could strike with, could end with civilians dieing, which would look bad to the newly formed Afghan government.

@Bob Genghiskhan Nation state was a bad choice of words on my part. Perhaps sovereign nation might be closer to what I'm thinking of. But China, Russia, France, and as far as I know all nuclear nations have a seperate command for their nuclear weapons which remain remarkablely (or perhaps not so remarkablly) neutral as far political infighting goes, and if SA's nuclear command was as splintered as the rest of it's military, how did the disarming and disassembly happen in such a neat and orderly fashion? I agree that Pakistan is unlikely to lose control of their nukes. I never said it was likely. On the outside chance they did lose control oneway or other to the Taliban I'm not convinced all them would see it your way. At least they may pop a couple of nukes as a demo, which may have unintended results.

Recommend y'all read 'The Grand Chessboard' by Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Iraq was more about ego. Bush Jr wanted to take out Saddam, what many said daddy should have done. He thought it would put another feather his cap and go down in history as the President that saved the West. The bad intel they never questioned because they wanted to believe. The corporate profit thing was more a bonus. To top it off and worse for all he ignored his generals and let his political people run the war.

@warsprite yeh that's right, trillions of dollars were spent and untold thousands of lives destroyed just so 1 guy could stand up for his daddy. umm no.

fiedler, you haven't looked at the Iran-Iraq War, have you. Not only did the US spend millions, if not billions, on the Iraqis (with chemical weapons no less) and to a lesser extent the Iranians (Iran-Contra Affair), many have speculated that one reason for this was revenge for the Iranian revolution the year before. Possible, seeing that the US ignored the attack on the USS Stark by an Iraqi pilot, killing 37 and wounding 21.

If revenge can lead to this, the war in Iraq could easily be inspired by one guy wanting to stand up for his daddy, in part.

largeham, are you trying to make me laugh? Your logic is so... perverse I'd rather not even try and argue with you. All I can say is the world just does not work the way you seem to think it does.

'many have speculated' - wtf is that supposed to mean?

It was stated weirdly, what I was trying to say was that if a country was willing to spend millions helping a blatantly authoritarian, genocidal regime, and suffer 58 casualties from said regime, for revenge; invading a country to save face doesn't seem so unlikely.

@fiedler Empires, kingdoms, and nations have gone to war over less. Your assuming Bush knew it would be that costly. Had he let the generals run the operations the way they wanted it would not have. Infact the military did not even like the ideal of starting a second war.

Bob Genghiskhan +1

well said all around.