From: Monte Davis 

"John Beamish"  wrote:

>About 75,000 containers go through US ports
>daily.  A GPS, a nuke and a container are much better.  Total deniablilty
>too since there's no missle track to give yourself away.

I take your point, but there are strong reasons why a government -- as
distinct from non-state actors -- would prefer the speed and
"centralization" of ICBMs. As deniability goes up, command and
control goes down.

Even the A.Q. Khan Warhead Technology Bazaar in Pakistan seems to have been
more a cut-rate version of the classic US/USSR "cultivate allies with
nuclear technologies" than "let's give Osama his very own
bomb." And that's a government with multiple, uneasily balanced power
centers; the idea that a control freak like Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-Il
would do so is hard to swallow.

One of the main reasons for Khrushchev's fall from power was that the Cuban
missile crisis scared the Politburo even more than it scared us. They knew
(or found out during the crisis) what we didn't know until a few years back
-- that Castro did in fact have authority to arm and fire. And they didn't
forgive K. for making the _rodina_ effectively hostage to Fidel's
decisions. I suspect those lessons have been studied worldwide...


Monte Davis
http://montedavis.livejournal.com

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5