War between Israel -v- Iran & Co (merged threads)

[bourbon]

Go back to the time when India and Pakistan were competing to build a bomb. Had the (leading nations of the) world had the balls to say that there were enough nations with the bomb and there would be no more we would have been in a better position now, yes?

Probably not, the likeliness of conventional conflict between the two would be much greater – nuclear weapons have deterred that.

Now we have the potential problem of renegade Pakistan scientists helping North Korea and Iran build a bomb of their own.

The Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons was a cost of our partnership with the Government of Pakistan in countering and rolling-back the Soviet Union. We could have stopped its development had we chosen to, but it was the cost of doing business. Renegade scientists are an unintended consequence of this.

This cowardice is making the world a more unstable and dangerous place.

I am sure similar arguments were used against those who were in opposition to the devils-deal described above, which caused the unintended consequences you lament today.