A thought for the day, as we look at not just the deterrence of Irregular Threats, but as importantly how this fits into the larger collective of a comprehensive scheme of deterrence: Nuke states; Non-Nuke States; and the sticky issue of proliferation.
Premise: The US treats those states who possess nuclear weapons with a greater degree of respect for their national sovereignty than those states that do not possess such weapons. Thus providing a powerful provocative motivation to gain such weapons in the very states that we are working the hardest to prevent from doing that very thing.
Thought for consideration: Would our counter-proliferation efforts be more successful and perceived as less hypocritical if the U.S. were to state and then implement a policy of recognizing the same writ of sovereignty to all states, regardless of whether or not they possess such weapons?
Similarly, would a shift in focus with those states that are routinely held up as potential "threats" (by those who are desperate to find some way to make our current threat-based strategy hanging over from the Cold War valid once again) from the points where our National Interests diverge, to points of convergence instead. We will always have competitors, and we need to compete. But do we really need to make others into "threats"?
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