I feel very conflicted about what's happening.
On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects. You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.
> What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
This is the key. People talk some crazy stories about Iran being a theocratic state whose life mission is destroying Israel but the fact is they don't want to end up like Libya, Syria or any other country Israel considers a threat.
And a reminder - Israel has illegals WMDs, using technology and nuclear material stolen from the US. So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.
I think the point of this bombing is to change the calculus you just mentioned. Now there’s an actual reason to not try for nukes, you may get bombed.
NK’s conventional weapons (and SK’s pointed right back at them) saved them from conflict, that’s how they got to nukes without us doing something like this. They already had mutually assured destruction from conventional weapons and proximity to an ally.
Iran’s problem is we don’t care much about anyone around them except Israel, and they already would destroy Israel if they could, so they had nobody’s head at which to aim their bullet.
NK’s government is an evil one but the Kims really like being alive and that keeps them somewhat rational. They are quite obviously not religious since they claim to be God (and surely are aware they are not), so they don’t believe in benefits to martyrdom.
Islamism is a death cult (and I mean that literally) so their actions aren’t rational as we would define the word. We can’t rely on their self-preservation instinct the way we can with the Kims.
It's not that simple. Those countries were destined towards collapse with or without nuclear weapons. Iraq, Libya, Syria—those are three countries that fell into catastrophic civil wars, along internal conflict lines, in power vacuums succeeding an unpopular dictator. None of those autocracies were stable in the long-term. (But a nuclear weapon is quite stable; it succeeds the falls of governments and passes on to whoever replaces them).
Deplore US' strategic stupidities all you want; but it's not the only actor with agency in the world.
Would anyone have been better off with Assad fighting a version of the 2010's civil war with nuclear weapons in his arsenal? Or Hussein, that sectarian war? Those are two men who gassed thousands of innocents with nerve agents; they wouldn't surely wouldn't hesitate long about dropping nukes.
(Can you deter a civil war with nuclear weapons?)
We could also ask who would have inherited a hypothetical Qaddafi nuke, after his fall: which Libya? There were at least three Libyas one point. ISIL governed one!
(One semantic nitpick: I don't think it's fair to say those dictators "gave up" their WMD's. With all three, their WMD programs were forcibly taken from them. In Iraq, 1981, the bombing of the Osirak reactor; and again in the 1991 Gulf War the bombing of Tuwaitha (which permanently ended Iraq's uranium enrichment). Qaddafi turned over all his nuclear materials to the USA, after being directly threatened, in the months following US' 2003 invasion of Iraq. And Assad lost his North Korean-built plutonium reactor in 2007, to an airstrike. Did anyone of these dictators have agency in those "give up WMD" choices? I think not).
Once you've obtained some nukes, complete with decent rockets to liv them, nobody is going to mess with you too badly, or try to take the nukes back; you're now a member if the club.
Japan or South Korea would likely be able to produce nuclear weapons in a few months if they needed to. I bet even Ukraine could, with its remaining nuclear plants and relatively advanced industry, and are on friendly terms with the US.
But if you made enemies with the big members of the nuclear club, and with the US in particular, they will do everything to stop you, and your situation would become much harder; that's the case with Iran.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/north-koreas-artill...
Iran’s deterrent was/is through its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis) along with its sizable missile inventory, anti-air capabilities and strategic threats to oil and gas exports.
Israel’s investment in missile defense and the outcome of the Oct 7th attacks severely weakened Iran’s deterrence to a conventional attack.
I think the lesson should be that any nation that has enough conventional leverage to deter an attack could choose to build nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons may complement, but can’t displace other capabilities.
The US has nuclear weapons but that didn’t deter Iran from launching direct attacks on US troops in the Middle East or sponsoring insurgents in Iraq. Nuclear weapons are also essential worthless against non nation-state actors such as Al-Qaeda.
That sounds insane. I don't think world would be more peaceful if every country under every government had WMDs. We'd be in the middle of nuclear winter now if that was the case. You could draw analogies to everyone owning a gun. We know it just ends up with many more dead and nothing being more peaceful.
> Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
He's wrong. What protects North Korea is that it's poor, has no natural resources and devastated human capital and neither attacks anyone with terrorist attacks nor credibly prophesies their intent to kill any nation or ethnicity.
If they did that, they'd be steamrolled already. WMDs or not.
Or had them, and then gave them up because they were under the impression that they would be protected if they did so; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_de...
So, I have an honest (non rhetorical) question: Was NK saved more by having their own nukes, or by sharing a land border with China who has nukes and doesn't want the US getting involved in the area?
That's ahistorical in the case of Syria and Iraq. Israel destroyed the nascent nuclear weapons programmes of Syria and Iraq, just as it has done to Iran's. Syria and Iraq did not give up those programmes willingly.
By your logic, I am a little surprised Iran is still even a state then.
I never understood the logic.. (or maybe it's the theatric element?) There are other WMD that seem much simpler. If they hypothetically release some horrible biological agent in Israel - it could incapacitate the country overnight
Or set off a dirty bomb to make huge regions unlivable (just the perception of radiation risk would preclude many from living there.. see Fukushima)
How has the situation been better in the twenty years NK has had nuclear weapons than the fifty years after the Korean war and before NK got nukes?
No you don't, unless you're a dictatorship (including all the examples you gave).
