Fafnir
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Hi fafnir jan . Yes you are right .Nukes can save dictators like Saddam and Gaddafi for a while but you ignore another fact here . Would they have met their ending if they'd some acceptable percentage of favorability between their own people ? Why US waited another decade from 1990s to 2000s to finish Saddam and didn't do the job in the first war ?
Why USSR went down while they had the biggest number of nukes per capita?
Another question : Do you think DPRK would have gone long time ago if they hadn't nukes ? I don't think so .Majority of north koreans still support their leader .With or without nukes .And they hadn't nukes from 1950s to 2000s ( from the war with south and US to 2006 nuclear test ). Guess what , US didn't invade them .
Now imagine how US can perform a full invasion on a country with 70 millions of people who support their government ? I would say favorability matters more than nukes while i agree that having a stockpile or even being able to make weapons grade material in less than 48 hours can increase detterence significantly .I am just saying there is something more important which no country should ignore .
Oh I agree that nuclear weapons may not save you from an internal revolt or a coup attempt but they will make it substantially far,far less likely that any external force may seek to out right attack you or to intervene against you in a civil conflict and to attempt to back or use the rebels/terrorists/insurgents etc as a weapon to overthrow you like nato did in libya,as it was very likely that without that help that gaddafi would probably have been able to crush the insurgents fairly quickly and indeed was doing so before the nato "intervention"
The us waited another decade to deal with saddam for several reasons,the first one was that the us mandate was only to liberate kuwait not invade iraq,there would have been little support for that among the coalitions arab members and I think also the us simply didnt want to push its luck,it had achieved a fast cheap easy victory with very little loss of life during the liberation of kuwait,an invasion of iraq with all that would entail would likely be far more costly in all respects.There was also the hope that the iraqis would deal with saddam themselves and indeed that looked to be the case at least initially with revolts in the north and south and in the beginning it looked as tho the us might help/support the insurgents however it quickly reconsidered this position because there was also the worry that removing saddam could further empower/encourage iran in the region.In the end for various reasons the us decided to leave saddam in power but neutered/contained his country subjected to the most severe sanctions ever imposed and with unscom to oversee the destruction of his more advanced weapons/weapons programs
The ussr had plenty of nukes but its biggest problems were internal,ironically I think that if the ussr had built less nukes and instead produced more consumer goods for its populace it might still be around today,another option would have been economic reform/liberalization rather than political reform,in other words just like what the chinese did,if the soviets had done that its very possible the ussr would still be around today.
Now as for the dprk for most of its existence it was a member of the communist bloc so it had the military support of both the ussr and china,in chinas case there was a defence treaty,as well as being a highly armed and militarized society far more so than the south so attacking them was really just far to dangerous to contemplate as it almost guaranteed a chinese or soviet intervention or indeed both intervening,which is I think we can agree a very frightening prospect as both were now nuclear armed,however by the 1990s things were very,very different the ussr/communist bloc was gone and china was happily doing business with the us and the south,the us was the sole unchallenged supreme super power and the military gap between north and south was now firmly in favor of the south in most areas,now this doesnt of course mean that the dprk was a sitting duck far from it the dprk could still have inflicted a horrifying level of damage on the rok in the event of any war.I think ultimately the dprk went nuclear because it came to the conclusion that at the time at least,bushs presidency,that it faced a rogue super power that was uninterested in peaceful coexistence or negotiations or deals unless they involved capitulation,I suspect for them the main turning point or points were bush tearing up the agreed framework nuclear deal done under clinton and the halting of the construction of the promised reactors and finally bushs labeling of the dprk as part of the so called "axis of evil",I think at that point the dprk considered that it faced a very real threat and I would imagine after seeing what happened to iraq and libya they would have had few doubts on that score.Now this doesnt mean that bush/the us was going attack them,I dont think it would for several reasons,but the dprk doesnt see it that way and in the end thats what really matters ie their perceptions
Lastly I dont really think the us would care all that much about the level of support a government may have among its populace,if it had truly decided to attack/invade it would be far more concerned about its military capabilities probably more than anything else.
Finally let me ask you a question:If you were a powerful state and you were deciding between one of two countries to attack,both had pretty comparable militaries and had fairly popular governments and you thought that you had good national and political reasons/justifications for attacking either but one was nuclear armed and the other had no nuclear capability whatsoever,which one would you attack...hmm?
