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There is no definitive proof for US contingency plans but the US is so heavily involved with Pakistan to secure these nuclear weapons and on top of that there h

There is no definitive proof for US contingency plans but the US is so heavily involved with Pakistan to secure these nuclear weapons and on top of that there have been so many statements of top US officials (even from US Presidents) regarding this issue that I'm 100% sure that there are plans to swiftly take out or otherwise secure these nuclear weapons if something dangerous develops there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#U.S._security_assistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_d... Note how the government of Pakistan responds to these allegations that the US has these plans by reassuring everyone that the weapons are safe instead of being outraged that a foreign government disregards their sovereignty in such a way. That says a lot. > This depends on whether or not you believe the ideology can travel past the level of technological sophistication necessary to deploy nukes. The ideology itself is pretty self-abnegating - it has many marques of a suicide cult. Well ISIS is quite comfortable with using the latest technologies for their purposes and countries like Iran have a truly remarkable scientific community (considering their isolation), so I tend to believe that ideology alone will not inhibit them sufficiently to not being able to achieve this goal if they really want to. Edit: Yes I agree, the US could take out ISIS in a few weeks, so could Russia. What is missing is the will as there are serious repercussions if you try to do it while other superpowers oppose it vigorously. (and on top of that you'd have to use very blunt force in order to do it - many civilians on ISIS held territory would die) That's why I believe that Trump as a president would make it happen as he has stated on multiple occasions that he would do it together with Putin in some way. If the US and Russia / China shared a common goal here they would destroy ISIS very quickly.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I agree - I didn't chunk the pieces of the ideology itself very well. It's a dissonant mix and I can't always parse it well. Iran is a... bicameral society with, as you say, a high degree of sophistication coeexisting with fundamentalism. As the sting of 1953 fades, I can't help but think we'll eventually achieve normal relations with them. I don't, for example, see as much screaming about the Obama Administrations attempts to thaw things out by the Rightist press as I used to. It's not a stretch for present-day Americans to denounce Dulles-brothers style adventurism. This being said, I think of ISIS itself as an international attractor for disaffected youth, with an apparently explicit emphasis on martyrdom. And yes - I expect we'll keep a very close watch on Pakistan. I just meant that if Pakistan were to fall, it wouldn't be a huge military effort to ... secure it. It would be a big logistical effort but I think of Gulf War I as the model. Of course, then we'd stiffen the resolve of those who oppose Westerners being there at all. I am also sure that we'd try to use the fig leaf of the U.N.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

I agree - I didn't chunk the pieces of the ideology itself very well. It's a dissonant mix and I can't always parse it well. Iran is a... bicameral society with, as you say, a high degree of sophistication coeexisting with fundamentalism. As the sting of 1953 fades, I can't help but think we'll eventually achieve normal relations with them. I don't, for example, see as much screaming about the Obama Administrations attempts to thaw things out by the Rightist press as I used to. It's not a stretch for present-day Americans to denounce Dulles-brothers style adventurism. This being said, I think of ISIS itself as an international attractor for disaffected youth, with an apparently explicit emphasis on martyrdom. And yes - I expect we'll keep a very close watch on Pakistan. I just meant that if Pakistan were to fall, it wouldn't be a huge military effort to ... secure it. It would be a big logistical effort but I think of Gulf War I as the model. Of course, then we'd stiffen the resolve of those who oppose Westerners being there at all. I am also sure that we'd try to use the fig leaf of the U.N.