Take any American, and treat them the way Americans treat others, and they would be forming terrorist cells (gorilla war), building nukes, basically every single thing they could to fight back. To never surrender.
Remember Red Dawn? That would be an American Response, to what America is doing.
That is it basically. If shoe was on other foot, Americans would never surrender.
So, why are we expecting others to give up quietly?
Largely because they didn't actually need it. Their conventional artillary pointed at south korea was already (and still is) more of a deterrnt than the nuke is.
Nobody was desperate to invade North Korea prior to their acquisition of nukes. It's a horrific war field and combat prospect. Iraq and Afghanistan were each a cakewalk next to going into North Korea (again). North Korea was safe as they were.
The primary threat to Gaddafi over time was internal, nukes would not have protected him. What was he going to do, nuke his own territory? The same was true for Assad.
The primary threat to Iran's regime is internal. Nobody is invading Iran. It's a gigantic country with 93 million people. It can't be done and it's universally understood. Trump won't even speculate about it, even he knows it can't be done. What would nukes do to protect Iran's regime? Are they going to nuke their own people? Are they going to nuke Israel and US bases if the US bombs them?
So let me get this straight: the US bombs Iran, Iran nukes Israel and some US bases, maybe even a regional foe - then Iran gets obliterated.
That's not what would happen in reality at all. Don't take my word for it, ask Pakistan: the US threatened to bomb them [0] - despite their possession of nukes - after 9/11 if they didn't cooperate. Why would the US do that? Because the US knows that MAD doesn't work like the online armchair crowd thinks it does.
"The primary threat to Gaddafi over time was internal, nukes would not have protected him. What was he going to do, nuke his own territory? The same was true for Assad."
Have you checked, how many outside interventions both countries had and still have?
Labelling this as "internal" is pretty missleading. If both dictators would have had nuclear weapons ready to launch, no foreign bomber would have dared going in against the regime.
> That's not what would happen in reality at all. Don't take my word for it, ask Pakistan: the US threatened to bomb them [0] - despite their possession of nukes - after 9/11 if they didn't cooperate. Why would the US do that? Because the US knows that MAD doesn't work like the online armchair crowd thinks it does.
That isn't a MAD situation.
Pakistan has nukes but they can't launch them on the US.
Not sure why this comment is downvoted: the facts are established, as is (among others) the Mosaddegh coup d'état co-organized by the US:
> On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d'état that strengthened the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran. It was instigated by the United Kingdom (MI6), under the name Operation Boot[5][6][7][8] and the United States (CIA), under the name TP-AJAX Project[9] or Operation Ajax. A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mosaddegh nationalized the country's oil industry.
(...)
> In August 2013, the U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. (...) was in charge of both the planning and the execution
Or the US backing of Saddam Hussein from 1982 onwards during the Iraq-Iran 8-year war of aggression, with “massive loans, political influence, and intelligence on Iranian deployments gathered by American spy satellites”. During this war, Iraq employed chemical weapons leading to 50.000 - 100.000 Irani deaths.
Yes. Their repeated warnings that Iran would no longer tolerate the kind of back-and-forth blame shifting that think-tank policy papers openly described years ago as a strategy to keep Iran off sides, and that any attack by Israel would be considered an attack by the USA too and that American assets that surrounded Iran would be attacked; since under all the clownish “who? Meeee?”act gaslighting and stupid pathological lies, everyone knows they are one and the same.
It’s like dealing with psychopathic toddlers who think people aren’t smart enough to know they are lying when they deny killing the family pet even though their hands are covered in blood and you just watched them mid act of slaughtering the family pet.
The coat asymmetry with drones is crazy, they are stupid cheap to deploy on a nation state level. I feel like it’s going to be years until we fully learn the lessons from the Ukraine Russia war.