"The transit time for a container ship across the Pacific is less than ten days."
You can't put nukes onto enough container ships to gain global domination.
The risks are huge. You'd have strategic assets in transit for DAYS that would subject you to immediate obliteration if caught - something that a shipping fire or sinking could easily do to you, and accidents happen on the high seas.
And even then, you'd only be taking out a few coastal cities at most before being obliterated.
And that's presuming that your atomic trigger isotopes hadn't decayed too much, that your electrical circuits and conventional explosives on your nukes had survived the radiation during the transit - sans clean room maintenance, that the slightest bit of moisture hadn't rendered the heavy metals of your atomic core and shell into useless rust, and that your core and shell hadn't been cracked by getting bumped in any rough seas (plutonium and uranium are among the most brittle metals known).
You can't put nukes onto enough container ships to gain global domination. Of course not. What you can do is disable the lead competitor. That's a mighty good start.
The risks are huge.
They always have been. It's never stopped any number of ambitious malefactors.
You'd have strategic assets in transit for DAYS that would subject you to immediate obliteration if caught - something that a shipping fire or sinking could easily do to you, and accidents happen on the high seas.
Tojo took that risk. Hitler took that risk. The reaction was slower, but they knew the chances they were taking. The Russians were planning to do it, even when the world was nuclear. Some think they're still up to something. You do know about the scale of the bunkers under the Urals?
And even then, you'd only be taking out a few coastal cities at most before being obliterated.
A few coastal cities? How about nearly all of them. Have you looked at the population distribution of the US?
And that's presuming that your atomic trigger isotopes hadn't decayed too much, that your electrical circuits and conventional explosives on your nukes had survived the radiation during the transit - sans clean room maintenance, that the slightest bit of moisture hadn't rendered the heavy metals of your atomic core and shell into useless rust, and that your core and shell hadn't been cracked by getting bumped in any rough seas (plutonium and uranium are among the most brittle metals known).
All easily doable, in fact, maintaining clean and dry conditions within a container is done every day. So is putting technical staff on the ships for final preparation.