"A few nukes added to the fray would even the odds."
Exactly. Hence, World War IV.
Someone posted a Bodansky article (and a related comment by Gen. Myers) on the failure of imagination. Imagine this:
The 21st century Pearl Harbor was not 9/11.
The 21st century Pearl Harbor will be a coordinated nuclear strike designed to saturate any rudimentary missile defense.
Threatened simultaneous launches from China, North Korea, and Iran with missiles that have been covertly transferred (as the USSR did to Cuba in 1962).
Objective is the realization of territorial ambitions without U.S. intervention. That intervention is to be deterred by a missile and martyr capability built over a decade. Nuclear blackmail.
A coerced Korean reunification on North Korean terms. Chinese "reunification" with Taiwan by same method. And Iranian assertion as the dominant regional power by leading a pan-Islamic jihad against Israel beginning with intervention in southern Iraq. (As Khomeini used to say - -the road to Jerusalem - - "Tariq al-Qods" - - runs through Karbala.)
The chaos in Iraq has been engineered. It is the "preparation of the battlefield".
All these military conflicts coordinated and nearly simultaneous. And all three nations now have the theoretical ability to launch against the continental United States.
That has been my "imagined scenario" for the past decade.
Your analyses and commentary have always been interesting to me. Thanks for sharing both here!
bttt