After I went to bed something about your remark just kept nagging at me so I figured I'd better try to put my thoughts into words. At first blush perhaps that defector was much more of an intelligence "get" than we thought, but I find it impossible to believe that the UK or anyone else would give him up to what would be a certain death, even for hostages (not to mention that I refuse to believe that the Brits have lost that much backbone).
So what else could be up, I was thinking.
Ever since the end of the Cold War we've been in the comfortable position that none of our adversaries could really attain any of their goals -- we showed in the Gulf War that we would chew up Russian tank divisions like dog food, the Chinese navy was no match for ours, and even Saddam's Million Man Army could only slow us down for four days. Even today, that mostly remains the case, though ongoing developments in the Chinese navy and air force are increasingly disturbing.
Indeed, the only way that our adversaries could really hope to gain anything they desire in the near term is if they acted in concert.
I presume that the Iranian army isn't any better than Saddam's and numbers not more than a million men, and inferiorly outfitted at that. However, a blitzkrieg into Iraq, plus a naval assault on the Gulf, PLUS a Chinese blitzkrieg against Taiwan, PLUS a North Korean blitzkrieg on Seoul, would play merry havoc with our ability to respond. Indeed we very well may wind up having to sacrifice quite a lot in order to guarantee victory elsewhere.
I think we need to be looking VERY closely on logistics -- not ours, but everyone else's. Attacks require food, ammunition, and fuel, at a minimum, but also all other manner of supplies and the vehicles to move them. We should be looking for transports of materiel, stockpiling, and especially at attempts to camouflage such buildups. We should be looking for logistical prepositioning, and also at personnel movements. We should be looking at naval tankers, and whether they're all taking on fuel loads. We should be looking at their use of rail and what they're moving (and when, and to where). If nothing "is up", then no worry, but if "something is up", then we should be looking for telltale signs rather than waiting for "something" to happen.
I presume that the Iranian army isn't any better than Saddam's and numbers not more than a million men, and inferiorly outfitted at that. However, a blitzkrieg into Iraq, plus a naval assault on the Gulf, PLUS a Chinese blitzkrieg against Taiwan, PLUS a North Korean blitzkrieg on Seoul, would play merry havoc with our ability to respond. Indeed we very well may wind up having to sacrifice quite a lot in order to guarantee victory elsewhere.
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And we should make sure that our enemies understand that such a move would result in a nuclear counterstrike to stem the losses.
We made dang sure that the Soviets knew this... but nowadays, we go out of our way to reassure are sworn enemies that we have no intention of doing so.
All our leaders have simply become nothing more than Mohommed's whores.
Actually what would happen is the genie would come out of the bottle and a lot of foreign people would die in mushroom clouds.