How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb

A recent article I stumbled upon while at the Economist.com, entitled "Spinning dark new tales," discusses a possible scenerio where Iran and North Korea, among other states with nuclear capabilities (namely Pakistan and Syria) are currently collaberating to provide North Korea with a working centrifuge machine (which would ultimately provide Kim Jong Il's regime with operational nuclear weapon capabilities). Yet all the international media hype caused by this interesting cadre, has led me to another point - do we (as members of the academia, as well as ordinary citizens) necessarily even have to worry about these potential rogue states causing nuclear war? With the recent onset of information and communication technologies (ICTs), media across the globe has already zeroed in on the nuclear activities of states such as North Korea and Iran. In an unlikely event where one of these countries would actually launch a nuclear missile at a strategic target (for example, the U.S.), the consequences of such an attack, namely the responses of other G20 nations, total amount of media coverage (domestic and international), along with second strike capabilites, would be so great that it would completely make void any benefits which the attacking nation would gain (unless the only reasoning behind the attack was to cause terror). Now this is all just hypothetical speak, but in the words of Dr. Strangelove, "Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack - and I believe that ICTs have the potential to do exactly that.