Letters to the Editor
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Take a read from Japan
Who's PM said recently that the point of their 'pacifist' constitution was not to simply absorb strikes from foreign nations. This was in reference to some comments from their defense ministry that asserted that eventually Japan would be compelled to become a nuclear state. (Japan has something like the 3rd or 4th largest defense budget in the world now - about $50 billion USD - not bad for a 'pacifist' country, is it?)
So the idea that just because crazy people who claim to want to acquire nuclear weapons to kill you, claim that they don't care what you're response to that is, and then proceed along some path to do that....well I wonder what your tipping point would be? If not even deterrence as you conceive of it works then what would and how many of your own people, say, all of San Francisco, would you be willing to happily sacrifice in the name of the moral high ground.
I'm sure what risks you'd be willing to tolerate. Perhaps you'd be happy to be exterminated as long as no one could ever call you a ruthless warmonger.