but while you have it it is always a background threat making other leaders more wary.
I have never been able to find any logic in the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine. Not even when we had lectures on it at Uni and I had to write a seminar paper about it! It's utterly bonkers. It assumes that everyone is going to play by the rules.
What happens when someone doesn't? What about ISIS who think that all infidels have to die and when they (ISIS members)die in the service of jihad there'll be 70 virgins waiting for them in heaven... Really they'd be doing everyone a good turn to obliterate most of the human race, wouldn't they? Half jolly well deserve to die anyway and the other half get their reward in heaven...
The Republic of Ireland and their tensions with migrants.