Posted by SleepingHare on 4/3/2003, 2:52 am, in reply to "Re: Threat of Iraq" Nuclear weapons and ICBMs have changed that scenario. Any nation armed with both are a credible threat to the US. There is no real size limit for a country because large and expensive conventional armies become unnecessary to hurt a superpower. If you have the cash to spare and the time you will eventually be able to build up a stockpile of weapons you could use against the US. Unless the US anti-missile shield ends up working with a very high degree of precision, the US should be worried about hostile nations attempting to acquire nukes and effective delivery mechanisms for them. Unlike WWII Germany and Japan, a nuclear armed Iraq with accurate long-range missiles would constitute a potentially serious danger to Americans.
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I agree with iceburn on Germany and Japan. They had no credible ability to attack the US across an ocean, even if their forces weren't already heavily committed to other regional conflicts. If their ideology remained consistent they would never be tolerable to those they occupied and so they could never cease to occupy nearby nations with large armies. With their troops and resources tied up I can't see them posing anything more than a regional threat. Any invasion force they could land would inevitably lose.
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