[Mumitroll]

If Iran had nukes, and Israel was convinced Iran was planing a strike, they might very well use them.

no. "planning a strike" is not a justification for a preemptive nuclear attack. Israel would be eradicated after that, by whatever means available to Arab states.

Those are some big ifs though. Also, since you pointed out that Israel would possibly launch a conventional attack that "potentially does not require US approval" you'd be willing to conceed that the policies of Israel are not dictated by the US?

how should I best put it... Israel is like an attack dog which is being kept at a short leash. it cannot do anything major by itself, but it can bite its neighborhood every now and then. ok as an analogy?

although tbh what that analogy is missing is the backlink from the dog to the master.. which is also substantial in this particular case.

I guess you've never heard of Great Britain.

the British Empire was never even close. or did it have a fleet of nuclear aircraft carriers capable of bombing almost every country in the world into the ground within months?

What? Are you saying American hates itself, or other people hate America?

other people. the US is currently at a historical low in terms of worldwide esteem. I think the recent Gallup polls resulted in an estimated 80% of the world disliking the US. thats probably realistic too - here in Germany i'd say its more like 90%. in Russia it's probably around 95%. and in Iran or Iraq... lol.

Now I know you've heard of the Soviet Union, since you mentioned them. Last I checked they had lots of nukes.

i meant pre-US. aka 19th century or before.

How exactly are terrorists going to get their hands on this nuclear device? Nuclear weapons are not something you can make in a mountain cave. They require a lot of high tech infrastructure to refine the nuclear material.

you can theoretically obtain fissile materials today, maybe with large bribes etc. in any case I am not one to guarantee that its impossible.

Also, I'd point out that it most certainly wouldn't end with a mushroom cloud over a US city.

the US foreign policy as of today would probably end, or at least become much more moderate. there would be nobody to bomb in revenge, so they would have to concede millions of victims for nothing. ok, they might find someone - Iran for example - but a onetime occurrence would probably be enough to radically reevaluate the risks. it would have to be a nuclear bomb though - 9/11 wasnt enough yet.

We could like, start with the whole the USA is the most hated nation in history and go from there. Point: Nanjing massacre riled up people a lot more than McDonalds-in-your-backyard did.

not really. Nanjing is basically known in China and a few more SE countries. so maybe 2 billions (if we - unrealistically - say that everyone in SE Asia disliked JP as a result). if we take the above Gallup estimates as a basis, we've got around 4 billion people disliking the US today.

also, Nanjing casualties are estimated at around 100,000-200,000. the two US bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than that. i dont even mention the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden.

Another point: blind anti-Americanism (whereby everything American sucks, as your opinion seems to demonstrate here) is not the prevailing diplomatic stance of most, if not all, European states, no matter what the prevailing public opinion is.

lol do you realize what you just said? yes an anti-US policy may be not the prevailing stance of EU states... but they're, coincidentally, democracies. so a government that doesnt represent its people will ultimately get busted. and some do. yes, you may say that in many EU countries all the major parties basically run a US-subservient course (for many reasons), contradicting the will of the vast majority of their own population.... but all that you're admitting by that is that you're supporting tyranny and stuff being forced on people against their will.

Oh, and yet another hint: much of the USA's hegemony in world politics is based on its economic strength and its system of alliances as well, not just some sort of singular, oppressive "force."

that was the case previously, in the 50s-80s. nowadays, not anymore. the US economy is not competitive anymore, nearly anywhere. the few sectors that remain are basically: arms, aerospace, computers/software, agricultural equipment, and biotech. just about everything else, the US economy works for its inner market and is not competitive internationally.

And finally: mushroom clouds? Newsflash: the Cold War ended almost two decades ago.

i think you're also not entirely in the clear of the political realities of the world... the Cold War never ended. while the USSR might have unilaterally ended it on its side, and reduced its BMs, warheads, and military budget, the US never did. it just kept going on much in the same way. and since Russia nowadays is returning back on the arms race track - see recent Russia-Georgia war - it's basically Cold War all over again.

to quote one of the oldest and most experienced German journalists - Peter Scholl-Latour - when asked "When is the new Cold War coming?" at a political roundtable earlier this year he said "Coming? It's already here."