Breaching the Nuclear Threshold

OpenDemocracy's Paul Rogers asks: Could an Iraq war go nuclear? The answer, of course, is yes, and Rogers concludes,

the Pentagon is in apparently happy concert with Britain’s Ministry of Defence that the use of nuclear weapons may be appropriate in the coming war with Iraq. If the weapons are used, then the nuclear threshold that has held since 1945 will disappear and we will move into an even more dangerous world – as other states scramble to develop their own deterrents in the form of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Apart from all the other issues involved in the prospective war with Iraq – civilian casualties, regional instability, humanitarian crisis, environmental catastrophe – this alone is sufficient evidence to indicate why a war with Iraq could be so exceptionally dangerous.