Their potential reactions give us reason for concern. Even for the large societies in question Russia and China it would not be feasible to match the American standard of military development in less than two decades, and a formal alliance between them would not provide an interim solution. It would provoke a sense of confrontation and further stimulate American military investment without actually balancing either the immediate or the potential capabilities of the U.S. alliance system. For Iraq, Iran, and North Korea there is no realistic prospect of acquiring an equitable balance at any foreseeable time. All these countries have an incentive, therefore, to develop means to negate the sophisticated military capabilities they cannot match.
Nuclear weapons are the most effective option in that regard.
Just a few of them would be sufficient to wreck a conventional force operation of the sort that the United States mounted in the Persian Gulf War. Since Russia and China can make provisions for such a contingency without any major visible change in their force posture and hence without risking immediate provocation, that can be expected to be their principal reaction to the superior potential of U.S. conventional forces. For the others, however, nuclear weapons are not currently available and effort to acquire them have already and will continue to provoke active resistance. To the extent that they feel categorically excluded and immediately threatened, as Iraq and Iran both certainly do, their reactions are likely to involve preparations for clandestine sabotage of U.S. forces and deterrent retaliation against the United States itself. Systematic pursuit of offsetting strategies of this sort intersects the realm of terrorism and could seriously aggravate that already serious problem.