Reply #15: Germany can, for a while, impose a unilateral... [View All]

[punpirate]

... economic boycott--but it would take a while to convince the rest of the EU. There's absolutely no likelihood of them taking up arms against the US.

Russia is a larger problem, in that an attack on Iran will cost them a lot of money--money that Russia needs very badly--but even they would not risk a nuclear exchange with the US.

One has to keep in mind that there are much cooler heads prevailing in the rest of the world than in Washington right now.

If Bush were to use, unilaterally and without provocation, nuclear weapons on Iran, the rest of the world could find ways to retaliate much more effectively than launching nuclear weapons. A steady, continuing dump of dollars onto the world money market, combined with a general economic boycott, would destroy the dollar in a matter of days to weeks. The US economy would collapse utterly. At that point, if Congress didn't act to impeach Bush and Cheney and his whole bunch immediately, we could probably expect torches and pitchforks and guillotines on Capitol Hill and the White House lawn.

What the White House isn't about to admit is that the US economy is very fragile--thanks to massive debt and increasing imbalance of trade--and the rest of the world knows that. They continue to buy dollars to protect the value of the ones they already have. But, they could stand a little shared hardship to get rid of Bush.

Consider this: the 1973 oil slowdown produced about a 4% shortfall, and the lines to gas stations were legendary--same with the embargo in 1978. Now, imagine a 60% shortfall from a world-wide embargo against the United States....

Cheers.