Depends on your criteria for "worst." You didn't ask me for mine (and I assume you don't care), but in foreign policy terms "worst actors" generally means those who are unstable players on the world stage who can shift power dynamics towards authoritarians and cause regional trouble with a good chance of global spillover. Notice I didn't mention China either. Though they manipulate puppet states, bet both sides of every race and generally suck on human rights, they are still a relatively stable nation who actually wants continuity... for now, at least. That may change soon, given the 24 million extra men that resulted from their discontinued birth control policy.
You include Mali and Turkenistan in the "worst actors" group? Fine, but last time I checked they aren't spending billions on a Russian-supplied military buildup like Venezuela, or developing battlefield nukes (you know, the kind of briefcase-sized warhead designed to potentially nuke invading columns of Indian tanks on their own soil) like Pakistan.
So, I suppose the answer to your question is "No", I haven't forgotten that the world has no shortage of terrible places run by tyrannical regimes (and, given human nature, it never will). Some of those regimes are simply more externally dangerous than others.
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Date: 2012-09-12 08:16 pm (UTC)You include Mali and Turkenistan in the "worst actors" group? Fine, but last time I checked they aren't spending billions on a Russian-supplied military buildup like Venezuela, or developing battlefield nukes (you know, the kind of briefcase-sized warhead designed to potentially nuke invading columns of Indian tanks on their own soil) like Pakistan.
So, I suppose the answer to your question is "No", I haven't forgotten that the world has no shortage of terrible places run by tyrannical regimes (and, given human nature, it never will). Some of those regimes are simply more externally dangerous than others.