[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Renegade 13 said:

Impractical.

Stealing research in this day and age is impossible. There would be so many back-ups and copies you'd never get all of them. No point even trying that.

So, steal any research we can, destroy the rest, and if they try and do it again just send in military forces before they can finish research again.

Steal a bunch of highly refined uranium from a hostile country? Good luck.

Steal it, destroy it, meh. Bomb the refining plants. Boom bada boom, and you might not have destroyed all the uranium but you can also put back their research if you bomb the right plants.

Abduct or kill the scientists? Sure, why not stoop to the level of a terrorist, which is what you'd be if you went in and started blowing people away for the sole reason that you think you're the only one with the right to have nukes.

I said (though maybe not clearly) that abduction would be my preferred method of "elimination"; I'd kill them ONLY if we'd run out of options. Abducting them does not mean "put them in Guantanamo", at least to me; to me, it means "keep them alive but have them locked up safely where you can keep an eye on them until they can no longer do harm".

Put pressure on a religious zealot that hates you? How? Not when they have you by the short hairs with regards to a resource you don't have enough of...

Once (if) we've taken/killed their scientists, disabled their refining plants, set back their research programme by years, possibly decades, they'll be at least slightly more..... agreeable. Agreed, religious zealots won't; but putting pressure on them is easier. Even if "putting pressure on them" means "stationing troops just outside their border ready to invade at any time". That's pressure too, you know.

Only options; Flatten the nation. And I don't mean go in there with troops, that's doomed to failure. I mean flatten literally. As in, carpet bombing.

Ooh, now that's a bad idea. Flattening the research and production facilities, OK, but flattening the nation? And how do you think the rest of your allies would react?

Or stay out of it. Only practical solutions in this day and age.

Touché.

I was only talking from a fictional standpoint, not the current situation. IF I were a superpower (cough,cough) and IF a nation of religious zealots..... et cetera.