1. South Africa has a robust economy and Nigeria and Sudan's economy are growing reasonably.
Most of those countries are still in the Stone Age.
2. Pak. could acquire a 100 B-52 (and bankrupt itself) to give the same capability as 30 F-16's with 40 nuclear weapons. It is not nuclear weapons that is insane, it is fighting without the best mix of weapons within an available defense budget which is.
Horse Puckey! 100 B-52s even in conventional mode gives me alot more capability than 30 F-16s with 40 nukes. A single B-52 carry enough ordnance for six sorties ... and that's before returning home to re-arm. If you can count, that's 600 targets destroyed versus 40.
3. The N5 members could indeed destroy Pak., but Pak. having nuclear weapons makes it more difficult not less as you suggest.
What's Pakistan going to do? Throw nukes at itself? The N5 can deliver nukes across the globe. Pakistan can toss in its own backyard.
4. Nuclear weapons can increase influence and does increase the freedom with which one can manuever compared to when the nation doesnt have it.
Oh, you mean like Afghanistan and Vietnam? How about the former Warsaw Pact who are now NATO? Taiwan? North Korea? Japan? Canada? Australia? Canada has more say in Yugoslavia than China even after the Belgrade Embassy Bombing. And Canada right now is deterining domestic Afghan policy while nuclear Russia is staying out.
You need to do alot more study.
p.s. how many divisions can a penis destroy?
In the case of Bush and Putin? All of them.
40 nuclear weapons can destory at the very least 4 divisions.
Horse pucky again. If the armies are prepared (and never assume that they're not), than a division can even survive multiple strikes. That's because for you to kill a division, you have to find it and it ain't as easy as you think. The best way if for your division to crash into their theirs and fix them in which case, your nuke would likely to do as much damage to you as them.
The Czech front alone during the Cold War was expected to toss 163 nukes in the openning phases of WWIII and even then, they think they still required 3 whole army groups to flank the remains of V Corps.
You know very little about the nature of nuclear warfighting.
The problem is that you are looking at it from a U.S./Western/Canadian perspective. Pak. cant afford the 100 B-52's required to destroy 4 divisions but the U.S./West can and therefore they dont want poor nations like India/Pak./Iran from "cheating" and acquiring that capability at such a low cost that nuclear weapons provide.
I'm looking at it from a warfighting perspective and you're damned wrong that nukes are cheap ways to cheat. If anything, they add to your costs without adding to your abilities.