Who controls the nukes, and are they going to be used as arguments in a domestic political debate over whether to permit secession or not?

In Russia, it was pretty clear-cut, because all the relevant officers were Russians, so Moskva could just order all the nuclear ships to re-base to St. Petersburg, and all the land-based warheads to be put on trains and shipped to Moskva. But the collapse of the Soviet Union was the collapse of a colonial empire. What you're talking about here is the equivalent of Kola and St. Petersburg striking out for independence.

I find the notion of a disintegrating country with several thousand megaton at its disposal less than perfectly reassuring...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.