If the international community routinely condemns the pursuit of strategic weapons such as ballistic missiles, not to mention the nuclear warheads they can carry, then why do so many countries insist on pursuing them? It's a question worth asking, and to answer it, we need only look at Iran and North Korea, relatively weak states that have both been pretty provocative of late. Early this morning, Iran launched two ballistic missiles — its second launch in two days — and in doing so raised the question of whether the West would reapply sanctions against it. Separately, North Korea announced today that it had successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead, something that would, in theory, enable the country to finally deliver its payloads. While different in scale, these kinds of actions are undertaken for one reason alone: military necessity.