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Do we need a nuclear deterant  

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  1. 1. Do we need a nuclear deterant

    • yes
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    • no
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    • don't know
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Guest Anonymous

Thought I would open up this political hot potato

25 billion (at least) is going to be spent to maintain the defence policy known as M.A.D Mutually assured destruction , they argue that it has helped maintain the peace since the 2nd world war ?

they also say that they would never fire them of first ,instead you just fire them of 2nd for spite?

The thing is how can you demand that other countries shouldn't have them when we are actively building them.

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So it is ok for warmongering nations such as the UK and the USA to have nuclear weapons but not ok for Iran to build a nuclear power station that might give them weapons grade material to make their own bomb. Meanwhile Israel probably has nuclear weapons.

 

Yes we do need to defend whatever nation we are in.......UK, Scotland or Free Shetland but I would be interested to see how defence of our nation has us involved in Afghanistan or Iraq.

 

Way back in the cold war there was a catch phrase "better dead than red". Never did see the sense in that then and I still don't.

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Best to have the most destructive weapons possible as a deterrent and though hopefully never have to be used they may just have to in some situations.

At the moment they may not be needed but who knows what may happen in say 10 years. I dont want to have to say then wish we had invested in those weapons as we are blown to bits.

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Deterrance works!

 

Does anyone really think Stalin's Red Army would have sat meekly on the Elbe river at the end of WW2 once the British and US armies had been shipped to the Far East to finish the war against Japan (without the atomic bomb, an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been required to bring the war to an end)?

 

And do you really trust the USA to garuantee our security with their nukes, under all circumstances? Remember the USA doesn't have friends, they only have interests.

 

When China is a multi-party state, when Iran is a secular democracy, when North and South Korea are geographical descriptions of the same country, when Russia is a member of the EU and NATO, when Iraq is stable and the Taliban is a memory, when the worlds primary energy source is no longer oil and the Palestinian/Isreali conflict is over and when India and Pakistan have amicably settled their differences.... I could go on, the world is a dangerous, unpredictable place.

 

When the conditions above are met, then, and only then, will be time to put our nukes on the table along with everyone elses.

 

I would rather see us dismantle all of our conventional forces before we give up our deterrant. After all, tanks and guns are sausage all use against someone who is threatening you with nuclear weapons.

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Germany and Canada are NATO members though, so they do condone, to an extent, the proliferation of nukes...

 

Personally I'm against shelling out billions on death machines, especially when 1 trident sub has something like twice as much fire power as was used by both sides in both world wars combined...

 

Having said that, I don't buy the "if the west can have nukes why can't Iran etc" argument.

 

We set up (or at least contributed) to many a tin-pot dictator's / manic ayatollah's regimes through the wars we underhandedly funded (or fought by proxy) in unstable regions throughout the world during the cold war. the least we (the west) can do is try and prevent the maniacs we effectively created from having the means to evoke the "wrath of Allah" at the push of a button...

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I disagree, Ally. As I said, detterance works, it is working for North Korea right now. And if Iran will feel a bit safer by having nukes then I don't see why we have any right to stop them from building them. I'm in favour of anything that puts an end to George W Bush's rampant imperialism. The USA is doing more to increase world instability than any other country at the moment. (though the recent US election results may have put a stop to that)

 

The sooner individual governments realize that they have no right to impose their will on others, the better and if it takes rampant nuclear proliferation to ram this message home then so be it. Once everyone is secure behind their nuclear walls, we can begin to build the fair and equitable system of world goverment we so desperatly need.

 

North Korea may be a f*cked up mess but so what? Thats a problem for the North Koreans and their immediate neighbours. It's none of our business, just the same as Saddam Hussain was none of our business. If Kim Il Jong developes missiles that can reach us... well thats what Trident is for.

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The sooner individual governments realize that they have no right to impose their will on others, the better and if it takes rampant nuclear proliferation to ram this message home then so be it. Once everyone is secure behind their nuclear walls, we can begin to build the fair and equitable system of world goverment we so desperatly need.

Ah yes, Mutual Assured Destruction ( MAD for short ), where everybody has the means to wipe everybody else off the map, and so everybody lives happily ever after.

 

There are two problems with MAD.

The first is that it assumes that everybody with their finger on a nuclear button is rational, and won't act against their own interests by launching a nuclear first strike. Unfortunately, time and time again, quite bonkers people do manage to get into positions of power, and it only takes one nutty leader who doesn't mind dying in order to smite his enemies to start a nuclear war.

The second problem with MAD is that it ignores the possibility of accidents. If a country believes a nuclear attack has been launched against it, the pressure is on to use its own weapons before it is too late: there isn't much time to check that the missile detection equipment isn't on the blink. Apparently, more than once, the USSR were only a few minutes away from launching their missiles, incorrectly believing the USA had already launched theirs.

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I'm in favour of anything that puts an end to George W Bush's rampant imperialism. The USA is doing more to increase world instability than any other country at the moment

 

Surely the US's ability to impose this rampant imperialism on others is due to the fact that they are a super power- ie they have an obscene arsenal of nuclear weapons which they, of course, claim to have as a "deterrent".

 

Once everyone is secure behind their nuclear walls, we can begin to build the fair and equitable system of world goverment we so desperatly need.

 

Once everyone has the ability to destroy the planet at the touch of a button then we can begin to sort the world out? Sorry, but that's lunacy!

 

It's none of our business, just the same as Saddam Hussain was none of our business.

 

Agreed, but imagine if he'd had nukes?

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Deterrance works!

 

Does anyone really think Stalin's Red Army would have sat meekly on the Elbe river at the end of WW2 once the British and US armies had been shipped to the Far East to finish the war against Japan (without the atomic bomb, an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been required to bring the war to an end)?

 

That ignores the fact that Japan had already surrendered by the time the two bombs were dropped. The arguement that it was to prevent an invasion is a false one and one that is used to justify the absolute distruction of two major cities.

 

And do you really trust the USA to garuantee our security with their nukes, under all circumstances? Remember the USA doesn't have friends, they only have interests.

 

I really don't trust the USA with their nukes.

 

When China is a multi-party state, when Iran is a secular democracy, when North and South Korea are geographical descriptions of the same country, when Russia is a member of the EU and NATO, when Iraq is stable and the Taliban is a memory, when the worlds primary energy source is no longer oil and the Palestinian/Isreali conflict is over and when India and Pakistan have amicably settled their differences.... I could go on, the world is a dangerous, unpredictable place.

 

When the conditions above are met, then, and only then, will be time to put our nukes on the table along with everyone elses.

 

I would rather see us dismantle all of our conventional forces before we give up our deterrant. After all, tanks and guns are sausage all use against someone who is threatening you with nuclear weapons.

 

I would rather have conventional forces or civilian militia. There is pretty much zero chance of surviving a nuclear war. If you're not killed by the initial attack (CND - The effects of nuclear weapons), you will have to survive the fallout (and we've all seen in the press the effects of radiation sickness) it's not high on my list of ways I'd like to die, only being beaten by AIDS or Ebola. If you get that far you'll have to deal with the nuclear winter, global tempretures will drop making food almost impossible to grow, the fires causes by the burning of the Kuwaiti oil wells during the First Gulf War caused average tempretures to drop by 10C up to 200Km away. If you manage to get past the the initial attack, the fall out and the winter you then have the possibility of a nuclear summer as the debris in the atmosphere causes the entire Ozone layer to go, bombarding the Earth with UV-B while at the same time the greenhouse effect causes global temperatures increase. The result is Venus.

 

Small arms and diplomacy however will be more effective at promoting global security. Why isn't the US going to invade Venesuala? Because Chavez ordered 300,000 AK-47's. Civilian defence is far more effective at preventing invasions than nuclear weapons. Diplomacy is the key to preventing nuclear proliferation. Help Iran develop alternative sources of energy and it will be far less likely to want to develop Nuclear power. Disarm Israel and you also have a much more stable Middle-East especially if a single state solution can be achieved.

 

Most importantly is for the West to stop destablising the world. Easiest way to stop terror is to stop participating in it. Easiest way to prevent war is by not starting them. Easiest way to stop creating divides between nations is for us to first realise we are all the same and are our real enemies are our ruling class.

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OOh.... I appear to have touched a few nerves here. :P

 

Where do I start...

 

Ah yes, Mutual Assured Destruction ( MAD for short ), where everybody has the means to wipe everybody else off the map, and so everybody lives happily ever after.

 

This was true during the Cold War when NATO and the Warsaw Pact had tens of thousands of warheads pointed at each other and an all out war would certainly have ended civilisation and probably all life on Earth in the process. I agree that that was insanity, but that is not what we currently face. Any future war is unlikely to involve more than a dozen warheads, which will be catastrophic for the countries concerned but will not threaten the whole of civilisation. MAD no longer applies.

 

Surely the US's ability to impose this rampant imperialism on others is due to the fact that they are a super power- ie they have an obscene arsenal of nuclear weapons which they, of course, claim to have as a "deterrent".

 

The USA's rampant imperialism is directed at countries which don't have a deterrant. North Korea lets off one primitive little A-bomb and the mighty US of A won't go near them. I can't think of a better arguement for deterrance.

 

Once everyone has the ability to destroy the planet at the touch of a button then we can begin to sort the world out? Sorry, but that's lunacy!

 

A few dozen warheads cannot destroy the planet, it would take thousands. MAD no longer applies. However a creditable deterrant can be acheived with a few dozen warheads. Once it is impossible for any one country to threaten any other, then we will have a chance to build a truly international society.

 

That ignores the fact that Japan had already surrendered by the time the two bombs were dropped.

 

I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong.

 

Small arms and diplomacy however will be more effective at promoting global security. Why isn't the US going to invade Venesuala? Because Chavez ordered 300,000 AK-47's.

 

That's rubbish, the USA have no need to invade Venezuela because Venezuela is no threat to the USA. Anyway the US is overstretched at the moment which is why they haven't attacked Iran.

 

Most importantly is for the West to stop destablising the world. Easiest way to stop terror is to stop participating in it. Easiest way to prevent war is by not starting them. Easiest way to stop creating divides between nations is for us to first realise we are all the same and are our real enemies are our ruling class.

 

Absolutely. I agree with every word of that last paragraph. But I would also add that to be truly secure we not only need to stop interfering with other countries, but we need a creditable nuclear deterrant to stop them interfering with us. The US/NATO will not always be the dominant military power in the world and we need to be secure when our dominance passes on to someone else.

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Guest Anonymous

dargon wrote:-

That ignores the fact that Japan had already surrendered by the time the two bombs were dropped. The arguement that it was to prevent an invasion is a false one and one that is used to justify the absolute distruction of two major cities.

 

they dropped two bombs on japan purely because of the fact that they were made of two different types , I believe the nagasaki bomb was a plutonium based type, we should also remember that the american air force was already bombing japenese targets with conventional explosives

& had destroyed a significant part of tokyo in one night with 80,000 civilians dead, more than britain lost in the entire blitz.

In fact American Military commanders had stated that with conventional bombing alone they would have destroyed all credible targets both military & civillian well before the end of 1945, the dropping of the "bombs" were really for there own research to gauge exactly what they did to people and infrastructure.

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