Crawley
Board Legend
fudge all to do with Trident. More to do with the hap-hazard immigration policies followed in recent years.
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North Korea..
- Thread starter Mumorn
- Start date
fudge all to do with Trident. More to do with the hap-hazard immigration policies followed in recent years.
The Moonlit Knight
Banned
That's because it's a brick idea! You guys need to get with it and drag your bricky NHS to the modern world.
parklane1
Tony Galvin
Really, how the hell can you define one bottomless money pit from another? That really makes no sense.
parklane1
Tony Galvin
Crawley
Board Legend
?
Surely you are answering your own question there?
You are agreeing the NHS is a bottomless pit too. So how best resolve it, without endangering the nations safety at the same time?
Reform it, as suggested by our Dutch friend above. And stop the drain on its resources by NHS tourists for a start.
Have you tried getting an NHS appointment lately? Good job I have the option of going private.
Anyway, that's another argument. Apologies for going OT.
So, shall we nuke N.Korea or not?
parklane1
Tony Galvin
You miss my point, the bottomless pits are the defense/tridet budget and the (in you own words) More to do with the hap-hazard immigration policies followed in recent years.
No.
Crawley
Board Legend
Ah, makes more sense now.
So you agree the immigration policy (or lack of) is to blame for some ills then?
parklane1
Tony Galvin
If you are asking if i think the immagration policy could be run better then the answer is yes, but please do not come back and say i disagree with it.
thfcsteff
Garth Crooks
That 'brick idea' and 'bricky NHS' twice saved my mother from dying of cancer.
Unfortunately, there are so many selfish people these days that if you eradicated the NHS, you would be left with a whole new wave of sick and ailing who have nowhere to go. I could break down the problems that would cause if a humanitarian argument isn't enough...
thfcsteff
Garth Crooks
I was just about to write something along the lines of the above. You saved me the time. Agreed and well-said.
spursman17
Stephen Kelly
UK Predicted Spending 2014:
Healthcare: £129.9 billion
Defence:£44.7 billion
Welfare: £115.2 billion
Our health service is collapsing because of abuse and inefficientcy.
Food kitchens are opening because of the recession and is a World problem.
I suggest you look at past history to see the effects of countries with minimal deterrent. Kuwait ring any bells? How about Poland in 1939? You can have all the commodities you want but if you think the World is a peaceful place then I assure you it's you living on 'cloud cuckoo'.
spursman17
Stephen Kelly
Dubai can relations turn sour? Can economies fail? Did anyone ever think Rome would fall?
Did you know we were prepared to use nuclear weapons against Argentina when they invaded the Falklands? What would happen in 20 years time if Argentina do wish to pursue nuclear weapons while we decommission ours? After all the South American economy is expected to sky rocket in the foreseeable future and an increase in defense spending is a very high possibility. America recently did not 'side' with us when recognizing the Falklands as British. What happens if other members of the UN follow suit? Shall we give up our land? Shall we let our residents be invaded? Shall we give up on £Billions of natural resources?
To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
George Washington
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Well, to analyze the likelihood of us needing Trident, you have to understand two concepts; nuclear threshold, and the stability-instability paradox. The first is the point at which settled states would be willing to use their nuclear weapons, and has been mapped out differently by every international relations expert from John Mearsheimer to Robert Rauchhaus. Two constants, however, remain: firstly, that larger states (bigger land areas and populations) are more willing to use nuclear weapons than smaller states (due to their ability to 'absorb the hit' of a retaliation without extreme damage incurred to its power centres), and secondly that developing states are more likely to use nuclear weapons than developed states (due to the social factors involved: younger populations, so greater ability to recover, less infrastructure likely to be destroyed, etcetera, etcetera).
Now, the UK and Western European countries have worked hard to raise that nuclear threshold to the point where nuclear conflict, even in the event of a conventional attack, seems impossible to imagine. France isn't willing to use nuclear weapons against us because they find it inconceivable: there is too much risk involved to its infrastructure and (Relatively, by nuclear weapons-state standards) small, affluent population. Additionally, the diplomatic efforts of the last seventy years have eradicated the thought of using nuclear weapons to resolve a conflict in Western ideology. Even if the Marine Nationale started firing cruise missiles at Dover over a territorial dispute, the thought of nuking Paris would be inconceivable, due to the weight of sixty years of diplomatic and strategic thought, and the ramifications to Britain's concentrated infrastructure and dense population centres should France retaliate, which it can do even with a conventional and aerial deterrent (due to proximity).
Now, we've established that we will not nuke France. It remains, then, to examine the second possibility you envisioned: that of an enriched, powerful Argentina invading 'Las Malvinas' backed up by nuclear weapons. Never mind that they are a signatory to the NPT and that South America has long been a self-declared 'nuclear-free zone', the concept you present is an interesting one. So they proceed to invade the Falklands, and like in the 80's, a Royal Navy task force is assembled to take back the islands and creates an exclusion zone before landing marines at Port Stanley. The ARA ( Armada de la República Argentina - their navy) responds with conventional cruise missiles fired at the supporting British fleets (and, likely the carriers) and war officially breaks out.
Now, Argentina has the support of the United Nations. This much is obvious. And should Britain remain steadfast in her desire to retake the islands, they will no doubt face UN pressure.
Now imagine Argentina proceeded to fire a nuke at London.
Over a conflict spanning a few hundred square kilometers, over tiny islands with more sheep than men, Argentina in a fit of pique fired an ICBM 5000 miles to London.
Do you still think the UN would support Argentina? If somehow, the UN becomes a warmongering band of nations all extremely hostile to the UK led by their national equivalents of Genghis Khan, perhaps not. But in a sane view on the next twenty years, it is inconceivable that in the event of an Argentine nuclear attack, the UN would not side with the UK.
And, even supposing the UN were to still stand by Argentina, do you think, in the event of an unprovoked attack consisting of an ICBM or two (the maximum number of advanced nuclear weapons a country like Argentina could hope to acquire in twenty years, even assuming an extremely accelerated research and development rate far beyond contemporary countries like India, China, Israel and Pakistan (the most recent nuclear states barring north Korea, an anomaly)...do you think our conventional and aerial deterrents (which we do possess, albeit in reduced numbers (estimates range from 15 to 50 warheads in bases across the country)) would not succeed in wiping out Argentina in retaliation?
Argentina would not risk nuclear war over anything short of national survival. They will abide by the world-standard nuclear threshold. That much has been established by India and Pakistan: their nukes have meant that neither side threatens the existence of the other, but both can conduct low-level operations in the confidence tat their nuclear umbrella prevents effective retaliation (Pakistan in Kashmir and India in Balochistan). Now,this is the second part of the argument, that of the stability-instability paradox.
The stability-instability paradox simply explains that nuclear weapons decrease the capacity for high-level conflict (conflict aimed at threatening a nation's existence) but increases the capacity for low-level conflict (i.e, infiltrations, skirmishes, wars fought over far-flung territorial areas (much like the Falklands)). High-level stability creates low-level instability. This is what we would see in a war between Britain and Argentina, not all out nuclear war. Quite similarly, in any conflicts we will engage in over the next fifty years, this is what Mearsheimer and co. believe will happen: low-level conflicts with nuclear weapons-states, or high-level conflicts against states without nuclear weapons.
In this regard, the cost of Trident becomes prohibitive. If our current deterrent effectively prevents all but the United States and Russia from threatening our existence (And neither of those seem to want to annex us), then that money would be better spent on our conventional forces. Half that amount would prevent a lot of the current crippling budget cuts being applied to our armed forces, and the other half would go quite a way to easing the strain on our overworked and under-funded social services.
A strong conventional force would enable us to fight off the Argentinians on the Falklands and still paint us as the 'defensive' party, something we would lose if we were to exercise our nuclear option. Conversely, a nuclear response would encourage Argentina's allies and the UN to respond in kind, dooming us anyway if your predictions on the future are true. So using nukes becomes not only counter-productive to a conflict like that, but actively self-destructive.
I don't think many people realise just how much of a taboo nukes are in the international community. For all the bluster between the superpowers in the Cold War and the modern 'security threats' states like Iran and North Korea pose, the only time nukes have ever been used offensively was against Japan in 1945. Nearly seventy years ago. Once unleashed, nuclear war cannot ever be contained again. It's why states are willing to undergo humiliations and endless incursions (see India versus Pakistan) without resorting to nuclear force.
So, having established the two principles of nuclear weapons used in IR theory, and established that nukes themselves are very much 'last resort', and will continue to be for much of the next century....do we still need to spend billions on Trident, when our existing deterrent will work just fine? This isn't even taking into account the jobs and revenue that spending the money on conventional forces or the social services will create, something our Trident program fails to do.
Ballistic submarines (the newest versions, anyway) and their payloads are expensive, expensive toys for nations that have at least managed to get their own houses in order. We cannot claim to that.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
And, as am addendum, the fact that we were prepared to use nuclear weapons against Argentina back in '82 when it was abundantly clear a conventional invasion would succeed is more an indication of the madness of Thatcher's plans than it is of the usefulness of nukes. A use of nukes in 1982 would have turned both superpowers against us instantly. The Soviets would have used our attack as proof of the perfidiousness of NATO and the Western alliances, strengthening their position and garnering most of the non-aligned nations into their sphere as a result of widespread fear of NATO deciding to go ballistic and nuke everyone not on their side. As a result, the US would try to repair the damage by excommunicating the UK from NATO and placing it under crippling economic and arms embargoes, to show the world that this was the action of a mad-woman, not of NATO. Hell, they would probably have approved a focused attack on London with the intent of removing Thatcher and her government, and would have authorised attacks on all UK nuclear assets to try to contain the damage done to its (and NATO's) reputation. Argentina would win world sympathy and would probably be handed the Falklands by the US and its allies.
We would be at war with the US, isolated from the world, under an arms and economic embargo, without the Falklands, with our nuclear assets being hunted down by U.S task forces, and with our reputation as a nation destroyed forevermore.
Thank GHod our 'preparedness' to use nuclear weapons against Argentina in '82 never came to pass.
We would be at war with the US, isolated from the world, under an arms and economic embargo, without the Falklands, with our nuclear assets being hunted down by U.S task forces, and with our reputation as a nation destroyed forevermore.
Thank GHod our 'preparedness' to use nuclear weapons against Argentina in '82 never came to pass.
braineclipse
Terry Dyson
Cheers for two more excellent posts Dubai. Appreciated, you're obviously way more informed than I am or will ever be on this topic. A couple of questions, if you don't mind 
Would you say that even without this new Trident program there are no countries outside Russia and the US that the UK couldn't match up to in a nuclear way in the foreseeable future? Seems to me that's pretty much what you're saying.
I still think you overestimate somewhat our ability to predict future developments.
How stable do you think the situation in Russia is?
Do you think there's a need to plan for the worst? Just looking at for example the potential upheaval and change that will follow in the worlds should climate change be as bad as some people think as an example. Or is there no point in expensive planning for worst case scenarios as a country like yours could just play catchup on the nuclear stage should something bad happen?
Would you say that even without this new Trident program there are no countries outside Russia and the US that the UK couldn't match up to in a nuclear way in the foreseeable future? Seems to me that's pretty much what you're saying.
I still think you overestimate somewhat our ability to predict future developments.
How stable do you think the situation in Russia is?
Do you think there's a need to plan for the worst? Just looking at for example the potential upheaval and change that will follow in the worlds should climate change be as bad as some people think as an example. Or is there no point in expensive planning for worst case scenarios as a country like yours could just play catchup on the nuclear stage should something bad happen?
spursman17
Stephen Kelly
Dubai I respect your view and informative posts. However the things you have posted are open to speculation and based on what you predict (based on likeliness) rather what can happen.
News today, NK will target Japan first in a nuclear strike as they are the one developed country in East Asia that do not have a nuclear deterrent.
News today, NK will target Japan first in a nuclear strike as they are the one developed country in East Asia that do not have a nuclear deterrent.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Cheers for two more excellent posts Dubai. Appreciated, you're obviously way more informed than I am or will ever be on this topic. A couple of questions, if you don't mind
Would you say that even without this new Trident program there are no countries outside Russia and the US that the UK couldn't match up to in a nuclear way in the foreseeable future? Seems to me that's pretty much what you're saying.
I still think you overestimate somewhat our ability to predict future developments.
How stable do you think the situation in Russia is?
Do you think there's a need to plan for the worst? Just looking at for example the potential upheaval and change that will follow in the worlds should climate change be as bad as some people think as an example. Or is there no point in expensive planning for worst case scenarios as a country like yours could just play catchup on the nuclear stage should something bad happen?
Firstly, no worries, mate! Political science was one of my two majors at university, and I delved into international relations as a speciality. Hence the elaborate-sounding waffle.
Responding to your questions, firstly, no, I'm not saying the US and Russia are the only countries that could challenge us in a nuclear conflict. Right now, the US (5,000), Russia (3,100, judging by Alexander Khramchikhin's estimates), France (300+) and Israel (300-400) all have bigger nuclear arsenals than us, the US and Russia by orders of magnitudes.
However, firstly, it is fair enough to assume that not all these weapons will be aimed at the UK. Deterrence involves planning against any potential aggressors, and I'd wager Israel plans its nuclear deployments based on the distance to Damascus, Cairo and Tehran, not London, Birmingham and co. Similarly, France's 'force de frappe' is a deterrent independent of NATO, and was declared in the 70's and 80's to be designed almost exclusively against Soviet aggression. Today, I'd wager a lot of their 'active' warheads are still targeted at Russia and the ex-Soviet republics, which seems the most likely source of European hegemonic ambitions in the future.
That leaves the US and Russia. However, most of their arsenals are in cold storage, and the 'active' weapons that remain (1000+ on both sides) are targeted almost exclusively at each other, a remnant of Cold War strategic planning and a recognition that the size of their respective nuclear weapons pools will definitely not be overtaken by any nation within the next half-century, such is the size of their strategic arsenals.
Now, there is an element of danger involved in estimating threats to nations and basing nuclear deterrence plans (mostly secret) around assumptions about said threat levels. But it is safe to assume that any weapons aimed at the UK will be minimal in number on France, Israel and the U.S's side, due to the strategic efforts of British foreign policy over the last fifty years that have left us firmly embedded in the 'Western' camp, alongside them when it comes to power projection and national interests. So the threats to the U.K, by deduction, will emanate from a (future) resurgent Russia, much like in the Cold War. However, again, the Russians cannot afford to focus on us when the U.S still maintains its huge weapons base. So it is safe to assume that they will assign to us a number of weapons consistent with the weapons we aim at them.
In essence, we are secondary or even tertiary targets for almost every one of these nations. So the prospect of competing against them, necessitating a 'them against us' nuclear comparison, is remote. The one threat I think stands out above the others here is Israel's rumored 'Samson option', which is a reference to Samson bringing the temple down on the Philistines and himself. This holds that in the event of an existential threat against Israel (i.e, when the U.S abandons Israel to its fate and Arab nations move in for the kill), Israel will fire its nukes at the 'civilized' world (read: New York, London, Moscow, Paris, etcetera) to take the world down with it. In essence, it's a 'support us or we'll take you all down with us' threat. Its validity has been the subject of much discussion, and scholars aren't even sure it exists, but the noises from retired Israeli commanders and prime ministers over the years haven't been encouraging.
In summary: focusing on a comparison is irrelevant, because we are not the 'prime target' of any nation, and thus cannot find an adequate opponent to measure up to. The U.S and Russia's arsenals are large enough that they can assign a portion of them to us commensurate with our threat level, making comparison attempts useless. France doesn't particularly care about us threat-wise, so they won't have many nukes budgeted for us. Israel's a bit of an anomaly, but it is fairly certain they aim to deter Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iran and co. rather than the EU and the US. To truly measure up our nuclear capabilities, we need to have a situation where we can completely focus on one opponent (like in the Cold War) and thus measure our arsenal against it. right now, I'd wager bits of our capabilities are pointed in all sorts of directions, making comparisons useless.
The second question's interesting. Russia's situation at the moment is more stable than many give it credit for. Sure, you have an upsurge in communist tendencies as people hanker for the old days when Soviet Russia was a superpower and the money wasn't all in the hands of a few oligarchs. And yes,other people are getting equally desirous for genuine pluralistic democracy, something Putin's strong-man regime doesn't provide. But these two tendencies are mutually exclusive, and when you add the increasing racism and inequality of Russian society into the mix, you have a society rife with divisions, which perfectly suits Putin and his regime since that means there is no unified opposition to his rule. So I'm fairly certain he isn't going to fall anytime soon.
However, their capacity to become a superpower again seems vastly diminished. Russia's economic indicators are poor: currently driven by oil and gas revenues, Russia's need to diversify its industrial sectors beyond reliance on natural resource exports is pressing, yet investors and companies are put off by the labyrinthine bureaucracy, rampant corruption, shady business practices and powerful organized crime groups. Until it gets the revenues it needs to rebuild its stagnant army and air-force, re-open the Black Sea bases it shut down after the Cold War, re-arm its surface fleets (crucial to modern power projection) and re-build its flailing and deeply unreliable arms export industry, Russia's ability to transform into a superpower will remain almost nil. However, its sphere of influence in oil-rich Central Asia, and its claim on the rich gas fields of the Arctic, are both huge potential revenue generators, so the prospect cannot be discounted entirely.
In twenty years, if Russia invests wisely, reduces the oligarchs' power (something it is currently doing, with the persecution of the likes of Berezovsky and Abramovich), makes itself a favored FDI destination and diversifies its economy, it has the potential to rival China as a challenger to the U.S hegemony. However, it must be noted that they're still essentially operating under a U.S system of global trade and capitalism, and thus will always be hindered.
Finally, climate change will hit us in full force about twenty years from now. There is also an asteroid projected to pass close to us within that time period. These are assured. Beyond this, however, when you come to human possiblities, it becomes much, much murkier. China and India could either go into conflict (the favored solution to their rise, from the U.S point of view) or form an economic bloc (as you saw with BRIC's new wealth fund the other day) and emerge as a direct challenger to the EU-US hegemony. The U.S could finally, resignedly default on its huge foreign debt bill and shock the world economy into double-digit recession rates, or it could attempt to preserve its standing via expensive and possibly extremely dangerous military flexing. The world could see the advent of the singularity, as technology improve to the point where the human brain is augmented into a higher intelligence, thus rendering any attempts to predict anything beyond that point meaningless (due to our fleshy normal brains being unable to understand this new artificially augmented human's thought patterns), or we could be sucked into a third world war as a result of famines, drought and global anger over an unequal economic system.
Attempting to predict future 'events' or 'trends' is meaningless when it comes to humanity. All we can do is pursue aims: short term and long term. As the UK, our short term aim should be to get our nation back in order without sacrificing the welfare state we pioneered: to erase the deficit and get us back on a sound economic footing without risking rioting and open rebellion in the process by destroying the social securities that have kept people contented for these last sixty-odd years. If this means isolationism, looking inward, and temporarily suspending our expensive ballistic submarines, Queen Elizabeth-class carriers and F-35 orders, so be it. A minimal deterrent should be aimed for, and if possible our conventional forces should be boosted somewhat (which is possible without the QE carriers or the submarines), to enable us to ward off low-level threats.
Long term, our aims should be to achieve a dominant position on the continent. Whether that is by integrating with the EU or by operating outside of it is open to debate, but what is becoming increasingly clear is that our future lies within our geographic proximity, i.e within Europe. We cannot project power into other emerging national 'blocs' (China-India, U.S-Canada-Mexico, Brazil, Russia, East Asia (Japan-South Korea-Malaysia etcetera)) as we once could when Europe (and to a lesser extent, North America) was the world's leading power location and a scramble to claim African, Asian and South American lands ensued. In the new world, we are seeing power blocs emerge that can easily match our technological and economic prowess, and thus limiting our influence to 'local' regions. Again, that means Europe. Now, whether that means military domination, economic domination or diplomatic (via the EU) domination is again, open to interpretation, but that must be our aim.
Oh, and becoming Europe's 'navy' again couldn't hurt. We are an island, after all, and conventional power projection depends entirely on the navy nowadays.