I'm not really into politics but this sounds a bit of a stupid idea to me Jeremy Corbyn has suggested the UK could keep its Trident submarine fleet but without carrying nuclear warheads. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35337432
I think when he gets to be prime-minister his bodyguards are going to have quite a hard time protecting him and his family and his MP's and their families if the guns they carry are unloaded or filled with blanks. Perhaps if they just say "bang" and look really angry that will be enough?
I suppose he's not expecting the Labour Party to close down after he has lost them all their supporters beyond the membership... Good on consistency, this man.
Maybe the Germans should have adopted the same policy in 1939 - send their submarines to sea but leave their torpedoes at home and just shouted at all those poor merchant seamen.
Back in the great hey-day of nuclear disarmament and ban the bomb etc. I wanted to see CND et al. campaigning in Russia and China etc. (never quite sure why they weren't all off trooping the troop over there?!) any one for camping outside a Soviet site guys??? Then I heard that Russia was actively funding anti-bomb groups in the west, whilst at the same time setting off the biggest bombs in human history on Nova Zemla - just to see their effect. I know we won't fire first. Simple as that, so it doesn't bother me if we have them or not. If we have to fire in retaliation I suspect it will pretty much all be over already anyhow so I'm not too bothered about that either. Fatalistic I guess. What is a concern though is if we have nothing and everyone knows it. If you are playing poker and show all your cards and the other players don't you'll be bluffed into loosing every single hand and walked all over until the end of the earth. They might even just obliterate you just to make your "point of view" go swiftly away. Once we've been flattened who's going to care what "sensible" things we might have had to say. The niceties of diplomacy say that if you have nothing to bring to the big table you'll count for nothing and won't have a say. The point is the minute we don't have trident I suspect that the "powers that be" will see the UK as a totally spent force. Not really a day that I want to see. Could foresee though Europe/EU chipping in more and having a say in the UK's (and France's) nuclear force. Can't quite see why the UK has to bear so much of the mutual defence burden, but we usually manage to cope, so "mustn't grumble" and "just carry on regardless" I guess .
Ah! A laudable documentary (I can't recall at the moment what was the conclusion to that episode but my guess is things remained the same, i.e. Jim didn't get to do anything too dramatic thanks to Sir Humphrey and we stuck basically with the status quo and just "carried on" ) ...is there a Russian version perhaps? There are some great Stalin era jokes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_political_jokes#Stalin i.e. "Stalin reads his report to the Party Congress. Suddenly someone sneezes. "Who sneezed?" Silence. "First row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot, and he asks again, "Who sneezed, Comrades?" No answer. "Second row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot too. "Well, who sneezed?" At last a sobbing cry resounds in the Congress Hall, "It was me! Me!" Stalin says, "Bless you, Comrade!" ...and some of the really great ones are peppered about in here: http://russianrulers.podhoster.com/ For years after WW2 the Russians expected a pre-emptive strike by the West. And most would never have dreamed that the "dear leader" could do anything but good. Not sure if anyone watches RT? https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Russian+today+Jeremy+Corbyn+Trident&oq=Russian+today+Jeremy+Corbyn+Trident+&aqs=chrome..69i57.10540j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 https://www.rt.com/uk/329102-keith-vaz-trident-corbyn/ Apparently we are to be "persuaded" to back unilateral disarmament I'm not quite sure what are his "persuasive skills" - but is it a euphemism we are "meant to just understand" perhaps :P ? https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Stalin%27s+persuasive+skills&oq=Stalin%27s+persuasive+skills&aqs=chrome..69i57.14618j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 i.e. the link above to : The Persuasive Leader: Lessons from the Arts - By Stephen J. Carroll, Patrick C. Flood (on Stalin's persuasive skills) which sadly has an epic fail as regards postability on that one, might be possible via cut and paste though I guess perhaps?) has: "In all of these situations persuasive leaders are able to manipulate people using their persuasive skills to inflict significant suffering on various segments of the community" & "Why do such persuasive leaders act the way they do?" etc. and "why do people follow them" ^_^
As I see it,the most serious risk of the destruction of mankind is if failed or rogue states are in a position to use any nuclear capability they may have or acquire. Nuclear derterrent....ours is not independent,the technology is dependent and derived from the US.I would think that any strategic decision made by the UK to deploy nuclear weapons would have to receive the sanction from the US special relationship.Whatever the UK brings to the nuclear table,the whack belong to the US. Some might remember the position of CDG who dismissed US forces from France in 1966 because he believed that he should sanction the use of nuclear weapons deployed from French bases...a postion which is still relevant today for there are no US forces with bases in France
Was it the ex-ambassador to the UN telling us in today's press that the UK is a spent force both diplomatically and militarily? I suspect it's already all happened under our very noses and this government are just carrying on trying to solve domestic problems and economic troubles rather than worry about having an empire - frankly there's not much else they can do, whether we like it or not....and on the same page I read that we haven't got enough money to help veterans suffering from PTSD over Iraq and Afghanistan. You can't have your cake and eat it and if the cake is nuclear weapons, I say bye-bye cake......
I'd say effectively that the UK, USA and Europe etc. Japan, South Korea are all combined. We are all essentially one country / one block as regards where most of the really big decisions go. We aren't really independent of each other. Once you factor in computers and multinational corporations even what goes on in Saudi Arabia and who controls the outputs of South America, Australasia even Africa and India to an extent. It rather comes down then to the question of how we react solely to individual events, and here, yes certainly differences can occur. We were not going to "fire nukes" at Argentina. Whatever happened simple as that. But if Argentina had nuclear weapons. Or we had to face a similar scenario with a state that did. This is one of those things that might make them not attempt to blackmail us with that threat. A nuclear armed North Korea is a threat to anyone they might "reach", strategically we don't have much of finger in that pie, but it's not inconceivable that a country slightly nearer might pose such a potential threat. All in all, having it means that you do not have to use it, not having it means that you are a strategic joke, to be laughed at by anyone that does. As much as we are dependent on the US - I like them They are a good friend. I rather like France too. America likes the UK and it is generous of them to sell us Trident, not "generous" of us to buy it off them. We could "go it alone" like the French but frankly what is the point? We have nothing to prove after WW2, Korean stretched us to the limit, Suez was a mis-step, we didn't go into Vietnam, we won the cold war. Now we have to think about what comes next, the next 20,30,50 years. So does Corbyn really know, 100% for sure what comes next ? B)
Ps. I don't know either and I wish too that we could both have our cake and eat it, and yes, the cost of Trident does seem like an awful lot. But as regards what we are "paying for" with Trident I don't really think what we are doing there is paying for a chance to be "an independent threat". Basically the way I see it is that we are paying for and cross subsidising the US for the whole burden they carry for "European" defence. If we withdrew utterly from these "deals" with the US, we would be unilaterally shifting a lot of the burden for our defence wholeheartedly and freshly onto the US, we can by all means "go it alone" but who's paying for most of it right now? I suspect we'd soon find that we were having to pick up a lot of new and unexpected bills, US airbases for example patrol UK and European airways as a big part of Nato. Were we to give up "trident" I suspect that the US would simply have to make up the shortfall by building itself a further 3 or 4 of these subs to take up those maritime patrols and cover the gaps that we would thereby have left. Perhaps they'd ask us then to pay for these patrols and cover the cost of even more of ours and Europe's defence? As regards scenarios though, one I could easily foresee is a rogue ex-Russian or neighbouring state unit driving a few mobile nuclear missiles down to Syria and for Assad then to have an opportunity to threaten his neighbours and even Cyprus etc. if he is not given the lee way to organise things exactly as he wills. It is difficult then to see what would counter that threat, save the threat in turn of something more final than he currently has to face. Anyhow the stuff of nightmares, not reality, but it doesn't have to happen, just the pure threat of it is enough. After all remember the fears re. the nuclear intentions of Iran, Iraq, Libya etc. any of which might have quite suddenly come to pass.
No balls please. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/11243593/Matt-cartoons.html?frame=3552793
