COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
Well said.
Nuclear weapons are indeed unusable weapons, until such time
as pretty much all human civilization is at an end.
In that event, who would care?
The fact is that nuclear missiles for a country like Britain
are pretty much gigantic penis-envy toys, extremely costly toys.
Britain could make little difference in a full nuclear
exchange with something like several hundred warheads versus many thousands – and
in many modes of deployment - for Russia.
Russia requires its atomic forces to offset those of the
United States, the most aggressive country on the planet which in the absence
of Russia’s countervailing force would become the world’s dictator. Only Russia
can respond to the ultimate aggression by America.
In case you think that unthinkable, go read some history.
The United States had a fully developed plan for massively nuking Russia in the
early 1950s. We were only saved by a miracle.
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Response to another
comment:
Protect you from what?
You are the one who is naive here.
The United States does not seriously protect anyone.
Being under "the nuclear umbrella" is only another
means of control, much like some of free-trade agreements America has with
economically insignificant countries.
Control is the American objective.
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The point has been made below that Britain would not dare to
launch a single missile without American permission, else the launch would
quickly call down an attack on Britain by the United States.
I believe that that is a completely accurate statement of
the situation in the modern world. Former Soviet countries like Ukraine were quietly
told after the collapse of the Soviet Union that they would be targeted by
American missiles if they refused to give up their stocks of Soviet nuclear
weapons, and they did give them up.
The hard truth is that a country such as Britain with Trident
submarines is rather like being a carrier boy for the big game hunter.
In effect, in allowing Britain to have a system like Trident,
the United States is having your treasury subsidize a costly weapons system for
them. You get the pride and penis-envy value out of it while America gets some
costly armaments paid for by British taxpayers.
Such a system will never, never in fact be Britain's to use
according to its own judgment and for its own purposes.
The situation somewhat resembles that of the F-35 fighter
jet which America is trying to foist off on every "ally."
The F-35 is an unbelievably expensive dog of a plane, poorly
designed to try doing everything and ending doing none of them well. The U.S.
is pouring billions into it to try to get it half right. All the allies buying
some of them, as they have been very much pressured to do, provide a huge
subsidy to this effort for the Pentagon.
These are some of the most wasteful ways possible to spend
British money, essentially shoveling it over to the Pentagon. And they do
nothing for Britain’s defense needs or technological advance. In Trident, you have
an effective but literally unusable weapon. In the F-35 you have an ineffective
but usable weapon. In both cases you literally are billions poorer.
