ClymAngus wrote:So if someone nukes Scotland does that mean England doesn't have to retaliate? Don't worry! Of course we would! (you can't stratosphere that much good whisky and expect to get away with it.)
Only
if the USA lets you ...
To be fair to Corbyn, he's just suggesting that the constant at-sea patrols, with nuclear weapons ready to fire at any time, be stepped down. If global tensions start to build, then the warheads can be restored to the submarines. It's a bit like having a gun, but choosing not to carry it everywhere in your hand, cocked and loaded: perhaps in some situations it could be kept in its holster, or even - now and then - left at home ... (although there is of course the issue that putting the warheads back into the submarines in a time of global crisis might make things even more tense).
My issue with Trident isn't that it's a "deterrent", and that if we gave it up we'd suddenly be invaded by the Russians/Chinese/Vikings/Martians/whoever. Clearly, given all the countries around the world that don't have nuclear weapons, and who aren't constantly being overrun by invaders, there is no correlation between having nukes and not being attacked. My main, and pointed, objections to Trident are that A) it's a hell of a lot of money to pay for something that does nothing (see previous sentence), and which we can never use - if we have to fire it, then it's waaay too late and frankly, I would quite honestly prefer that millions of civilians somewhere else are NOT murdered to avenge my death; and B) it's bloody dangerous, it's based less than 30 miles upwind of Scotland's largest city, where I happen to live, and it's held in the
less-than-competent hands of the British military. (For another, squeakingly hilarious, example of British military competence with regard to nuclear submarines, see
this story, and try to imagine what happens the next time some sailor goes nuts with a gun on board a nuclear submarine and there ISN'T a two-fisted local councillor on hand to sort things out.)
The purpose of Trident is to channel vast sums of money into the arms industry, and to allow British politicians to pretend that we're still some sort of player on the global stage. But consider: who do you think has more clout, internationally? The non-nuclear-armed Angela Merkel, or the Trident-toting David Cameron? Are we really safer as a nation because we have a stockpile of WMDs built and maintained by another country, given that soon we will very likely no longer be able to make our own steel?
You might like to watch this:
http://www.channel4.com/news/nuclear-tr ... -schlosser
I'd strongly recommend reading Schlosser's
Command and Control - it's about US nuclear weapons accidents (because the USA lets its own people find out about these things), it reads like a thriller, and contains some of the most hair-raising true stories I've ever read.