Nukes or No-Nukes?

No

No

No

Nowhere is best!

Yes

No

Alll that plants will run out of fuel soon.....

In an era where individuals or small numbers of people can cause carnage by driving trucks along seaside promenades, flying planes into buildings, opening fire at airports and gig venues or exploding backpacks on public transit systems, the idea of a huge nuclear arsenal (which will in all likelihood never get used) is rather absurd.

Like HS2, Trident is a vanity project, a complete waste of money. The funds would be better spent on better intelligence and more policemen on the beat (and helping to reduce the deficit a bit, or just improving the quality of life in this country).

There are compelling arguments on both sides here. I can understand those who campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons but the truth is they can't be uninvented.  So we have to face up to the fact that some potentially hostile and unstable countries will have nuclear weapons and that the UK might be a target (for whatever mad reason).  The choice is do we rely on political and diplomatic persuasion and, if needs be, conventional military means to deter those who possess 'the bomb' and threaten us, or do we retain a modern nuclear deterrent with a reliable means of delivering it? What strategy is likely to deter the most? 

Looking back, countries that have opted for neutrality in the face of military powers squaring up to one another don't seem to fair too well, with despots no respecters of countries who stand on the touch-lines.  

So I'm in the camp of modernise Trident. I feel safer.

Cost? £31bn sounds a lot. It is a lot. But bear in mind HMG spends over £600bn every year and the £31bn will be spent over several years and employ a lot of people in the UK. 

Personally I'm against nuclear weapons and therefore against the renewal of Trident; however IF (okay so it should be 'AS') Trident is to be renewed, it needs to be done properly and whatever the costs are they need to be found. You can't do this piecemeal... the building and equipping of two aircraft carriers is a shambles, let's not repeat it with Trident II.

MDS posted:

I can understand those who campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons but the truth is they can't be uninvented.  

Perhaos, but we have "invented" countless chemical (and biological?) weapons which we choose not to pursue on moral grounds.

 

Cost? £31bn sounds a lot. It is a lot. But bear in mind HMG spends over £600bn every year and the £31bn will be spent over several years and employ a lot of people in the UK. 

£31bn is a conservative estimate on the cost of building the submarines only (and there is 10bn contingency fund on top).  To quote from The Guardian...

The most expensive item would be the cumulative running costs, estimated by the government to be about 6% of the total defence budget. Crispin Blunt, Tory chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, has calculated, on the basis of parliamentary answers, that a new Trident system would cost £167bn over a 30-year lifespan.

CND have estimated higher at over £200bn.

But to me the cost is irrelevant... if Trident is needed, then the costs must be met whatever they are; I'm just not convinced Trident (or any nuclear weapon) is justified.  The arguments just aren't convincing (IMO). 

I think we should spend a few thousand quid on big inflatable decoy Trident submarines and fool the world into thinking we have a serious nautical nuke deterrent when in reality we're simply saving a couple hundred billion that we can't afford to waste on something so hideously stupid in the first place.

It would be interesting to set up a forum member 'poll vote' to see the support for and against.

Why can't we set up a forum poll votes these days?  

Debs

naim_nymph posted:

I think we should spend a few thousand quid on big inflatable decoy Trident submarines and fool the world into thinking we have a serious nautical nuke deterrent when in reality we're simply saving a couple hundred billion that we can't afford to waste on something so hideously stupid in the first place.

But what if someone decides to invade us to destroy what we don't have?

Chris Dolan posted:

naim_nymph posted:

I think we should spend a few thousand quid on big inflatable decoy Trident submarines and fool the world into thinking we have a serious nautical nuke deterrent when in reality we're simply saving a couple hundred billion that we can't afford to waste on something so hideously stupid in the first place.

But what if someone decides to invade us to destroy what we don't have?

We could fill the inflatable decoys up with laughing gas, and if or when an invader pops them the gas would incapacitate them with giggling so they'd be unable to fight on and get captured : >

Debs

Thanks for posting, I am going to listen to it.

It's a much easier decision to make if you're several hundred miles away, like Westminster perhaps. I don't  like nukes but there are thousands of jobs depending on Trident. I'm glad it's not my decision.

Is also valid that  (for example) Iraq decides to create thousands of jobs to develop massive destruction weapons?

JamieWednesday posted:

Do we need them?

Do we want them?

Should we have them?

Where do we put them?

Should we spend the money paying down our debts instead?

Or put it into 'conventional' forces?

 

Yes, with the amount of Russian state-sponsored doping we need to anticipate ruskie zombie junkies on our doorsteps soon.

No, they are expensive and dangerous, but so are my pit bull terriers and no-one 'messes' with me.

Maybe not, but I trust myself more than my sneaky neighbours...

Under Jeremy Corbyn's high backed livingroom chair. No-one would look there, especially Jeremy, as he keeps his collection of rally megaphones and placard painting kit in the hallway.

No, target Basingstoke with a pre-emptive strike and the Credit Card bill will magically 'vanish'.

Yes. Join the Navy, see the world.

Erich posted:

Is also valid that  (for example) Iraq decides to create thousands of jobs to develop massive destruction weapons?

When you have a track record of using chemical weapons on your neighbours and your own population (Mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun etc.) probably not.

You mean like the US did in Vietnam with napalm?

Or nagasaki?

Erich posted:

You mean like the US did in Vietnam with napalm?

No, like the U.S. distributing small-pox infested blankets to Native Americans (seeing as we are now changing the country for which the question is being asked!)

Erich posted:

Or nagasaki?

Does not compute.

Three days after Hiroshima? Civilian and military casualties for continuing a conventional war? Think it through.

The OP has asked specific questions about Trident renewal, so let's stay on that rather than conflating the past actions of other governments.

If it hadn't been for the first batch of US submarines carrying ICBMs we wouldn't have GPS. I didn't get that info from a CND leaflet or Jeremy Corbyn, but then some people don't like to know these things.

No guarantee at all that this latest batch of submarines will deliver anything as useful as GPS, but who knows ?

It is a little more complicated than 'do we want them'.  Do we want them at all, of course not, but they exist and many countries, including some who we have perhaps not always been too friendly with, have many of them.  Do we want to not have them whilst those countries still do, no because not having a deterrent for that would be foolhardy.  When I was young and naive I was a member of CND and believed passionately that we should rid the world of Nukes.  I now understand that this will not happen and that removing ours unilaterally would be a risk too far in a risky world, indeed one that seems to be riskier now than it ever was.  The geni is out of the bottle and no amount of wishing will put it back, which is sad, and we would be better off spending our energies trying to build understanding and lasting relationships with our brethren in other countries.   

dayjay posted:

It is a little more complicated than 'do we want them'.  Do we want them at all, of course not, but they exist and many countries, including some who we have perhaps not always been too friendly with, have many of them.  Do we want to not have them whilst those countries still do, no because not having a deterrent for that would be foolhardy.  When I was young and naive I was a member of CND and believed passionately that we should rid the world of Nukes.  I now understand that this will not happen and that removing ours unilaterally would be a risk too far in a risky world, indeed one that seems to be riskier now than it ever was.  The geni is out of the bottle and no amount of wishing will put it back, which is sad, and we would be better off spending our energies trying to build understanding and lasting relationships with our brethren in other countries.   

Nice post dayjay. Rather than type my own, it is a lot easier to modify yours to express my own view.

Hope you don't mind. (something about copying being the most sincere form of flattery ?)

JamieWednesday posted:

Do we need them?................................Yes, because others have them.

Do we want them?................................Prefer not to, but since others have them, yes.

Should we have them?........................Yes, puts us (who are sensible) in a strong     negotiating position.

Where do we put them?.....................In submarines somewhere in the oceans.

Should we spend the money paying down our debts instead?......No. it's peanuts in the big picture.

Or put it into 'conventional' forces?.....It's not a case of "Either v Or", we need them both.

 

Nuclear weapons are so much better than the old fuzzy ones.

Well somebody had to say it��

Willy.