Quote:
Originally Posted by Xaccers
If it's in their intrest to do so, financially and politically (Falklands anyone?).
If we were nuked, exactly how would we object to other NATO members for not coming to our aid for fear of themselves being nuked?
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OK, fair enough,
if we no longer had a nuclear deterrent
and if we were then subjected to a nuclear attack,
and if our NATO allies decided "You know, I think we'd best stay out of this one...", we would of course be a bit screwed...Then again, one you've been nuked, what use is retaliation, other than post-mortem revenge?
I've always thought that the point of a nuclear deterrent was that it was meant to be, well... a deterrent.
We have these weapons to deter other nuclear states from attacking us, as they know that even if they flattened the whole of London (or more), our Vanguard subs out on patrol as a continuous at-sea deterrent would be able to swiftly retaliate with a load of Trident SLBMs, hence deterring anyone from attacking us in the first place.
If we no longer had any nuclear deterrent whatsoever (which is not what the Lib Dems are proposing), we would still be a member of NATO, our NATO allies the USA & France would still have nuclear weapons, and so there would still be a deterrent against attacking us. Any nuclear-armed rogue state would know that even if we did not have nuclear weapons any more, our allies would still have them, & would be assumed to come to our aid under our mutual/collective defence agreements.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirius
I just cannot trust him. He reminds me to much of the biggest lier of them all Blair
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I find that Cameron reminds me far more of Blair than Clegg does...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirius
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[btw, the final quote you've bolded is that of
Liam Fox, the
Conservative Party's Shadow Defence Spokesman, who as you quoted has "held out the prospect of a cut in the number of nuclear warheads.".]
If it was the consensus among them, it would be party policy & their website & manifesto etc. would say something like "We believe in unilateral nuclear disarmament & wish to totally scrap the UK's nuclear deterrent". It isn't. They don't.
Some Lib Dem MPs & prospective parliamentary candidates are in favour of getting rid of our nuclear deterrent completely, but not all of them.
[Just as
some Labour MPs are in favour of disarming, even though it is not party policy. Just as
some Labour MPs are not in favour of Trident renewal, even though it is party policy, etc.]
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-editi...on-to-the-vote
When the vote to renew Trident came up in the Commons, 88 backbench Labour MPs voted against the Government's white paper on renewing Trident, rebelling against the three-line whip imposed by the party. The vote only passed because of Conservative support... however the Conservative party also imposed a three-line whip, & the article I've linked to says that "...with several past and present Tory MPs speaking against Trident renewal and calling for greater resources to be devoted to more effective non-nuclear means of defense and deterrence..." and "the use of a three-line whip to mandate support for another party's motion is very rare and indicates that more Tory MPs might have opposed Trident if left to their own judgment.".
[Also, note that voting against renewing it now does not equal voting in favour of scrapping the deterrent altogether]
This is also interesting regarding the renewal decision a few years ago:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...nt-436428.html
As mentioned earlier, if we did not have nuclear weapons, would it matter? Why do we need them? We're in NATO. The US has them. France has them*. But no-one else in NATO does & they get along just fine. Who would we use them against? It's not the Cold War any more...We can't use them in retaliation for a terror attack. We could use them against a nation, such as Iran or North Korea, if they for some insane reason chose to attack us, but without nuclear weapons of our own we would still have our nuclear-armed NATO allies as a deterrent against attack (or as retaliation for an attack). Why do *we* need them?
*[Actually... sod it... If France has them, then we MUST have them!
]
I'm not actually advocating nuclear disarmament by the UK (I've not been in CND since my student days over a decade ago, & personally I do accept the need for some sort of nuclear deterrent), I'm just trying to show the other side to "WE MUST HAVE THEM!!!!!!!".
Regardless, however, unilateral nuclear disarmament is not Lib Dem party policy, it is not Lib Dem party policy to totally ditch our nuclear deterrent. They simply think that we should not spend ££££££££££££££ on a like-for-like Trident replacement, given the cost and given the rather different situation in the world since the end of the Cold War & since we first got Trident (& Polaris before it).