This Trident thing...

[andygates]

Please explain to me just who we're going to nuke?

For extra credit, compare to insurance against badger attack: £1000 premium, and we promise to gas the one wot bit you.  Explain how Trident offers a substantially more well-priced policy against a more credible threat.

Please explain to me just why this is anything more than reluctance to leave the Big Swinging Dicks Club?

Comments

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

http://www.octopustruth.com/

I can't believe you even needed to ask!

[skean.livejournal.com]

This explains everything. And if it doesn't, this one should

[simoneck.livejournal.com]

It isn't.

But it might almost be worth it, if we then shut up about Iran breaking the nuclear poliferation treaty. We signed that too and said we'd work to reduce then remove our capability. Can't see any sign of that yet.
I don't want Iran to gain this capability, but we shouldn't be so hypocritical and sanctimonious about it.

[jonnycowbells.livejournal.com]

We're going to nuke Iran and North Korea, but only if the US get nuked first. We're a strategic back up - a probably not very effective effort to avoid a single point of failure.

Quite how this was deemed acceptable between the USSR breaking up and other nasty foreigners getting nuclear programs I'm not sure. I guess it's a problem with mutually assured destruction - it's like being on the phone with your new girlfriend going "You hang up first", "No, you hang up first.", "No you....you still there?", "No you.."

Both situations leave me slightly sick.

On Greenpeace estimates I make it about £36 per person per year and it's more of a vaccine than an insurance policy. A vaccine that might not work, so more like a Rabies vaccine then. Or a Malarial prophylaxis. Do badgers carry Malaria?

Right - I'm off to swing my dick...

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Okay, I see the strategic backup (or at least strategic retribution) angle. Sorta like having a gun-toting neighbourhood: you rob me, my neighbour shoots you.

But the robber has to believe he's at risk, and in the analogy, he just goes armed if he does.

And here you end up with one of those pan-Atlantic gun control debates. The US side says that an armed community is a polite community; the UK side normally argues that fewer guns in circulation is good, and only skilled operators should use them in limited circumstances (the Met's Armed Response Unit has a staff of 350).

Hm, that argument could be stretched to say that we're the skilled operators - stable, mature, reasonably non-partisan. But I think we'd be kidding ourselves to believe it.

Nations are pretty much getting on. The "current terror threat" is not nation-sized, and has never threatened anything on the scale of even one of our smaller, sillier wars. All talk that having submarine nukes which could pop up in the Gulf and glass Mecca is bogus and silly.

[simoneck.livejournal.com]

>>All talk that having submarine nukes which could pop up in the Gulf and glass Mecca is bogus and silly.

No, it's true and scary.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Okay, compromise: it's true and silly, it's bogus protection and it's definitely scary.

An armed society is a polite society

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

In states where carrying in a car is permitted, drivers who are armed are more likely to commit acts of road rage.

I'd offer a citation but I can't be arsed.

Re: An armed society is a polite society

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It's credible without the citation. People are dumb / mendacious / impulsive. The more weapons, and the bigger the weapons, the greater the consequences of any dumbness, mendacity or impulse (viz the man-on-the-street's 9/12 "glass Mecca!" rants from the USA).

This risk is independent of any deterrent effect.

A weak deterrent and a high risk combine to make the possession of a deterrent more dangerous than not having it. Especially if you could have spent the billions on something more useful.