h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Serious point however, is there still an actual deterrent in the UK having nuclear weapons? or does it encourage others to seek them becasue we are seen to have them, like the US, like North Korea, like China, like India and Pakistan etc. Isn't it now clear that nuclear non-proliferation is a joke and disregarded by almost every government?"

Hmm, interesting... My personal thought is that no, the UK being geographically situated where it is probably doesn't have much direct effect on many other countries nowadays.

If you look at where nuclear weapons are being/have been developped in the last couple of decades then it's usually had something to do with local geo-political problems...

Pakistan - India who have been at each other's throats for centuries

China - With border disputes with Russia on one side and issues Taiwan on the other

North Korea... with half the US Army (the half that isn't in Iraq) sat just the other side of the DMZ

Iran... On one side they've India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers... On the other they've had a despotic dictator who's been having a go at them for years, only to find he's been replaced by the other half of the US Army - who are now starting to have a go at them.

Israel... Surrounded by half a dozen countries who's governments would _love_ to see Israel wiped off the map.

South Africa - shunned and ignored by the international community for decades - no wonder their government wanted to make their country more powerful on an international stage.

Where we might have a problem nowadays is that if the UK were considered a stable, peace loving country then our nuclear weapons might add weight to our opinions/actions in internation policing/politics...

The trouble is that right now, half the world seems to see the UK government as a lacky to an extreme right wing US government, and thus extremely prejudiced against the muslim world - which would probably have the opposite effect and actually encourage other countries to develop nuclear arms.

Perhaps not geographically influential but I see it as politically influential. as you point our our influence politcally as a honest broker or a country of good faith has been seriously undermined, perhasp fatally in the last few years.

Can a country that so badly misjudged the presence of WMDs in Iraq, is all but set on a course of new nuclear power stations; if the intimations of Blair and others are taken at face value and which is now openly discusing renewing it's nuclear deterrent, seriously come to the court of nuclear non-proliferation with clean hands and say to others don't go down the nuclear route? I'd expect derision.

And in response to this new emnity towards us what are we talking about - but only renewing/replacing our own nuclear defences. It is inspired lunacy imho. I'd love to see one of our government do some of the disarming we so happily preach about, if we can persude Gaddaffi to give up WMD's why can't we follow suit?

I'd forgotten about S.Africa and Israel's programmes.
Also when Bush was in India recently didn't he agree new terms on a nuclear deal with India, much to Pakistan and Musharaff's chargrin?
There was a rumour I'd heard repeated on the news occassionally that the US was interested in developing "battlefield nukes." How much truth there is in that I don't know but if true, mini-nukes on troops and artillery - are they serious? Which war is this they are planning for?

Nuclear non-proliferation is not seriously an agenda anymore and I fear that is to our detriment. The UK's hypocrisy in maintaining its place in the nuclear club of the haves and the havenots, would I imagine, get up the noses of the Iranians just as much as this patronising "carrot and stick" rhetoric coming out of Washington.

"Can a country that so badly misjudged the presence of WMDs in Iraq, is all but set on a course of new nuclear power stations; if the intimations of Blair and others are taken at face value and which is now openly discusing renewing it's nuclear deterrent, seriously come to the court of nuclear non-proliferation with clean hands and say to others don't go down the nuclear route? I'd expect derision."

I'm not sure what what being mistaken about WMDs in Iraq (ie an intelligence failing) and building nuclear power stations (ie a peaceful use of nuclear power) has to do with dissuading nuclear non-proliferation. The main stalling-point from the UK's point of view is that we have atomic weapons and we're telling other countries we can have them but they can't. That's something that's been the case for forty years, so I don't see how two recent irrelevant UK issues affect any of this.

"And in response to this new emnity towards us what are we talking about - but only renewing/replacing our own nuclear defences. It is inspired lunacy imho."

For a nuclear power to update it's weapon systems is standard practice. I don't see how this is "inspired lunacy". If Brown hadn't signalled intent to update the weapons it's not as if we'd have got rid of them. The fundamental stalling-point remains the same.

"I'd love to see one of our government do some of the disarming we so happily preach about, if we can persude Gaddaffi to give up WMD's why can't we follow suit?"

First, our nuclear arsenal (unlike the enormous arsenals of the USA and Russia) is fairly small so there's not an awful lot to disarm. Any talk of disarming warheads should focus on those two countries (and indeed, in the past, has). Secondly, I'm not convinced we "persuaded" Gaddaffi - he made the first moves on that issue. Gaddaffi is playing politics - looking to improve relations with the West and lift the sanctions against his country now that he and the West have a common enemy (Islamism). It's worked out for him extremely well.

Russia's nuclear arsenal isn't anything like it used to be though - quietly (for understandable reasons) they've been scaling it back throughout the last fifteen years and intend to end up with a deterrent roughly the size of the French one. Or slightly bigger than ours, if you like.

Oh yes. Incidentally, target number one in any nuclear strike on France would presumably be their SLBM station which I think is Brest. Given the prevailing wind conditions that would undoubtedly kill more Britons than it would French people.

I was really wanting to drop this in, though:

http://cns.miis.edu/research/safrica/chron.htm

South Africa doesn't have a nuclear weapons programme. It did have, but it doesn't any more. The only nation to date which has armed itself and then disarmed itself.

"South Africa doesn't have a nuclear weapons programme. It did have, but it doesn't any more. The only nation to date which has armed itself and then disarmed itself."

South Africa only disarmed because the aparteid regime knew it was a pariah state with no real allies and wanted to defend itself. After the collapse of aparteid in the early 1990s the nuclear weapons became an anachronism since the regime that had wanted them no longer existed and so they were abandoned.

A simliar example is North Korea, if it's telling the truth in saying it has atomic weapons and if (in the future) the NK regime any future democratic government of that country will likely abandon them.

Countries like India and Pakistan are different - they are stable, non-pariah states that acquired them because of the potential threat from powerful neighbours (not least each other).

"South Africa only disarmed" should read "only armed itself". Oops.

Doesn't that make Whisky's case then that nuclear proliferation is more to do with local politics or feuds with neighbours?

Perhaps I'll concede, I overstated my case in my last post - but the intelligence failure on Iraq and the decision to invade are connected to non-proliferation of weapons becasue one of the many weapons we were seeking to dissarm Saddam of, were nuclear weapons.

The support we lent that that invasion has undermined our abilty to reason with Iran over a nuclear weapons programme that it denies it has.

I think inspired lunacy is an apt phrase, because why is this decision being talked about being taken now and for what reason is it necessary to renew our military deterrent? I don't think it makes these islands any safer having a new round of nuclear subs, even foregoing the debate earlier in the thread about who really controls what, but for the simple fact that if we renew our weapons - what posible message does that send to countries we are trying to dissuade from arming?

And I don't see how the Russian and US stockpiles being larger excludes us from a process of dissarming. At this stage it's not about the literal number of weapons still out there but about the message keeping them active sends to the world. So long as no-one disarms (and South Africa being the notable exception ) no one else will be persuaded either.

And you are probably right about Gadaffi.

I think at root my very simple worry is that renewing our nuclear deterrent solves nothing it only adds to the problem.

>>Countries like India and Pakistan are different - they are stable, non-pariah states<<

Pakistan's capacity to maintain 'stability' is rather questionable. Military coups have been the rule rather than the exception for long stretches of its history - the idea of a militant Islamist regime somewhere in the future isn't altogether out of the question either (the regime currently backed by the US isn't altogether unlike pre-revolution Iran in a number of respects - except that it's now nuclear of course).

And if a nation needs to go nuclear if it has nuclear neighbours, where does that leave Iran?

Argentina and Brazil both started nuclear programmes at one point, then agreed not to proceed. I'm not saying those two countries have anything like as fraught a relationship as India and Pakistan, but isn't that the preferable solution?

I know I'm risking the crystal ball thing, but I suspect future generations are going to judge us pretty harshly for this one. At the end of the Cold War, there was a perfect opportunity to do away with nuclear weapons altogether and it was up to Britain and France to take a lead in that. Had we scrapped Trident then, it would have made this country *more* safe, I would argue, rather than less: with them, we're a nuclear target (or Faslane is, anyway), without them, who would want to launch a nuclear strike on this country? I mean, what for?

Basically, the only two positions of safety are if no one has them or if everyone has them - where you're anywhere in between there are all sorts of hazards. Personally, I'd rather no one had them. And the Cold War logic of deterrence just doesn't apply anymore, since there's only one nation in the world that retains first-strike capability.

(Which does not mean being able just to launch them, it means being able to launch enough of them to ensure that you eliminate the other country's ability to retaliate - and, with Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles, where it's all but impossible to ensure success, even that one country's first-strike capability is questionable against at least four of its potential opponents).

So what's the point? Say we retain four Trident or next-generation equivalent submarines. We can use them against countries that can't retaliate for whatever psychotic reasons, but only on the basis that that then strengthens their need in the interim to acquire the means to retaliate: our retention of our nuclear 'deterrent' is actually *now* (as opposed to during the Cold War) an incentive to other countries to acquire the same. As a threat, it's absolutely useless.

Or, we can use it against countries that can retaliate, which is basically a suicide pact.

(Sorry Clive - I had that window open for far too long I seem to be agreeing with everything you just said)

The more the merrier I say.

(that's people agreeing not nuclear weapons, save someone getting confused.)

The thing that really bothers me about North Korea is, its pretty likely that there's going to be a revolution there eventually. The place is just too poor for that not to happen. And if you have li'l Kim sitting in his Presidential palace as murderous hoardes break through the door, what's to stop him from launching? And of course, us having nuclear weapons too really wouldn't make the blindest bit of difference.

"Or, we can use it against countries that can retaliate, which is basically a suicide pact."

Or a hostile country that acquires them cannot use them against us because we could retaliate so any potential war becomes a stalemate and therefore not worth fighting. If you remove your deterrent then you remove the reason for the hostile country not to attack you and no make a nuclear attack more, not less, likely.

This is how a nuclear deterrent works.

"and no make"

ignore that rogue "no".

>>and make a nuclear attack more, not less, likely<<

Sorry, but I disagree with that - the idea of using nuclear weapons against countries that don't have them in the first place ... well, I used the word psychotic earlier and that does seem to me to fit. I mean, what for? To render depopulated and partially uninhabitable a country that would therefore capitulate and ... what? What's the military objective here? Where's the victory? Where would the winner stand in the eyes of the rest of the world?

Likelihood is that any nation that used them against a non-nuclear country would have to be instantly targetted by all the other nuclear nations as itself incapable of handling them responsibly (i.e. never actually using them) and posing an immediate threat, with the response time measurable in minutes. If, for instance, North Korea ever did use one against Japan, China would be more or less obliged to obliterate North Korea a few minutes later, purely for its own protection.

That's the real problem with nuclear weapons. They're not really military weapons at all. They're just instruments of mass destruction, too blunt ever to be able to achieve anything.

Awesome Whisky, love the image of a UK fishing trawler off the coast of North Korea.

The russian one's weren't ever much good either... Once had one following us around the Baltic for a week until the skipper got fed up and took off at about 40 miles an hour - leaving the thing bobbing around in our wake (he even had the nerve to signal 'das vidanya' to the poor guys on the trawler as we steamed over the horizon. )

Pity our skippers nowadays have to get written permission from their mums to go above 15kts or so

Trin, can you explain how "we" had the opportunity to get rid of all nuclear weapons when the cold war ended? How exactly were "we" going to get the Chinese to disarm?

ps. And as a corralary, how were the Chinese going to get us to disarm? And trust that *complete* disarmament had occured?

"Sorry, but I disagree with that - the idea of using nuclear weapons against countries that don't have them in the first place ... well, I used the word psychotic earlier and that does seem to me to fit. I mean, what for? To render depopulated and partially uninhabitable a country that would therefore capitulate and ... what? What's the military objective here? Where's the victory? Where would the winner stand in the eyes of the rest of the world?"

You're missing the point. Countries tend to acquire atomics in order to protect themselves from outside threats which is why they're such a "must-have" weapon for unliked states like North Korea and Iran. Once you have atomics you can dismiss the serious threat of invasion. In a world with multiple nuclear powers, using them against an undefended country would likely bring trouble down on your head (it's almost certainly no coincidence that the one time they have been used, it's when no other country possessed them). Apart from that, most serious "battlefield" use of atomics can be achieved by non-atomic means. Their main purpose, then and now, has been to stop anyone from risking an attack.