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Trident. Yay or nay?


Stichman

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I just handed an anti-trident leaflet on the street, and it got me a-thinking. What do you make of the whole affair. Should we have nuclear weapons or not?

The woman on the leaflet writes "Defence should not be put before liberty and common sense", which strikes me as a slightly silly thing to say - surely defence and liberty are pretty closely linked? And self-defence strikes me as common sense. Hmm.

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  • 4 weeks later...
There is no need for the UK to have Nuclear Weapons.

Replacing Trident and building missile defence systems in the UK and Europe is a total waste of money and could start a new Cold War. It is immoral, illegal, expensive and useless.

There are far more useful things our government should be spending 76Billion on!

why is replacing Trident illegal??

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why is replacing Trident illegal??

Replacing Trident would breach customary international law, in particular because it would infringe the intrangressible requirement that a distinction must be drawn between combatants and non-combatants.

If the envisaged use of force is itself unlawful, the stated readiness to use it would be a threat prohibited under Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter and that the replacement of Trident would be likely to constitute a material breach of article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

If the UK develops its nuclear provision, it will be tearing-up the Non Proliferation Treaty, having abandoned any vestige of commitment to it. Where will that leave the prospect of negotiating away existing nuclear weapons? Where will that leave the prospect of persuading countries without nuclear weapons not to acquire them? How can we persuade Iran to respect the NPT when we do not?

The use, the threat of use, the planned replacement of Trident is illegal. The Scottish Parliament should take the opportunity today to send a clear message to Whitehall that Scotland respects the rule of law and expects Downing Street to do so also.

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Bugger not having nuclear weapons. Not having some crazy leader trying to nuke us because we don't have any. Imagine how much of an easy target we'd be then.

Which "crazy" leader are you referring to? Nuclear weapons do not prevent a country being attacked by another WMD country. Why would having a Trident replacement prevent Britain being attacked by WMD? I fail to see your logic.

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Which "crazy" leader are you referring to? Nuclear weapons do not prevent a country being attacked by another WMD country. Why would having a Trident replacement prevent Britain being attacked by WMD? I fail to see your logic.

The threat of retaliation surely?

I'm on the fence by the by, although the billions of pounds would be nice.

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Which "crazy" leader are you referring to? Nuclear weapons do not prevent a country being attacked by another WMD country. Why would having a Trident replacement prevent Britain being attacked by WMD? I fail to see your logic.

Surely nobody is going to kick off a nuclear war when everyone has nukes? The threat of retaliation means that nobody is really going to use them because it would just end up in the whole world getting pretty bashed.

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What you are talking about is a doctrine called Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

It is the most insane idea ever in the history of the world.

The Fog Of War: 11 lessons from the life of Robert S. MacNamara is a film in which MacNamara (US Secretary of Defence, 1961-8) talks about the things he learned while in that position. Including how close we have come, on several occasions, to destroying the world with a massive nuclear war. His second lesson (of the 11 in the film) was "Rationality will not save us." I suggest watching this film. I imagine it is up on google video.

Spend a couple of hours reading about MAD and how close we came to destroying the world during the cold war and it will probably change you perspective on our nuclear policies.

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What you are talking about is a doctrine called Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

It is the most insane idea ever in the history of the world.

The Fog Of War: 11 lessons from the life of Robert S. MacNamara is a film in which MacNamara (US Secretary of Defence, 1961-8) talks about the things he learned while in that position. Including how close we have come, on several occasions, to destroying the world with a massive nuclear war. His second lesson (of the 11 in the film) was "Rationality will not save us." I suggest watching this film. I imagine it is up on google video.

Spend a couple of hours reading about MAD and how close we came to destroying the world during the cold war and it will probably change you perspective on our nuclear policies.

Okay dokey, but are you telling me you'd feel more comfortable if we had no nuclear weapons and the rest of the world did?

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If nuclear states were willing to honour the commitments they made in the NNPT then we would all be dismantling our nuclear weapons stockpiles and no one would have nuclear weapons. When we refuse to live up to our obligations, and when we build new nuclear weapons we are making the world more dangerous for ourselves. The very fact that we have nuclear weapons and threaten to use them forces our 'enemies' into developing them.

But, if there was an 'enemy' of ours that had nuclear weapons, i would still rather that we didn't.

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