His argument is that Britain would be better able to support American foreign policy if it spent more money on conventional forces instead.
This is the very attitude which led to this outburst by Ernest Bevin :
"We've got to have this thing.
I don't mind it for myself, but I don't want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked at or to by the Secretary of State of the US as I have just been...
We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs ...
Ernest Bevin understood that the British people pay their taxes to further their own best interests,not those of the United States.
Would you sleep better knowing that the UK had the conventional capability to remove an enemy nuclear weapons fcillity, or a hostile regime before we faced a nuclear attack; or would you sleep better knowing that the UK had the capability to burn up a few thousand "enemy" civilians in retaliation for them having already done the same to us?
ReplyDeleteOur (and France's) balistic missiles are political tools used to justify a fading world power remaining at the UN's top table.
Besides, probably the biggest atomic threat we face comes from terrorist fanatics who aren't deterred by such grand weapons and who don't present viable targets for a nuclear retaliation.
Hello Brian Black,
ReplyDeleteall weapons are political tools.
The United Kingdom does not have the conventional capability to remove nuclear weapons facilities from hostile nations such as Russia,China,North Korea,Iran or even little Israel.
Nor could it afford to acquire such a capability without expenditures many times greater than than the cost of maintaining a nuclear deterrent.
Even if it did acquire such a capability,without a nuclear deterrent,any attempt to use conventional forces to neutralise a hostile nation's nuclear forces could provoke a nuclear attack which could be launched by said nation without fear of nuclear retaliation if the United Kingdom did not possess a nuclear deterrent.
There are few nations which have the resources to maintain a nuclear weapons capability,there are no terrorist organisations with such resources,nor are there likely to be as any organisation with the resources to field nuclear weapons would have no need to resort to terrorism which is a stategy of weakness.
The nuclear deterrent force exists to deter nuclear attack by nation states with nuclear weapons,it was not created to deter minor terrorist attacks.
Grand Logistics.