How many nuclear submarines should we have?
Is it time to scrap Britain's nuclear weapons? Gordon Brown says he's prepared to get rid of one of the four Trident submarines.
Does the UK need to spend 20 billion pounds upgrading our weapons when there's such a strain on public spending? Can Britain be a world power if it scraps Trident? Is it time to move on from the cold war or should we be prepared to defend ourselves against countries like Iran?
Email your thoughts to breakfast@bbc.co.uk, text us on 85058 or leave a comment here on the blog.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~11~RS~)
Comments
At a time when states like N/Korea and soon Iran are nuclear this is not the time to disarm.
Was it Bevin, at a labor party conference who said " to unilateraly disarm is to send a British foreign secretary naked into the conference chamber " after deligates had voted to disarm the nuclear deterent.
At the same conference Hugh Gaitskill said he would "fight and fight again" to overturn that decision.
The world is a dangerous place.
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I am sadly of the opinion that we should talk softly but carry a big stick. We live in dangerous times.
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I agree with Zelly - not for the first time. If we bin our nukes we are even more beholden to the Americans, whom we are intimately allied and aligned with in the eyes of everyone else and indeed in reality. All it needs is China and Russia to get uppity again and only France will be able to respond for Europe. Then there's Uncle Kim and Armadinnajacket striving to get hold of The Bomb - and they're known to be less than stable. The philosophy was MAD - mutually assured destruction - and that philosphy of maintaining a balnace of strengh and the guarentee that the lobber of the first missile would be wiped off the face of the earth in retaliation kept a lid on even the most vociferous power-hungry idealogue.
Then there is the faint whiff of hypocrisy; Gordon keeps telling us there will be no cuts, only investment (despite his ministers sneaking out to announce reductions to the media) and then there's all those jobs...
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I would like to comment on two calls. The first a man said we should keep our deterrent so we don't rely on the Americans. The second said Israel should be supplied with a nuclear umbrella so that Iran won't feel the need for weapons. So Israel should rely on others but not us.
No mention of the EU on the programme. We should scrap all nuclear weapons and the EU should take our seat on the "security" council.
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I think Israel will do what it feels is in its best interests regardless of what anyone elses thinks - as usual. Although it's not officially mentioned, apparently Israel has its own nukes and everyone whos anyone in world leadership is aware of it. Even without its own arsenal, only a complete fool messes with Israel - their track record for winning their wars is quite well established, having routed several much larger, better equipped armies in their time.
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I only caught snatches of the phone-in so I don't know if any of these points were raised:
1. Britain ceased to be a world power as long ago as the 1930s. The General Staff acknowledged this before World War II when they warned British PMs that they could not protect the Empire and fight a land war in Europe simultaneously.
2. Britain's defence spending has been consistently the highest in western Europe throughout the entire 1945-2009 period. Are we any the safer for it?
3. After millions spent and wasted on developing an 'independent deterrent', Britain eventually bought the off the shelf American Polaris system. But, even after paying for it - through the nose - Britain could never deploy these missiles without US permission. I suspect that the same is true of Trident.
4. In the 1980s, Enoch Powell pointed out that Britain's independent deterrent was quite unneccessary as, in the event of a hot war, it would be in America's best interests to protect its main European landing strip viz. the UK.
5. The gravest external danger faced by the British public in recent years has been terrorism. Terrorists may eventually use nuclear weapons but are quite immune to them.
6. As always, influential people with a vested interest in ratcheting up the fears of the general population come out of the woodwork. Manufacturers of weapons systems, the right wing press, this defence institute or that strategic studies college will and must always press the case for extravagant defence spending. That is their job - to get on the TV with Paxman and scare the viewers.
Those with reservations about the defence lobby have to be very careful lest they are depicted as un-patriotic, closet taleban or part of a left wing conspiracy against our young soldiers.
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I don't want to say a certain number...But a huge amount of Nuclear Submarines are needed....
=Dennis Junior=
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so half way through :
informed caller: israel has 200 nukes
nicky: says how do you know
expert: yes 200 seems to be about right.
5 minutes or so from the end :
caller from lala land :t we cant give up the fight against the taliban because if the taliban win they will take over pakistan and then take control of the nukes and then the taliban will kill 15 million brits. with those nukes.
nicky: in the name of god (that is it is irrational and primitive with respect to the taliban)
me: so isnt israel predicated on the belief that its being is gods will. isnt the motivation behind the illegal expansion because of the belief that god has already determined this 9palestinian) land to be israel.
apparently nicky discloses in todays show that he goes on bbc awareness courses but im not too certain what he is being made aware of.
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"apparently Israel has its own nukes and everyone whos anyone in world leadership is aware of it. Even without its own arsenal, only a complete fool messes with Israel - their track record for winning their wars is quite well established, having routed several much larger, better equipped armies in their time."
jimmy carter recently disclosed that israel has some 200 nukes. he should know.
as for israel winning wars, theyve proven not to be o successful in lebanon recently, and they certainly did not achieve their goals in the recent gaza war which they are still continuing in terms of their seige (collective punishment).
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"I am sadly of the opinion that we should talk softly but carry a big stick. We live in dangerous times."
gadhafy made an interesting speech at the un today (not covered by the bbc or sky, al jazeera english cut away once he got to the bits about the abuse in abu ghraib etc ) about the hypocrisy of the big stick brigade.
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Many people were aware that Iraq's WMD was a lie when our forces attacked and occupied Iraq, a country that hadn't attacked the UK and was not capable of fighting back. However a far bigger lie perpetrated for almost a generation was that the nuclear deterrent was to fend off the Soviet threat. Since the end of the so called 'Cold War'(free market capitalism versus state capitalism) nuclear arms proliferated rendering that argument as bogus as it always was and laying bare that it was unchallenged global capitalism that is and always will be the cause of any threat of nuclear conflict!
One of the most ridiculous arguments expressed by several of your callers you put on air (many predictably from a military background who haven't quite adjusted back to life in the real economic world) is that nuclear weapons have prevented wars. Suggest that to: the Vietnamese, Congolese, Rwandans, Afghans, Somalians, Koreans, Iraqi's or Iranians.
The reality is that nuclear weapons are solely to protect the economic imperialist interests of a small minority of global capitalists who through the passage of time have successfully divided the globe in artificial borders (countries) to make it appear as if conflict is always inevitable between them.
As long as this economic system continues, so will nuclear proliferation regardless of how many short term vote-winning stunts national leaders like Gordon Brown try to pull off which is what this latest Trident submarine withdrawal is all about and which won't make the slightest bit of difference anyway!
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"as for israel winning wars, theyve proven not to be o successful in lebanon recently, and they certainly did not achieve their goals in the recent gaza war which they are still continuing in terms of their seige (collective punishment)."
Yes, it's a shame when a quick, decisive operation is hampered by having to consider that there's some woolly headlheaded liberal with a camera behind you, leading to a drawn-out campaign resulting in far more casualties.
Change the record, for God's sake!
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"Change the record, for God's sake!"
so says a person who has no sense of the nature of israels crimes against its neighbours.
"Yes, it's a shame"
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"Nick Vinehill"
good post
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No mention of the crimes its neighbours perpetuate against Israel, I notice. Anyone for another ball-bearing packed rocket...?
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