Scrap UK'S Nuclear Weapons? Are They Mad?

Question

Does anyone agree that scrapping Britains nuclear option would be an act of madness? Considering it is due to come into effect in 2025 and last until 2055. How can the disarmament brigade predict what threats we will face in 25 to 50 years time? Wth North Korea nuclear, Iran on the way, and the Arab world looking to follow, and uncertainty on what our relations with Russia and China will be in the future, surely we need to keep the deterrent that served us so well during the cold war??

RE Cardinal Fang: Were not building more, we're actually reducing them by 20% overall. Iran and N Korea are brutal dictatorships, they are likely to use them without compunction..unless of course we have them, thats what they are for, as a deterrent to ensure no one like the aforementioned uses them on us! Any country which allowd terrorists to try and strike with nuclear weapons from its territory would be guilty by proxy, and so we'd hit them.

Answer 1

yes we need an up-dated version
what's the point in cutting the number of war heads if anything we needmore
with the rest of the world becoming capable of going nuclear we need them
think about it we are not to far from another war so we need them

Answer 2

This is a shortsighted view. Having a nice nuclear weapons stockpile might make you feel safe but the simple fact is that if nuclear war breaks out, we're all in a *LOT* of trouble, whether the UK has nukes of its own or not.

Lets just say North Korea decides to launch weapons at the UK. What will a nuclear arsenal do? Sure, if you're quick, you can launch back at 'em and take out millions of their people, but what are you going to do about the nukes on their way to the UK? You still can't defend yourself against their weapons. What use is a weapon you can't even use to defend yourself?

Time and money needs to be spent on developing defenses against nuclear threat rather than maintaining the "mutual destruction" deterrent that kept the US and USSR on the brink of nuclear launch for so many years during the cold war.

If mutual destruction was truly an effective deterrent, then the Cuban crisis would never have been a crisis would it? We would have known that the USSR would never launch because they knew the US would retaliate.

But the truth is we know that it only takes one person who decides the collateral damage is worth it to kill millions and millions of innocent people with the push of a button. Without an effective defense, all the nukes in the world won't prevent that. WITH an effective defense, all the nukes in the world are rendered useless.

Nuclear weapons are an outdated technology. We no longer need to take out an entire city to render it defenseless. Maintaining nuclear arsenals simply gives other countries a reason to do the same thing.

Answer 3

First of all I would like to ask - if a non-state terror group had nukes, where would you bomb?

Secondly, how can we tell Iran and North Korea to keep to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, when we ourselves are breaking it by building more of them?

Thirdly - can you ever concieve of a situation where we really would lauch nuclear weapons and risk all out destruction ourselves? If we're not going to use it, why have it?

It's time we set an example to the world and scrapped our nuclear arsenal. It would in the long term make us a lot safer than having them.

Answer 4

They are all peas out of the same pod and stand on their head once they have ceased their involvement in politics, the Conservatives have a very short memory of their evil dealings from 1979 to 1997 and take advantage of the fact that there is a new generation of voters who either do not care or do not have any knowledge of the past performance of that party. Then there is the other aspect of a British government of either colour who fear what economic action the American government will take against Britain if they do not carry out their wishes, (e.g. the lies about Afghanistan and Iraq ) but when you discover who controls the U.S government the answer becomes crystal clear. There is little doubt that what is in the mind of Michael Portillo is to hand over our independent deterrent to the U.S. and let them make all the decisions and also pay a substantial amount of taxpayers money to them for the privilege of involving us in even more wars. As Portillo has a first class degree in History he of all people should know better than to make inane comments such as this..

Answer 5

There should always be a deterrent but I ask a deterrent to what?
Nuclear weapons were for the cold war. We are now in a different type of war. How do we protect ourselves best from those who wish to defeat us in the new war? What must those nuclear weapons rely upon to work? Control that and you control the world.

Answer 6

No, I disagree. I think keeping the weapons would be an act of madness!

What use are weapons that we can't use without the USA's permission? We can't predict what threats we will face in 2025, but we can say that there is no currently forseeable scenario where having nuclear weapons would be of use to this country

Answer 7

Falklands would be like nuking your own land
Hong Kong was a 99 year lease that had ended
God forbid a nuclear war but you have to weapons strong enough to deter the enemy

Answer 8

Yeah. If it hadn't been for our nuclear weapons, we'd have had to withdraw from Suez, the Argentinians might have invaded the Falklands and we'd have had to give Hong Kong to the Chinese.

Answer 9

and dont forget the jews dont like you very much either