So we will be keeping our nuclear deterrent, its confirmed, by Blair, the Man, Mr Nuke… oh god what’s the point…
Blair’s rational for having a nuclear deterrent was fundamentally flawed on so many levels, he openly admitted that ours was the smallest of all “recognised” nuclear nations, of which Israel is still not one, and also that we only need three submarines, and one would always be on patrol. One sub, now I don’t want to base my logic on bond films or such but, how reliable is one submarine? How hard to find? We have all the risk and attention of a nuclear state but virtually none of the protection… we just have to hope that if someone decides at some point to twat us, they accept that our solitary submarine on patrol might get them if it knows where it came from etc… I know there are protocols etc but, really how is it an actual deterrent? Cameron liked the term minimum deterrent. But how much of a deterrent is that? Both parties argued that it was important for us to be strong and independent, but also that if we were to unilaterally disarm, it would mean nothing and no one would notice, or care
The US I accept has a credible deterrent, they are not only fiercely and frighteningly patriotic, but have enough nukes to alter the orbit of the planet.
France has planes, and possibly undeclared nuclear cheese, the US actually has, well, just about everything you can think of, and even China will soon have a new nuclear submarine program… The French have a new updated submarine system and they will have four submarines. Cameron seemed greatly vexed by the idea that the French could end up with more nuclear submarines than us.. He was keen for the prime minister to confirm that if we had less subs than the French they would at least be bigger, and faster.
The PM returned that obviously by definition our subs would be better than the French ones and went on to imply even casting doubt on such a certainty Cameron was extremely unpatriotic.
Blair also verged on mentioning a very interesting possibility. It was when he was commenting on the unpredictability of the future. Fair enough, in the 50s when Polaris was first considered you could never have predicted how the world would turn out, and likewise now we are looking at a nuclear deterrent that will still be in place in 50 yrs time, and we can know nothing about the kind of threats the world will then be experiencing.
It could be rogue states, it could be more substantial powers. But he here Blair took a tangent. He said we are now solid allies of the United States, but we should not assume, that a time will not come…
My God… he’s going to say, I leaned forward, I could almost hear the words… “we must not rule out a time when the neo-cons are completely out of con-fucking-trol and Europe along with the new super powers of Chine and India are going to have to do something, and we are going to need to deter president bush the fifth from nuking us along with all the uther turrsts…
But no, it was a more mundane and likely scenario, a time when we are threatened and the US is not, and further more, and the US isn’t bothered, cos it has itself a new bitch thank you very much.
Our deterrent, described by Cameron, as “minimum” is certainly that, negligible would be good word. Blair admits it is so insignificant that if we did away a with it the rest of the world would not really notice.
Interesting I noticed that yesterday when we said we would renew, the world didn’t notice, I searched a great many international news sites, not one carried the story of our new nuclear weapons program, however, I did discover that George Clooney’s dog is dead… we should all take a moment to get our priorities straight, and Blair should write to apologise for making such an announcement on such a sad day…
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