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Our "rational" enemies (Russia and China) are so vast in terms of both
geography and population, that even the total deployment of our nukes
is of no concern to them.Our "irrational" enemies (Iran, Pakistan and North Korea) either lack
the capability to attack us or don't consider us a primary target
(Iran/Israel, Pakistan/India, N. Korea/S. Korea or Japan).I find this logic frankly disturbing and more than a little orientalist.
Lumping Iran and Pakistan in as 'irrational' has no justification in the actual conduct of their foreign policy, when you look at their actions rather than the rhetoric, and frankly smacks of bias against them for being counties where religion features more prominently as part of their political discourse.
Then the idea that China and Russia would a) willingly accept the deaths of millions, and b) that this makes them 'rational' is both muddle-headed and deeply distasteful. I think you know full well the incredible physical and economic damage it would do if Moscow and St Petersburg, Beijing and Shanghai were reduced to nuclear rubble and the vast number of people who would die in the process, and I can't believe that the rulers of Russia or China would somehow write that off as a statistic.
Whether or not you agree with it, the nuclear deterrent largely functions at a level below that of actual nuclear war. Yes, there is an architecture of mutually assured destruction to dissuade anyone from being tempted to use them in a first strike. But the deterrent has also functioned as an incentive to the great powers to de-escalate conflicts so that there is little chance of them turning nuclear. Quite a few strategists would argue that the deterrent is one of the reasons we have not had a major land war in Europe since WWII. The First World War started with the Austrian-Hungarian invasion of Serbia. A century later, the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine results in a far, far smaller loss of life and much lower risk to international stability (although, we were all very worried at the time) in no small part because of the great powers' overriding interest in ensuring that the conflict remained contained and didn't escalate to a larger global stand-off.
For the record, I want a world without nuclear weapons, although I think multilateralism is the way to achieve that, not unilateralism - partly because I think multilateralism gives the opportunity to build a post-nuclear security architecture that we can use to de-escalate conflicts without needing the threat of nuclear apocalypse to sharpen the mind.
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h2o
Agreed and it doesn't need a great deal of analysis to pull it apart.
a) There are no conceivable circumstances in which the UK will be the sole target of a pre-emptive nuclear strike by a conventional force.
b) That being the case, there are no conceivable circumstances in which the US wouldn't deploy it's vastly superior nuclear arsenal against the aggressor (because they would also be threatened).
c) So our "nuclear deterrent" is 1) no deterrent and 2) unnecessary.
Our "rational" enemies (Russia and China) are so vast in terms of both geography and population, that even the total deployment of our nukes is of no concern to them.
Our "irrational" enemies (Iran, Pakistan and North Korea) either lack the capability to attack us or don't consider us a primary target (Iran/Israel, Pakistan/India, N. Korea/S. Korea or Japan).
The most pertinent threat of a nuclear attack against us comes from terrorists deploying an unconventional nuclear weapon, ie a "dirty bomb", against which Trident is neither effective nor a deterrent: how do you launch a nuke at stateless individuals for whom their own death and the deaths of others is of no concern?
Our nuclear capability is preserved to maintain the façade of our position as a "global player" predicated on having been on the winning side in WWII (cf the permanent members of the UN Security Council) and as a result of politico-corporate circle-jerks.
The argument that we should prepare for the unknown future (where nukes somehow become relevant and necessary), ignores the known present: it's the Poor Bloody Infantry who have borne the brunt of our recent interventions and yet it's the PBI who have suffered the brunt of cuts in defence spending.
It's a nonsense to argue that billions should be spent on "what if", at the expense of known, immediate requirements.