NATO, Get the F@#k Out...

[inbetween]

OK if we got rid of the weapons and left NATO

Give me one good reason why he would attack a small island that offers no benefit to Russia.

Getting rid of nukes is an option within NATO but not outside. Only two western European countries have nukes but the rest essentially do also have them via NATO, take that away and you become vulnerable. Had Finland and Sweden not joined NATO and who knows maybe been invaded then we'd have a huge problem much closer to our doorstep.

A second reason I would always argue for nukes is the secondary effect it brings in the industrial complex. We'll spend billions on nuclear weapons and submarines but that money goes to local communities such as Barrow which would be otherwise decimated, where will those thousands of jobs go?

This is why I know the defence unions were extremely suspicious about Corbyn who was completely out of touch with a big chunk of his supposed working class base.

There is only really an argument about the cost however they aren't that expensive. The figures quoted are often around £200bn but that is spread over the entire service life which is 30 years+ which is only £6bn per year. We will spend more on a completely pointless rail system in HS2 over the next 10 years than on nuclear weapons.

 

[Semper aggressus]

Depends on the viewpoint of what's at the end of it.

Russia and China are actually making trades and having partnerships for assets, not installing puppet govs to loot them.

Why do you think BRICS is working?

As a side note, the destabilising of Libya is the result no other African country wants for itself, hence what's happening.

Of course they are, initially. That’s how these insidious nations ingratiate themselves, then once a country has trusted them long enough to rely on Russia or China, they’ve got it by the bollocks and will bleed it dry, quite literally in many cases.

 

[Semper aggressus]

You know what’s at the end of it. It ain’t sunny uplands and trebles all round.

More like a bucket of instant sunshine.

 

[Semper aggressus]

OK if we got rid of the weapons and left NATO

Give me one good reason why he would attack a small island that offers no benefit to Russia.

If you think any nuclear attack in Europe wouldn’t virtually wipe all of us out and put society back centuries then you don’t know how fucking awful these things are. If Russia nuked France and Holland we’re still fucked. It’s too terrible to even contemplate, hence MAD. Even Putin knows that; him, his kids, everything, all dead if he does anything that stupid.

The deterrence works.

 

[knuckles]

If you think any nuclear attack in Europe wouldn’t virtually wipe all of us out and put society back centuries then you don’t know how fucking awful these things are. If Russia nuked France and Holland we’re still fucked. It’s too terrible to even contemplate, hence MAD. Even Putin knows that; him, his kids, everything, all dead if he does anything that stupid.

The deterrence works.

Also we have the prevailing winds in our favour, not always, but generally winds blow westerly, that is west to east, fallout/radiation would mainly blow back towards Russia.

 

[SebastianBlue]

I am coming to this late, and a lot has already been said, so I will save everyone my normal treatise response.

I did want to simply state, with unabashed verve, that almost nothing in the OP makes any sense at all. I honestly thought I was reading satire at first until I realised who started the thread.

Might as well try to reason a raccoon out of a rubbish bin.

 

[SebastianBlue]

Give me one good reason why Putin and his ilk would use nuclear weapons on a small island with few natural resources, minimal armed forces and diminishing influence on the world.

Just one good reason

Because he has a long memory.

But mostly because he can (if we had no means of deterrence, that is).

Strong men do things for one reason and one reason only: to maintain the illusion of supreme, unassailable power.

Whatever they can do to that end, they will.

 

[Rascal]

BM has spoken then, NATO is great and nuclear weapons are brilliant and we have to them because Putin and they are pretty cheap for something that will never be used.

NATO nowadays though pretty much manages the risks caused by it being brought into existence. It should have been disbanded when the Berlin wall fell and the Warsaw pact disintegrated. A totally new organisation embracing both organisations dedicated to peace could have changed the world and negated the need for nuclear weapons. NATO though is now just a tool for capitalist imperialism and anyone against that will suffer the wrath of a world dominated by corporate interest, not working class interests.

 

[City Hobgoblin]

With falling and negative birth rates in Russia and I would expect to see them trying to take a % of the 'demographic dividend' population boom and incentivising economic in-migration / guest workers as part of a developing co-operation.

 

[Pedestrian]

OK if we got rid of the weapons and left NATO

Give me one good reason why he would attack a small island that offers no benefit to Russia.

To make a point.