LABOUR’S shadow business minister, Ian Murray, has broken ranks with the party leadership over the renewal of Trident by stating that he would not vote for the renewal of the submarine missile fleet under any circumstances.

Sorry mate, but if you've done a degree in nuclear policy i'd have expected you to be more knowledgable about the plans and planning of the nuclear states that we have our deterrent to deter.

Did you see the soviet cold war plans recently released by poland for a limited war to invade Denmark & parts of Germany?

The plan called for limited nuclear strikes on bases & population centres in Germany, Denmark etc. All of the european nato members except Britain and France - the ones that could fire back. The policy was then to de escalate via diplomatic means once they had what they wanted.

I'm on mobile at the moment but it's freely available on google if you want to have a look.

My point is that the very fact that we had a second strike capability which was guaranteed to be in operation stopped the Russians from even thinking about using their nukes on us in a limited war scenario because they gambled that despite being part of NATO we wouldn't risk global thermonuclear war on vengeance for Denmark. Because if we've fired ours, then Russia fires theirs, but back at us this time - and then France, US etc. would have to respond.

It's the very definition of MAD doctrine. If the destruction is no longer 100% assured (i.e. relying on allies to assure their own destruction by responding when their own security is not threatened), then it doesn't work any more.

Your argument is that if between 10 and 80% of the uk population is dead or dying thanks to a huge saturation nuking campaign of our archiapelago (be honest, it'll never be above 90%) there's no point in responding with nuclear force.

Surely at that point there's no point not to either? That's the whole idea of the doctrine. Suddenly we are the crazy man with nothing to lose and a decent number of warheads to throw around. Yeah, nuking them back isn't going to help humanity or make the world a better place. But it's the threat of us doing it which gets us taken seriously in the enemy's strategy.

For that to happen you need to 100% guarantee, rain or shine, collision with french sub or sandbar that our deterrent ia out there lurking in the depths. That's why we need 4 subs minimum. You wouldn't even save much money getting three, most of the cost is in R&D anyway.

/r/unitedkingdom Thread Parent Link - scotsman.com