The leader interviews: Nicola Sturgeon on Trident, Labour and independence

Haha, the arrogance is astounding. Experts on international affairs wouldn't make claims like that

  • American Security Project: "U.S. maritime ports are vulnerable to nuclear and radiological terrorist devices hidden within shipping containers...DHS failed to meet the July 2012 deadline for 100 percent radiation scanning of all U.S. bound shipping containers."
  • University of Southern California: "Deterring the Smuggling of Nuclear Weapons in Container Freight Through Detection and Retaliation"
  • National Academy of Engineering: "Various ways of detecting nuclear materials hidden in such containers have been proposed or tested, but most are ineffective."
  • UCSD Journal of International Policy Solutions: "the probability that inspectors will detect a shielded nuclear weapon in a shipping container using the current screening system is only about 10 percent".
  • Graham Allison, JFK School of Government, Harvard: "[a nuclear weapon] is far more likely to arrive in a cargo container than on the tip of a missile".
  • Stanford University: "Preventing the importation of illicit nuclear materials in shipping containers"

I could go on, but this is literally the first page of googling for "nuclear attack shipping container".

Even suggesting that North Korea is a "don't-give-a-shit" state is laughable.

South Korea is the one with the world's 8th highest household income.

North Korea is the one with the nuclear programme where several million people starved to death in the 1990s and many are now are forced to eat grass to survive.

You really shouldn't base your beliefs on things you're just making up.

Similarly, you really shouldn't base your beliefs on your current love of the armed forces.

Clearly neither of us are experts on international affairs. But it's not unreasonable to point out that most of the complexity required by today's nuclear powers is because they want things like the ability to launch strikes from submarines or deliver an overwhelming response to someone with a similar level of technology.

That only works if everyone else plays the same game as you do. 9/11 has cost the US tens of trillions of dollars and two decades of conflict using nothing more than a few dozen fanatics and some planes.

/r/ukpolitics Thread Link - theguardian.com