Nuclear Squib

The trouble with most of this nuclear weapon stuff is that it’s posturing from the 70s and 80s

Threats today are often either conventional or hybrid in nature.

Nuclear weapons are useful to deter other nuclear-armed countries from attacking. They are useless in a conventional conflict.

So are we going to embark on a new cold war 😕 A new build up of nuclear armaments.

I think that the conventional/hybrid threat rather than nuclear is greater, but a cold war is looking likely. Russia says that its manufacturing is on a war-footing and NATO countries are pumping money into their defence and industries.

It would have been helpful if Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine, hadn't threatened nukes and hadn't threatened to invade NATO nations. Nobody seems to care as much about the conventional wars that are happening around the globe, despite the huge loss of life during the last 80 years

Nuclear weapons are useful to deter other nuclear-armed countries from attacking. They are useless in a conventional conflict.

Yes, as long as it remains conventional. Nukes, Biological and Chemical up the ante; Russia has announced using chemical weapons (contravening the Chemical Weapons Convention) in Ukraine, for example https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/have-chemical-weapons-been-used-ukraine

Nuclear weapons are useful to deter other nuclear-armed countries from attacking. They are useless in a conventional conflict.

Someone should have told the Japanese.

Nukes are very useful for terrorizing civilian populations, but Americans who witnessed what had happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki were utterly horrified by what they saw. As well as causing horrific injuries, nukes mean that your own soldiers will be exposed to fallout and will have to fight on contaminated ground. The U.S. contemplated using nukes in the Korean war, but didn't. Same with Vietnam. Russia keeps making threats about using nukes in Ukraine, but hasn't. They just aren't very useful except as doomsday weapons.

The deterrence ultimately comes down to being an insurance policy. And whilst right now you could argue there's been little need for it in the last 20 years, it was needed in the cold war and it would take 20+ years to regain the deterrent if it was scrapped. And we have no idea what the world will look like in the future so it goes back to it being an insurance policy.

Also one point on the cost is that the huge headline figures are before a substantial part of the is reclaimed in taxation. UK nuclear and marine engineering jobs are well paid and support industries in alot of cities, with relatively little of the total cost going abroad. Therefore you have UK companies paying corporation tax, income tax on well paid workers + the VAT and income tax generated by the money they spend in the local economy. So the net spend is actually probably 30-40% less than the headline figure.

And places like Barrow, Glasgow (Faslane), Plymouth (Devonport), Bristol (DE&S), Reading (AWE), would take a substantial blow if all those well paid jobs disappeared.

It's not a reason for it to exist in itself, but its worth noting the economic impact scrapping the deterrent would have. Long term you could probably argue that money can be spent on incentives to grow other industries, but the short term pain would be immense.