• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

UK General Election - 8th June 2017 |OT| - The Red Wedding

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
Isn't Piers actually right though?

He's right that you have to be able to defend what's in your manifesto. Corbyn will always have a gaping wound on that issue.

We all abhor the idea of deploying nuclear weapons in any circumstances, but the game of mutually assured destruction has to be played by all nuclear-armed governments. That's why Corbyn put it in the manifesto, but he's too stubborn to adopt a bog-standard position of "if needs must" regarding it's deployment.
 

curls

Wake up Sheeple, your boring insistence that Obama is not a lizardman from Atlantis is wearing on my patience 💤
Or, we go as a modern world for the complete disarmament of weapons of mass destruction that serve no purpose in the modern world. Honestly, I hope history looks back at the past 100 years in absolute disgust. I can't believe that we even as a society thought making a weapon so powerful if used it would kill millions of other human beings was the right thing to do.

It's utterly disgusting and it makes me ashamed to think our species are happy to think about killing millions of other people as a good and right thing to do.

Like someone else said Corbyn really needs to just come out and end trident. The whole thing is just absurd, Just own it and make a global statement!
 

excowboy

Member
If no-one's realistically gonna use them, can't we just build some cheap duds, pretend they're the real deal and all live like kings on the money saved?
 

Chinner

Banned
okay, what can we nuke and what can't we nuke?

i have some post-it notes, so i'm going to make an effort to make this clear.

firstly, can we nuke nintendo? i'm thinking no?
 
Explain how that relates to first strike policies.

Trident was specifically designed to be a retaliatory system with the Continuous At Sea Deterrent

Yes, Trident was designed to be a dead man's hand - there was always a second strike ability even if we got nuked first or were otherwise compromised.

However, a second strike ability is not the be-all and end-all of nuclear policy. It's not relevant when you have, as we have seen, a Russian state that is continually probing the West for weaknesses to advance its own gains.

By removing the threat of a first strike, you are telling your opponent that they can get away with whatever they want other than nuking you. If they march into Eastern Europe, they know as long as they don't use nukes you won't either. So you have a bloody and futile land war in Europe. But then the Russians say "if you don't stand down, I will nuke you."

And then everyone either dies, or you capitulate.

If you have a first-strike policy, the bloody war never happens and the brinksmanship does not happen. If Russia walks into Estonia, the world ends. End of discussion. It does not matter how many nukes Russia has. There is guaranteed escalation and guaranteed red lines. Nukes deter conventional warfare.
 
you do realize france has nukes too

Yeah, i wasn't being serious :p

I find the whole thing depressing but that Gary Lineker tweet is bringing a smile to my face. The world would not be poorer if Piers Morgan had spontaneously combusted instead of being given a career in America after he left the Daily Mirror...
 

Audioboxer

Member
Isn't Piers actually right though?

That poses the question of "Schrodinger's nukes". Are we both going to use them and not use them?

Ergo, many believe it's much better to dismantle, save the money (invest some into traditional defences) and try to lead the way in worldwide peace talks and generally not being a bunch of war mongering cunts that would even want to make anyone go to war with us.

No, no one can be certain about what the future holds, but there's so much you can do as a country that isn't sitting around thinking a nuclear weapon is what is keeping the country ticking along. The world is pretty much over if a nuclear war ever started. Even in the event your country falls to an attack, you are asking if an individual or small group of individuals are willing to before they potentially die "hit a button" to send off a nuke to massacre a fuckton of other civilians.

It's just madness for this GE what matters most to many is Corbyn's take on Nukes.

Yeah, this audience definitely seemed more representative of the British public....we're fucked.

It was like UKIP and the Tories had a men's club meeting. A handful of sane women snuck in.
 

curls

Wake up Sheeple, your boring insistence that Obama is not a lizardman from Atlantis is wearing on my patience 💤
Why not come up with a comprehensive / multi faceted campaign highlighting how absurd nuclear weapons are? It's not like people are particularly hard to (positively) manipulate.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
He could have just said "yes" to the retaliation question. It's de facto Labour Party policy. For someone who claimed to be about Labour Party internal democracy, I'm deeply disappointed in that answer.
 

Aki-at

Member
Just watched the nuclear exchange between Corbyn and the audience.

Dear lord do we mercilessly want to kill millions of people. We deserve Brexit and we deserve May and I suspect that's that for Corbyn.

EDIT: And Corbyn should have just lied with the answer.
 

kmag

Member
Yes, Trident was designed to be a dead man's hand - there was always a second strike ability even if we got nuked first or were otherwise compromised.

However, a second strike ability is not the be-all and end-all of nuclear policy. It's not relevant when you have, as we have seen, a Russian state that is continually probing the West for weaknesses to advance its own gains.

By removing the threat of a first strike, you are telling your opponent that they can get away with whatever they want other than nuking you. If they march into Eastern Europe, they know as long as they don't use nukes you won't either. So you have a bloody and futile land war in Europe. But then the Russians say "if you don't stand down, I will nuke you."

And then everyone either dies, or you capitulate.

If you have a first-strike policy, the bloody war never happens and the brinksmanship does not happen. If Russia walks into Estonia, the world ends. End of discussion. It does not matter how many nukes Russia has. There is guaranteed escalation and guaranteed red lines. Nukes deter conventional warfare.

That's doctrine is essentially gone now. Fuck there's actually the question if NATO would do more than fire off a strongly worded email if Russia went gungho into the baltics. The US ain't nuking Russia and UK's limited trident might take out Moscow and St Petersburg but if we wanted to do anymore they'd know it's coming because we'd actually have put more than 8 missiles on the boat and probably launch the standby sub.
 

Xando

Member
Why not come up with a comprehensive / multi faceted campaign highlighting how absurd nuclear weapons are? It's not like people are particularly hard to (positively) manipulate.

Why waste money on a good marketing campaign when people read the daily mail anyway
 

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
He could have just said "yes" to the retaliation question. It's de facto Labour Party policy. For someone who claimed to be about Labour Party internal democracy, I'm deeply disappointed in that answer.

this is where the activist in him costs him votes. I'm not excusing the nutters who want to nuke everyone but if he just played it a little straighter as a politician he wouldn't be forced to argue with people about nuclear war.
 
The number of people who wanted to kill millions with nuclear weapons in that audience is scary. Frankly, I have more respect for someone who stands up and says they won't use them. The fact Corbyn has, obviously, conceeded with his party to keep funding doesn't mean he has to be responsible for the nuclear devastation of another country.

Another point is that the only way May would use it would be as retalliation, but that means that someone has launched at us, which means the actual deterrence has failed, how is that better?
 

pulsemyne

Member
If no-one's realistically gonna use them, can't we just build some cheap duds, pretend they're the real deal and all live like kings on the money saved?
The Soviets used to in the old days and then leave them outside for Americans to photograph and thus make them think they had more than they did.
 

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
He could have just said "yes" to the retaliation question. It's de facto Labour Party policy. For someone who claimed to be about Labour Party internal democracy, I'm deeply disappointed in that answer.

This is the core reason why he's viewed as unelectable and an incompetent party leader. It's alright to have a personal view, but it should not trump the party position. Once the party takes a stance, Corbyn has to defend that stance. You can't put something in your manifesto and then not stand behind it.
 

Moze

Banned
Sky news doesn't seem to care too much about the nuclear blunder. The positive is that none of this is new. Corbyn has been rinsed over this for a long time now.
 
The number of people who wanted to kill millions with nuclear weapons in that audience is scary. Frankly, I have more respect for someone who stands up and says they won't use them. The fact Corbyn has, obviously, conceeded with his party to keep funding doesn't mean he has to be responsible for the nuclear devastation of another country.

Another point is that the only way May would use it would be as retalliation, but that means that someone has launched at us, which means the actual deterrence has failed, how is that better?

It's spite. We're dead so we may as well take more innocent people with us
 

PJV3

Member
Sky news doesn't seem to care too much about the nuclear blunder. The positive is that none of this is new. Corbyn has been rinsed over this for a long time now.

That's what I'm thinking, I just can't see people in the polling booth dwell on nuclear weapons and fucking up north korea.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom