kitch9 said:
If we tried to fight a conventional war against an enemy with a few quid they would sink our ships from the comfort of their armchairs. The Argies probably wouldn't pose too many problems even if they did try again, we were skint as a nation in 1982 as well if I remember correctly.
The nuclear deterrent us just that, it can be fired from anywhere and that alone will stop bigger countries fucking with us. It will never be fired in anger ( we must hope.) but is an effective deterrent non the less.
You do know that Thatcher was considering nuking argentina if the British task force failed right?
She gave an ultimatum to the french president at the time, give us the excocet codes, or we may have to use nuclear weapons
A deterrent isn't a deterrent if you don't have the resolve to actually use it.
if Argentina defeated the task force, or if we had gotten rid of our amphibious capability and the small carriers we had left, leaving us unable to mount a retaking of the islands, I have no doubt that first Thatcher would of threatened escalation, then if the Argentinians didn't capitulate, she would of nuked them.
Although I imagine the international community would of stepped in somewhere between all that.
kitch9 said:
The battlefield and enemy has changed. The enemy no longer wears a uniform, but instead tries to hide amongst civilians, whilst having no morals or rules. There's fuck all ships and jets can do about that.
The current insurgency/terrorism is a drop in the bucket compared to what a full scale war would look like.
It would be irresponsible to assume that from now until forever more, we will be fighting terrorists, The UK is part of the European Union and NATO, to be a sovereign country you have to be able to defend your own and to some extent your allies, airspace, waters and territories, the UK must give it's international and domestic defence responsibilities precedence, because the ability to kill Untrained AK wielding maniacs is going to come in very fucking handy if ours or an allies territories are threatened.
Using the Americans as an example, if they where to re-factor their armed forces towards fighting tribes people and terrorists, and got rid of all their hardware, Carriers, fighters, bombers etc, the huge power vacuum would destabilise the world.
There would be a massive arms race across Asia, as Japan and South Korea, struggle to acquire the ability to counter the Chinese's new found military influence, either meaning a heavily armed (possibly nuclear) South Korea and Japan, or a South Korea and Japan who must capitulate and give preference to Chinese influence
Why do you think China is developing the ability to destroy Carriers with ballistic missiles?
It's not for fun, I'll tell you that.
It's because they want to exert more influence on that region of the world, and deny the Americans (and us) the ability to operate in that part of the world, thus giving themselves more influence over the region.
To a large extent military power == international influence, the weapons themselves may never be used, but their mere existence exerts pressure on our economic/political rivals, and reassures our allies, thus ultimately giving you economic leverage.
Apologies for being incoherent/ranty.
