The labour Leader thread...

[Rroff]

Which is increasingly being invalidated as a military doctrine. It's not the 1970's anymore, the world has moved on.

The reasons for having nuclear weapons is just as true today as it was in the 1970s - you confirmed as much a couple of posts back yourself.

The fallacy is you see nuclear weapons as a way of winning a conflict when their purpose is to deter the conflict from happening in the first place. Your counter to that isn't valid as it only applies to a complete madman and if it comes to that scenario all bets are off - countries like China with a semi-rational government wouldn't even entertain the idea of a statement making nuclear strike unless they could be 110% sure we wouldn't strike back and they can't possibly know that for sure - I mean David Cameron has used drones to assassinate people maybe he is a complete madman and would strike back in full force.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

....yet.

Are you talking about an alien invasion again?

 

[Glaucus]

The Overton window changes all the time. In fact just by floating this idea the party has begun to change it, because it's got people talking about it.

Not in any meaningful way, it's a marginally different colour of grey. Nothing which needs drastic change is even being hinted at. There's no decent change being talked about voting, party politics or constitutions because this would damage labour just as much as every other party.
Any talk is coming from outside party politics and is very minimal at the moment and will take many decades to grow.

 

[Naff8000]

But how effective is a deterrent when your enemies know full well that you'll never use said deterrent?

Where does this assumption of yours come from? I asked you for evidence and you snaked past it as usual. Our enemies and possible enemies know we have nukes and it is that latter that is important. Our problems today aren't so much nations as dispersed terrorism but if countries like the UK and France start ridding themselves of nukes then the game could once more. The U.S is just 300 million people after all.

 

[RoboCod]

Are you talking about an alien invasion again?

We can put that in the list of complete unknowns too yes. As I keep repeating, we have absolutely no idea what might arise in the future. Shall we go round the merry go round one more time? Or are you tired yet?

To me it sounds like you want disarmament on a moral basis, as if it's somehow progression of a nation to disarm its military. You'd quite happily have Corbyn do that wouldn't you? Dissolve our military to nothing? For what it's worth, I think a nation possessing nukes has nothing to do with us progressing to this utopian society you envisage. Whether we keep a hold of them or scrap them tomorrow, it would have no bearing whatsoever on the state of the nation, morally and barely financially.

 

[Rroff]

We can put that in the list of complete unknowns too yes. As I keep repeating, we have absolutely no idea what might arise in the future. Shall we go round the merry go round one more time? Or are you tired yet?

To me it sounds like you want disarmament on a moral basis, as if it's somehow progression of a nation to disarm its military. You'd quite happily have Corbyn do that wouldn't you? Dissolve our military to nothing? For what it's worth, I think a nation possessing nukes has nothing to do with us progressing to this utopian society you envisage. Whether we keep a hold of them or scrap them tomorrow, it would have no bearing whatsoever on the state of the nation, morally and barely financially.

Its a common fallacy - that the pinnacle of an advanced civilisation is one that has divested itself of its weapons... the dream of fools.

The pinnacle of an advanced civilisation is one that can wield the most powerful weapons with absolute responsibility. (Depending on scenario this might mean weapons are irrelevant but that is another story).

 

[PermaBanned]

Not in any meaningful way, it's a marginally different colour of grey. Nothing which needs drastic change is even being hinted at. There's no decent change being talked about voting, party politics or constitutions because this would damage labour just as much as every other party.
Any talk is coming from outside party politics and is very minimal at the moment and will take many decades to grow.

And yet public opinion on gay marriage changed completely in just a few years.

 

[RoboCod]

I think it was the church and government legislation that changed. I'm pretty sure public opinion was similar to as it is today a few years back. If you insist otherwise then I suggest some citation is needed.

 

[RoboCod]

Its a common fallacy - that the pinnacle of an advanced civilisation is one that has divested itself of its weapons... the dream of fools.

The pinnacle of an advanced civilisation is one that can wield the most powerful weapons with absolute responsibility. (Depending on scenario this might mean weapons are irrelevant but that is another story).

I'm all for no weapons, no nukes, no war or needless death. However, until potential enemy states all scrap their nukes I think it would be ludicrous to scrap our own. The two main issues with that point are; A. any state is a potential enemy state. B. There will always be other states with nuclear weapons/developing nuclear weapons before we disarm our own. We cannot always control who develops this capability - which is yet another reason to retain a deterrent.

I think the nuclear matter will just go around in circles all day given the difference in opinion. They're not going away ever, we live in a world where they were invented and they exist. I'm just grateful that no one so extreme in their beliefs will ever have the power to go full retard and be able to disarm us.

I am quite astounded number 10 haven't already contacted amigafan though. He would be very helpful in predicting the future and telling what will happen. Imagine the potential if we knew what he knew!

 

[Glaucus]

And yet public opinion on gay marriage changed completely in just a few years.

Rofl, polls don't even go back very far and even then the polls have over 50% in agreement with gay marriage from the start.

 

[Tefal]

Visionaries drive the world forward, realists hold the world back.

Nonsense, the visionary is the architect, the realist is the engineer who turns the idea into reality

 

[Tefal]

And yet public opinion on gay marriage changed completely in just a few years.

No it didn't

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Rofl, polls don't even go back very far and even then the polls have over 50% in agreement with gay marriage from the start.

50% were for it on general equality principles and the rest didn't mind if it stopped the gay community bleating on bout how hard done buy they were...

 

[elmarko]

The problem with the ownership of nuclear weapons is that it motivates other nations to also develop them. As signatories of the none proliferation treaty, to discourage further global nuclear weapons those in possession of them are supposed to disarm gradually.

When considering risk, a few factors should also be considered - for one, we ascribe the end to wars akin to WW2 to them (in reality this has more to do with globalisation & the EU), we also seem reluctant to consider future risks.

It's entirely plausible that in the next 250 years a nation may cause global damage with nuclear weapons as a direct result of our failure to address the principles outlined in the none proliferation treaty. Refusal to disarm may result in the same negative consequences as disarming (or worse) we simply do not know for certain.

Making one of the most popular defences for retaining a high level & mobile defence irrelevant.

Personally, I think we should move to a much cheaper land & sea surface based deterrent as we maintain the theoretical benefits but not the ruinous costs or trident.

 

[aardvark]

The problem with the ownership of nuclear weapons is that it motivates other nations to also develop them.

true, but as some bad guy country could make them in secret the other guys need a deterrent, otherwise what would stop the bad guy from simply taking over whole continents.

 

[NickK]

Thing is the there's always the unknown - how much use keeping nuclear is for those is, by it's natural state, unknown too.

The fact that countries develop their own weapons
a) is seen a right of passage, a silver bullet to solve the threat of invasion as a power and status symbol.
b) places need to maintain some deterrent until country has grown up, motives are understood by everyone and has stability. It's not the people that develop the weapons that you worry about, it's those that invade/capture or replace by progression that you worry about.

However - having nuclear weapons has strong parallels with public ownership of guns. People cite crazies with guns as the reason for owning. History has demonstrated it's not just the 'crazies' you know with a gun that is the problem. The difference is that there's no police force to enforce control, so you have to work together.. and crazies don't. However the question remains - who is crazy enough to pull the trigger?

 

[Jono8]

The problem with the ownership of nuclear weapons is that it motivates other nations to also develop them. As signatories of the none proliferation treaty, to discourage further global nuclear weapons those in possession of them are supposed to disarm gradually.

When considering risk, a few factors should also be considered - for one, we ascribe the end to wars akin to WW2 to them (in reality this has more to do with globalisation & the EU), we also seem reluctant to consider future risks.

It's entirely plausible that in the next 250 years a nation may cause global damage with nuclear weapons as a direct result of our failure to address the principles outlined in the none proliferation treaty. Refusal to disarm may result in the same negative consequences as disarming (or worse) we simply do not know for certain.

Making one of the most popular defences for retaining a high level & mobile defence irrelevant.

Personally, I think we should move to a much cheaper land & sea surface based deterrent as we maintain the theoretical benefits but not the ruinous costs or trident.

But you simply cannot pretend they don't exist. There will never be complete disarmament . There will always be the risk that someone somewhere has got nuclear weapons which is why disarmament will not and should not ever happen.

 

[Schlong&Stable]

Personally, I think we should move to a much cheaper land & sea surface based deterrent as we maintain the theoretical benefits but not the ruinous costs or trident.

What ruinous cost? The per annum cost of Trident represents a small percentage of the defence budget, and a trivial amount compared to the likes of the overseas aid budget.

There is no cheaper system which offers anything remotely comparable in terms of range or redundancy.

 

[kissenger]

The Overton window changes all the time. In fact just by floating this idea the party has begun to change it, because it's got people talking about it.

I think a mistake some Corbyn supporters are making is in thinking that they can change the terms of political debate in this country just by putting forward new ideas. In actual fact they might be narrowing the terms of debate because if Corbyn and his followers are seen as lacking credibility, the ideas they put forward will also be seen to lack credibility and will be taken off the agenda for years to come.

E.g., under Miliband it was a debate between hard and soft austerity, but both were seen as reasonable options. Now Corbyn wants it to be a choice between austerity and something else (I guess Keynesianism), but in reality most people will see it as a choice between sensible economics (i.e., the Conservatives) and the loony left, which is what Corbyn and McDonnell et al are at the end of the day.

 

[Rroff]

^^ What I've not seen a lot of from Corbyn and/or Labour under Corbyn so far are alternatives.

I see them say x or y is wrong and/or presenting arguments why x or y is wrong (often using deceptive portrayal of the facts to make a case) but anything about where they really stand or what they'd really do is vague. (Obviously its early days and some things they won't have a considered response to and/or will (hopefully) be addressed in upcoming conferences).

Yet people seem to be buying into their whole "new politics" and "straight talking" in their thousands while so far they are doing exactly the same kind of politics as Labour before them?