Row About Neaclear Weapons

[ivor4781]

corbyn is getting flak over saying we dont need nuclear weapons and would not push "the button" well done him no other European country has the except France so what would they do if threatened ?

[ToraToraTora]

"It might be a good time to remind everybody, that nuclear weapons have only been used in anger twice, and on both occasions by America" .......and saved millions of lives.

[Old_Geezer]

"so what would they do if threatened"
Presumably ensure they have spent so much on troops and conventional weapons that they knew the threats were empty.

[ichkeria]

Now that Putin has started bombing Syria I would suggest that the threat of a conflagration between nuclear powers has increased somewhat

[mikey4444]

TTT...actually, I am not going to argue with you in that point.

I have read too many personal testimonies from survivors of Japanese prisoners-of-war camps, and the truly dreadful Burma Railway, to be in no doubt that the A bombs probably saved lives.

[-Talbot-]

mikey4444
He could easily invade Sweden, which has lots o valuable mineral wealth, and it wouldn't take long ! But he has shown no need or inclination to do so.


The Finnish think he has plenty of inclination to take back Finland.

[ToraToraTora]

you see mikey, paradoxical thinking, you CAN do it!

[mikey4444]

TTT...well if our Yankee friends are going to protect from the ghastly Ruskies, than we don't need our own deterrent, do we !

[jourdain2]

I'm not bonkers, mikey, just using that as an example. Loopies happen and it is possible that they can eventually become a threat.

[mikey4444]

Talbot...so why have Russia and the USSR before it, not taken the opportunity to "take back" Finland ? They could do it very easily, so perhaps the reason is that they don't want, or need to !

[ichkeria]

Putin has openly threatened Sweden not to join NATO, which it is now thinking of doing. Sooner it joins the better

[mikey4444]

jourdain2....N. Korea is definitely loopy and its definitely a threat, but not to us !

I think the South Koreans can rely of America to defend themselves against the man with the worst haircut on the world !

[Jackdaw33]

North Korea is safe to be as loopy as it likes as long as it has the protection of China. Were it not for that it would have been gone long since.

[ichkeria]

Russia could not realistically 'take' Finland. They could invade but they would not be able to support their own invasion
They did not have the resources to take Georgia in 2008. They might have big weapons and a large army but it has been notoriously underfunded and under equipped.
Putin seems to prefer the more sneaky sort of tactic we have seen in Ukraine . And actually that sort of 'hybrid' warfare is potentially hard to combat as your enemy can largely be in denial about what is going on.

[-Talbot-]

He could easily invade Sweden, which has lots o valuable mineral wealth, and it wouldn't take long !

Talbot...so why have Russia and the USSR before it, not taken the opportunity to "take back" Finland ? They could do it very easily,

Your military genius has put everyone on this thread in their place, mikey...well done!

[jomifl]

/nuclear weapons have only been used in anger twice, and on both occasions by America. /
and they worked.

[Hypognosis]

//ToraToraTora
The left/anti British
//

Oh? I've seen this phrase "anti British" thrown around on Answerbank before and dismissed it as I didn't think it was aimed at me or people like me.

This is the first time I've seen it practicaly *conjoined* with "the Left".

Provided there have been fewer than 50 threads disputing this in the past five years, kindly explain why being left of centre means being "anti-British".

//have never been able to handle paradoxical thinking, //

You mean just the ones you've met and talked to had failed to grasp this concept?

//you need them so you don't need them, end of.
21:07 Wed 30th Sep 2015//

You need them to stop tank divisions from rolling into Germany. Fulda Gap should pull up some interesting analysis on Google.

I can't claim to know why the basic assumption of the west was that Russia had a perpetual desire to invade. They kept their WWII territorial gains because 39-45 had cost them about **20 million** soldiers and civilians, all told. No way would you hand territory back, after such losses, if you'd been in charge.

Russian militarism was all about not losing another 20 million but it scared us witless and we weaponed up.

USSR had *no nukes* at the end of the war and the notorious spies leaked nuclear secrets to them in an attempt to set up the stalemate which ended up preventing further wars in Europe.

This was, probably, why McCarthy went to such lengths to hunt down further spies. The rhetoric against Communism must have reached a level that the Soviets imagined the west seriously wanted to invade them and wipe out their ideology, hence they kept their military on the huge side.

The worst of it all was that the Soviet leadership MUST have been aware of how much their own citizens and the pact countries hated communism so the whole setup of "defence of the ideology" was purely to maintain the hold of the few on the reins of power.


Footnote:-
Finland was attacked by Russia in 1939.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

Forests and lakes and snow and ice are evidently not ideal tank country.

[Hypognosis]

Incidentally, an invasion of Britain by Putin, even if technically feasible, would not be attempted because they would need to maintain a supply chain across hostile waters and airspace. They would have to attack closer neighbour countries first and that is what NATO is all about: the 'gang' clubbing together to tackle the bully.

Just bear in mind that we got lucky last time: Hitler kept interfering with his generals' strategy. Thinking himself talented in such matters, in the mould of Napoleon even, he went and attacked Russia.

Imagine if he'd been content with gains made by 1942? To a certain extent, D-Day was only feasible (huge as it was) because it was the second front which Stalin had been insisting on for some time. If there had been no eastern front, we would have faced their full strength and, likely, thought better to not attempt liberating europe.

Also we were fortunate that Hitler was trying to achieve whatever his grand aim was within his own lifetime and had no offspring to pass his ambitions on to. A few more years of technological development before getting started while pacifists held sway across the channel could have left us floundering.

[tamborine]

Around 1980s there was a nuke threat. My OH built us a bomb shelter in the crater of an existing WW2 bomb cavity. Our barns held sand bags to fit against house windows etc. He thought we were prime targets coz of being near Heathrow. I took my kids to Australia coz I feared for their welfare.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-30/apocalypse-then-how-1980s-britain-fretted-over-nuclear-threat

[ichkeria]

Hypognosis most of what you say is correct and very wise:
Don't forget though that when you say.
!I can't claim to know why the basic assumption of the west was that Russia had a perpetual desire to invade. They kept their WWII territorial gains because 39-45 had cost them about **20 million** soldiers and civilians, all told. No way would you hand territory back, after such losses, if you'd been in charge. "

I could never really understand this either, although I think it was a case of "be prepared". The Russians we know had drawn up invasion plans for Britain (probably largely based on the idea of some sort of counter offensive, who who knows for sure) just as we also had invasion plans for them.
Nonetheless, don't forget that at the conclusion of WWII the Soviet Union illegally re-occupied the Baltic States (never officially recognised by the USA as part of the Soviet Union), Konigsberg (ethnically cleansed and renamed Kaliningrad) and the Kuril Islands. These were not so much territorial gains as rather sneaky attempts at imperial expansion, no matter the costs of the war. And it's still going on today.

[ToraToraTora]

"TTT...well if our Yankee friends are going to protect from the ghastly Ruskies, than we don't need our own deterrent, do we ! " - The septics would not protect us, they'd protect themselves.