The Policy Blender

How close we have come in the past. Britain was lucky not to have been invaded in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. She was not capable of defending herself, had not yet cemented the military support of America and if Hitler had given the go-ahead for Operation Sealion we’d all be eating sausages for breakfast and the royal family would be dressed in SS gear (hang on…).

We were close then, but we soon became prepared. After the Second World War we had nukes and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM). No longer would people sneak up to our territory and invade. Then the Argies sneaked up to the Falklands and invaded. Cheeky blighters. So why didn’t we flatten Buenos Aries? Well, the point is we could have done if we wanted to. The Argies figured that we wouldn’t risk the outcry that would naturally follow if we loosed a few nukes off in their direction, but they didn’t figure that we would simply beat them the old fashioned way – by sending an Expeditionary Force.

So, two different lessons from the past, one result. But there was entirely less risk attached to the latter, because if things went badly for the Expeditionary Force, we could have flattened the Argies at the push of a button. That’s insurance – you don’t have to use it, but it’s nice to know you’ve got it.

We presently have the pleasure of dealing with not only extremist Islamists and other assorted nutters, but with what until recently were termed “rogue states”. Essentially a rogue state is one that is doing its best to develop nuclear technology and has said it wants to wipe a neighbour off the map, or perhaps rain down a sea of fire to the West.

The title rouge state, and latterly the ill-conceived Axis of Evil, actually makes these nations sound vaguely respectable on the world stage. They are not. Basically, these guys are like the violent organised criminals who play ‘I’m the king of the castle’ in various market towns around the UK. They are big fish in very small ponds. On the Global scale they are two-bit gangsters.

Our present challenge is to negotiate with these two-bit gangsters to achieve a viable balance of power that is acceptable to everyone. I would prefer to do that with the knowledge that if it all goes tits up, we won’t be the ones sitting in a crater wondering what went wrong at the negotiating table. When dealing with global gangsters it’s perhaps fitting that to quote Al Capone: “you can get further with a kind word and a gun that with a kind word alone”.

We have already had our taste of future warfare. Vietnam, Ulster and Iraq have indicated the shape of warfare to come. Contrary to popular belief, asymmetric warfare is numbers-driven. Those numbers have pound signs in front of them. National Security is all about the elimination of risk. If we work on the assumption that there will always we a market for threats against our country, then logic says we must invest in capabilities that will mitigate those risks.

Accepting that dealing with treats requires investment, and that investment is followed by research and development, therefore we cannot accurately cost the required level of investment for each individual risk, the arguments against investing against mitigation future risks to national security are simple: 1) there won’t be any threats, 2) there might not be any threats – let’s chance it, 3) there will be some but hey - guns are bad m’kay?, 4) why don’t we just let anybody who wants to just blow us all to pieces?

I’m not convinced by any of the above arguments against investment in defence systems. Call me pessimistic if you like, but I don’t think – with the best will in the world – that any non-military action we take to mitigate future risk (diplomacy, being less capitalist, using less energy, becoming an Islamic State, not eating meat, handing over the keys to the Falklands, speaking French… etc) is going to adequately protect our security. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be pursuing these avenues, but we should do so with Trident in our back pocket in case of an SFI (Shit Fan Interface).

Call it a get out of jail free card.

Chris will probably have a much more fervent answer to this, but the only thing Trident does to defend us against nuclear attack is ensure whoever attacks us dies too. We still die. And Al Capone would have wanted a bulletproof vest on and a gun if he'd wanted to ensure his survival and his opponent's demise.

I think Trident is a waste of money because we will never use it. Or we will use it merely as a kneejerk reaction to someone else using something similar. Find a way to defend against other people nuking/using biological weapons etc. and spend the money on that instead. The Americans seem happy enough to be hair brained, one eyed and dangerously neo conservative on our behalf, and they don't have our pension problems eating at their tax cause all their old people die of fatness. Let them pick up the bill for keeping world order by killing everyone.

And don't call nuclear weapons defence systems. They don't work like that, see above.

Correct; we will never use them, so in that respect they are a waste of money. But the value of them lies in not using them. If we were able to pretend to the world that we had some then that'd be just as valuable. The threat is where the value lies.

However, their value in even this respect needs questioning as we move to a more unified society. Yes, there are 'rogue states' but as long as we have friends with big guns, and a suitable expeditionary force of our own do we really need these missiles? Threats of the future are unlikely in my opinion to come from individuals/states/etc where the threat of being nuked is a deterant simply because the guy (or gal) pushing the button will likely only really care about their own well being, so as long as they're hidden in a bunker away from any retalitory blast they won't care.

they are a defence system because the only way that they will be a waste of money is if we fire them.

I continue to disagree, naturally. I like to think that no nation clever enough to make a nuclear weapon is stupid enough to fire one. Unfortunately, this increasingly looks like it's flawed logic - the people making the weapons aren't the same people who choose whether to fire them. While this applies to, lets say, North Korea and Iran, it must also apply to our own government. They've already demonstrated that they're prepared to go to war against the will of the people that elected them to represent them (I know, this one again). Who is to say Blair is safer with his finger on the proverbial button than any other bugger who is president of some tin-pot so-called-democracy in any part of the world? Disturbingly, I find myself trusting Bush more than Blair. At least if he does nuke someone, before it happens we'll know he's going to do it and we'll know why.