Scrutable

dyqik wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:06 pm Meanwhile, the actual weapons available to resist Putin are chiefly financial laws, like enforcing tax and money laundering laws, and existing sanctions.

Yes, and they are being used.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:14 pm

Fishnut wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:07 pm

plodder wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:12 am

There's a whole generation of people who don't know what actual existential dread of imminent catastrophe feels like, but yet feel existential dread about not-imminent future catastrophe all the time. They're going to sh.t themselves, poor bastards.

Maybe not quite as imminent as nuclear holocaust but I think the current generation of kids have a pretty good sense of existential dread from the global inaction on climate change.

I mean, the climate catastrophe has already started - it's a present threat, not a future one.

Down here in hot places people are already cooking and burning to death in their homes on a yearly basis, and we all know it's going to keep getting worse until decades after the carbon emissions trajectory reverses. e.g. the Portuguese youngsters bringing a case against 33 governments in the ECHR. https://youth4climatejustice.org/ Obviously kids in hotter, poorer countries have it even worse and are less empowered to complain.

Very good point. People may not be seeing their homes nuked but they are increasingly seeing them burned, and flooded, and destroyed by hurricanes and tornadoes, and cut off by snow storms, and destroyed in landslides.

Fishnut wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:18 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:14 pm

Fishnut wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:07 pm

Maybe not quite as imminent as nuclear holocaust but I think the current generation of kids have a pretty good sense of existential dread from the global inaction on climate change.

I mean, the climate catastrophe has already started - it's a present threat, not a future one.

Down here in hot places people are already cooking and burning to death in their homes on a yearly basis, and we all know it's going to keep getting worse until decades after the carbon emissions trajectory reverses. e.g. the Portuguese youngsters bringing a case against 33 governments in the ECHR. https://youth4climatejustice.org/ Obviously kids in hotter, poorer countries have it even worse and are less empowered to complain.

Very good point. People may not be seeing their homes nuked but they are increasingly seeing them burned, and flooded, and destroyed by hurricanes and tornadoes, and cut off by snow storms, and destroyed in landslides.

One difference is that there is still time to avert the worst effects of climate change, and at some point it may be possible to reduce Co2 levels.

After a global nuclear war the few left living will envy the dead.

Fishnut wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:18 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:14 pm

Fishnut wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:07 pm Maybe not quite as imminent as nuclear holocaust but I think the current generation of kids have a pretty good sense of existential dread from the global inaction on climate change.

I mean, the climate catastrophe has already started - it's a present threat, not a future one.

Down here in hot places people are already cooking and burning to death in their homes on a yearly basis, and we all know it's going to keep getting worse until decades after the carbon emissions trajectory reverses. e.g. the Portuguese youngsters bringing a case against 33 governments in the ECHR. https://youth4climatejustice.org/ Obviously kids in hotter, poorer countries have it even worse and are less empowered to complain.

Very good point. People may not be seeing their homes nuked but they are increasingly seeing them burned, and flooded, and destroyed by hurricanes and tornadoes, and cut off by snow storms, and destroyed in landslides.

Yep. Much like the "stochastic terrorism" of ISIS et al., the climate emergency is creating stochastic catastrophes that kill people or destroy their homes/livelihoods completely unpredictably. One big nuclear bang is much less anxiety-inducing I suspect.

Woodchopper wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:15 pm

dyqik wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:06 pm Meanwhile, the actual weapons available to resist Putin are chiefly financial laws, like enforcing tax and money laundering laws, and existing sanctions.

Yes, and they are being used.

Hahaha. No, they largely aren't.

sideshowjim wrote: Wed Mar 17, 2021 3:35 pm Any ideas of the purpose of it? Nuclear posturing seems a bit pointless outside of a cold-war scenario, and what the hell can you do with 260 warheads that you can't do with 200?

Stack them in a triangular pile 22 layers high - and you'll have 7 spare in case any break.

Another reason why nukes are bad: we might want England to be invaded.

If you were German on Kristallnacht you'd be wanting neighbouring democracies to invade and save the people and country from Nazism. I'm not saying England under Johnson is going to become a Nazi state... well... maybe I am. If we lose our democracy and us Remoaners get rounded up to be reeducated in the value of peasant labour, I'd rather like EU forces to gather in the Scottish Republic. Would be a shame if Johnson's threat of nuking Paris would prevent the tanks from charging to Watford Gap Services.

Deterence is wonderful !!?? That'd be why Argentina didn't invade British territories in the S.Atlantic. Oh, wait . . .

dyqik wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:06 pm Meanwhile, the actual weapons available to resist Putin are chiefly financial laws, like enforcing tax and money laundering laws, and existing sanctions.

The ability of the UK to avoid these are what brexit was all about

tom p wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:54 pm

dyqik wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:06 pm Meanwhile, the actual weapons available to resist Putin are chiefly financial laws, like enforcing tax and money laundering laws, and existing sanctions.

The ability of the UK to avoid these are what brexit was all about

Are you proposing an alliance between Brexited and Putineers?

bmforre wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:58 pm

tom p wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:54 pm

dyqik wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:06 pm Meanwhile, the actual weapons available to resist Putin are chiefly financial laws, like enforcing tax and money laundering laws, and existing sanctions.

The ability of the UK to avoid these are what brexit was all about

Are you proposing an alliance between Brexited and Putineers?

It's very well documented.

dyqik wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:00 pm

bmforre wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:58 pm

tom p wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:54 pm

The ability of the UK to avoid these are what brexit was all about

Are you proposing an alliance between Brexited and Putineers?

It's very well documented.

And not just putineers. The finance behind the vote leave campaign came largely from the scum who hope to profit from managing the proceeds of kleptocrat-scale theft from Russia, china & many other countries with less-than-stellar records of government openness and honesty

tom p wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:20 pm

dyqik wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:00 pm

bmforre wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:58 pm

Are you proposing an alliance between Brexited and Putineers?

It's very well documented.

And not just putineers. The finance behind the vote leave campaign came largely from the scum who hope to profit from managing the proceeds of kleptocrat-scale theft from Russia, china & many other countries with less-than-stellar records of government openness and honesty

You can also see their decades long influence campaign at work in the US, particularly via the NRA.

Detailed commentary on the UK policy:

https://twitter.com/LawDavF/status/1371 ... 61893?s=20

It annoys me that no one in media discussions mentions that Nato countries like Spain or Italy have no warheads of their own and yet remain completely uninvaded by Russia

Trinucleus wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 5:10 pm It annoys me that no one in media discussions mentions that Nato countries like Spain or Italy have no warheads of their own and yet remain completely uninvaded by Russia

Or mention, as has previously been pointed out, that Britain's possession of nuclear weapons did not discourage Argentina from invading the Falkland Islands.

JQH wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:48 pm

Trinucleus wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 5:10 pm It annoys me that no one in media discussions mentions that Nato countries like Spain or Italy have no warheads of their own and yet remain completely uninvaded by Russia

Or mention, as has previously been pointed out, that Britain's possession of nuclear weapons did not discourage Argentina from invading the Falkland Islands.

I think you have the wrong deterrent, JQH. Nuclear weapons are a mark of respect directed at nuclear foes, but the small fry just get conventional threats. Like the British naval presence (was it just the one ship?) poncing around the South Atlantic. The Argentine junta invaded only after British plans to save money by removing that sole deterrent became public knowledge.

dyqik wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:06 pm Meanwhile, the actual weapons available to resist Putin are chiefly financial laws, like enforcing tax and money laundering laws, and existing sanctions.

If Putin and his friends own lots of valuable properties scattered around London, they're not going to bomb them, are they?

JQH wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:48 pm as has previously been pointed out, that Britain's possession of nuclear weapons did not discourage Argentina from invading the Falkland Islands.

A weapon that your enemy believes you won't use is no threat.

As others have mentioned, we came much closer to annihilation due to nuclear war in the 20th century than most people realise. These risks are discussed in terrifying detail in the Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg (yes, the Pentagon Papers Daniel Ellsberg), who worked as a nuclear war planner. Second, presumably climate change makes nuclear war more likely, as the significant pressures it will produce will drive major powers closer to the brink.

Third, the nuclear arsenals of places like the USA and Russia should not be understood as deterrents. The whole point of these arsenals, and also of proposed 'defense' systems like Star Wars, is that they open the option of an annihilating first strike (Ellsberg claims that initiating such a strike against the Soviets was seriously discussed at the highest levels of the US military, and presumably the Soviets had similar discussions). The argument here is that for deterrence you only need a fairly modest number of missiles on nuclear subs, and missile defense systems can only handle an insignificant fraction of a major strike. So what's the point of giant arsenals and hypothetical missile defense systems? Well, you launch your giant arsenal first, this crushes the enemy (and everyone else nearby) to the point where they can only respond with missiles launched from submarines, planes that were in the air at the time, and whatever land installations escaped the carnage, and your missile defense system can handle this retaliation. This is why Star Wars was such a major sticking point in discussions between Reagan and Gorbachev. Because the Soviets, correctly, understood it as an aggressive rather than defensive measure.

Millennie Al wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 4:20 am

JQH wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:48 pm as has previously been pointed out, that Britain's possession of nuclear weapons did not discourage Argentina from invading the Falkland Islands.

A weapon that your enemy believes you won't use is no threat.

Which feeds back into the salami tactics.

If it obvious we weren't going to use nukes to defend the Falklands then you can extrapolate that to East Berlin fire fighters and upwards through Cyprus then Gibraltar then the Channel Islands right until T-70s are parked at the Watford Gap service station so exactly what is the point of our "independent" (sic) nuclear deterrent and why does the "logic" of the UK having nuclear weapons not apply to Sweden or Japan or West Germany?

And note I'm carefully and deliberately using Cold War-era reference points. If the logic of the UK's nuclear deterrent made no sense at the height of a Cold War with an obvious and clearly nuclear-armed opponent how can we justify it now in these more ambiguous, asymmetric times with the harshest dose of austerity in history just around the corner? A dirty bomb explodes in a container on a ship at London docks, a cyber attack cripples our electricity distribution system, a fanatic spends a weekend deliberately spreading COVID-22 on the underground, a trade bloc imposes sanctions on us crippling imports, then who do we launch at?

A discussion about 200 vs 260 warheads is literally angels dancing on a pin-head.

Little waster wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:37 am

Millennie Al wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 4:20 am

JQH wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:48 pm as has previously been pointed out, that Britain's possession of nuclear weapons did not discourage Argentina from invading the Falkland Islands.

A weapon that your enemy believes you won't use is no threat.

Which feeds back into the salami tactics.

If it obvious we weren't going to use nukes to defend the Falklands then you can extrapolate that to East Berlin fire fighters and upwards through Cyprus then Gibraltar then the Channel Islands right until T-70s are parked at the Watford Gap service station so exactly what is the point of our "independent" (sic) nuclear deterrent and why does the "logic" of the UK having nuclear weapons not apply to Sweden or Japan or West Germany?

And note I'm carefully and deliberately using Cold War-era reference points. If the logic of the UK's nuclear deterrent made no sense at the height of a Cold War with an obvious and clearly nuclear-armed opponent how can we justify it now in these more ambiguous, asymmetric times with the harshest dose of austerity in history just around the corner? A dirty bomb explodes in a container on a ship at London docks, a cyber attack cripples our electricity distribution system, a fanatic spends a weekend deliberately spreading COVID-22 on the underground, a trade bloc imposes sanctions on us crippling imports, then who do we launch at?

A discussion about 200 vs 260 warheads is literally angels dancing on a pin-head.

Or as we saw with Ukraine, European leaders had trouble dealing with:

- men wearing balaclavas taking over government buildings
- separatists armed with weapons only used by the Russian army
- Russian artillery firing over the border into Ukraine (but denied by Russia)
- Russian army units operating in Ukraine (but denied by Russia)
- A Russian army unit shooting down a civilian airliner (but denied by Russia and probably an accident)

Its easy for policymakers to state that ta use for armed forces would be to resist aggression against another European state. Its much harder if no one is sure exactly what is happening.

Difficult how a UK Prime Minister could decide to use nuclear weapons in an unclear situation in which the supposed aggressor is claiming that its all a misunderstanding and they only want peace.

Classic scene from Yes, Prime Minister on salami tactics and the nuclear deterrent.

secret squirrel wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:55 am So what's the point of giant arsenals and hypothetical missile defense systems?

To convince your well-equipped enemy that if they try a first strike then, even with the best spycraft and very large number of missiles targetting your missiles, you'll still have enough of yours left to destroy them. Mutually Assured Destruction.

Money well spent.

Instead of making sure people definitely have ok lives now, lets spunk billions on a system to kill other civilians after we're all dead.