Trident is more important than ever.

It is relevant to the point I was making, that countries who sell or otherwise place weapons at the disposal of other nations have little control of their subsequent use.

Britain can make the difference. Lets stop developing these WMD's and set the example and make a statement that history will remember. We Brits had the common sense to choose peace instead of war.

It doesn't matter what we choose; it matters what our enemies choose - we saw that for sure in 1939. North Korea isn't following our lead on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, democracy, freedom of travel, property rights, freedom to trade, right to a fair trial, right to life, protection from cruel and usual punishments, presumption of innocence, equality under the law or freedom of thought; what, pray tell, makes you think that Kim Jung Un will start acting like a decent human being in the event that we in the West throw away our weapons?

Instead, we have huge wastes of taxpayers money on a colossal scale for these vile systems. If Trident was ever used, it would end all human life on Planet Earth.

North Korea doesn't even have a proven ability to deliver nukes to a distant target and certainly not to the UK. Unless you are imagining we are some kind of global policeman with Trident? That role supposedly ended in the early 60s.

Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia - all much more credible threats - North Korea seems to pop up in these discussions as a sort of useful bogey but it's rubbish really.

This is just plain wrong; trident consists of 192 ~500kT thermonuclear weapons; it has a total yield of 96 MT. A total of 2000 nuclear bombs have already been detonated on Earth - many of them substantially less clean than trident - with a combined yield on the order of 150MT. If human life is going to be wiped out it will be by enemy weapons - maybe you should campaign in Russia first considering that they have over 1GT of nuclear weapons and a substantially less liberal government.

North Korea doesn't even have a proven ability to deliver nukes to a distant target and certainly not to the UK. Unless you are imagining we are some kind of global policeman with Trident? That role supposedly ended in the early 60s.

Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia - all much more credible threats - North Korea seems to pop up in these discussions as a sort of useful bogey but it's rubbish really.

Either we allow the South Koreans to have nuclear weapons, or we make it clear to Kim Jung Un that any nuclear attack on South Korea will be met with a nuclear attack on his country. Or should we let a mass murdering communist have a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region and raze South Korea to the ground?

It's the principle of the thing; either we have the power to defend ourselves from such maniacs or we hide behind someone else who does. I'd rather the former.

Iran and Pakistan have developed into credible threats over time. North Korea may not be able to deliver nuclear strikes right now but how can you predict where they are heading or when they will become a credible threat to the UK? North Korea is showing all the signs of being very dangerous in the future so it seems perfectly logical for it to pop up in a discussions like this.

I've already given a wide range of credible reasons why the independence point is a myth and nothing you've said, despite all your hifalutin blather (and LOL some of that - you sound like a 50-year old Tory politician, are you in training for Conservative Central Office??), makes the least credible difference to it.

In fact, most of your 'arguments' are straight out of the standard nuclear weapon hawk songbook and you either believe all this guff without engaging your brain, or you question it. I admire your touching faith in the authorities anyway, in the same way I admire the naivete of a young child believing in Santa Claus.

It's laughably unlikely that the US will allow such a situation to emerge, but even if it did, and NK nukes could span the globe, what possible role could an alleged UK deterrent have compared to US might in deterring North Korea??

It's laughably unlikely that the US will allow such a situation to emerge, but even if it did, and NK nukes could span the globe, what possible role could an alleged UK deterrent have compared to US might in deterring North Korea??

No, you have given a wide range of opinions. They are not reasons, and they are not credible.

Simply stating 'I have done this' doesn't make it so, since all you have used is a journalistic opinion piece where the strongest opinion he is willing to make is 'it is unlikely', and another where Greenpeace and an anti-nuclear activist go up against the government with nothing but their opinion and come off second best, as every one of their arguments is comfortably rebutted with facts in the second half of the source.

It's ironic that you claim that I believe all this without engaging my brain. I am simply asking myself what is most likely position. I can look at the evidence and consider the arguments.

We have a nuclear deterrent which relies on the principle of the weapons being based on a strategic and undetectable hidden platform (stealthy submarines) which means that the possibility of them being taken out by a tactical first strike is unlikely, because if their location is unknown, it will be extremely unlikely for them to be taken out by a nuclear strike.

I ask myself, which is most likely.

1 - The UK has full control over the weapons, and they can be launched by the submarine, either on the direct order of HM government, or in the event of HM government being destroyed in a surprise attack after following procedure to ensure that the UK government no longer exists, they can be launched independently on the basis of the codes and orders issued before departure.

2 - The UK does not have full control over the weapons, and they cannot be launched by the submarine without the Americans giving permission. In the event of HM government (and/or the American Government) being destroyed in a surprise attack they just sit there uselessly, because the means to issue the firing orders and thus launch the missiles no longer exists, removing the whole deterrent rationale for having a hidden sea based nuclear strike force at an unknown location.

You are going with option two, obviously.

While I are always glad to have young people participating in debates, its with the proviso that they keep the debate at an adult level.

You have so far used silly insults against those who disagree with you and members of the armed forces.

Have made silly statements with no cites (opinion does not count as a cite) to back them up.

When called on to your silly statements and insults, continue to insist on them as fact, in spite of other posters telling you otherwise, and have pretended to be shorthanding or paraphrasing in an attempt to avoid having to concede the point.

Perhaps you have been a little bit too ambitious taking part in a discussion between adults as you appear to be more then a little out of your depth when it comes to sensible argument.

It is to your credit that you have actually made the attempt to participate, but I think that its more then likely that your parents would prefer you to concentrate on your schoolwork for the time being, and maybe enter the forum of ideas in a few years time.

All young people nowadays are encouraged to feel confident in their abilities, but while this is good for their self esteem, in many cases (such as yours for example), it simply doesn't come up to the mark, abilitywise.

Don't lose hope, I fully expect you to be a fully lucid, persuasive and knowledable debater at some time in the future .

But that time is not now.

Do your truly think there's no scope difference between some Exocets flogged by the French (and especially with their long history of moral indifference to the conduct of the purchasers of their weapon systems) and the delivery of Trident nuclear weapons from the US to the UK?? It's a ridiculous comparison.

They were all fired at once were they? And you think that there is some imaginable context where 'our' Trident could be fired alone and not as part of global thermonuclear war with China or Russia on the side of the US?

When you say "we", are you talking about Britain? This thread is about renewing the UK Trident missile system. The points you are raising about NK and SK are irrelevant, they are within the orbit of US command, unless we were part of some overall taskforce. I don't know what the ratio is of existing long-range US nuclear weapons able to destroy North Korea is to the number of alleged nukes capable of deliver by NK, but presumably it's something like 1:10000 (US:NK) or more. It's not quite clear why in this situation it requires a UK nuclear force??

Plenty of situations where they could want to hit the US's closest allies. They may well make the calculation they could hit an ally and the US won't strike back over anything less than a direct attack on them. I believe there were similar fears in quite a few countries that the US would not get into a nuclear war with Russia over anything less than a direct attack during the cold war.

The scope difference doesn't matter.

In both cases, all I had to do was show that the principle is the same.

Weapons delivered into the hands of other states will no longer be directly controlled by the original state, and while the former state may be able to exert some aspect of political pressure as a means of indirectly controlling them, that is about all they can do.

It requires a UK nuclear force because soon the US may be in range of North Korea and thus the DPRK will be able to deter a US counterattack if it decides to destroy South Korea. Besides that; if we agree that the West should have nuclear weapons then we should have nuclear weapons being as we are the second (or third - it alternates with France) most powerful state in NATO.

Also, we don't know the future. Compare the world of 1913 to the world of 1963. Fifty years is a long time.

There isn't any meaningful content in most of the above. Clearly you're trying to get a rise out of me, but just want to say, it's not working.

The only relevant bit was your numbered items, but I have to say, putting to one side the complexity of survivability and removal of top command from strikes, etc, they rather support the notion that there is no genuine independence, don't they? You seem to be realising that the question of overall control is vested in some kind of joint command between the US and the UK, am I right? Or do you firmly believe that the UK could use these things utterly without recourse to the US in NORMAL conditions, eg, not in a complex situation where one or other top-level power has been toppled?