More and more it looks like isolated North Korea may have actually attacked South Korea. Will it lead to war? Unlikely. North Korea has gotten away with worse. We already know North Korea has developed and tested nuclear weapons and we already know North Korea has developed and tested missile platforms to deploy said weapons to threaten South Korea and Japan. America…not so much and worse yet, not the United Kingdom.
British Conservative and Labour administrations claims to keep nuclear weapons to “deter” North Korean aggression are at best hollow and uneducated and at worst outright lies. Nuclear weapons do not deter development nor do they deter aggression.
Iran develops nuclear technology as it likes and it performs aggressive postures against its neighbours (taking over oil fields in Iraq, carrying out harassment and military manoeuvres in the Strait of Hormuz). Iran also continues to fund Hezbollah and supply them with even more advanced weaponry for the inevitable conflict with Israel.
Britain’s fleet of 4 Vangard class submarines do not in any way threaten any states but the one they were originally intended to threaten: Russia. Just as the missile shield being used to coral Russian territory (yet somehow protecting Europe from Iran) is only meant to defend against Russian ICBMs, British subs sailing into the Baltic from Scotland are only meant to attack Russian cities. With North Korea to the East of Russia it is believable to say interceptors and military bases are there to stop NKs McGuyver-ed together missiles but credibility begins to slip when Polish interceptors are needed to stop Iran’s yet to exist missiles. A more suitable place might be Cyprus or Turkey…I’m no geo-stategist nor am I a rocket scientist…I’m just considering the shortest distance between two points.
On the other hand. Lockheed Martin makes around 8 billion dollars a year from selling and maintaining advanced ballistic weapons which may never get used to countries like the UK. With Trident it will lock in over 100 Billion. The company makes lots more selling to the US Department of defence (DOD) but as was warned by Eisenhower, the Military-Industry is now vital to the US economy. American Military-Industry is not vital to the British economy however and only takes away from the money that could be spent on civilian aerospace, transit, industrial and agricultural sectors.
Maybe Russia still is a problem, maybe the cold war is not really over…then come clean. If we still need to attack Russia, just say so. We have guarded against Russia for decades and if we still need to then lets do, but stop feeding us this inconsistent and untrue line, NK and Persia are not detered and you know it.
