27
votes
United States to return to staging nuclear weapons in UK
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- Title
- US to station nuclear weapons in UK to counter threat from Russia
- Authors
- Tony Diver,
- Published
- Jan 26 2024
- Word count
- 322 words
Until we live in a truly peaceful world, I think this is a good thing. A lot of countries have been getting a little too grabby lately.
Hope I don't eat my words, but nuclear weapons seem to promote peace rather than war. It forces nuclear powers to compete in economic and cyber spaces since direct combat isn't an option.
I suppose they haven't prevented proxy wars, but those are are "better" than massive world wars between super powers.
I'd love to see a world where nobody needs nuclear weapons, and I would damn sure love to see a world where poor countries don't serve as our conventional weapons testing grounds. But looking at it objectively, it's a step forward from where humanity was for most of our existence.
Pacifism is great until you get knocked in the teeth by a hostile party. Thus far they've been a deterrent, and in some cases a threat, but so far the nuclear counter is luckily still at two.
Edit to add: the header on the article are exactly the type of people I'm talking about. Pacifism is great as a goal, but we aren't there yet. It's the same people that would tell Ukraine to roll over because peace above all. Unfortunately (and I mean that), it doesn't work that way.
Something, something, peace in our time.
Unfortunately so. Atomic weapons have been a proponent of peace among atomic powers, but as long as one nation has them, no nation will give them up, and these states will be emboldened to impose their will on those without. The most notable thing about this news is that the United States is returning nuclear weapons to U.K. territory, instead of bolstering their stockpiles in other continuous platform states like Germany or Italy, so a normalization of nuclear weapons being imported to other allied nations could reoccur.
Well, across the pond is where all the grabbiness is happening so it makes sense to me.
The US is to station 50kt gravity bombs within Britain at Lakenheath airfield, complementing an assortment of American weapons stationed throughout the rest of NATO in addition to Britain's own deterrent force of submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
The USA has had some of its best nuclear hardware parked inside NATO since the 50s, and it's never gone away, just had a dramatically reduced stockpile in five different countries. It went from some seven thousand weapons down to around a hundred. The other EU nations have their own weapons, some of them much larger than the US stashes combined.
I wouldn't forget about France either, a partner with the USA for a lot of advanced R&D that included the first neutron bomb tests in the early 80s. They have their own stockpile with variable blast levels that alone are more than enough to take Russia off the map, or more surgically (hah) just take out army positions with a minimal amount of collateral damage (glassing one valley / county / township at a time rather than all of Europe).
If I were to place a bet on where in Europe the USA would stash a modern clandestine weapons capability, it'd be France. That may seem a bit like an odd choice, but remember we've been tight with them since our war of independence with the Brits, and that's a much older and closer tie than it looks at first glance, even if we grumble at each other from time to time. Their gift is still standing there to welcome everyone into Upper New York Bay, after all.
Upshot is nothing new for Europe or Russia with this development - but it is an escalation, and a first step on the road to return of the cold-war mindset. It's also the US signaling to Russia that they aren't taking this Ukraine business as lightly at the Pentagon as this lame-duck congress (factually the least productive, most gridlocked in all of US history) has been taking it in the House.
NATO has to sort its priorities out right quick because if and when Russia moves one inch on any NATO member, everyone under the age of 40 reading this is potentially looking at a draft no matter what country they live in, or what gender or religion they are. Ahh, equality at last. :P
Frankly I'd rather give Ukraine a blank aid check in perpetuity than see things go down that route. Anyone voting to withhold aid is flippantly baiting a world war just to score social media points with their cultish base. Russia cannot be allowed to cross Ukraine, period. If they are not stopped cold there, then NATO will be forced to mop them up in a month... and they will, without real effort, without a second's hesitation, and without using nukes. Russia will collapse faster than Iraq did in the 90s.
The question then becomes if Putin will go scorched earth when the pitchforks are at his door. If the answer is yes, then we'd all better pray that most of those rockets go off on the launch pad or in the silo, and the ones that make it up in the air are sitting ducks for modern interceptors and satellite lasers.
The big problem here is that none of this covers the submarines, which are the real deterrent since they can't be tracked and they can launch from anywhere. Pretty hard to defend a coastal city from a nuclear attack when the travel time of the weapon is measured in single digit minutes. One can nuke Boston from inside Boston Harbor and there's no stopping that without taking out those submarines.
If you're curious about how the war is really going over there (and I think there's a case to be made that every living soul should be) then Perun can catch you up in one hour. The short version? They need bullets - all they can get their hands on, and they need them yesterday. Without those bullets they are reduced to playing defense and Russia will break through those lines within a year. With those bullets, they can at least hold the line and at best reclaim all of Ukraine's original territory, possibly including Crimea. In a sane world, that's where it stops, up goes Iron Curtain 2.0, and we all wait for Russia to freeze to death or to have a revolution and decide they are done being the world's asshole neighbor.
When you see the news that the Kerch bridge has been sent to the bottom of the bay, things will start to get hot in Russia. It's a cultural icon and Putin's favorite pet project, and it has to fall to liberate Crimea. Until then it's gridlocked trench combat, land mines, and flying exploding bombs, all for gains measured in single digit kilometers that traded back and forth between both sides with no real progress. Modern warfare has gotten... weird.
Ukraine has done a frankly stunning job but I think we sold them out short with aid coming as an IV drip of old hardware rather than a fast infusion of modern weaponry. Now they are in the crunch, and our lack of stronger support put them there when we could have put them into a much better position with just a little more resolve.
I wouldn't look to much US help until after the election. Europe is going to have to carry this on their own for a little while, at least until next year. The social media junkie faction of the republican party is going to play roadblock until then because it's the only way they can get any press or relevance. Just to be clear, they aren't specifically blocking aid, they are blocking everything on general principle, even the border bill they wanted so badly.
I can see the reasons for doing this given Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.
I don't think it is a great thing to do. It is dangerous. Mistakes and other things happen.
Hopefully over time the last of the Soviet Union leaders in Europe will die and leaders of a certain mentality/mental illness will be gone.
Historically a decent number of Brits were militantly anti-nuclear weapons. I’m not sure how the public opinion would be today. Ironically some of the protest movements then seem to have led to the anti-transness of British feminism.
You didn't ask, but from the perspective of a Dutchman: No long term weapons or bases during peacetime. It's sovereign soil no other nation should be in any military capacity. It sort of defeats the point.
In cases like an ongoing war in Ukraine, yeah, this is sensible. There's a credible threat to the alliance which should mean an increased co-operability and shared weaponry should fill the gaps any single country might have on its own.
I think the idea with military bases is partially that they act like embassies during peacetime. There's often lot of cultural exchange around them which is great for both countries. And of course there's the deterrent effect; Taiwan was devastated when the US removed their military base from the island because it was a security assurance (if the country is attacked then the military base guarantees some involvement).
I consider that an active security threat, so my second paragraph would apply.
Would you care to share your opinions on the benefit/detriment of the Volkel airbase and its long-term housing of American weapons?
I don't consider the local goings on to be a problem per se, nor do I think the diplomatic benefits are a net negative although it's probably best left to actual diplomats, but I do entertain a more esoteric (yet very practical) downside where the reliance of US military spending supercedes a country's own military expenditure. Why bother if you're defended by the, admittedly many, guns of others?
It's probably the one thing I agreed on with Trump when he started talking about the 2% spending agreement and chastising the alliance for almost unilaterally failing to do what they should have been doing all along.
A country should stand on its own, militarily speaking, and defend their own sovereign soil. Only entertaining foreign troops when the alliance is called into action, not before.
It's a shame Trump didn't realize that expenditure entitles the U.S. to certain privileges in foreign relations that America would surrender were it to make its allies walk the walk, so to speak.
Trump's an idiot, but he's a smart idiot and I think he is well aware of that. He doesn't care what the US loses as long as he wins, and his base only cares about things that directly benefit the US.
Specifically they care about excluding foreigners, repatriating jobs, persecuting lgbtq, subjugating women.
They don't know or care about alliances or geopolitical advantage
I also would like to repatriate significant numbers of jobs, but nothing else on this list