Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
I get the horrible feeling I am mocking what turns out to be a helpless victim of progeria syndrome, though. HYUFD on paper is the youngest poster here.
Really? I thought HYUFD was in his his forties or higher!
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
@HannaLiubakova Massive explosions in a number of cities in #Belarus. Residents of Baranavichy, Luninets, Stolin, Hantsavichy, Slutsk, Kletsk and other cities reported sounds similar to explosions. We are trying to understand what happened
Dear God, this sounds bad
I hope I am wrong
But if I had to guess right now I'd say Putin is trying to cue up a pan-European war
You’ve only got to watch his increasingly deranged speeches to realise that is a real possibility
I still can’t see how he’s satisfied finding a “peace deal”
We talking Putin or HYUFD here? I am losing track...
Belarus Opposition politicians tweeting cryptically tonight:
"❗️❗️❗️Over the past 3️⃣ hours, about 3️⃣0️⃣ fighter jets, transport planes & helicopters lifted into the sky from #Belarusian airfields in Baranovichi, Gomel, Lida, Luninets❗️ 6️⃣ missiles launched near the city of Kalinkovichi. Explosions are heard in various cities of #Belarus." https://twitter.com/PavelLatushka/status/1504200509481173006
May be nothing...
Sonic booms, not explosions from what I can tell. Where are those planes heading?
If it has reached twitter then they'll be wherever they were going already.
@Flatlander: you were right about the shadow sticks. I didn't reply the other night as I had gone to bed and didn't see you last comment.
Ah, thanks - no problem. Smile for summer, frown for winter, straight line for the equinox.
Makes a change for me to be right about something...
Straight line on Sunday then. It's the height of the shadow, no? But doesn't it make a V-shape?
Having been called a genius today on a betting site for my sports betting analysis ☺️ as she was swiping through magazines on her kindle I talked her through as it is. Tottenham have a far better squad, far easier fixtures Arsenals look tough, spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch, stronger bench with options Arsenal don’t have, and spurs a manager proven winner wherever he has been more than 5 minutes - Arsenal will finish about ten points behind Tottenham.
She’s gone to bed.
Am I a bad person? Do you think me a bad person?
“spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch” did I lay it on too thick?
Belarus Opposition politicians tweeting cryptically tonight:
"❗️❗️❗️Over the past 3️⃣ hours, about 3️⃣0️⃣ fighter jets, transport planes & helicopters lifted into the sky from #Belarusian airfields in Baranovichi, Gomel, Lida, Luninets❗️ 6️⃣ missiles launched near the city of Kalinkovichi. Explosions are heard in various cities of #Belarus." https://twitter.com/PavelLatushka/status/1504200509481173006
May be nothing...
Sonic booms, not explosions from what I can tell. Where are those planes heading?
If it has reached twitter then they'll be wherever they were going already.
@Flatlander: you were right about the shadow sticks. I didn't reply the other night as I had gone to bed and didn't see you last comment.
Ah, thanks - no problem. Smile for summer, frown for winter, straight line for the equinox.
Makes a change for me to be right about something...
First time I have don this so don't know if link will work, but it seems that it was just planes and artillery exercise. not defernite but seems more likely to me.
Having been called a genius today on a betting site for my sports betting analysis ☺️ as she was swiping through magazines on her kindle I talked her through as it is. Tottenham have a far better squad, far easier fixtures Arsenals look tough, spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch, stronger bench with options Arsenal don’t have, and spurs a manager proven winner wherever he has been more than 5 minutes - Arsenal will finish about ten points behind Tottenham.
She’s gone to bed.
Am I a bad person? Do you think me a bad person?
“spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch” did I lay it on too thick?
Yeah, Kane has switched from being on strike to putting himself in the shop window.
Belarus Opposition politicians tweeting cryptically tonight:
"❗️❗️❗️Over the past 3️⃣ hours, about 3️⃣0️⃣ fighter jets, transport planes & helicopters lifted into the sky from #Belarusian airfields in Baranovichi, Gomel, Lida, Luninets❗️ 6️⃣ missiles launched near the city of Kalinkovichi. Explosions are heard in various cities of #Belarus." https://twitter.com/PavelLatushka/status/1504200509481173006
May be nothing...
Sonic booms, not explosions from what I can tell. Where are those planes heading?
If it has reached twitter then they'll be wherever they were going already.
@Flatlander: you were right about the shadow sticks. I didn't reply the other night as I had gone to bed and didn't see you last comment.
Ah, thanks - no problem. Smile for summer, frown for winter, straight line for the equinox.
Makes a change for me to be right about something...
Straight line on Sunday then. It's the height of the shadow, no? But doesn't it make a V-shape?
Having been called a genius today on a betting site for my sports betting analysis ☺️ as she was swiping through magazines on her kindle I talked her through as it is. Tottenham have a far better squad, far easier fixtures Arsenals look tough, spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch, stronger bench with options Arsenal don’t have, and spurs a manager proven winner wherever he has been more than 5 minutes - Arsenal will finish about ten points behind Tottenham.
She’s gone to bed.
Am I a bad person? Do you think me a bad person?
“spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch” did I lay it on too thick?
Yeah, Kane has switched from being on strike to putting himself in the shop window.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
You really haven't a clue.
No we wouldn't, Sidewinder missiles might have helped but it was UK aircraft carriers and carriers that took troops to the Falklands and British troops who in turn recaptured the Falklands.
Having been called a genius today on a betting site for my sports betting analysis ☺️ as she was swiping through magazines on her kindle I talked her through as it is. Tottenham have a far better squad, far easier fixtures Arsenals look tough, spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch, stronger bench with options Arsenal don’t have, and spurs a manager proven winner wherever he has been more than 5 minutes - Arsenal will finish about ten points behind Tottenham.
She’s gone to bed.
Am I a bad person? Do you think me a bad person?
“spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch” did I lay it on too thick?
Arsenal tonight didn't look like a Top 4 club playing at home.
Having been called a genius today on a betting site for my sports betting analysis ☺️ as she was swiping through magazines on her kindle I talked her through as it is. Tottenham have a far better squad, far easier fixtures Arsenals look tough, spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch, stronger bench with options Arsenal don’t have, and spurs a manager proven winner wherever he has been more than 5 minutes - Arsenal will finish about ten points behind Tottenham.
She’s gone to bed.
Am I a bad person? Do you think me a bad person?
“spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch” did I lay it on too thick?
Yeah, Kane has switched from being on strike to putting himself in the shop window.
If you consider the players United, Spurs, and Chelsea may lose this summer (for various different reasons) it will be interesting to see where they go.
Without wanting to go over the last thread all over again I looked up some stuff on the Falklands War regarding @HYUFD comment on it being easy.
The US Navy assessed that a successful counter invasion was impossible
Lord Craig stated that if just 6 of the 13 bomb fuses that failed because the Argentine Hawks were flying too low had detonated we would have lost
And that is ignoring the threat of the exocets getting past the destroyers and frigates which suffered badly protecting the carriers.
But hey ho just a cake walk.
Right you want to restart this I can go on all evening and all night now if needed.
None of that changes whatsoever my point that Thatcher was prepared to fight to retake the Falklands as Argentina did not have nuclear weapons unlike us and had a far weaker military like us. Hence we won the war and she would have continued to fight the war no matter what the cost.
Sending a no fly zone into Ukraine against a Russia armed with nuclear weapons is however a totally different ball game
Even had all our carriers been sunk and most of our destroyers and frigates been sunk (which they weren't and was highly unlikely) we could still have placed submarines armed with nuclear weapons off the coast off Argentina and refused to remove them until the Argentines withdrew
Again showing your ignorance. Re our frigates and destroyers over 50% were hit. As per my previous reference frome some who actually knew what he was talking about if just 6 of the 13 bombs that failed to explode had done so we would have lost. So not highly unlikely at all, but nearly happened. Bizarrely we were lucky that the very brave Argentine Hawk pilots got too low. As it was 4 did sink.
So 50% were not and most were not sunk and our carriers survived.
Even if all 13 bombs had not gone off that did not mean we would have lost as we had nuclear weapons and Argentina did not.
As I said we could have parked subs armed with nuclear missiles off the Argentine Coast and refused to remove them until Argentine forces withdrew from the Falkland Islands
Again completely missed the point. All I objected to was you saying it was easy. Go on finally admit it wasn't easy. The US Navy thought it impossible. The head of the RAF thought that we would have lost if 6 of those ,13 bombs had exploded. If they had of exploded we would have lost over half our frigates and destroyers.
Under no circumstances can that be described as easy.
Go on admit it wasn't easy. That is all I am after. Be a man at admit you were wrong to say tha.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Bonkers. I never said we should concede defeat. Don't know where you got that from. Once we were committed, we were committed. And I was in favour of us doing so. You just make stuff up.
I have objected to one thing, you saying 3 times that the Falklands war was easy and you are so weak you can't admit that was a mistake. Pathetic.
You are so feeble and weak that you are happy to insult the memory of those that fought and the government of the day than admit you were wrong.
Shame on you.
Yes you did.
You were not prepared to use all methods at our disposal to free the Falklands. You effectively said if the war had started to go against our conventional forces we would automatically have lost.
You restarted this debate not me, so stop whinging if you can't take the heat
And I said you are polite the other day !!!!!
Your whole commentary on the Falklands was error strewn, fake, and frankly an unbelievable ascertain we would nuke Buenos Aires
I was discussing the Falklands war in detail with constituents in the1983 election, were you? - because if you had said half of what you have said you would have had a very angry response
Had you effectively handed over the Falklands to Argentina had the conventional war not started to go in our favour I am sure you too would have met with an angry response
But the Thatcher Government was well started on handing them over to Argentina. Secret talks, running down the forces both locally and more generally ... the V-bombers, the assault ships, much else was being closed down, including Portsmouth Dockyard. If General Galtieri had been a little more patient ...
There were talks, so what, at most they would have involved some powersharing and even that unlikely. Not wholesale handing of British territory to Argentina
Of course, you weren't awarte of anything more than the Flowerpot Men or the Magic Roundabout.But there was a hell of a lot of criticism of Mr N. Ridley at the FO, and Lord Carrington actually wanted to resign from MoD.
Yes.
A Tory minister. Wanting to resign for fouling up.
Just imagine how unutterably bad that was.
Actually Carrington at the FO, and he did resign. Nott merely flounced out of an interview with Robin Day. “ why should people believe you, a transient, here today and, if I may say so, gone tomorrow politician.… “
Thanks for the correction! Memory of a long time ago.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
You really haven't a clue.
No we wouldn't, Sidewinder missiles might have helped but it was UK aircraft carriers and carriers that took troops to the Falklands and British troops who in turn recaptured the Falklands.
Without wanting to go over the last thread all over again I looked up some stuff on the Falklands War regarding @HYUFD comment on it being easy.
The US Navy assessed that a successful counter invasion was impossible
Lord Craig stated that if just 6 of the 13 bomb fuses that failed because the Argentine Hawks were flying too low had detonated we would have lost
And that is ignoring the threat of the exocets getting past the destroyers and frigates which suffered badly protecting the carriers.
But hey ho just a cake walk.
Right you want to restart this I can go on all evening and all night now if needed.
None of that changes whatsoever my point that Thatcher was prepared to fight to retake the Falklands as Argentina did not have nuclear weapons unlike us and had a far weaker military like us. Hence we won the war and she would have continued to fight the war no matter what the cost.
Sending a no fly zone into Ukraine against a Russia armed with nuclear weapons is however a totally different ball game
Even had all our carriers been sunk and most of our destroyers and frigates been sunk (which they weren't and was highly unlikely) we could still have placed submarines armed with nuclear weapons off the coast off Argentina and refused to remove them until the Argentines withdrew
Again showing your ignorance. Re our frigates and destroyers over 50% were hit. As per my previous reference frome some who actually knew what he was talking about if just 6 of the 13 bombs that failed to explode had done so we would have lost. So not highly unlikely at all, but nearly happened. Bizarrely we were lucky that the very brave Argentine Hawk pilots got too low. As it was 4 did sink.
So 50% were not and most were not sunk and our carriers survived.
Even if all 13 bombs had not gone off that did not mean we would have lost as we had nuclear weapons and Argentina did not.
As I said we could have parked subs armed with nuclear missiles off the Argentine Coast and refused to remove them until Argentine forces withdrew from the Falkland Islands
Again completely missed the point. All I objected to was you saying it was easy. Go on finally admit it wasn't easy. The US Navy thought it impossible. The head of the RAF thought that we would have lost if 6 of those ,13 bombs had exploded. If they had of exploded we would have lost over half our frigates and destroyers.
Under no circumstances can that be described as easy.
Go on admit it wasn't easy. That is all I am after. Be a man at admit you were wrong to say tha.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Bonkers. I never said we should concede defeat. Don't know where you got that from. Once we were committed, we were committed. And I was in favour of us doing so. You just make stuff up.
I have objected to one thing, you saying 3 times that the Falklands war was easy and you are so weak you can't admit that was a mistake. Pathetic.
You are so feeble and weak that you are happy to insult the memory of those that fought and the government of the day than admit you were wrong.
Shame on you.
Yes you did.
You were not prepared to use all methods at our disposal to free the Falklands. You effectively said if the war had started to go against our conventional forces we would automatically have lost.
You restarted this debate not me, so stop whinging if you can't take the heat
And I said you are polite the other day !!!!!
Your whole commentary on the Falklands was error strewn, fake, and frankly an unbelievable ascertain we would nuke Buenos Aires
I was discussing the Falklands war in detail with constituents in the1983 election, were you? - because if you had said half of what you have said you would have had a very angry response
Had you effectively handed over the Falklands to Argentina had the conventional war not started to go in our favour I am sure you too would have met with an angry response
But the Thatcher Government was well started on handing them over to Argentina. Secret talks, running down the forces both locally and more generally ... the V-bombers, the assault ships, much else was being closed down, including Portsmouth Dockyard. If General Galtieri had been a little more patient ...
There were talks, so what, at most they would have involved some powersharing and even that unlikely. Not wholesale handing of British territory to Argentina
Of course, you weren't awarte of anything more than the Flowerpot Men or the Magic Roundabout.But there was a hell of a lot of criticism of Mr N. Ridley at the FO, and Lord Carrington actually wanted to resign from MoD.
Yes.
A Tory minister. Wanting to resign for fouling up.
Just imagine how unutterably bad that was.
Those were the days, when people resigned for things they were responsible for even if it wasn’t their fault. That distinction seems to have vanished.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was exchanged for nine Russian PoWs, conscripts born in 2002-2003, according to President's Office. This may be the first prisoner exchange carried out since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine…. https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1504218513904488453
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was exchanged for nine Russian PoWs, conscripts born in 2002-2003, according to President's Office. This may be the first prisoner exchange carried out since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine…. https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1504218513904488453
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
No I haven’t. You’re just making stuff up. Thinking it’s evil to use nukes in a first strike against a non-nuclear power is just …. normal. I know every Trident captain would agree with me.
We have nuclear weapons to deter other nuclear weapons. We would only ever use them in that context. We don’t have a tactical nuke or the doctrine for their use.
In your view we don't have nuclear weapons to be used unless the UK itself is nuked.
So you confirm Russians could invade and occupy the UK using conventional forces if you were in charge without fear of the ultimate deterrent
Why do the BBC insist on calling the PM "Prime Minister Boris Johnson", like he is some kind of royal. Far too much formal respect
Why the Johnson nonsense? It's ludicrous. He's Boris. We all know him as Boris. He IS Boris. They should just say "Today, our Boris went to Saudi Arabia", or "next week, the Bozzmeister" (cheery grin) "will be Bozzing About in Belarus". Or just have a picture of the Bojo doing thumbs up at all of us
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
Belarus Opposition politicians tweeting cryptically tonight:
"❗️❗️❗️Over the past 3️⃣ hours, about 3️⃣0️⃣ fighter jets, transport planes & helicopters lifted into the sky from #Belarusian airfields in Baranovichi, Gomel, Lida, Luninets❗️ 6️⃣ missiles launched near the city of Kalinkovichi. Explosions are heard in various cities of #Belarus." https://twitter.com/PavelLatushka/status/1504200509481173006
May be nothing...
Sonic booms, not explosions from what I can tell. Where are those planes heading?
If it has reached twitter then they'll be wherever they were going already.
@Flatlander: you were right about the shadow sticks. I didn't reply the other night as I had gone to bed and didn't see you last comment.
Ah, thanks - no problem. Smile for summer, frown for winter, straight line for the equinox.
Makes a change for me to be right about something...
Straight line on Sunday then. It's the height of the shadow, no? But doesn't it make a V-shape?
The scenario was plotting the path of the end of the shadow cast by a stick pushed into the ground.
This describes a concave arc in summer, a convex arc in winter, and will transition through a straight line on Sunday.
It doesn't work precisely because the sun is actually displaced in the sky from its 'real' position by atmospheric refraction. Apparent sunset is usually about 5 minutes later than the geometric sunset.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
No I haven’t. You’re just making stuff up. Thinking it’s evil to use nukes in a first strike against a non-nuclear power is just …. normal. I know every Trident captain would agree with me.
We have nuclear weapons to deter other nuclear weapons. We would only ever use them in that context. We don’t have a tactical nuke or the doctrine for their use.
In your view we don't have nuclear weapons to be used unless the UK itself is nuked.
So you confirm Russians could invade and occupy the UK using conventional forces if you were in charge without fear of the ultimate deterrent
Belarus Opposition politicians tweeting cryptically tonight:
"❗️❗️❗️Over the past 3️⃣ hours, about 3️⃣0️⃣ fighter jets, transport planes & helicopters lifted into the sky from #Belarusian airfields in Baranovichi, Gomel, Lida, Luninets❗️ 6️⃣ missiles launched near the city of Kalinkovichi. Explosions are heard in various cities of #Belarus." https://twitter.com/PavelLatushka/status/1504200509481173006
May be nothing...
Sonic booms, not explosions from what I can tell. Where are those planes heading?
If it has reached twitter then they'll be wherever they were going already.
@Flatlander: you were right about the shadow sticks. I didn't reply the other night as I had gone to bed and didn't see you last comment.
Ah, thanks - no problem. Smile for summer, frown for winter, straight line for the equinox.
Makes a change for me to be right about something...
Straight line on Sunday then. It's the height of the shadow, no? But doesn't it make a V-shape?
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was exchanged for nine Russian PoWs, conscripts born in 2002-2003, according to President's Office. This may be the first prisoner exchange carried out since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine…. https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1504218513904488453
I bet those conscripts are pissed off. Back on the front line by breakfast time.
Belarus Opposition politicians tweeting cryptically tonight:
"❗️❗️❗️Over the past 3️⃣ hours, about 3️⃣0️⃣ fighter jets, transport planes & helicopters lifted into the sky from #Belarusian airfields in Baranovichi, Gomel, Lida, Luninets❗️ 6️⃣ missiles launched near the city of Kalinkovichi. Explosions are heard in various cities of #Belarus." https://twitter.com/PavelLatushka/status/1504200509481173006
May be nothing...
Sonic booms, not explosions from what I can tell. Where are those planes heading?
If it has reached twitter then they'll be wherever they were going already.
@Flatlander: you were right about the shadow sticks. I didn't reply the other night as I had gone to bed and didn't see you last comment.
Ah, thanks - no problem. Smile for summer, frown for winter, straight line for the equinox.
Makes a change for me to be right about something...
Straight line on Sunday then. It's the height of the shadow, no? But doesn't it make a V-shape?
The scenario was plotting the path of the end of the shadow cast by a stick pushed into the ground.
This describes a concave arc in summer, a convex arc in winter, and will transition through a straight line on Sunday.
It doesn't work precisely because the sun is actually displaced in the sky from its 'real' position by atmospheric refraction. Apparent sunset is usually about 5 minutes later than the geometric sunset.
Having been called a genius today on a betting site for my sports betting analysis ☺️ as she was swiping through magazines on her kindle I talked her through as it is. Tottenham have a far better squad, far easier fixtures Arsenals look tough, spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch, stronger bench with options Arsenal don’t have, and spurs a manager proven winner wherever he has been more than 5 minutes - Arsenal will finish about ten points behind Tottenham.
She’s gone to bed.
Am I a bad person? Do you think me a bad person?
“spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch” did I lay it on too thick?
Yeah, Kane has switched from being on strike to putting himself in the shop window.
If you consider the players United, Spurs, and Chelsea may lose this summer (for various different reasons) it will be interesting to see where they go.
It looks pretty nailed on that Tielemans will go from Leicester, but I think we will keep our other first team. We love Youri, but he is replaceable.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
You really haven't a clue.
No we wouldn't, Sidewinder missiles might have helped but it was UK aircraft carriers and carriers that took troops to the Falklands and British troops who in turn recaptured the Falklands.
Not Sidewinders
And without Sidewinders the Argentine Air force would have sunk those ships.
Seriously, why do you do this? If everyone is telling you that you have got it wrong (and not just on your view of things but actual facts) then you should consider that perhaps we know what we are talking about.
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was exchanged for nine Russian PoWs, conscripts born in 2002-2003, according to President's Office. This may be the first prisoner exchange carried out since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine…. https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1504218513904488453
I bet those conscripts are pissed off. Back on the front line by breakfast time.
Fragging their lieutenant by lunchtime. Double win for Ukraine.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
You really haven't a clue.
No we wouldn't, Sidewinder missiles might have helped but it was UK aircraft carriers and carriers that took troops to the Falklands and British troops who in turn recaptured the Falklands.
Not Sidewinders
Are so you finally looked it up.
So again missing the point. You said the US was little more than neutral. So you were wrong again weren't you?
And again you profess to know more than the leading advisors of the time who said they were vital. Breathtaking.
Our troops weren't landing without air support and it was the 100 plus sidewinders the US supplied at zero notice that provided that by keeping the Argentine planes at bay, in particular the Super Etendard with their exocets that were such a threat to the carriers.
But no the US were little more than neutral and the experts at the time who arranged this are all wrong because @hyufd who was 1 at the time says so.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
You really haven't a clue.
No we wouldn't, Sidewinder missiles might have helped but it was UK aircraft carriers and carriers that took troops to the Falklands and British troops who in turn recaptured the Falklands.
Not Sidewinders
And without Sidewinders the Argentine Air force would have sunk those ships.
Seriously, why do you do this? If everyone is telling you that you have got it wrong (and not just on your view of things but actual facts) then you should consider that perhaps we know what we are talking about.
No proof.
The Sidewinder was not the only missile our planes used and our ships also had their own defences.
There is no evidence at all the entire task force would have been sunk without Sidewinder missiles, aircraft carriers and converted liners alike.
Nor does it defeat the point we also had submarines with nuclear weapons unlike Argentina as a last resort
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
You really haven't a clue.
No we wouldn't, Sidewinder missiles might have helped but it was UK aircraft carriers and carriers that took troops to the Falklands and British troops who in turn recaptured the Falklands.
Not Sidewinders
And without Sidewinders the Argentine Air force would have sunk those ships.
Seriously, why do you do this? If everyone is telling you that you have got it wrong (and not just on your view of things but actual facts) then you should consider that perhaps we know what we are talking about.
No proof.
The Sidewinder was not the only missile our planes used and our shops also had their own defences.
There is no evidence at all the entire task force would have been sunk without Sidewinder missiles, aircraft carriers and converted liners alike.
Nor does it defeat the point we also had submarines with nuclear weapons unlike Argentina as a last resort
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
You really haven't a clue.
No we wouldn't, Sidewinder missiles might have helped but it was UK aircraft carriers and carriers that took troops to the Falklands and British troops who in turn recaptured the Falklands.
Not Sidewinders
And without Sidewinders the Argentine Air force would have sunk those ships.
Seriously, why do you do this? If everyone is telling you that you have got it wrong (and not just on your view of things but actual facts) then you should consider that perhaps we know what we are talking about.
No proof.
The Sidewinder was not the only missile our planes used and our ships also had their own defences.
There is no evidence at all the entire task force would have been sunk without Sidewinder missiles, aircraft carriers and converted liners alike.
Nor does it defeat the point we also had submarines with nuclear weapons unlike Argentina as a last resort
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
Have you ever studied any part of the Cold War? If you have, you weren’t reading….
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
As someone who was in the FCO at the time, I'd just like to say that even a UK threat of nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear state, let alone their actual use, was unthinkable in 1982.
How do you know what Thatcher would have done had British conventional forces started to lose the War and her premiership then been at risk of ending in humiliation and British territory lost to invasion without using all means of defence at our disposal?
He was in the FCO for goodness sake and his statement is factual as you would understand had you been around at the time
He was not Thatcher was he and Thatcher would have decided not the FCO
I absolutely would have not had any input into that decision, but you seem oblivious of the fact that the US only just supported our effort to retake the Falklands - we persuaded them by the skin of our teeth. We would have lost all US support for the war had we even hinted at using NW. And without the US helicopter and logistics support, our troops would not even have made it to the Falklands.
So its time to put your ignorant arse on ignore.
We got to the Falklands with our aircraft carriers and cruise liners who transported our troops.
Not due to the US who were effectively little more than neutral in the campaign
(What are the odds The Only True Tory In History has no idea what I'm going on about?)
@HYUFD go on, do you know what he is referring to because it was the first thing I thought of when you made that post. You are supposed to have a degree in history but you appear to know F All.
Still not got back to Andy on this one @hyufd. Another one of your historical blunders. I assume you are still looking through Wikipedia to find out what he is talking about. Not a clue.
@hyufd. Still avoiding this one. Your latest lack of knowledge on the Falklands war. What was Andy refering to? What again have you got spectacularly wrong re the Falklands war.
I'll give you a clue @hyufd. Lord Powell, Thatcher's key foreign affairs advisor and Richard Pearle an American deputy defence secretary both said we would have lost without them. Know what they are yet? Yet according to you the USA were little more than neutral.
You really haven't a clue.
No we wouldn't, Sidewinder missiles might have helped but it was UK aircraft carriers and carriers that took troops to the Falklands and British troops who in turn recaptured the Falklands.
Not Sidewinders
And without Sidewinders the Argentine Air force would have sunk those ships.
Seriously, why do you do this? If everyone is telling you that you have got it wrong (and not just on your view of things but actual facts) then you should consider that perhaps we know what we are talking about.
No proof.
The Sidewinder was not the only missile our planes used and our shops also had their own defences.
There is no evidence at all the entire task force would have been sunk without Sidewinder missiles, aircraft carriers and converted liners alike.
Nor does it defeat the point we also had submarines with nuclear weapons unlike Argentina as a last resort
Proof? Did you see what exocets did?
What other air to air missile did our planes use?
Sea Darts and Sea Wolfs all proved effective at downing Argentine planes. Vulcans could be used to bomb Argentine airfields
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
Have you ever studied any part of the Cold War? If you have, you weren’t reading….
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
Have you ever studied any part of the Cold War? If you have, you weren’t reading….
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
Have you ever studied any part of the Cold War? If you have, you weren’t reading….
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
Have you ever studied any part of the Cold War? If you have, you weren’t reading….
Oh for god’s sake. Do some reading. They had maps of all countries, just like we do. The actual soviet war plans are declassified and you can read them. Spoiler: they don’t involve invading the U.K.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
Have you ever studied any part of the Cold War? If you have, you weren’t reading….
Oh for god’s sake. Do some reading. They had maps of all countries, just like we do. The actual soviet war plans are declassified and you can read them. Spoiler: they don’t involve invading the U.K.
Of course they did, we were a NATO enemy.
Only someone as naive as you would have believed the Soviets had not drawn up any plans for an invasion of the UK.
Unlike the show 'As Time Goes By', which went by very slowly.
One of those successful “unfunny” comedies so popular in the 80s and 90s.
‘Last of the Summer Wine’ was the daddy, though.
Don’t Wait Up, George Layton’s Comedy was of that ilk and Allo Allo certainly outstayed its welcome.
I think Allo Allo is hilarious and holds up well. A lot of the comedy in the 80's and 90's was very well written. I also find it easier to laugh at things with a laughter track.
I really liked Allo Allo but, like with Are you Being Served, it probably ran for two too many seasons. They just run out of ideas and repeat gags and catchphrases.
Well, it was a spoof on one of the best drama series the BBC ever made, and once they’d stolen the spoofable plot lines from its three series, they were bereft of new ideas.
The real shame about Secret Army was the last episode, one of the very best of the series, was not shown on terrestrial TV. It wasn’t even on the dvd release.
You Rang My Lord, as a spoof, was far better and only ran for four seasons.
What makes you say it was one of the best? Insofar as we know about it, it sounds like something of a disaster to me, and better we never saw it.
The ending wasn’t particularly satisfying, I agree, although it did nicely exemplify how, once the war was over, many were eager to put the whole experience behind them and move on; what had mattered hugely just a few months before suddenly became irrelevant.
I have seen it a couple of times and I think it works really well. Mind you I know a few people who are not keen and I approached it with no expectation based on that. It is available on YouTube. I cannot see why they couldn’t have released it on DVD.
There was also the follow up series Kessler which tied up some loose ends. And, touching on what you refer to how people just wanted to put it all behind them, much later on the hunt for justice became much more pronounced.
I once read David Cesaranis book ‘Justice Delayed’ and was surprised and appalled how we became a haven for former Nazis to start new lives.
If you mean the never-shown reunion episode, I am pretty sure that’s not on YouTube. If you have a link, I’d be interested.
It certainly has been although accounts get taken down quite regularly. Poor old archivetvmusings got,taken down recently. He had some decent stuff.
Ta. I had read a full synopsis, but never seen the episode.
I can see what they were trying to do, and it continues the series’s admirable effort in being at the very front end of digging beneath the two-dimensional way in which the war was still depicted in films of the time. And the acting from the lead characters is good; from the supporting cast, not so much.
The way in which the children and BBC staff are used to suggest that the upcoming generation has little knowledge, interest or care about their elders’ experiences is overdone, indeed laboured, and their ignorance isn’t credible when the reality is that most children of that time were both knowledgeable, at least in a superficial way, and interested.
But the drama doesn’t work, and detracts from the powerful episodes that went before it, so I can see why it was shelved. The strength of the series was always in illustrating themes of the war through their own personal stories and inevitably claustrophobic lives. Trying to Segway from that into having each of the characters opine about the big themes of the war so directly fails, as does the rather arbitrary way in which they have doled out the various attitudes people might have had, looking back, among the cast.
And the ending - drawing a direct parallel with the Cold War and the behaviour of the Soviets - whilst not unreasonable - doesn’t fit at all; tacking a one-dimensional polemical ending onto a series that excelled in depicting the ambiguity and moral dilemmas that those during the war had, on both sides.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
Have you ever studied any part of the Cold War? If you have, you weren’t reading….
Oh for god’s sake. Do some reading. They had maps of all countries, just like we do. The actual soviet war plans are declassified and you can read them. Spoiler: they don’t involve invading the U.K.
Of course they did, we were a NATO enemy.
Only someone as naive as you would have believed the Soviets had not drawn up any plans for an invasion of the UK.
Even the ones I had just shown you
That isn’t what you showed me. Read up on them properly. Then look up the 1979 Warsaw Pact war plan. Now all unclassified.
Nope. That was absolutely the point. You were willing to concede defeat.
Defeat never needed to be conceded as we had a bigger military than Argentina and nuclear weapons unlike them. Thatcher knew that hence she went to war.
You could have gone through every war in history as to hypotheticals which might have given it a different course, so what.
Do you think the Americans would have "allowed" us to strike a city like Cordoba with a nuclear weapon?
The Americans would have suffered an appalling political backlash throughout Latin America and I'm quite sure Reagan, for all his Anglophilia, would have been strongly advised by his administration the nuclear destruction of a Latin American city would be a catastrophe.
I suspect, had we got to that point, American political and economic pressure would have been applied to BOTH London and Buenos Aires to broker a diplomatic solution.
Who cares what the Americans did. We defend our territory at all costs, the Falklands was our territory.
If the Americans refused to respect that they were not true allies anyway.
Of course the UN did pressure both sides for a diplomatic solution and if the Argentines had withdrawn their forces from the Falklands one could have been found without further escalation
Just so I'm clear - if Washington had told us in the event of launching a nuclear attack on Argentina, they (Washington) would impose punitive economic sanctions on the UK, you would still have incinerated Cordoba.
The worldwide economic and diplomatic consequences of such a course of action would have been extreme - we might well have been thrown out of both NATO and the EEC. The pictures of the incinerated ruins of Cordoba would have been broadcast round the world and would have led to huge sympathy for the Argentines.
The economic impact would have been no less severe with a run on sterling and capital flight from the UK leaving us exposed to inflation and renewed unemployment.
Have you forgotten the extent to which American economic pressure forced both us and the French to stand down in Suez in 1956?
Thatcher's Britain would have been as much a pariah state as Putin's Russia is now.
If you remember the considerable debate over the morality of sinking the Belgrano, Thatcher would have been worse than a pariah at home, too. We’d likely have handed her over to the Hague for trial.
Put it another way.
The Soviet Union didn't fire nukes, even in its Evil Empire phase.
The USA didn't fire nukes in Vietnam.
Crass Putin isn't using them now.
There is no way that the UK could have used its nuclear weapons in the Falklands without becoming, unambiguously, The Baddies. There's no way of using them without turning civilians into radioactive ash.
There's a whole episode of Yes, Prime Minister setting this out. If They have them, We need to have them. But only to fire second in a bit of game theory. To use them first is to be a nation-sized suicide bomber.
Maggie, right to the end, had the class to recognise this. She wouldn't have escalated a war to nuclear level in an attempt to save her Premiership, because it wouldn't have worked.
The USA did fire the atomic bomb against a Japan which did not have them at the end of WW2.
The USA and USSR very nearly fired nukes at each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knows what Putin will do.
There was an episode of Yes Prime Minister which made clear if the Soviets had broken through West Germany and France they would soon reach the UK.
UK forces could hold them off for about 48 hours. The PM would therefore have to decide whether to threaten and respond with nuclear weapons or the UK would be under Soviet occupation
THAT is what you took from that exchange in that episode? You utterly missed the point…..
If you were in charge quite clearly we would already be under Russian occupation, that is self evident
No I just understand the laws of armed conflict, the proportionate use of force, the mindset of the military, deterrent theory, and the actual U.K. policy on these things.
I’m a hawk! Compared to many on here I’m a warmonger! You making me look wet says a lot more about you than me.
No you don't. The whole point of a deterrent is you would have to be willing to use it as a last resort of defence.
You have clearly ruled out ever using it, so it is no longer a deterrent to the enemy
That's not strictly true. The deterrent works if the enemy believes there is a reasonable possibility that it would be used.
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
And he quite stressed if he was in charge he would have made clear he would never use them.
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
If the “he” in this post is me then you’re just making things up.
No you just confirmed it, if the Russians had occupied most of Europe and were ready to invade the UK and our conventional forces were not sufficient to be able to hold them off you would allow them to invade and occupy the UK.
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Citation needed.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
You would have to be willing to go first if you were going to put off the Soviets from invasion.
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
Have you ever studied any part of the Cold War? If you have, you weren’t reading….
Oh for god’s sake. Do some reading. They had maps of all countries, just like we do. The actual soviet war plans are declassified and you can read them. Spoiler: they don’t involve invading the U.K.
Of course they did, we were a NATO enemy.
Only someone as naive as you would have believed the Soviets had not drawn up any plans for an invasion of the UK.
Even the ones I had just shown you
That isn’t what you showed me. Read up on them properly. Then look up the 1979 Warsaw Pact war plan. Now all unclassified.
Initially that plan excluded the UK and France as we had nuclear weapons that could have been used in retaliation.
Had we ruled out ever using them as you want that would no longer have been an issue for the Soviets.
Then they could have put their outline invasion maps to use
Seriously, if the reports are correct that is an insane number. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky says another Russian general has been killed during fighting...
He is the fourth general reportedly killed, leading some to ask why such senior members of the Russian military are so close to the front-line.
Analysts believe that around 20 generals are leading Russian operations in Ukraine, meaning that if all the reported deaths are confirmed, one fifth of Russia's generals have been killed in action.
Comments
For example, even though Western governments explicitly ruled out First Strike use, the Russians believed that there was a reasonable possibility that they would and based their strategy on that assumption. Hence at least one of the near-armageddon situations we had back when I was a kid.
You really haven't a clue.
She’s gone to bed.
Am I a bad person? Do you think me a bad person?
“spurs have goal scoring strikers on the pitch” did I lay it on too thick?
https://twitter.com/NewsfeedUkraine/status/1504207201237409801?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1504207201237409801|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2022/03/16/report-explosions-in-belarus-n455912
Annoying presentation though.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BLSchmitt/status/1504155206925393929
Not Sidewinders
Hence they would have been useless. The enemy, the Soviets whoever have to think you ruthless enough to use whatever weapons you have at your disposal to defend your nation and territory.
If they don't it is no deterrent at all
This may be the first prisoner exchange carried out since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine….
https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1504218513904488453
Mayor:”Thank you for not dropping me”.
Z: “We don’t drop our own”.
https://mobile.twitter.com/achkhikvadze/status/1504155308553293825
So you confirm Russians could invade and occupy the UK using conventional forces if you were in charge without fear of the ultimate deterrent
Why do the BBC insist on calling the PM "Prime Minister Boris Johnson", like he is some kind of royal. Far too much formal respect
Why the Johnson nonsense? It's ludicrous. He's Boris. We all know him as Boris. He IS Boris. They should just say "Today, our Boris went to Saudi Arabia", or "next week, the Bozzmeister" (cheery grin) "will be Bozzing About in Belarus". Or just have a picture of the Bojo doing thumbs up at all of us
No wonder I'm not paying my licence fee
This describes a concave arc in summer, a convex arc in winter, and will transition through a straight line on Sunday.
It doesn't work precisely because the sun is actually displaced in the sky from its 'real' position by atmospheric refraction. Apparent sunset is usually about 5 minutes later than the geometric sunset.
This is without commentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MFM8PFio6k
You have already ruled out ever using a nuclear weapon unless the UK was itself nuked
Seriously, why do you do this? If everyone is telling you that you have got it wrong (and not just on your view of things but actual facts) then you should consider that perhaps we know what we are talking about.
Against a nuclear armed foe, there are a few narrow circumstances in which you might go first. Though, of course, your premise is bollocks since the Soviets didn’t actually plan to invade the U.K. But none of that is relevant - you’ve been talking about nuking a non-nuclear power.
So again missing the point. You said the US was little more than neutral. So you were wrong again weren't you?
And again you profess to know more than the leading advisors of the time who said they were vital. Breathtaking.
Our troops weren't landing without air support and it was the 100 plus sidewinders the US supplied at zero notice that provided that by keeping the Argentine planes at bay, in particular the Super Etendard with their exocets that were such a threat to the carriers.
But no the US were little more than neutral and the experts at the time who arranged this are all wrong because @hyufd who was 1 at the time says so.
You know none of this stuff do you?
The Sidewinder was not the only missile our planes used and our ships also had their own defences.
There is no evidence at all the entire task force would have been sunk without Sidewinder missiles, aircraft carriers and converted liners alike.
Nor does it defeat the point we also had submarines with nuclear weapons unlike Argentina as a last resort
We were in NATO, the enemy of the Soviets, of course they had plans to invade the UK.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1191816/world-war-3-london-map-soviet-union-plan-red-atlas-cold-war-spt
I was talking about defending the Falklands, British territory, at all costs from the enemy. The same principle applies
What other air to air missile did our planes use?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1191816/world-war-3-london-map-soviet-union-plan-red-atlas-cold-war-spt
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34524336-the-red-atlas#
Only someone as naive as you would have believed the Soviets had not drawn up any plans for an invasion of the UK.
Even the ones I had just shown you
I can see what they were trying to do, and it continues the series’s admirable effort in being at the very front end of digging beneath the two-dimensional way in which the war was still depicted in films of the time. And the acting from the lead characters is good; from the supporting cast, not so much.
The way in which the children and BBC staff are used to suggest that the upcoming generation has little knowledge, interest or care about their elders’ experiences is overdone, indeed laboured, and their ignorance isn’t credible when the reality is that most children of that time were both knowledgeable, at least in a superficial way, and interested.
But the drama doesn’t work, and detracts from the powerful episodes that went before it, so I can see why it was shelved. The strength of the series was always in illustrating themes of the war through their own personal stories and inevitably claustrophobic lives. Trying to Segway from that into having each of the characters opine about the big themes of the war so directly fails, as does the rather arbitrary way in which they have doled out the various attitudes people might have had, looking back, among the cast.
And the ending - drawing a direct parallel with the Cold War and the behaviour of the Soviets - whilst not unreasonable - doesn’t fit at all; tacking a one-dimensional polemical ending onto a series that excelled in depicting the ambiguity and moral dilemmas that those during the war had, on both sides.
Had we ruled out ever using them as you want that would no longer have been an issue for the Soviets.
Then they could have put their outline invasion maps to use
What's the Russian equivalent of a five-barrelled surname?