If the U.S. will play a smaller role in European security going forward, we need to have a conversation about nuclear weapons. The current UK and French arsenals are not sufficient to deter Russia, but the big question is if the solution is to grow their stockpiles, or if more countries need to join the nuclear club.
(The fact that this is now a discussion just goes to show the shortsightedness of American isolationalism.)
@anderspuck very curious to hear why UK & French arsenals not sufficient. Quantity? Political reasons? lack of survivability? lack of tactical weapons … perhaps a possible YouTube/podcast topic? :-)
IMO since 2022-02-24 we’ve unfortunately needed a German/EU nuclear bomb for deterrence. US will not trade Boston for Berlin in the Trump era (which does not necessarily end with Trump himself), Britain has Brexited, and the French deterrence force is for counter value attacks in the defence of France itself as I understand it.
@Povl
I suspect some asinine argument about numbers, whenever someone talks about "not enough to deter" you know
someone is either deeply careless or is out to sell you something: "deterrence" is not a solid enough concept that it can be quantitatively measured, much less with such precision you can clearly state if a single weapon category is "enough".
@anderspuck
@anderspuck
See? "Use for themselves" like nuclear war is haggling about slices of bread in a famine!
The US with its 1600 deployed warheads were nevertheless allegedly so threatened by Iraq they had to invade and destroy the regime. Israel, the lone nuclear power in the middle east is nevertheless engaged in what it sees as an existential struggle with a extremely weak opponent.
Nuclear weapon numbers don't mean much once you have enough to destroy the 10 largest cities, counterforce is just a bad euphemism.
@Povl
@anderspuck
In the nuclear realm it is either strategic or nothing, "tactical" is a bad joke dreamt up by people who feel sad for the nukes not getting to explode.
A single trident at 100 kt seems pretty fine to level Avdiivika.
@Povl
@tobychev @Povl Silly thing to write. At some point it is about numbers. UK has 120 operational warheads. How many of those do you think they will be willing to use in Eastern Europe vs. how many they might want to save for themselves?
Russia has about 4500, and France has about 290.