*stabs Tia*

> TheBigOne wrote:

> i never said i had a normal sence of humor......... but the only thing better could have been all the people in iraq smacking sadam in the face with there shoes........  and Yes the people are so skeptical now days.. if u dont almost watch the exact death they will nevre beleave it.

And yet doing so would violate international law. 

Wait a sec...

> -This is first in first served, so you can't pick a name already used, also no using any other players normal nicks.

You don't think that's problematic?

Make sure you keep the receipt for the girl!  When she's about 13, you'll be glad you kept it!

Oh, and see if you can get an extended warranty on your model!

> The Yell wrote:

> >>Why?  Deterrence is a purely defensive strategy, claiming that if an opponent fires nuclear weapons, they will respond with their own weapons.  In a world where all nuclear weapons are deterrence-tooled weapons, the world is actually quite safe because mutually assured destruction is guaranteed.<<

On the contrary, such a posture would open the world to widespread conventional warfare.  the 1970s, which were the era of greatest goodwill between NATO and Warsaw Pact, was quite explosive.

1: Relatively, the 1970's could have been much worse.
Russia and China were in open conflict a year before, yet neither committed to full scale war due to the fear of nuclear retaliation (one note to prove my point: A year before, there are allegations that Russia had asked the United States if a nuclear strike against Chinese nuclear facilities would trigger a US response... the US came to China's defense, so the Soviets couldn't follow through).
The Vietnam War took the form of a proxy war on the parts of China and Russia, similarly to the Afghanistan war.
Your examples of conflicts during this period will involve either nuclear vs. non-nuclear powers and/or non-nuclear vs. non-nuclear nations, which aren't applicable to this debate since nobody is referring to fully denuclearizing Britain, or are referring to small conflicts which, because of deterrence, never erupted into open conflict.
2: Correlation doesn't imply causation.  How does the scenario above lead to widespread conventional war?

>>For deterrence to be effective, both leaders must have the understanding that each side fears the weapons of the other side.  If Britain is fielding offensive weapons which are able to nullify the opponent's capability to launch a second strike, Britain has nothing to fear from Russian nuclear weapons.<<

No. For deterrence to be effective, one side's independent offense must have a capability to do damage to the other side.  At the point where, say, China has the power to cripple the US Pacific fleet in combat with the Chinese mainland, the US is deterred from policies that might inflame a Chinese response.  There may, or may not, be a contrary deterrent of Chinese aggression out of respect for US combat potential.  There is no "mutual" deterrence, just concurrent and opposite deterrence.

1: So in your scenario where China can take down the US Pacific fleet, China's only reason for not being aggressive is... because they're nice guys, respectful of their enemies?  So if bad guys have a technological edge in nuclear weapons, they'll suddenly just decide they like peace?  From the perspective of that leader, the choice to not go to war in a scenario where that leader is assured victory against a strong aggressor, is utterly irrational.  In the case of nuclear weapons, where there wouldn't be issues like reconstruction to deal with, it's even more irrational to let a weak enemy survive.
Even if your scenario is true, believing the scenario means that war is inevitable under that framework.  Only a belief in mutually assured destruction has the slightest chance of obtaining peace.  The adoption of your theory creates a self-prophecizing nightmare scenario.
2: Your theory runs contrary to pretty much every nuclear strategy scholar in 50 years.  Back up your stance with some kind of justification (i.e. why mutual deterrence does not exist) or, simply put, your argument is overwhelmed by the hundreds of military scholars on deterrence.  The theory is fairly straightforward: In a scenario where two nations know that their use of nuclear weapons will result in their own annihilation, they desire to prevent that conflict from occurring due to the certainty of failure.
3: If mutually assured destruction does not exist as a theory of deterrence, how do you explain the fact at a large scale war never occurred between the US and USSR, the US and China, or the USSR and China?
4: Upon reading that... you might be simply questioning my use of the word "Deterrence" instead of "mutually assured destruction" in:
"For deterrence to be effective, one side's independent offense must have a capability to do damage to the other side."
If that's the case, fine, I meant mutually assured destruction.  Regardless of the semantic strawman you're throwing out, the thesis still stands.

>>In any realist interpretation of politics, a nation with the capability to first strike their opponent would do exactly that.<<

Realistically quite the opposite.

No, realist as in "a realist framework of international politics," meaning "the political system is a state of anarchy, nations primarily focus on promoting their own interests first."

>>Knowing this, Russia's only chance for survival is a last ditch effort at a near-suicidal first strike against Britain, or at the very least operating under a high-alert status that risks triggering accidental nuclear wars. <<

Unless of course Russia knows that Britain has a totally defensive posture, in which case, Russia can declare for the greatest nuclear drawdown in world history, and at the same time, invade and partition its neighbors with conventional forces, without opposition from the UK.

1: The fact that Russia keeps its nuclear forces on launch-on-warning status empirically disproves your stance.
2: If there is no defensive role for submarines, then it undermines the assumption that Britain has a totally defensive posture, by the very fact that those weapons exist.

>>At the point where a nuclear weapon no longer provides a stable deterrent force, assuming those weapons are not intended for any first strike plans, what is their use?<<

Strategic bombardment of the enemy, first, last, second, in between, post-armistice, what have you.

So... you're admitting that the submarines are purely offensive, and not deterrent forces?  Great, that means I win.

Okay, got it.

1: We're not talking about the entire UK arsenal.  We're only talking about one portion of the triad, which means those nations still have to spread out their nuclear weapons.
2: Nuclear submarines provide absolutely no benefit in that regards, because nations rarely, if ever, plan on launching nuclear weapons directly at submarines.  If they did, nuclear-tipped torpedoes would be more commonplace.
3: The close alliance among NATO members means that this has probably already been accounted for in Russian nuclear strategy, with an overwhelming number of nuclear weapons.  Other nations are so far behind in nuclear development that it doesn't matter (China included... their missiles only reach as far as the west coast of the US, so are hardly able to threaten much of Europe).

Nevermind... after carefully reviewing this... there is nothing here to indict my arguments.  Come on, someone argue with me!  You know, like the people who were favoring the other side of the argument?  X(

> EmperorHez wrote:

> I'm pretty sure that if the US launched a first strike against Russia tbeir Early Warning System would not be able determine if the missiles were American or British. So they would automatically retaliate by blowing up the UK as well as the US.

Agreed, with one caveat: a missile's direction can often indicate its source location.  That being said, your argument enhances my justifications for ending the submarine program.

If Britain officially ended its nuclear SLBM program, it would leave Britain blameless if a first strike would occur as a result of another country.  Britain's only nuclear options remaining would be aircraft-deployed bombs (which generally require a visible launch point) or land-based ICBMs.  Both of these launches would look vastly different from a submarine-launched attack, as the submarine would normally be only a short distance from the target's coastline.  Once it's identified that an attack was coming from a submarine (which could be determined by a mix of whatever radar blips showed up on screen, along with reports from Russian submarines or other naval forces in the area), Britain could be ruled out as a possible aggressor.

Nope!

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Krenim_weapon_ship

It's the Chuck Norris ship!  It doesn't kill people!  It erases them from history!

> avogadro wrote:

> im pretty sure "it" is the lack of honest news coverage.... and i doubt there was ever truling honest news coverage ever, i think people are just becoming more demanding from news coverage.

If that's "it," what does "it" have to do with the OP?

Okay, nevermind, I was wrong.

See, now I was guessing that Chris and/or Avo would mention that if you say that homosexuality is a biological trait and not a learned stimuli, then that means it is, in effect, a dysfunction, just like any genetic disease, in that it changes a person's behavior in a way that is contrary to their ends of self-preservation and proliferation of their genetic material.  In effect, a trait can't be biological, and at the same time not be considered a mutation/deviation from the genetic superior (only in the sense that heterosexuals are biologically more likely produce offspring than homosexuals), thus justifying Chris' argument in the second post.

Not saying I necessarily agree with this.  Just a devil's advocate. 

> [TI] Lateralis wrote:

> @Godwin's Law

"However, sexual orientation is simply an issue of personal preference."

Sorry, but that's an incorrect.  I am gay, but I didn't wake up one day and think "Gee, this gay thing sounds like a lot of fun.  I'll go find myself a man!"  I knew from a very young age (8 or so) that I wasn't "wired" the same way as the other kids/boys at school.  Over time it became apparent what this was.  But to say that it is a "preference", as if to say that I one day made this conscious decision is frankly wrong. 

Uh oh... I see what Chris/Avo are going to do with this!  Writing down my guess on a sheet of paper, just to see if I'm right.