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Post 04 Feb 2011, 8:42 pm

To me, this is very disturbing. If it is true, I think, honestly, the President should resign:

Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.

Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.

The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationship”, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website.


The spying, in and of itself, is shruggable. Everyone does it. What I find reprehensible is giving the Russians, who at best are antagonistic, info on our best ally. That is betrayal.

Who's next? Any Japanese secrets we can deal to the Chinese? How about Israeli secrets to the Iranians?

Shameful.
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Post 05 Feb 2011, 1:39 am

Well I'm certainly of the opinion that the so-called 'special relationship' is one-sided, and that America tends to neglect it right up till the moment that you start another war, at which point it suddenly becomes terribly important again for a while... The Obama administration has been particularly bad in this respect, with fairly regular diplomatic snubs coming our way. This is odd when you consider how popular Obama was and to a certain degree still is in Britain. Objectively you'd have to say that the performance of this administration in foreign policy has been fairly poor on many fronts. Not as disastrous as Bush obviously, or at least the blunders have been less high profile and catastrophically expensive, but poor nevertheless. Certainly the world was expecting a lot more.

That said though, I guess we Brits do need to be realistic. If our nuclear deterrant is purchased from the US then it's not a truly independent system in any case. It would be difficult to conceive of any instance where we might actually use it without some kind of American sanction. I'd guess that we were probably made aware of this information being included in the arms reduction deal. If we weren't then it certainly is a slap in the face, but it's more likely that this constitutes Britain's contribution to the deal.
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Post 05 Feb 2011, 6:52 am

I'm sure the Brits will be as shocked to learn that the US puts it's interests firsts as all the US citizens who still believe that the US always selflessly sacrifices its resources and political capital for the good of the world.
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Post 05 Feb 2011, 8:46 am

Russia isnt the USSR and is more likely to be a friendly or neutral in the coming years then anything else.

There is nothing wrong with a bit of military transperancy and given Russia's admittied lack of credible modern hardware, equipment and there precarious position as gasmunger to europe its more likely to have positive effects then negative.

In any event the trident missilie still scares the bejeebus out of the chinese which is all that matters atm.

As for the ''special relationship'' i think if you spoke to anyone who has served abroad (US/UK) that the troops on the ground have a very good rapore with each other and the same reason that australia/canada will follow the UK into battle is the same for US/UK...... We are the same. Whilst we try our hardest not to be culturally integrated into the US it will take more then a few politicians with sloppy words to break the bonds forged from the words 'never again'.

As for Russia, they seem to be on the up and up and have more reason to be skeptical of NATO then the reverse.

As for wiki leaks, which is your source..... it should be shut down and assagne executed for treason. I couldnt care less about leaked government documents but that website, and the people who leaked from inside the military to it have unneccasarily put troops lives at risk should equally be drawn and quatered without trial.

Take anything from that website with a pinch of salt, it is far from 'free news' and if you think they don't have an agenda then you are sadly mistaken.
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Post 05 Feb 2011, 9:07 am

Take a deep breath and read the whole article. The crucial info is saved for the last few paragraphs (underlining added for your convenience):
Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers said: “This appears to be significant because while the UK has announced how many missiles it possesses, there has been no way for the Russians to verify this. Over time, the unique identifiers will provide them with another data point to gauge the size of the British arsenal.”

Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, said: “They want to find out whether Britain has more missiles than we say we have, and having the unique identifiers might help them.”

This is hardly the equivalent of of giving the Russkies the abort codes that would render the weapons useless. My guess is that we are giving them all the serial numbers of weapons produced as part of the info provided so they can track our weapons under the agreement, and this is just a case of telling them that the numbers that are "missing" are those of weapons we've sent to the Brits.

As for the special relationship, I find it amusing that it can be so casually disparaged in the context of this particular story. How many nations are permitted to buy nuclear weapons from us? And when it comes to military procurement, consider:
The United Kingdom is the only collaborative, or Level One, international partner in the largest US aircraft procurement project in history, the F-35 Lightning II program. The United Kingdom was involved in writing the specification and selection and its largest defense contractor BAE Systems is a partner of the American prime contractor Lockheed Martin. BAE Systems is also the largest foreign supplier to the United States Defense Department and has been permitted to buy important US defense companies such as Lockheed Martin Aerospace Electronic Systems and United Defense.

Read that entire wiki page for more background on the "special relationship".

Now let's consider the burdens being carried by each partner. Sass, I suppose, would argue that as the junior partner the UK has to carry the burden of being frequently ignored and slighted. [He has my sympathies. I was once the junior partner in a consulting firm and know what that's like.] The UK has 20% of our population and 15% of our GDP, but only 10% of our land forces strength and 15% of our naval strength - and those figures are now about five years old; I imagine the gap is widening. The UK spends 2.40% of GDP on the military while we spend 4.06%. We could match the UK's burden by cutting our military budget by $244 billion. While it's not easy to compare apples to oranges, I think I'd rather have the UK's burden of insults and slights and keep the $244 billion than spend the money for the privilege of treating them poorly.

[In Dunnigan's database the UK has a land combat rating of 1037 versus the US's 10,000, and a naval forces rating of 46 versus our 302. Per CIA World Factbook, Populations: 62 million versus 310. GDP: $2.2 trillion versus $14.7. Also military budget as % of GDP.]
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Post 05 Feb 2011, 11:45 am

What good is a missile agreement without the ability to verify? Don't the Russians have a right to verufy the allied arsenal if they are providing verification of theirs?
Seems to me thats the heart of any treaty and if the allies are allowed to hide a part of their arsenal from verification the system will fail.
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Post 06 Feb 2011, 5:48 am

Frankly, I never thought that Trident was properly independent anyway. As far as I'm aware, we cannot launch without using US infrastructure, so if you guys didn't want us to, you could easily switch off our capability. So it makes no difference to me to know that the US are telling Russia which missiles we own.

It's not like we are going to use them, is it?

And Doc, you really should have read the full article. The British media have a habit of putting out a misleading headline, a vague but biased top paragraph, and it's only at the very bottom (by which time most people have accepted the message) that the facts are revealed.

Then there's the Mail and Express who simply make it up, and the Sun/News of the World who bug peoples' phones...
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Post 06 Feb 2011, 10:27 am

I don't like making such "secrets" known but it's more a matter of appearance, making ourselves "look" bad to our UK friends. In reality, does it really matter much? So they have 100 missiles instead of 110? (or whatever the number may be, it's more than enough for a deterrent).

Sass mentioned something that made me think...
He says Obama is bad as far as our relations (I agree)
He says Bush was worse, while Bush was far from perfect, why is it that Bush's policy was so much worse? I know you don't like the whole war "stuff" (nor do/did I) but how has Obama been any different there? How come Bush is so much worse? Is it reality or perception, nobody liked him so his policy must have been worse? Or are there actual reasons he is worse?
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Post 06 Feb 2011, 11:30 am

On Bush's watch we saw the complete collapse of American soft power. He managed to totally antagonise most of your closest friends in the world and presided over an administration that contributed to an unprecedented surge in anti-American sentiment acrsoss the globe. That has to go down as a foreign policy fail, no matter how you cut it. Policy-wise he wasn't actually all that different though. The general drift of US foreign policy during Bush's 2nd term has been continued in Obama's 1st term. In fact wasn't it Pigsy who described Obama's administration as 'Bush's 3rd term' ?

I think Obama and Clinton have been very naive and have made a number of mistakes so far that have needlessly pissed off some close American allies. They give the impression to me that they really don't have much of a clue what they're doing. Obama has also largely squandered the immense goodwill he enjoyed when he first became President. he could have leveraged that to achieve a lot but instead he seems to have nothing to show for it. But however bad I think he's been, the results are never going to be as bad as they were under Bush.
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Post 06 Feb 2011, 2:05 pm

So it sounds to me exactly as I suspected. You don't mind Obama even though he has done nothing to differentiate himself from Bush. And what were the policies of Bush that made him so hated? It seems to me people just liked to hate the guy, a little issue here a little issue there and it was easy to blow up and into a hate GWB thing. Yet here we we have the same thing and it's ok (funny thing ....he campaigns on "Change" and all we hear here is how it's no different?)
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Post 06 Feb 2011, 3:29 pm

Well personally I didn't hate Bush, so I'm the wrong guy to ask. I also didn't totally buy into the Obama lovefest for that matter, although I did/do find him a refreshing change.

The thing is though, while Obama hasn't drastically changed American foreign policy, he also wasn't largely responsible for the actions which were so unpopular around the world. A lot of this has to do with the way the various wars were prosecuted, but not entirely. I think more generally there was a sense from Bush that he had no respect for any kind of international engagement that wasn't strictly on his own terms. Now obviously every President will look first and foremost to furtherance of American interests, but Bush took things to an extreme through gratuitous use of force, unilateral disregard for international treaties and conventions, deliberate blurring of the lines regarding torture and respect for human rights, deliberate sidelining of international institutions such as the UN etc, and all the while maintaining a very patronising attitude that this was all for our own good and we should thank him for it. Obama has, disappointingly, failed to rescind a lot of the policies brought about by the Bush administration, but at least he's made the effort to sound more respectful and conciliatory. Ultimately words are less important than actions, but it does possibly explain why people are still willing to cut him some more slack.

I don't necessarily want to get into a debate on the rights and wrongs of American foreign policy here. As you probably know, I did actually support the war in Iraq so I can hardly be too critical of that (although I was very critical of the way the war and its aftermath were handled). I do think it's a great shame that American soft power has eroded so badly though. Not so long ago you were far more admired than feared around the world, and I can't help thinking the world would be a miuch better place today if that were still the case. Bush wasn't completely to blame for the decline, but he had a very large hand in it, which is why he was and will remain much worse than Obama, however disappointing Obama is turning out to be.
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Post 07 Feb 2011, 6:07 am

GMTom wrote:So it sounds to me exactly as I suspected. You don't mind Obama even though he has done nothing to differentiate himself from Bush. And what were the policies of Bush that made him so hated? It seems to me people just liked to hate the guy, a little issue here a little issue there and it was easy to blow up and into a hate GWB thing. Yet here we we have the same thing and it's ok (funny thing ....he campaigns on "Change" and all we hear here is how it's no different?)


I think there is a world of difference between starting a war and choosing to continue it. Once a President decides to go to war and commit thousands of troops and billions of dollars, his successor is severely locked in on options. It's very tough to just declare the war is over.

Although there are certainly people who irrationally hate GWB, for most people that I know he is seen as a poor president because of the strategic decision to invade Iraq, spending billions of dollars, creating a large pool of killed and injured soldiers, with the end result of strengthening Iran.
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Post 07 Feb 2011, 7:53 am

Ray Jay wrote: It's very tough to just declare the war is over.



Really? Why? If the President decided today to say the war is over and pulled all United States forces out of Afghanistan, what would be the results? It's not like Afghanistan is going to attach the U.S. in any way.
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Post 07 Feb 2011, 9:08 am

No ones leaving anything,

And depending on how these protests in the middle east turn out it is just as likely old bushy will be remembered as the saviour of the middle east because by kicking in the door of one despotic nuisance he showed the world that they were better of doing it themselves. I do seem to recall a quote of his about peace breaking out all over the middle east, damned if i can find it though.

anyways, all this gibber is for another thread i suspect.
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Post 07 Feb 2011, 12:20 pm

GMTom wrote:And what were the policies of Bush that made him so hated? It seems to me people just liked to hate the guy, a little issue here a little issue there and it was easy to blow up and into a hate GWB thing.
I never 'hated' GWB. He just epitomised many of the things that I dislike about the American system.

However on the 'little issue' things, it's not that at all. Unless you see Climate change or the Iraq war as little.

Archduke - you know, surely, that there is a difference between starting a war and not ending one. The main war that is contentious is Iraq, not Afghanistan.

As for whether withdrawal would result in attack, remind me, wasn't the main reason for invading Afghanistan that the 9/11 attacks had been planned and co-ordinated from there, and that the government of the day had been reluctant to do much about it?