manxie wrote:A PS an after thought as a country now if there was a war our forces are so small we wouldn't stand a chance plus when so great a percentage of our population wouldn't know how to use a gun we would soon be overrun and have to capitulate
Manxie, that's like saying that Russia would be overrun by China because China has a two million man standing army with tens of millions as reserves and Russia only has 1 million standing army with 2.5 million reserves.
In reality if Russia was threatened, the Chinese army would be hit with tactical nukes and China would be threatened with wholesale nuclear Armageddon.
In a post thermonuclear era, no country with nuclear weapons can ever be called "weak" or its defence defined by the size of its army.
Of course if we all signed up to Corbyn’s idea of the world, then we would be exactly that, weak and undefended and only able to capitulate in any serious war. Something to think long and hard about.
The UK is the third largest nuclear power in the world by deliverable power, France is 4th, China is 5th and then we have Israel, India and Pakistan. Deliverable power, in the nuclear context is just about all there is for measuring how catastrophic it would be to attack that nation.
For instance China would be utterly devastated if Russia went Nuclear but Russia would merely be significantly hurt. If even that as Russia has ABM defences which might, or might not, work.
I often wonder if people don’t realise that the 5 permanent members of the UN security council are the 5 major nuclear powers in the world? Yes conventional forces are needed to project non nuclear power, to hold land and to influence people short of catastrophic war.
But never, ever, think the UK is some useless backwater because it has 29,000 frontline combat troops ready to deploy. It’s about half what the EU has as the EU has mainly French frontline combat troops ready to deploy and the UK troops are considered better trained and more effective than the EU troops.
This whole “we’re just a little island” really irks me. So was Japan in WWII. The UK is a massive world power which derives world respect from that power. The BS about the UK being some insignificant little nobody comes from the EU and that is only to try and override the UK on every issue.
Don’t be fooled. Bite us and you’ll get your knackers flattened. The rest of the world, outside the EU, knows it, I’m saddened that the people of the UK do not.