Back To The Beginning 18: Games Without Frontiers

In a world that is increasingly unlikely to see the kind of horrific mass warfare that could (in)conceivable necessitate a nuclear strike, it is obvious corruption for the government to buy more of these awful weapons. A toy that can never be unwrapped. 

The contempt with which this government holds us is naked: they tell us they have no money for nurses during a pandemic, but they publicly endorse spending more on Trident. A folly that will never be used. No war, moving forward, will be fought similar to the wars of old. Future conflicts will be limited, guerrilla, technological. They will blur national lines making it impossible to pick a target. They will be clandestine and fought with cyber attacks and digital forfeiture; erase assets at the touch of a button. Far easier than blowing up a bank. Who then gets the nuke? Always the innocent.

It wasn't a nuke that stopped the Japanese war machine either. The purpose of the two atom bombs wasn't to force their surrender, that was already on the cards. Instead the west slaightered thousands just to send a message in the burgeoning cold war. Don't fuck with us, as we atomise innocent lives.

Now our nuclear arsenal just comes across as a decrepit anachronism. A fool's errand that only a fool would employ. Who are we going to nuke? The EU for snubbing our fish? Certainly not our friends in Russia; the corrupt oligarchs we are increasingly welcoming into our legislature? Syria? Some mad mullahs in a tribal backwater too busy propping up the global drug trade? 

No, this is simply a sop to the arms industry. The Ministry of Defence (lol) is just a blank cheque. It's a well oiled, well armed, gravy train. It just exists to keep the elite in clover. Grace and favour properties for the minsters and generals. Croquet on the lawns of Eton. Meanwhile squaddies, conscripted out of dubious (and increasing) nationalism are housed in squalor if at all. Those that return from the misadventures those elites send them on often end up on the street fighting PTSD and alcoholism. No support at all. The money hasn't money for them anymore than the health services forced to patch them up, but it has money for guns and bombs. An open wallet for the death dealers it regularly hosts in urban arms fairs and conferences. This society is a sickness. The government doesn't care, and if we don't we will lose more than a few nurses.

Still at least we, as an increasingly Napoleonic little island, can threaten large powers with nukes we will never deploy. They know we will never deploy, and so forth. Pathetic.