So how's Theresa May doing in her first few weeks as Prime Minister? Well, she's scrapped The Department For Climate Change, made Boris 'Shaved Baboon Eating A Thesaurus' Johnson the country's international spokesperson, formed the most right-wing cabinet this side of Thatcher, rushed in a vote for a £31 billion renewal of Trident, and said she would happily annihilate 100,000 people given the option. Which brings me to nukes.
Perhaps the greatest work of art I've ever witnessed is the series 'Protect And Survive.' It's a collection of short infomercials commissioned by the UK government in the 70's to be broadcast if a nuclear attack was certain. The footage was only broadcast in the 1980's as part of a comedy programme, and has since been widely available as a documentary source since it's in the public domain. It's accompanying booklet, however, was available for purchase at your nearby Post Office. Whether people actually filled their suitcases with earth and fortified their walls with large blocks of wood; no-one knows.
If you want to understand how The English react to a crisis; watch this. 'Protect And Survive' is a darkly comedic series that remains relentlessly chipper in the face of apocalyptic situations. The broadcast advises to turn the water and gas off. It gives calm instructions to create a makeshift toilet. If "anyone should die," it tells you to move them to another room and label the body with name and address. Above all: ensure your shelter is supplied with tea and biscuits.
The whole affair is undermined by the fact that nuclear fallout doesn't go away after a few weeks like the broadcast suggests. It doesn't even go away after a few months. It takes years before it's safe to go outside (and by 'safe' I mean your life will still be shortened by about twenty years). Even if you somehow survived the blast then you would just slowly die inside as your home become a filthy, radiation-ridden coffin - as demonstrated by the equally dark When the Wind Blows.
I'm still not convinced the programme is genuine. The eerie synth music and the primitive stop-motion overlaid with the clipped tones of a calm yet authoritative voice typical of the BBC feels as though it's in on the pitch-black joke. The final serial details how you dispose of the dead, and that's the final word. It's placement right at the very end seems almost deliberate. Regardless of all the useless measures you take to protect yourself, you will die. A 'stiff-upper-lip' and a determination to 'stick it out' won't work. You will die.
I regard the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as second only to The Holocaust in how brutal an attack on the fabric of humanity itself it was. More may have died during previous conflicts, and more may die in conflicts to come; but never has such a vast amount of innocent lives been murdered at once. Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained factories and bases that fuelled the war effort, yes; but that's nothing compared to the amount of guilt-free lives erased from reality. It still is, in effect, the largest act of terrorism ever committed.
It's often pointed out that whilst World War One was an industrial war - utilising inventions such as machine guns, shells, and tanks to turn the crushing wheels of the Industrial Revolution against it's creators - World War Two was a scientific war. Radar. Enigma. Submarines. Synthetics. Zyklon B. The Atomic Bomb.
How did science prevail? How did people still tinker with test-tubes when a poisoned gas designed to quickly kill a large room crammed full of people was specially developed. Albert Einstein, the man who revolutionised how we perceive the universe, aided in the creation of a force that could obliterate said universe. Why do we continue making these weapons? Why do we make them even more deadly? Isn't the complete destruction of an entire city enough?
Most importantly: how can Theresa May be willing to inflict this on the world? How can my government - almost all of whom are old enough to have been alive during the production of 'Protect And Survive' - approve of creating weapons 40 times more powerful than the ones that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I've seen countless memorials to The Holocaust, all of which bear the same message: "Never Again." So why isn't it the same with America's Nuclear Holocaust? Chemical weapons are outlawed. Why aren't nukes?
We are still very much in a Cold War. Every superpower on this planet possess weapons capable of flattening not just my hometown but the town next to it. The surrounding towns would promptly die of radiation poisoning as the fallout sets in. I only sleep at night because I know no-one will ever use these weapons.
People who assume a country we're at war with would just wipe us out simply don't understand how war works. You don't just summon an army and beat up the opposing army until one of you gives up. War is a logistical and economic nightmare that's run on resources. Why did Hitler try to invade Russia when Russia and Germany were allies? Because The Battle Of Britain had almost drained the Nazis of their oil, and oil was Russia's largest export. Get Russia; get Russia's oilfields; continue war. Similarly, why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour? Because Japan relied on North America for it's resources. Without those resources they wouldn't be able to win a war, and so the only way to keep said resources would be to defeat the US as quickly as possible before they ran out of them.
A nuclear war would eliminate such resources. How would our financial empire be able to fund the world if London was destroyed? How would the Middle East keep up it's oil exports? China it's industry? France it's energy? Even if you ignore the cost of human life and reduce yourself to a soulless automaton interested only in tactical gains; nukes are counter-productive.
Furthermore: we face no international threat aside from terrorism - and you cannot strike terrorists with nuclear weapons. Their intent is to intimidate by committing isolated atrocities. Destroying a national landmark. Executing innocents. Lowering themselves to acts so evil we could not consider them ourselves. Then they hide. They remain split in groups. They use the internet to ensure their ideology continues. Some might have an army, but even that is hidden amongst the people. Every subsequent terrorist attack only makes us more fearful. wondering where they might be hiding. It makes us want to strike against them with equal cruelty; ensuring that the terrorists secure the moral victory in addition to the tactical one.
You cannot nuke terrorists. I'd argue you can't even bomb terrorists, but you can pinpoint a terrorists base and use precision weapons. We are far from defenceless. We are waging war against ISIS with military drones: remote controlled devices that drop precisely targeted missiles on potential hostiles. We don't even need to get our hands dirty. Regardless of whether the people we're effectively executing without trial deserve such treatment - or are even guilty - we have reduced our involvement in wars to the barest minimum. We do a bit of light bombing from afar, then go off to have a cup of tea.
Even if we should declare outright war with another nation, which at the present moment would be extremely foolish, then there are two scenario's we must face.
1) The country we're at war with has nuclear weapons.
In which case, nothing would change. A stalemate would be reached, because using nuclear weapons would result in retaliation - or, Mutually Assured Destruction. (M.A.D)
The acronym summarises the whole notion. Why the fuck would you eradicate all life as you know it for the sake of a single war? Why would you either destroy thousands, possibly millions, of innocent lives? Why would you wipe a resource-rich land filled with blameless people off the map? Furthermore: why would you risk a counter-attack? Why would you doom your own people, the people you're supposed to protect, the people you serve, to the same fate?
No-one is this stupid. Not even North Korea. It only uses the threat of nuclear war to get what it wants. Whenever the UN tries to investigate and hold NK accountable for human rights abuses, it threatens nuclear war. When NK is sanctioned, it threatens nuclear war. When NK runs low on vital economic resources, it threatens nuclear war. When South Korea starts trying to negotiate peace, it threatens nuclear war. When North Korea's iPhone reaches 1% battery, it threatens nuclear war.
North Korea wants you to think it's stupid enough to launch nuclear missiles, but it never will. If it ever did, almost the entire world would retaliate. And if their ultimate plan is to invade either South Korea or Japan then it'll want all the economic resources those countries offer intact considering how deprived North Korea's economic growth is. A bombed city can be rebuilt within a decade or so, but a nuked city is never the same again.
So this is who you want to be like, Theresa May? North Korea? Do you want to be sat around a table, looking into the eyes of all the major world leaders; all of these eyes saying the same thing: "I have the power to blast you to dust." Do you want everyone to despise you, yet never be able to truly express how much they hate you because they fear you also? But every single time you look at a person, you'll see a twitch. A glance. Some tiny part of that persons face will betray a shared vision. A vision of you burning.
2) The country we're at war with doesn't have nuclear weapons.
In which case, you're the bully. It's back to the days of the British Empire, where we massacred primitive tribesmen. You're the terrorist, threatening to stamp on the anthill. Your nuclear warheads essentially become a giant metal penis.
But even then, nukes aren't a deterrent. Saddam Hussein didn't surrender in either the 80's or the 2000's because of our nuclear arsenal. Nukes didn't stop Vietnam. Nuclear weapons won't stop war because no-one will ever use them.
Again, no-one is stupid enough. Theresa May continues to maintain her illusion of strictness. She aspires to mimic Margaret Thatcher in her refusal to be swayed, her refusal to show tolerance, and her continued defiance in the face of pressure. She will go out of her way to avoid appearing weak; a very dangerous trait for a leader to have. But she lied. She will continue to lie if she wants to keep up this ludicrous appearance of a pantomime villain. She will never murder 100,000 people at once. And any nation who tries to attack us will know this. They know we would never inflict such catastrophic damage because who would?
Nuclear weapons are not, nor have they ever been, a deterrent. Trident is a £31 billion waste. Every single nuclear weapon manufactured will never be used. They will hold no status. They will not keep us safe. They will not stop war and destruction. They will sit in the ocean and rot until the next renewal.
Nuclear war is terrifying in the same way a zombie apocalypse is terrifying. They are both scenarios that provoke imaginative scenes of horror, yet said horror will never occur. Meanwhile, in 2015 the USA declared that all drone strikes it carries out are lawful because North America is at war with terrorism, and terrorists are all over the world.
The USA is at war with the world. World War Three was declared last year. Except the enemy is unknown. It's everywhere and nowhere at once. There's a potential that this war will never end, for as long as someone is willing to take arms against the establishment then 'terrorism' shall exist. And nuclear weapons will play absolutely no part in this war. But they'll continue to be the teddy bear we clutch at night...though not too tightly lest it explode and wipe out my county.
No comments:
Post a Comment