September 17, 2014

Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your......Nuclear Missiles

It appears that if Scotland goes all independent tomorrow they have declared that they will be a nuclear free zone. The UK's nuclear deterrent is mainly concentrated in their ballistic missile submarines...which are based in Scotland. Some accommodation can likely be made but this would give the Scots a huge leverage over the UK England's nukes.


The result of this is that the English, who weren't expecting this voter to go anywhere suddenly find themselves scrambling for options. Since the new base in England or Wales will take a decade to build, the plan they came up with last week is to homeport their nuclear submarines in the US in the interim. Assuming the Scots vote for independence and Congress does not balk at the proposal, I'm guessing the English boats would be in Kings Bay, Georgia, which is the only US Boomer base on the East Coast. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:38 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 156 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Couldn't they, you know... just keep the base? I mean, hell, we have a military base in Cuba, so we know it can be done.

In fact, that's a pretty good argument when it comes to getting Scotland to assume its share of the debt. "Oh, you don't want the debt? I'm afraid we'll be keeping the port and will continue basing our submarine fleet there..."

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Wed Sep 17 17:45:31 2014 (zJsIy)

2 I'm bewildered by this myself. Someone in Whitehall seems to have dropped the ball.  
I'm wondering if the Labour types that are running the show in Scotland are so hysterically anti-nuke that they are willing to take their third of the debt. Alternatively, there might have been some terms in the agreement on the vote that ties England's hands on the matter. 
I'm guessing that the Scots actually voting to leave was just not taken seriously until as late as last week. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Sep 17 18:27:11 2014 (DnAJl)

3

Military bases are legendary for providing local jobs, and I think this is just a threat by the English. "You better not vote for independence, Scots!"

Like as not, if the Scots do divorce the English, they would indeed keep the base, and England would pay Scotland for the privilege.

(The US sends a rent check to Cuba every year. And the Cubans rip it up every year. I doubt an independent Scotland would do the same, however.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wed Sep 17 20:24:37 2014 (+rSRq)

4 ...they have declared that they will be a nuclear free zone.

Is that declaration limited to nuclear weapons, or does it include nuclear power plants as well? (A quick check of Wikipedia shows that there are two nuclear power plants currently operating in Scotland, supplying half of their electricity; OTOH, public opinion in Scotland is strongly against nuclear power, and the Scottish Parliament voted against construction of any new nuclear power plants back in 2008.)

Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Wed Sep 17 21:23:42 2014 (2eP1J)

5 With attitudes on display, Scotland is going to join PIIGS very quickly and become a true Greece of the North. Just was EU overlords in Brussels wanted.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thu Sep 18 13:09:42 2014 (RqRa5)

6 The yes vote does seem to be largely based on Trotskyite daydreaming.  The no vote is a lot more pragmatic, but it's hard to campaign on "What the fuck?  Are you people stupid or something?"

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Sep 18 15:58:16 2014 (PiXy!)

7 Well, it's all hypothetical. No won by a large margin.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Fri Sep 19 00:37:54 2014 (+rSRq)

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