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Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

> why does the US need any involvement?

You are asking the wrong question (or at least, a wrong question). It's not "why does the US need any involvement", it's "Why has the US insisted on involvement for so long?" (e.g. during the 1980s when widespread sentiment in Europe was for the US to close its military bases, the US insisted on remaining).

The UK does not rely 136k people to defend itself from military risk. It relies on its nuclear arsenal, which while not as large as those of the USA or Russia, it quite the deterrent all by itself.

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> The UK does not rely 136k people to defend itself from military risk. It relies on its nuclear arsenal, which while not as large as those of the USA or Russia, it quite the deterrent all by itself.

It's a deterrent from invading the British Isles, which would require a navy that only the US has, anyways.

It's not a deterrent from challenging the world order. The US nuclear arsenal is the only one in the West that, if it were deployed, would end human society on a global scale.

Russia has designed its nuclear forces and defense infrastructure around a war with the United States, a country with a much, much larger nuclear arsenal than the UK or France. There's a possibility that if Russia decided to use its tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine (which it has threatened before), and the UK or France responded in kind with strategic nuclear weapons, that enough of Russian nuclear forces could survive to completely wipe out those two nations while also having weapons in reserve.

That's why the US stayed.

US forces on European land are not a deterrent to the scenario you're describing.

Of course they are. Who do you think would deliver the weapons I'm talking about?

Its "nuclear arsenal" consists of a single missile boat on patrol with about a dozen or so ICBMs (which could certainly mess with major Russian cities. But if a Russian fast-attack sub (of which they have quite a few) gets it, bye-bye "nuclear arsenal".

> Since 1998, when the UK decommissioned its tactical WE.177 bombs, the Trident has been the only operational nuclear weapons system in British service. The delivery system consists of four Vanguard-class submarines based at HMNB Clyde in Scotland. Each submarine is armed with up to sixteen Trident II missiles, each carrying warheads in up to eight multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). With at least one submarine always on patrol, the Vanguards perform a strategic deterrence role and also have a sub-strategic capability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_...

Yeah, it's the reverse of what's often pushed in the media. There have even been initiatives for autonomous EU security projects, with the US (I think even Trump at some point, despite what he says now about NATO) being against anything that would undermine NATO.

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