You can watch via the embedded player below, or via the direct YouTube link, or you can listen to an audio-only version on Soundcloud.
Monday, August 4, 2025
Should the State of Palestine possess an independent nuclear deterrent?
Tonight's YouTube commentary is a sort of challenge to the minority of Scot Goes Pop readers who I discovered a few months ago actually believe that nuclear deterrence is a valid concept that works. I ask them to consider the following: if a hypothetical and highly debatable "threat" from Russia is enough to mean that the UK must have an independent nuclear deterrent, surely the State of Palestine, which faces a much more imminent and proven threat from its nuclear-armed neighbour, must either have its own deterrent or be protected by another country's deterrent? And if you think that this would not reduce the risk of a nuclear attack on Palestine or might even increase the risk, doesn't that mean deep down that you don't believe nuclear deterrence works, and that it therefore can't work for Britain either?
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DEPUTY First Minister Kate Forbes will not seek re-election to the Scottish Parliament in 2026.
ReplyDeleteWho will succeed Swinney now?
James - sorry butting in here totally out of context - but see it's just been announced - 3 articles in the National - that Kate Forbes is standing down next year. Is that a bit of a shocker?
ReplyDeleteIt may represent good news as it allows the SNP to turn a new page on indy.
DeleteA canna say I blame her. Who’d want to head up the finance committee in a glorified Parish cooncil? And that’s the way it’ll stay with Furst Meenister Swinney in charge.
DeleteThe best she could have hoped for is to one day rub shoulders with the likes of the Major of Greater Peterborough, on an equal footing.
MÃ iri McAllan and Flynn now main leadership contenders (as and when vacancy arises). Both excellent.
DeleteNot sure the comparison to the UK works. A nuclear Palestinian state may or may not be at greater risk of nuclear attack, but it would almost certainly be at lower risk of the kind of assault it's been subjected to for the last two years. There's therefore at least an argument for a Palestinian nuke that doesn't apply to the UK, whose geographical location makes it pretty invasion-proof anyway
ReplyDelete"but it would almost certainly be at lower risk of the kind of assault it's been subjected to for the last two years"
DeleteWhy? Because it would retaliate to a conventional invasion with a nuclear attack, knowing that Israel would be bound to retaliate with its own nuclear attack? Again, doesn't that suggest that "deterrence" is a bogus concept and that possessing nuclear weapons would increase the likelihood of a country's own nuclear destruction?
Deterrents only work if you're the only one with the deterrent
DeleteIt's the stupidity of the big stick argument, there are always going to be more and bigger sticks, leading to the obvious that no one really has a deterrent at all, just the threat of using them, which is where every nation was before everybody had the *deterrent*
War is good for business bad for people, but since when do people actually count?
I'd say that nuclear weapons probably do somewhat increase the risk of their owners suffering nuclear destruction, but that for nations in certain circumstances this may be a price worth paying for vastly reducing the risk of major conventional attack.
DeleteWhy? Because it would retaliate to a conventional invasion with a nuclear attack, knowing that Israel would be bound to retaliate with its own nuclear attack?
Yes - or at least, because anyone thinking of razing Palestine would know that there is a chance of nuclear reprisal. You might argue that anyone who initiates a nuclear exchange is acting irrationally. But a) states don't always act rationally and b) if you're facing extinction anyway, it isn't even necessarily irrational (from a self-preservation perspective) to ensure that your enemy is also annihilated.
Nuclear deterrence relies on the principle of "those guys seem both powerful and crazy, so better not prod them". I'm sure I read a Chomsky article once about how the US and the USSR both actively projected an image of being violent and lawless for this very reason
"it isn't even necessarily irrational (from a self-preservation perspective) to ensure that your enemy is also annihilated"
DeleteAs that logic ultimately leads to the destruction of human civilization and perhaps of our species, of course it's irrational.
nukes work to defend small nations - it is why the north koreans can hold off the yanks
ReplyDelete-if only we had the bomb in 1707
Being incinerated conventionally via shock and awe and in radioactive fire, what difference does it make?
A considerable difference - the death toll from a single nuclear weapon dropped on Gaza would be around ten to twenty times greater than that of the genocide so far.
DeleteIf an independent Palestine is to have any chance what it needs is not nukes but peace keeping troops in numbers provided by a much strengthened UN. It will be pretty difficult to get to even that point effectively.
ReplyDeleteIf there was the slightest hint of nukes Israel would likely conduct a scorched earth offensive, before the first step was taken, that would dwarf even the present horrors. Nukes would be suicide !
Kate Forbes to go ? Now is the time to push hard for change in the SNP. Perth on Saturday is the next wee step...
Israel has them. That is the hypocrisy over Iran and other states.
ReplyDeleteJohn Swinney and the gender agenda brigade who control him need to go. The devolutionists need to go. The careerists need to go. What a shambles. Thanks N S. You have a lot to apologise for but I’m not holding my breath.
ReplyDelete