In new comments on the BBC, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond claimed “worrying signs” about Russia’s military activity in Eastern Europe, and claimed Russian President Putin was considering new military invasions in the region.
Hammond then expressed openness to the idea of the Pentagon scrapping a decades-old arms treaty with Russia and deploying a number of nuclear weapons on British soil, saying he needed to see a more detailed case before making a decision, but that it was worth considering.
He went on to say that deploying nuclear weapons in Britain could be a way to “send a clear signal to Russia that we will not allow them to transgress our red lines,” though he did say he wouldn’t support “unnecessary provocations,” which apparently he did not feel the nuclear weapons would be.
The US has claimed Russia to be in violation of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty because of a cruise missile test launch, and Congress has been pushing for the US to withdraw from the treaty and start putting withdrawn nuclear arms back into Western Europe.
This seems an extreme overreaction, given the tensions with Russia center on the long-Russian Crimean Peninsula being reannexed after its secession from Ukraine, but many US hawks seem to believe their own hype about the Russian annexation being the prelude to a full-scale invasion of Europe, and are once again gearing up for a world-ending nuclear exchange.
Lovely map you've got there, Jason, showing Scotland as part of the UK. Now, if the Scots have any sense at all, they're going to press on as quickly as possible with independence so that the Russian response to Hammond's crazy scheme will just be to target merry old England. (And it wouldn't be a bad time for Wales to get out of the UK too.)
You can always count on the brits for some embarrassing idiocy.
Makes no sense at all. Apparently US submarines (and the Trident for that matter) are not enough? Additionally, the US already stores at least tactical nucelar weapons on Air Strip One anyway. I strongly suspect "US nukes in UK" is code for "cash for political operators".
Hammond Says Deployments Would Send 'Very Clear Signals' to Russia
Yep that you are even more a bunch of US sycophants.
Go Scots! Independence now – Then the Poms will have to put their nukes in London.
Bye, bye London!
"…US to withdraw from the treaty and start putting withdrawn nuclear arms back into Western Europe."
…that would be "supposedly withdrawn nuclear arms…
This is worse than the Cold War. At least at that time there was an explicable dynamic that drove both sides to confrontational postures. This new Cold War, like the Iraq War, has been purely an elective war of choice for the US and its henchmen.
This is such a weak argument that Mr Ditz would have been better off not writing it. By annexing Crimea without the consent of Ukraine, Putin violated the Helsinki Final Act, the first time since Hitler ans Stalin in 1939 that a European country has annexed the territory of another sovereign European state. What Putin now has is two useless white elephants: Crimea with no land access and "Sausagestan". To make Crimea viable, he has to grab not just Donetsk and Lugansk, but the four railway provinces as well. That's a minimum. And does anybody really think that Putin is happy about Estonia sitting more or less on the doorstep of his very own St Petersburg? In addition, he keeps saying and doing stupid things; the biker gang "invasion" of Poland and Germany, his embracing of Sepp Blatter … The latest is his statement (BBC) to the effect that he doesn't intend to attack any NATO country (sub-text: he intends to attack some non-NATO country! And, of course, that means, logically, that if Ukraine is brought into NATO, he won't attack it!). Putin is thus an unpredictable political clown and as long as he remains president of Russia, the world has to be prepared for any eventuality. Putin has no one but himself to blame for that situation.
1. Jason Ditz did not write an "argument." He reported an event.
2. No, the annexation of Crimea did not violate the Helsinki Final Act, for two reasons. One is that the Helsinki Final Act was not a binding treaty. The other is is even if it had been a binding treaty, neither the Russia Federation nor Ukraine were party to it. To say that the Russian annexation of Crimea violated the Helsinki Final Act is like saying that me stealing your bicycle violates the rules of the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.
annexing Crimea without the consent of Ukraine
???
e.g. …if I steal your silverware set, that'd be criminal. But if I 'steal' your girlfriend… it'd be presumed to be without your consent but no one need care.
I would strongly argue that Mr. Kenny is thoroughly history-challanged. Not the first time, either.