I know what you mean, amigo. I wrote likely, not certain. I’d give it a 33% chance, maybe, but consider it a lot more likely than democracy breaking out (or being imposed).
Though if history is anything to go by, revolutions are bad for military preparedness - experienced generals get the axe, maintenance schedules and training get messed up, lots of people die, and so on. So if radical Islamists do take over (and it’s worth pointing out the Sauds are no prize themselves), it’s not as if they’re going to be fielding a terribly capable military.
It’s not so much an English musing I have, more of a pan-EU musing, where they ‘ain’t gonna study war no more’.
Are you positing the USA as a threat or just as not caring to defend us? Because I think the latter is way more possible then the first, and I also think it doesn’t matter very much.
For those talking about a radical Saudi Arabia you’re missing the wider point of why does it matter anywhere? If the UK was worried about protecting oil supplies wouldn’t it be cheaper to spend money on developing alternatives? I wonder how much it would cost to build nuclear power plants for all of the UK’s energy needs versus x years of military spending.
And further what anyone ever want to invade the UK for? It could only be for ideological reasons, we have no resources or border issues with our neighbours(screw the Falklands).
Oh and for the American invasion you can’t use any EU territory (Iceland’s practically in) without also fighting their forces. Maybe Morocco or Algeria would be good?
You can use my house as a staging area. For a price…
(Yay, capitalism)
Joking aside, I don’t see the US as ever being a direct threat to the UK, so it would be the latter. And I think it would be more important than you think if the US, for whatever reason, decided not to project it’s military power world wide anymore, or if, again for whatever reason, the US decided that we were no longer friends with the UK and would no longer honor our mutual defense treaties or maintain our special relationship. If you don’t think it would matter then I guess we disagree.
If it was cheaper to simply develop alternatives don’t you think someone would be doing it by now? Even if you think that 90+% of the worlds countries are run by complete blithering idiots who are wedded to their military war machines and all that, surly SOMEONE would be smart enough to make the calculation that it’s cheaper to create alternatives to oil than to spend money on their military to protect their interests…right?
Of course, oil isn’t the only resource that the UK has a strategic interest in around the world, nor is it the only thing that can be threatened by a hostile power that the UK would need to defend. Your trade, for instance, still ranges world wide. You buy goods and services from all over the world, and you sell goods and services all over the world too…and that trade also needs to be protected.
Invasion isn’t the only threat that your military is geared to protect you from. No one is EVER going to be able to invade the US…not as long as we are a cohesive nation anyway. Our military is there to protect our interests (and all our friends interests…yours, if you are from the UK, as well) more than it’s there to protect us from invasion.
The US is probably the only country on earth that could possibly invade the UK. Since we’d be able to completely control the seas and completely interdict their trade routes, that alone would probably be enough to do them in. But we also have the logistics and lift capability of invading.
The trouble is, politically there would be zero chance of it ever happening (just as there would be zero chance that rest of the EU would just allow us to waltz in there and invade). Hell, it was tough for us to get through the invasion of Iraq (well…it wasn’t a cake walk, politically), and it’s been such a cluster fuck that I doubt we could invade even a country that is patently evil like North Korea, regardless of the provocation, let alone a country that a lot of our citizens still look to as a friend, and still have deep roots and history with.
-XT
I’d say Saudi Arabia is already ruled by Muslim extremists.
Not with the US defending it. Which would happen they really dont NEED a big of a military as they have because any direct attack on them would be an attack on NATO and at the very least the US would just go in on its own accord. We have so much military stationed in Europe already where is this planned attack coming from? Germany? They better take out Ramstien first.
Only bad thing I can think of is the UK would not be TOO difficult to occupy, compared to the US where we actually have red necks practicing red dawn war games with their assault weapons.
Once you own the air and sea you own the land.
Let’s say that the USA is not defending it. Nobody is defending the UK apart from the UK. The USA is not involved. This is about what the UK is capable of doing.
I really don’t think the Red Dawn scenario means anything in this comparison, there are literally no enemies in the world with the capabilities of launching a long distance invasion. In fact the only countries I’m aware of with the capability to maintain more than two battalions indefinitely in a cross-ocean war zone are the UK and The USA.
The someone-would-have-thought-of-it argument is interesting though xtisme. Because I think people have thought of it, it’s just politics and inertia gets in the way. The UK uses 345,798,000 MW·h/yr the largest nuclear power plant in the world produces 60.505 Tw-h and cost I can’t figure it out. The defence budget is about £40 billion a year.
Then it becomes a question of working out the numbers to see whether it would be more cost effective to build nuclear power versus spending money on the Middle East. I’m not sure what the answer is. (I tried but seem to have made a massive mistake somewhere, so maybe someone else can.)
The real interesting question is what would happen to world trade if the UK and USA just packed up and went home. Would pirates start springing out of the water everywhere? Would things carry on much the same? Would other nations pick up the slack? How much to world GDP does UK and USA defence spending contribute.
Now the USA invading which is a separate debate (and just for fun, so ignore political rationales) wouldn’t be as easy as you all seem to think. If we think how difficult the D-Day landings were it would be even tougher as the UK is not fighting an enemy on another flank. And there is a cost to having a supply chain which would be difficult for the USA. Plus the UK would have actual modern anti-aircraft defence systems that Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t have and if required I’m sure we could rapidly produce guns for a home-guard etc
Have any to modern military’s been to war post WWII, I’m not really sure about the technological disparity’s in Korea which I guess would be a relevant comparison.
Damn you inscrutable foreigners!
Just a nitpick, but we have at least one dispute with several neighbours.
from wiki:
“The ownership of Rockall is disputed, as are the exploration and fishing rights on the surrounding Rockall Bank and Trough, and the Rockall Plateau. Exchanges continue between the countries involved: Ireland, Denmark (for the Faroe Islands), the United Kingdom and Iceland.”
It’s deep water, but possibly very valuable, so watch out for an Irish/Danish/Icelandic coalition moving against us!
It’s an interesting article, btw.
Why would anybody else expend blood and treasure to fight for us if we won’t do it for ourselves?
If the time comes when we want to impose our will on someone who is doing something we find unacceptable, how can we do it, without capabilities? If we say ‘stop it’ and they say ‘you gonna make us?’ what then? Grumble a bit in the UN? Capabilities give options. Saying “what’s the very minimum we can spend, and get away with it given a dollop of luck?” shuts down options. Who would have thought twenty years ago that we would ever operate East of Suez again? All the force configurations were against it.
so these invaders attack the UK without attacking any US military base or personnel, including off duty men and women walking around the local cities?
Ok even if you take the US out, the UK has nukes they win, low yeild, very clean, tactile battlefield nuke
We have nukes too. That should mean we don’t need any other military, correct? And that should mean that any other country, including North Korea who also has nukes doesn’t need any other military either, right? I mean, if you have nukes, then you automatically win, and everyone just leaves you alone.
Funny that we had to invade Afghanistan when we had nukes…shouldn’t they have just surrendered? Iraq too for that matter. And, hell, shouldn’t Iran just roll over now and stop trying to build nukes of their own? I mean, we have nukes, the EU has nukes and neither of us wants Iran to get nukes so WTF? How are they still pursuing them?
The answer, of course, is that having nukes does you relatively little good except to prevent all out war to the knife. It’s an either or proposition…if you use them then you’ve just jumped the shark and all bets are off. If you don’t use them then basically you are going to get called on your bluff sometime…then it’s going to depend on how crazy your leaders are as to whether they kill millions or do nothing, because those are really the only options. Having a capable military that can protect your interests gives you additional options between the do nothing and kill millions gradient.
-XT
The problem with depending on another country or countries is that sooner or later they’re going to be a bit cheesed off that the official policy of a country when it requires people die for them is that it is your people who do the dying. Even when, as with the UK and US, the reciprocal amount of force that could be supplied is minimal in comparison, the idea itself provides support for that friendly relationship. The US is willing to supply troops to risk their lives in defense of us; we’re willing to do the same in return. Making it one-sided turns a pretty strong gesture of support into a dependance, and it’s already an area which is questioned significantly.
What’s all this then?!
No need to fight the hypothetical, just imagine the troops had been withdrawn a few years earlier for diplomatic reasons. Same deal for NATO, they got pissed with greater European integration or something and the whole business fell down.
And** Revenant Threshold** I think everyone is missing my point in arguing for a greatly reduced military (not that I very seriously hold the position). If the UK doesn’t see the need to protect itself because it sees no threats then it doesn’t need the US to protect it either for the same reason!
Most people seem to be addressing the question from a political direction, when I was more interested in a security-military perspective. It seems that we don’t have enough knowledge of modern armies fighting defensive wars on their own territory to make an effective judgment.
Thats fair enough.
And I agree with xtisme that nuclear weapons are not necessarily the best way to get what you want from other states, but when it comes to defence I believe that they’ll make every state think twice. And I believe that states are the only actors that have the force to provide a credible threat to a state such as the UK.
From a security-military standpoint, I think it might be one of those things that you don’t need because you have it. It’s a deterrent. That terrorism is such a big threat is because those who would seek to hurt us can’t beat us in conventional warfare, and recognise that fact. Transfer money and resources from conventional military to intelligence services and you’d probably see a reflexive move from potential foes to match the new weak link.