Kerre Woodham: Mutually assured destruction - will it work again?

I was listening to the podcast ‘The Rest is Politics’ last night. The speakers were saying that Trump's inclination to invade countries at will, will almost certainly result in nuclear proliferation and will drive countries to find protection in the shadow of Russia and China. The thinking being, what will stop the big orange guy from invading me? Nuclear warheads. Or a mate as big as he is. And then what do you know, a couple of hours later President Macron announced that France is to boost its nuclear arsenal and extend the deterrent to cover other European countries. It's a major development of its nuclear defence policy. The next 50 years, he said, will be an era of nuclear weapons. He said eight other European countries, the UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark had agreed to participate in a new advanced deterrent strategy. The aim, he said, is to convince potential adversaries that if they have the audacity to attack France, there will be an unsustainable price to be paid. 

Anyway, back to the future we go. Remember MAD magazine, the American satirical magazine? It was huge in the 60s and 70s and took its name from mutually assured destruction. Sure, press the button, but if you press the button, I press the button and we both go. The catchphrase for MAD magazine was “What, me worry?" And yep, we're back there. You just watch those Golden Visas fly off the shelf as wealthy Americans and Europeans look for a safe haven. Our isolation can work to our advantage.  

At the moment, when it comes to nuclear weapons, nuclear warheads, there are nine countries that have them. Russia has around 5,500, the US just over 5,000, China 600 – they're rapidly expanding their stockpile. France has 290 stable and mostly sea based as of yesterday, but today it'll be a different story. The UK 225, India 180, they're increasing their stockpile, Pakistan 170, increasing their stockpile. Israel has kept shtum about how many it has, and North Korea, who would know? But experts say they're actively testing and expanding. You've also got countries that host nuclear weapons: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey host US and NATO weapons. Belarus has Russian tactical nuclear weapons. 

So, 50 years of nuclear weaponry Macron is predicting, where mutually assured destruction is the only thing stopping people from pressing the button. It happened before and we got through it. And it does, I mean, you would have to have a death wish for yourself and your people and your country. But are there any guarantees on human behaviour these days? Given our isolation, will that work to our advantage? Hopefully, to a certain extent. We don't have anything of major military strategic importance. No minerals that you can only find here that can be used to make a super bomb, and then we should be relatively safe.  

As of late February this year, the Active Investor Plus, the Golden Visa program, has seen 573 applications received, 196 applications approved, and you can imagine that that will increase. Coming back to The Rest is Politics’ theory that as a result of America going into Venezuela and attacking Iran, that will see smaller countries looking to buy nuclear weapons to keep themselves safe or looking to cosy up to Russia and China. That theory is all well and good, but we should remember that having nuclear weapons didn't stop the US from attacking Iran. They just neutralised the nukes before they went in. And having Russia as your mate, “don't attack me, I've got Russia in my corner," is all very well and good, but as Syria's Bashar al Assad and Venezuela's Maduro and now the mullahs in Iran have found, Russia right now is all talk and no trousers. It can do a great line in rhetoric and they've given their friends a lot of verbal support, which will be pretty cold comfort, but when it comes to on the ground troops and military resources to go in and back up their mates, they're all tied up in Ukraine right now and Russia won't want to commit to wars on two fronts in two different zones.  

So, mutually assured destruction, the threat of one keeping someone pressing the button keeping you from pressing yours, worked before. Tensions eased and there was a relative period of peace. Can you see the same thing happening again? Tensions will rise, tensions will get high, people will get very nervous, and then we can all relax. Do you see New Zealand's isolation as its best defence?

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