NATO & Trident

Here's something I thought about today: Trump wants NATO countries to stump up and spend what they committed to spend on defence, thereby relieving the USA of providing the lion's share of NATO's costs. However, when one realises that:

1. It would be useless to merely contribute more men, as they are ineffective without the weapons to support them, and
2. Most of the NATO countries rely on American arms manufacturers for a high percentage of their weapons (e.g. Turkey buys more than 40% of its arms imports from the USA, the UK buys over 70% of its arms imports from the USA, Italy buys over 50% of its arms imports from the USA, etc.),

Then increasing defence spending will primarily benefit the American arms industry, which is something close to Trumps heart in terms of American job creation.

Not many people understand that the UK, a nuclear power, doesn't have its own nuclear deterrent. Trident, which is our only nuclear weapon, is built by Lockheed Martin and we spend a fortune maintaining and upgrading it, money that goes direct to America.

Essentially, NATO is an American money making machine.

Back to Trident - of the 4 subs, only one is on actual deployment at any one time. An awful waste of resources. Additional to that, the cost of Trident, and its replacement, is so high that our conventional forces are depleted to such an extent that we can no longer field a Task Force such as the one used in the Falklands, let alone fight a conventional war. The irony is that Trident is a weapon of last resort, but its cost means the reduction in conventional forces makes its use more, rather than less likely, as our conventional forces are not up to the task of fighting a conventional war.