Well this is awkward: Wikileaked cable suggests that US agreed to...

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...trade information on British nuclear arsenal in exchange for Russian ratification of arms treaty.

It's the Daily Telegraph, not the Fail, so despite the lean it's probably more credible.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-to-tell-Russia-Britains-nuclear-secrets.html
Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.
Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain?s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.
The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called ?special relationship?, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
Details of the behind-the-scenes talks are contained in more than 1,400 US embassy cables published to date by the Telegraph, including almost 800 sent from the London Embassy, which are published online today. The documents also show that:
? America spied on Foreign Office ministers by gathering gossip on their private lives and professional relationships.
? Intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US became strained after the controversy over Binyam Mohamed, the former Guant?namo Bay detainee who sued the Government over his alleged torture.
? David Miliband disowned the Duchess of York by saying she could not ?be controlled? after she made an undercover TV documentary.
? Tens of millions of pounds of overseas aid was stolen and spent on plasma televisions and luxury goods by corrupt regimes.
A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain?s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia?s support for the ?New START? deal.
Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK?s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.
Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.
Professor Malcolm Chalmers said: ?This appears to be significant because while the UK has announced how many missiles it possesses, there has been no way for the Russians to verify this. Over time, the unique identifiers will provide them with another data point to gauge the size of the British arsenal.?
Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane?s Strategic Weapons Systems, said: ?They want to find out whether Britain has more missiles than we say we have, and having the unique identifiers might help them.?
While the US and Russia have long permitted inspections of each other?s nuclear weapons, Britain has sought to maintain some secrecy to compensate for the relatively small size of its arsenal.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, last year disclosed that ?up to 160? warheads are operational at any one time, but did not confirm the number of missiles.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, for one, has nothing on its site about it.
 
Ouch, that is going to hurt relations between the current NATO big dogs.
 
O'Bama has showed the U.K. the cold shoulder for quite awhile (see the Gordon Brown pen incident).
 
God damn it. To all Brits: Sorry we have a nutter in office...
 
*shrug* dont see whats wrong. I guess Russia wanted assurances that the US was not "shielding" nukes from SALT/STAR counts by sending them to 3rd party nations that are Allies of the US and NATO. As the article points out the UK does not want to disclose its numbers because of its size but it is now getting what is considered to the most modern tech in SLBMs. Also one can fire back and say if the UK really wants it secret dont buy it from the US and develop your own but that is just being mean. Also the article says the US wanted to share performance numbers and I will need to dig in to Wikileaks to see if its there. Data like that in the past was considered to be very confidential and in that case would apply to US stock of D5's which puts us also at risk. I wonder if it was just something that was normal for the SALT treaties in the past and not STAR or maybe it came at the cost of the Russians giving us equal data.

Also on the part of US spying on our Allies, again this is a huge yawn from wikileaks. I remember seeing all the debate about this when it first came out, but I have an public release document from the DoD that talks about US Allies spying on the US, nations like France and Israel top the list in many categories. Dont see why everyone feels like saying sorry for the Brits, they would do the same to us and likely have in the past. When it comes to your nations interests you dont care who you screw.
 
Anything that puts another nail in the "Special Relationship" is fine by me. I wondered whether the CIA had pictures of Thatcher giving Reagan blowjobs in the Oval Office. It seemed to be the only reason our Government would bend over and repeatedly take it.

Nothing on the Grauniad site yet.
 
Also one can fire back and say if the UK really wants it secret dont buy it from the US and develop your own but that is just being mean.

A step down a dangerous path. Don't forget that we have control of most of your early-warning defence network, particularly where Russia is concerned.
 
God damn it. To all Brits: Sorry we have a nutter in office...

He's not a nutter, he's just in the wrong. It's not like he's parading the White House lawn in a kilt, Liberace smoking jacket and playing the fucking tuba.
 
Or believes that God told him to run for office.
 
Buggers! :shakefist:
 
If we were to accept that as medical insanity, there's a lot of people who'd be in straight jackets (well, they rarely use them these days..), and for pragmatic reasons, we couldn't do that. It's like the way we put pot smokers in jail and sell whisky to borderline student alcoholics (like myself).

:p
 
Also one can fire back and say if the UK really wants it secret dont buy it from the US and develop your own but that is just being mean.

That's a whole story of it's own, we were originally developing our own weapons however the US considered this against it's interests so decided that if we were going to have nukes it would be better if they were cheap american nukes.

There is a whole history of the US fucking around the UK in an effort to prevent the UK having an independent deterrent. This is just another example.

Still, if that's what being an ally means we can play that game.. and pull out of Afghanistan in a month.
 
That's a whole story of it's own, we were originally developing our own weapons however the US considered this against it's interests so decided that if we were going to have nukes it would be better if they were cheap american nukes.

There is a whole history of the US fucking around the UK in an effort to prevent the UK having an independent deterrent. This is just another example.

Interestingly this is a flip from the mid 20th century when the U.S. was manipulated by the U.K. and other European powers to do whatever they wanted. Not that it is good either way.

Still, if that's what being an ally means we can play that game.. and pull out of Afghanistan in a month.

Please do. I hate that we have had two warhawks in a row as President.
 
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