reform the British House of Lords. The Labour government elected in 1997
found little problem in expelling most of the hereditary peers, but then came
across serious and insoluble problems in obtaining political agreement as to the
nature and composition of a new chamber and what powers the resulting body
should have.
Second Strike Capacity
Second strike capacity is one of the many technical terms developed by
strategic theorists after the development of nuclear weapons, and as part of
the overall doctrine of nucleardeterrence. It means that a country must have
sufficient nuclear weapons, or weapons sufficiently well hidden and protected
that, even if an enemy successfully launched a nuclear attack with total surprise,
the defenders can guarantee to have, after bearing the attack, enough nuclear
capacity to inflict guaranteed damage on the attacker. This level of guaranteed
damage must be enough to make the original attack not worth the inevitable
cost (seemutual assured destruction). Typically, second strike capacity
involves the special protection of the defender’s nuclear weapons, either by
siting them in virtually invulnerable silos, or in nuclear submarines. The
problem with the doctrine is that it refers not to a static concept but to a
dynamic one, because what was at one time an invulnerable silo, or an
undetectable location, can cease to be if the potential enemy improves the
power of its weapons, or the sophistication of its reconnaissance. Thus the
search for the, essentially defensive, second strike capacity can in itself lead to
anarms race.
Secular State
A secular state is one which has no official ties to any religious movement. The
United Kingdom, therefore, cannot technically be regarded as secular because
there is an officiallyestablished church, the Church of England, just as the
Scandinavian countries have established Lutheran churches whose ministers
are very nearly civil servants, and Greece establishes the Greek Orthodox
Church. The USA, however, with the First Amendment to its constitution
expressly forbidding the creation of an established church, is a secular state. In
practice the term has more to do with the extent to which governing parties
are really independent of religious affiliation. With this alternative definition,
the UK, the USA and Scandinavia are essentially secular. In contrast, Italy
could not be so regarded, even thoughRoman Catholicismceased to be the
official state religion in 1985, because the major party of government from the
Second World War until the collapse of the ‘Old Republic’ in the early 1990s,
the Christian Democrats, had vital and close ties to the church. Some states,
Second Strike Capacity