The only thing that is certain about Trident’s supposed successor is that the world will have changed by the time it is operational. By then world conflicts and priorities will be quite different. Almost every week there is another scientific pronouncement about the acceleration of climate change. The odds that it will soon dominate human concerns are shortening all the time. It is true there is a finite chance that some time in the future Britain may be under a threat which requires it to have its own nuclear deterrent. But the odds against this happening are high. It would be daft to throw away £20bn on a low risk when the money could be so much better spent on slowing climate change and planning to contain its consequences.
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- 2006-07-19 @ 17:58:50
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lionmansfield
- 2006-07-19 @ 20:36:38
Good question. By the way my blog is the text of a letter by me in today's Guardian. Tell your friends about it if you will.
My comment on your question is this. It is the USA, not Britain, which is the "Great Satan" to the Mosl;em countries whether it likes it or not. If anyone is going to come under nuclear threat it is surely them first. And no-one is going to be fool enough to threaten the USA with its huge nuclear arsenal. It is highly unlikely any country would threaten Britain on its own. But if we are worried some loony country might we could keep our knowhow on nuclear weapons and landbased missiles up to date so if we had to we could build land based nuclear missiles quite fast. What we definitely don't need is huge expensive sumarine launchers.
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- 2006-07-19 @ 20:48:52
I take the Independent but will be sure to mention it.
I agree with your letter and your comment. Say Hezbollah (just as an example) sneaked a nuclear weapon into Britain. Terrible as the results would be, who would be to blame and who would we retailiate against. And why would we need submarines ? The world has moved on from the Cold War. Low intensity operations require different weapons and strategies.
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lionmansfield
- 2006-07-20 @ 17:52:51
We clearly share a point of view on this at least. I would like to compare notes with you on other things.I am new to blogging. Is there some way we could set up dialogue on other topics - e.g. the Middle East?
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Damn good point. Who are we supposed to be protected against with such a sophisticated deterrant. Iran ? North Korea ?