As I have I have said before in this blog [1] [2] [3], I am against the idea of replacing the Trident Nuclear missile system for a number of reasons, it will be simply too costly and this type of weapon has become completely useless in defending ourselves from today’s threats.
It will be interesting to see what today’s white paper uses as reasons for a replacement. The reasons will have to be very plausible for me, for example which country (countries) is/are going named as the potential new threat? China, India, Pakistan, Russia, Israel, France, the USA, all having proven warheads and missile delivery systems, or perhaps it will be the new enemies, Iran, Syria, Korea. Past politicians were very overt in their naming of the USSR as the post war threat that needed the original Polaris nuclear missile system, I wonder if Tony Blair or his successor will have any guts to name the new targets.
It’s also not only about naming who we might need to nuke in the future, it’s also about cost. Some reports say that the cost will be between £10-25bn to build and deploy a Trident replacement. We all know and have many current examples to expect that these costs will only go up, look at the NHS IT program increased costs, the cost of the Olympics continues to rise (some through accounting mistakes – ‘Honey I forgot the VAT!’, this for two projects hopefully not designed to kill anyone! It is inevitable that the £10-25bn will increase through the usual issues and errors that creep into just about every government project. Would it not be better to focus these huge sums elsewhere.
Another reason to question the need for retaining a nuclear deterrent, if we cannot (or will not) name a target country, is who or what do we aim the new missile at? As I have written before, did having a nuclear deterrent stop 9/11, or 7/7, or the many other terrorist atrocities around the world? No it didn’t and no it won’t in the future.
I will watch with interest how our elected MP’s position themselves on either side of the argument, my MP, John Redwood has so far given a very middle of the road response to my questions on how he will vote.
If you care about this subject you should write to your MP to find out what they think and how they might vote when given the chance. More on this to come I think.
Tags: Nuclear Deterrent, Trident, Blair, Terrorism
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