Trident is for Neptune

A long time ago, in a country far, far away from present day Britain, there lived a movement as widely ridiculed by the establishment as any in British political history. A group of scruffy Brits, calling themselves the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or CND, spent much of the 1970s and eighties trying to stop nuclear proliferation in Thatcher’s Britain. This ragged ensemble of left-wingers, environmentalists and church leaders literally stopped at nothing to get their message across. Women would chain themselves to fences at US air force bases in a brave, though pitiful attempt to stop the deployment of nuclear cruise missiles. Of course, not being strong swimmers, they were unable to prevent the deployment of Trident or to successfully chain themselves to the submarines, mainly because such sea-faring vessels offer few points of attachment for casual hitch-hikers.

Of course those were the dark days of the Soviet empire, the days of a ruthless military-industrial complex which invaded Afghanistan without due provocation, funded civil wars throughout Africa, Central America, and South-East Asia, supplied arms to despotic regimes, and maintained a vast nuclear deterrent. The Americans of course decried this ‘Evil Empire’ and such activities. Understandably the then British public were firmly against the idea of unilateral nuclear disarmament, especially with a large, predatory nuclear superpower at large, seemingly ready to invade foreign countries at any time.

Stop! CND cried, all of this nuclear proliferation will only encourage other countries to develop their own nuclear weapons, besides it will make us a target for their use! Unsafe! CND cried, all of these weapons and reactors will lead to nuclear accidents. Waste! CND cried, all of these nuclear weapons cost vast sums to procure, maintain and dispose of after use. How prophetically wrong they all were, apparently, as the government prepares to replace Trident with a £20 billion descendant (please note that this cost is an estimate and will in due time be vastly superseded as a consequence of ‘unforeseen’ costs).

One Labour dissenter, former home secretary Charles Clarke, asked why the government was ‘building new weapons to fight the last war’. Undeterred, Gordon & Tony seem set on becoming more nuclear than ever, replacing Trident as well increasing the UK’s energy provision from nuclear power. Many might question exactly who these missiles would be aimed at, especially as we are led to believe that the primary global threat is currently from terrorists, who tend to operate within small cells dispersed around the world.

Unsurprisingly, ACTUS nations such as Libya, Iran and North Korea (the Axis of Countries Terrified of the United States), have attempted to obtain nuclear weapons of their own, a weapons system which was after all invented at the same time as the medium range rocket and jet engine during World War II (so it shouldn’t really be very surprising if such technologies are replicated independently within 21st century Iran or Korea, any more than we would be horrified to see a jet fighter flying over Tehran?) Besides in this new age of economic imperialism with the constant threat of invasion from the United States, it shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise either to see other countries scurrying to gain their own independent nuclear deterrent to ward off invasion, any more than we would be surprised to see wreathes of garlic wrapped around the bed posts of a young maiden in a Vampire film. Understandably such countries object to being vilified by the West for developing a nuclear deterrent of their own, especially given that the Americans themselves are currently busy creating the next generation of nuclear weapons (whatever terrible form these may take). For some strange reason they seem to feel that being forbidden to have nuclear weapons by countries that have them themselves is a touch hypocritical.

So what are the reasons for maintaining a nuclear deterrent? Is it power, wealth, influence, or just security? Well neither Germany nor Japan possesses nuclear weapons, and they are amongst the richest industrial powers in the world. No nation ignores their views just because they don’t have 'nukes'. India and Pakistan are both now nuclear superpowers and nobody in the West seems to listen to a word they have to say. Perhaps it makes us wealthier as a country to be in the nuclear club? Well, the ten richest countries in the world (based upon 2004 GNP per capita) are in rank order Luxembourg ($56,380), Norway ($51,810), Switzerland ($49,600), the United States ($41,440), Denmark ($40,750), Iceland ($37,920), Japan ($37,050), Sweden ($35,840), Ireland ($34,310), and, in a lowly tenth spot the United Kingdom ($33,630). So only two of the ten wealthiest nations have nuclear weapons, and none of the top three maintain such a deterrent, quod erat demonstradum as the used to Romans say…as the Swiss, Icelanders & Norwegians elegantly demonstrate, there is more money to be made in staying neutral and being trusted by the international community.

Do nuclear weapons increase British influence? Possibly, if you believe that entrenching yourself within a club of like-minded countries and inducing the formation of enemy pacts represents meaningful and gainful influence. Certainly no politician or logician would argue that having nuclear weapons makes you less likely to be a military target for a nuclear strike, be it pre-emptive or retaliatory. OK, so let’s take a trip to Disneyland for a moment and imagine that a Western power gets in a first strike against another nuclear power, and that no nuclear weapons are fired in retaliation. Do any of the politicians or generals safely stowed away below ground in their nuclear bunkers really think that the planet would be habitable for the next century? Their intended disappearance below ground might suggest otherwise. Just look at the damage that one localised nuclear accident in the Ukraine caused and try and convince any environmentalist or nuclear physician that we would survive a major nuclear strike in the Middle East or Asia….

Perhaps the £20 or so billion earmarked for Trident might be better spent on poverty, AIDS, or building underground shelters, or as Stephen Hawking suggest in finding other planets to colonise once we have finished destroying this one…

Valete homo vastans