Trident Nuclear Weapons

Letter to my Member of Parliament

I am writing to ask you to vote against renewal or replacement of our nuclear weapons. These are my reasons:

1. The possession of nuclear weapons did not save us from being involved in conflicts in Cyprus, Suez, Malaya, Kenya, the Falklands, the Gulf War, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. It did not save us from years of terrorism by the IRA or by Islamic extremists on 7.7.05, Al Qaeda or ISIL.
2. In Europe, only the UK, France and Russia have nuclear weapons. This leaves more than 40 European countries that do not consider they need such weapons to ensure their security. If they don't need them, we can do without them as well.
3. The cost is unaffordable: at least £205,000,000,000 at a time when all our public services are being attacked, including health, social care, social services, benefits, education and public transport. Local authorities are cutting services, not to the bone, but into the bone. Our border forces are lamentably inadequate: 3 boats as against Italy's 600, even though their coast line is shorter.
4. Once a nuclear war begins, both sides lose, no matter who was the aggressor. A system of deterrence that would ensure our own nation's destruction if it were ever employed is in reality a form of national suicide.
5. Submarine-based technology is already obsolescent. Its strategic value derives from the fact that, even today, submarines are not as easy to track as land-based installations and vehicles. Unmanned underwater drones will remove that advantage forever, and such drones are currently under development. There would be no way of compensating for the loss of that tactical advantage. In the event of a conflict that ends up going nuclear, our subs, previously almost untraceable, would be easily located and destroyed before we deploy them.
6. The only reason why the UK retains Trident is because our leaders want our country to be seen as a major player on the international scene, thus justifying our permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This is a spectacularly bad reason, and it is definitely not a priority for most ordinary citizens in this country. It is simply using weapons of mass destruction as a global status symbol.
7. Mass murder by nuclear weapons would not be war: it would be genocide. Leaders who used them, or agreed to their use, would be war criminals.

Even if one has previously accepted the argument that we need nuclear weapons in the past, the rationale behind retaining or replacing them is ceasing to exist. I am reminded of how during the First World War, the generals maintained cavalry units and looked for opportunities to deploy them, ignoring the fact that military technology had rendered them obsolete. The repeated full frontal assaults by infantry units against entrenched machine guns was a refusal to adapt methods to changed circumstances; the generals eventually learnt to modify their tactics only after horrendous and pointless losses of lives caused by this bloody-minded obstinacy. The consequence was carnage on an industrial scale.

To renew our Trident weapons system is to employ the same blinkered thinking. There is no moral or financial logic to nuclear weapons. There is increasingly no tactical value in them either.

I therefore urge you to vote against renewal or replacement of our nuclear weapons systems.

Thank you.