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Trident

Posted by Sammy Wilson, MP for East Antrim, at 09:12, Wed 11 August 2010:

As I lay in bed listening to the wireless early on Friday morning, John Humphries commented that 6th Aug was the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, an event which brought the war in the Pacific to an abrupt end and ushered in the nuclear age. This one bomb vaporised a whole city larger than Belfast and instantly killed 70,000 people with many more dying from radiation in the months and years afterwards. It was deemed to be essential to saving hundreds of thousands of allied lives given the fanatical resistance from the Japanese as the allies closed in on their country. In the battle for the small island of Okinawa of the coast of Japan the Americans had lost 12,000 soldiers in a three month battle in which 110,000 Japanese soldiers had also died. The fear was that the casualties from an invasion of Japan itself would have been many times worse so a decision was made to bomb the Japanese government into submission with a weapon of awesome power.

That decision changed the way in which major nations would deal with disputes and ideological competition for the next half century. At Clement Attlee the Prime Minister said two weeks later “the bomb means a naked choice between world cooperation and world destruction.” Many attribute the nuclear deterrent with preventing another world war as the ideologies of the Communist East and the Democratic West collided during the Cold War in the second half of the twentieth century. The threat of mutual destruction caused world leaders to step back from the brink of war.

Throughout that period a debate raged in Britain as to whether it was necessary for us to spend tens of billions of pounds on our own nuclear weapons and the submarines from which they would be launched. With the Russian threat now a distant memory, severe pressure on the army because of the war in Afghanistan and commitments elsewhere, the need to make a decision about replacing our nuclear capability at a cost of £80bn and the immense pressures on the budget, the debate on our need for a nuclear deterrent has reopened.

Surprisingly many senior military personnel are at the forefront of the arguments against replacing our 160 Trident warheads and the submarines which would fire them. They argue that the nature of future wars do not require this type of weapon, they will demand troops on the ground, mobility, effective battlefield weapons and firepower to back up the soldiers. Scarce resources should be concentrated on these areas of spending. Given the inadequate equipment, lack of helicopters and increasing demand on our soldiers in Iraq and now Afghanistan, this argument certainly has force.

On the other hand there are others who argue that there is still a nuclear threat from rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, there is uncertainty about Russia’s future military intentions and the Chinese are building up their military might and there is no guarantee they will always remain friendly especially as they compete with the West for resources around the world. There is also the threat of terrorists such as Al Queda obtaining a nuclear device.

The arguments for spending £80bn on Trident at a time when we are facing a financial crisis, and have more pressing military demands looks extremely weak. The idea that the Americans who supply most of the technology would allow us to act independently is nonsense. If there was a threat from Iran or North Korea the Americans would be providing the counter threat anyhow. Does anyone believe that if terrorists threatened to explode a nuclear device in London that we would respond by threatening to fire a nuclear warhead from a submarine somewhere in the Atlantic and who would we fire it at anyhow – a terrorist cell holed up somewhere in Bradford ? The idea is ridiculous. Some of the money saved from Trident might be better used in gathering intelligence against potential terrorists.

I am no wishy washy liberal who reels in revulsion at the prospect of meeting threats with counter threats if that is the way to prevent actual violence. The nuclear threat despite its expense did the job required of it during the Cold War, but we are in a new situation. As the nature of the threat and the conflict has changed we must not spend money on weaponry designed to fight the conflicts of the past we must try to deal with the needs of the present and predict the requirements of the future. No doubt that will be one of the great debates when Parliament resumes in the autumn.