On Sunday, Barack Obama announced that he would pursue US ratification of the test ban treaty, with the ambition of creating “a world without nuclear weapons”. As agreed earlier this week, both the US and Russia plan to reduce their arsenals by a third. It’s a remarkable reversal, considering a new arms race looked imminent only a matter of months ago.
Gordon Brown was quick to lend his support to a “new global bargain”, as this posed an example to those still developing nuclear weapons, such as North Korea.
Funny, since the UK government still believes in the nuclear deterrent and ordered four new nuclear submarines in 2007. Both Tony Blair and David Cameron backed the plan for a new generation of subs, despite the £20 billion price tag and the obsolescence of the nuclear deterrent in an age of terrorism.
Gordon Brown can’t even claim it was Blair’s idea, since he defended the idea of nuclear weapons in 2006 when he stated his commitment to
“…protecting our security in this Parliament and the long-term – strong in defence in fighting terrorism, upholding NATO, supporting our armed forces at home and abroad, and retaining our independent nuclear deterrent.”
Surely we can’t support Obama’s plans, condemn Iran and North Korea, and build our own nuclear capacity at the same time.
The government is dodging this apparent hypocrisy by saying it only commissioned the new submarines, not any new missiles. That’s a bit like buying a gun and claiming you don’t intend to buy any bullets – doubly pointless in my mind.
I don’t want to dismiss the UK’s efforts. The Labour government has halved its stockpile since it came to power, and the new submarines will only carry 12 armed warheads instead of 16. Those could be downscaled again if Russia and the US, who own 95% of the world’s nuclear weapons between them, follow through on their de-commissioning schemes.
Nevertheless, the Trident plans should be scrapped immediately. Even Field Marshall Lord Bramal says the technology is obsolete: “Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face or are likely to face,” says the former head of the Armed Forces, “particularly international terrorism.”
By abandoning our plans for new nuclear submarines we will save £20 billion at a time when we really need the money, and we’ll show Obama, Medvedev, Iran and North Korea that we’re serious when we say we believe in a world without nuclear weapons.
The Earthbound Report 