In 1980, the UK replaced its independent Polaris nuclear
submarine fleet with the US-approved Trident nuclear program. Originally, the
idea was that a joint nuclear pact in Europe between Britain and the US would
help subdue the perceived aggression of the then Soviet Union. If a Warsaw Pact
country were to threaten a nuclear attack against Western Europe, then a
nuclear-armed UK could be a deterrent. However, the Warsaw Pact is long gone,
along with the Soviet Union, but still Britain today still keeps fleets of
nuclear submarines up in Faslane.
1. It's not a deterrent.
NATO refuses to admit that Trident is not a first-strike weapon, and given UK and NATO's track record of aggression against other countries, what reason do we have to believe the UK would not use a nuclear threat as an attack rather than a defence? Moreover, who exactly are we supposed to be deterring? Now that the USSR is gone, what threat is there to Britain's security that it's necessary have a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines? We're the one who's been conducting invasion after invasion all over the globe, in many peoples eyes we are the violent rogue state. Why should the country jointly responsible for destroying Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria be seen as a righteous owner of nuclear weapons? It shouldn't. Nuclear programs haven't kept the world at peace, it's only further slipped the balance of power into the hands of the Western powers and their allies.
If nuclear weapons are truly a deterrent, then every country in the world should be allowed to have them, otherwise the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction becomes otiose. So why then did the UK put sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran in response to them potentially building a Nuclear weapons program which they were well within their rights to build due to their signature on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? If you want to argue that only democracies should be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, then why did Britain give financial and political support to the Pakistani military dictator General Musharraf to build Nuclear weapons? Why do we refuse to send an international inquiry to Israel, which refuses to confirm the existence of it's Nuclear weapons when we know it has them? Every nuclear armed 'tin pot' dictatorship only has nuclear weapons either as a reaction to us having them in the first place or because we sold them to them. It's almost like NATO aren't interested in a deterrent at all, more that it's interested in surrounding and bullying countries we don't like into submission because we have bigger guns than them.
2. Trident costs the UK too much.
The UK is not in the best place financially, since 2009 we’ve seen mass unemployment throughout the country, increase in homelessness, and the ever increase cutting of our social benefits and public services. All evidence from living here would tell you we’re broke. Or are we? Apparently, we’ve got enough leftover to spend billions of pounds a year to buy new fleets of nuclear subs and maintain the Trident programs existence. The next fleet of successor submarines is likely to appear next year. This is at a time when the Tory chancellor, just 3 years ago, laid waste to hundreds of British public sector jobs as an attempt to 'tighten our belts', the Labour government fired 200 food inspectors, and the NHS is being slowly chipped away and sold off to the hands of profiteering healthcare companies. This money currently being spent on a Nuclear program, no one in their right mind would ever think about actually using, would be better spent invested in the British economy.
3. All countries should dismantle their nuclear weapons.
If someone uses a nuclear weapon, that's it. We're done. There's no more debate. If a nuclear missile were to be launched, there would be no more human race. You might believe that nukes help ensure "our interests". But we don't have to scourge the Earth with a poorly equipped military to secure foreign resources, we don't have to follow the United States into war after war and ultimately onto the scrapheap of history. We could start now by sending a message to the rest of the world that we don't need nukes and we will have no part in the insanity of holding weapons which will literally end in the extinction of Human kind.
