Security review did little to calm fears

I found the government’s misnamed ‘security,’ defence and foreign policy review terrifying and shameful.

How can a 40 per cent increase in the UK’S stockpile of nuclear warheads make us safer and improve our standing in the world?

If 180 of them - along with all the rest at NATO’S disposal - weren’t enough, why would 260 do the trick? And do we really have no respect for our international treaty obligations, in

this case as a

signatory of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which we demand that others should obey?

How will that go down with the 122 countries that voted in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons?

And how will it make anyone safer to intensify the ‘new’ Cold War with Russia, which in fact it began almost as soon as the old one was over, when formerly Soviet-controlled countries rushed to join NATO and Russia was not only cold-shouldered but had new NATO nuclear bases built on its borders.

All that achieved was to turn it

back in on itself, encouraging the rise of ‘strong’ (as in belligerent) leadership to restore national dignity and showing that antagonism creates further antagonism.

The review seems to accept that we can’t ‘beat’ China and need its trade, but plans to increase the UK’S overseas military presence in response to the technological and doctrinal threats it poses. How will that help?

And how can we be respected as ‘a soft-power superpower’ in the light of all that, when we are upping military spending by 10 per cent at the same time as taking the equivalent amount of money away from international aid, which will have such a catastrophic impact in terms of human suffering in Yemen and Syria?

Meanwhile, pandemics and environmental catastrophe, which represent an imminent existential threat to humanity, are almost an afterthought. Truly I could weep.