Having nuclear weapons has not made us a safer nation
Glorious Gloucestershire Mike Broome took this picture of Sandford Park fountain, Cheltenham
✒ THE 50th anniversary of the UK’S submarine nuclear weapons force was honoured by a special service in Westminster Abbey recently.
The force has been hailed as a major contributor to the maintenance of peace.
However, I believe that a growing number of people in this country do not share this assessment in any way.
The Times obituary column of September 23, 2017 contained a statement which should give all of us pause for thought: “A little after midnight on September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a 44 year-old military scientist made a decision based on instinct. It prevented the outbreak of nuclear war.
“Risking his career and the equivalent of a court martial, he refused to initiate the procedure leading to nuclear “retaliation” by the Soviet forces, because he judged the alert from Soviet early-warning satellites indicating an American nuclear strike to be a false alarm.”
The obituary concluded with a quote from Petrov: “I am not a hero...i was just in the right place at the right time.”
We should not delude ourselves that nuclear weapons have brought us greater security.
The word “deterrence” is so reassuring.
The expression “weapon of mass destruction” evokes a different response, and so it should, especially because of the risk of nuclear conflagration “by accident” or “miscalculation”.
Whatever the circumstances, at the heart of nuclear deterrence theory is the need to make it credible that all members of the “nuclear club” are not only prepared to threaten to use these weapons but are actually prepared to do so. Our country plays by these rules.
Should we not look to our religious leaders, in Westminster Abbey as in every church in the land to condemn any attempt to justify such thinking?
Our Prime Minister is a Christian and yet she has stated plainly that she would give the order to launch Trident missiles against civilian populations in retaliation to a nuclear attack.
I would put the following question to her: What do you suppose Christ would advise: to “honour” the promise to make deterrence “credible” by taking part in mass nuclear suicide or to refuse to participate in this genocide?
And what moral distinction or consolation would any survivors make between the discovery that this had occurred in response to a false alarm (similar to the Petrove case) or to a real attack?
Petrov rightly concluded in 1983 that it was highly unlikely that the US was bent on mass murder and destruction which would reduce the Soviet Union and beyond to a radioactive desert.
Whatever we think of Putin and his regime, our defence policy should not be based on the assumption or fear that he would ever contemplate such an attack on this country.
For what possible purpose? The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) remains as crazy and unstable as it ever was, however honourable and well-intentioned are the crews of Trident submarines.
The tens of billions spent on Trident would be better spent on strengthening our conventional forces in addition to halting and reversing the continuing cuts to social, policing, education and other budgets.