NEW TRIDENT? HAVE YOUR SAY
“If the UK envisages another 50 years of British security being based on threatening other populations with mass destruction then we encourage other states to do the same and thus paradoxically we increase our security risk rather than decrease it.” (Kofi Anan, former UN Secretary-General)
Trident is the UK’s nuclear weapons system. The UK stockpiles around 200 operational nuclear warheads. These launch from US Trident missiles on four submarines. Each warhead has around eight times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb which killed over 200,000 people.
Trident will be out of date in 2024 and developing a replacement will take 14 years. PM Tony Blair insists that the decision must be made by this March, while he is still in office - and without much time for a considered public and parliamentary debate on the issue.
Many politicians support the idea of a ‘deterrent’ weapons system in the belief this may discourage other countries from attacking the UK.
However many people think differently and oppose Trident. In 2006, the Defense Committee Inquiry identified international terrorism as “the most pressing threat currently facing the UK” and it concluded that: “...the strategic nuclear deterrent could serve no useful or practical purpose in countering this kind of threat.”
However the arguments are not just around whether nuclear weapons are an effective protection for the UK - replacing Trident is also a severe breach of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that the UK signed in 1968, alongside 188 other countries.
The NPT is an international agreement to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and commmits countries to reduce the number of existing ones.
Mr Blair claims that, in accordance with the NPT, the UK’s nuclear stockpile has been considerably reduced in the last decades and is thus at least working in the direction of disarmament.
Yet the question remains how developing new nuclear weapons can count as disarmament and what message this would give to the other NPT countries currently deciding whether to develop their own weapons.
All this without mentioning the huge economic price: costs for the replacement are estimated to be between 20 and 76 billion pounds. Peace groups argue that these funds would be spent better on
community well-being, social development and infrastructure.
Learn More:
* Read the government white paper:
www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/AC00DD79-
76D6-4FE3-91A1-6A56B03C092F/0/DefenceWhitePaper2006_
Cm6994.pdf
* Read the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) white paper:
www.cnduk.org/pages/altwhitepaper.pdf
* Read the BBC’s Q&A guide:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4805768.stm
Have your say:
* Come to the demonstration walk in London on Feb 24th, 2007
No to Trident and Troops Out of Iraq:
(BPEC can supply coach tickets to and from London)
* Sign The Petition Against Trident Replacement (UK citizens/residents
only):
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/trident/
* Lobby your local MPs (Members of Parliament). For how see:
www.cnduk.org/pages/campaign/lobby.html