UK’s Trident nuclear submarines – completely useless as deterrent

Trident is a colossal waste of money that will encourage further nuclear proliferation The Independent , By James Bloodworth, 9 March 2012 “……. Trident was excluded from the government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review in October 2010; and despite murmurings from some Liberal Democrats (aren’t there always murmurings from Liberal Democrats?), the coalition seems intent on spending £20 billion-plus renewing a weapons system which, if ever deployed, would result in the deaths of thousands, if not millions of human beings.
Twenty billion is just a figure of course. To put it into some kind of perspective, George Osborne’s first budget planned for cuts of six billion pounds; and public sector workers currently face a three per cent rise in their pension contributions to save the state just under two billion. A modern hospital costs in the region of £90 million (which, as it happens, would save thousands of lives a year, rather than stand-by ready to exterminate them), and a state-of-the-art environmentally friendly school costs between five and £10 million. To give free school dinners to every primary school child in the country would cost a further one billion pounds.

All of the above, as you might have noticed, are a pittance compared to the gigantic sum set aside for the renewal of Trident. In order to justify a spend three times that of George Osborne’s first year of budget cuts, you would at least expect Trident to have a substantial argument behind it. It doesn’t.

Trident categorically fails on its own terms, for there is very little to suggest it would “deter” anybody much from anything. As far as traditional warfare goes, Britain was a nuclear power when Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal and General Galtieri invaded the Falklands, and the possession of a nuclear arsenal did little to dissuade either party from their course of action – for the obvious reason that we could never morally justify using such a weapon; nor do so without first attaining the authorisation of the United States.

As for the contemporary security threat, back in 2009 a letter sent to The Times signed by a group of senior military officers – figures not known for their pacifist tendencies – said the following: “Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face or are likely to face, particularly international terrorism.”

In reality, having nuclear weapons is likely to encourage other states to pursue their own nuclear capabilities….. http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/03/09/trident-is-a-colossal-waste-of-money-that-will-encourage-further-nuclear-proliferation/