Conservatives join the debate
Michael Portillo, who probably made one of the three most embarassing political speeches of the 1990s on the subject of Britain's defence, where he declared that we would deal with our European allies by threatening them with the SAS, has come out in favour of scrapping Trident.This is important. Many on the Labour benches believe this system should go, and if Tories are now moving that way this is good news too. The argument against is simple: it's expensive, and it doesn't achieve enough to justify the cost. It's hard to justify morally.
I'll leave the moral arguments to one side (basically its use could only be to mass-murder civilians). That it's expensive is in no doubt. So what does it achieve? I would argue that there are two distinct scenarios under which it might be used, a) when the Americans are also threatening to use their weapons, and b) when the Americans are not doing the same. In (a) it's pointless. In (b) it's pointless, as the Americans wouldn't let us use ours (I was persuaded last time I made this point that we could probably technically use it in the face of American opposition (and on losing their monopoly of using nuclear force there would be no indifference from the Americans I believe), but I don't believe we could politically or militarily use it.
There was perhaps one caveat to this - which was if the nation was at risk of invasion. But no-one can come up with a plausible example of this nowadays, except perhaps the loonier stretches of the Right who still believe in the possibility of a French invasion.
So scrapping it will save money and allow us to build more conventional weapons. I would personally not bother, but certainly our armed forces are over-stretched and it's commonly argued that they couldn't fight another war like the Falkands (though such arguments, usually made by Naval people trying to get a budget increase, should be taken with caution).
Update: Oliver Kamm takes the opposite view [thanks James].
posted by Matthew @ 6/22/2005 08:48:00 AM
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