The many requirements of the British military in the twenty-first century does not include the ability to launch a potentially cataclysmic nuclear strike. The replacement will have a £25 billion renewal price-tag, which will almost certainly increase before final delivery of the new system, as such projects nearly always do. This is a huge sum to pay when our troops are dying in Afghanistan because they can't get appropriate body-armour, or have poor communications devices, or lack helicopters or sufficiently heavily armoured troop carrier vehicles. A recent Commission on National Security, headed by Lord Robertson - the former head of NATO, derided the governments’ insistence that the new weapons programme was necessary to defend our island. Commenting on the committee’s findings, Michael Evans insists that "Britain can no longer afford to buy the biggest and best weapons or finance every type of military capability and should instead focus on fewer, more specialist tasks..."^[1] At a time when our economic situation looms large, should we be advocating spending much needed money on a project that has questionable applicability to our military needs in the twenty-first century?

1. ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6613450.ece

The Commission on National Security also found that delaying or scrapping the proposed replacement would send a positive message to the international community “and in particular to the non-nuclear weapon state signatories of the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty]”^[1]. By not spending billions on a weapons system which has the ability to destroy the planet many times over, we would enhance our bargaining position within the non-proliferation regime, and increase the chances of dissuading other states from developing nuclear weapons. Even smaller reductions might have some impact on other countries and would certainly help to show that we are sticking to our commitments in the NPT which states that the nuclear states will move towards nuclear disarmament.

1. ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6613450.ece

No one is going to be looking at what the UK is doing. 'Rogue states' such as North Korea and Iran are certainly not likely to pay any attention to what we are doing. They may feel safer if the USA and Russia got rid of their stockpiles of Nuclear weapons but these states do not feel threatened by British nuclear weapons so our reducing them will not make any impact on their calculations.

Serious accidents are highly likely at some point due to the complexity of nuclear weapons, adding redundancy just makes the weapons more complex. Unexpected events will occur and often can’t be fully anticipated. Thus on Oct. 25th 1962 an air force sentry at Duluth sounded the sabotage alarm. However at Volk Field the bell that indicated a nuclear war had started sounded instead, as this was in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis the pilots had been told there would be no drills. Fortunately the base commander found out what had happened in time to drive his car onto the runway and stop the takeoff. Several other mistakes lead to the possibility of the US striking at the Russians or Cubans during the crisis.^[1] Obviously while we have such weapons we may be the ones who have the accident that either results in us attacking someone else accidentally or a nuclear weapon blowing up in our face.

1. ^ Scott D. Sagan, 'The Limits of Safety: Organisations, Accidents and Nuclear Weapons', (Princeton, 1993), p.3.

The 1999 Kargil conflict demonstrates that nuclear armed states may well engage in wars. Pakistan was not deterred from engaging in a conflict despite the Indian nuclear weapons. Pakistan even while the operations were going on, maintained that in view of asymmetry of conventional forces, they cannot accept a "no first use" policy. Indeed the Indians won the conflict, but were restrained from going further than forcing the Pakistan forces across their border, India not pressing its victory prevented any feeling by Pakistan that they were being backed into a corner, so helping prevent a nuclear conflict. Pakistan believed that a stable nuclear balance between the two states meant they could take more offensive action in Kashmir as India could not retaliate with her conventional superiority.^[1]

1. ^ Dr. S. Chandrasekharan, (July, 1999) http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers/paper71.html

The bipolar world of the cold war was stable and relatively peaceful. There was no general war among the great powers of the world, unlike the previous half century. The cold war peace has lasted longer even than that created by the concert of Europe between 1815 and 1856. Bipolarity allowed both sides to keep tight control over their respective blocs as they were by far and away the most powerful members. Balancing had to be internal rather than through the movements of a ‘swing’ state, this was done in part by nuclear weapons stockpiles, once they reached a certain level it did not matter if one side had more, the other could still deter attack. Deterrence operates by frightening a state out of attacking. It is achieved by the ability to punish. This is why a second strike capability is necessary.^[1] Nuclear weapons make defence and deterrence much more effective than offence. This is because nuclear weapons are a weapon of last resort; they are most likely to be fired in defence. If a country concentrates on its second strike capability rather than offensive nuclear weapons it is possible for it to become an entirely defensive weapon, this would mean it could not act as a coercive threat and would not result in a security dilemma.^[2]

1. ^ John J. Mearshimer, 'The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent', Foreign Affairs, (Summer, 1993), pp.57-58, http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0020.pdf
2. ^ Robert Jervis, ‘Weapons Without Purpose? Nuclear Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era’, Foreign Affairs, (July, 2001) http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/57069/robert-jervis/weapons-without-purpose-nuclear-strategy-in-the-post-cold-war-era

Status in the world should not be based upon having one extremely powerful weapon. This is one of the reasons why attempting to secure nuclear weapons is so popular, regimes think it will increase their status. Britain giving up its deterrent or combining it into a European deterrent would show that nuclear weapons are not needed to maintain a powerful role in the world. Britain would still be a major financial centre, a major economy, a member of the UNSC and one of the biggest contributors of peacekeepers in the world. Trident has little impact on our foreign policy, pariah regimes don’t fear us because we have the bomb as it is obvious we would not use it against them because these nations are far enough away that it could never impact on such a sensitive national interest that could be used to justify it.

Currently the UK is recognised as one of the powers under the non proliferation treaty along with the USA, China, France and Russia. All of these powers are either modernising or maintaining their current nuclear arsenals. This means to not replace Trident would mean that we'd suffer a severe loss of status in relation to the other permanent members of the UN Security Council, possibly raising questions of whether the UK even deserves its place as a member there as it would losing a final set of venomous fangs so to speak, something that "more representative" countries such as India (the world's largest democracy) now possess .^[1]

Churchill said that the H bomb that it was "our badge to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot" and today Trident remains one of our master keys to the Super League of World Politics.^[2]

1. ^ James Wirtz in "Contemporary Security Studies" Oxford University Press, First Edition 2007, Chapter 15, p273
2. ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2859394.ece

We already rely on the USA for our Trident missile systems so our fiction of having an independent nuclear deterrent is already a fiction. The USA can at the moment easily pull the rug out from underneath us.

The UK nuclear weapons programme was first created in late 1945 a time when people were concerned about the US commitment to Europe which was uncertain as the rise of the Iron Curtain had not been yet apparent^[1]. Currently if we didn't replace trident and disarmed more likely than not we would fall under the American strategic nuclear umbrella which would be fair enough in the short term and medium term as the relationship is currently strong despite certain cobblestones. A similar thing also applies with the French

But can we really rely on the Americans to keep that umbrella extended over the long term when their interests and emphasis may shift, regardless of cultural or ideological links. Having a nuclear deterrent helps us keep a degree of independence in an anarchic system even from our friends as well as our enemies and means we don't become too reliant on one or two allies who may not always be there for us when we need them.^[2]

1. ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2859394.ece
2. ^ http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/AC00DD79-76D6-4FE3-91A1-6A56B03C092F/0/DefenceWhitePaper2006_Cm6994.pdf