Nuclear Detterent

Is £100Million per year worth our national security?

After watching the first televised political debate, and listening to the brief period where Cameron and Brown were forced to answer Nick Clegg’s persistent questioning about our country’s nuclear programme, it got me thinking on the subject. Brown and Cameron both believe that getting rid of our nuclear weapons is a bad idea, because it makes us defenceless against emerging and current nuclear powers in the world. Nick Clegg says that if we get rid of them, we will save £100Million per year. So, the Liberal democrats have suggested that we dismantle our trident missile programme as a money saving measure and as part of the solution to our national deficit. The financial problems our country faces appear in the media every day, and are a constant worry to the general public, so it may be relatively easy, to dismiss the trident missile system as something we can do without. However, just because we hear about this every day does not mean it is not providing vital security. The secret service exist and operate around us every day, ensuring our national security. We do not see them, but we would quickly notice the consequences if they were not there! The ‘Trident’ missile system provides us with our nuclear deterrent and there for provides a vital part of our national security.

The people that support the dismantling of a trident will tell you that warfare has changed. That the ‘Cold War’ has ended and that we no longer require a nuclear deterrent. They would say that we are fighting a war on terror, a war against small extremist cells of intelligent but technologically limited people. That may well be the case today, but we all know how rapidly the world we live in can change; while there are unstable and extremist country’s (like Iran and North Korea), who have the technological ability to develop WMD’s, we need a nuclear deterrent; we need the ability to dissuade these countries from attacking us!!!

Just think for a moment here. We haven’t had any major attacks on our country since the Second World War. Sure we have had threats and there have been times when the world leaders had been sitting at their desks with their hand hovering over a big red button, but our Nation hasn’t been threatened directly and our wars abroad have not been challenged directly by other world superpowers. Up until this point we have had the ability to do great damage anywhere in the world; to completely obliterate any country with nuclear weapons. Imagine, that the ability to do this was taken away overnight. Other countries would be free to push us around and do what they want, without the fear of retaliation. Our Nation as a whole would seem weak. Don’t get me wrong, nuclear missile’s are terrible things and should never be used, but just ask yourself; have we reached the point where we can dismantle our Nuclear weapons and feel safe. My answer is no but others will have different opinions.