Nuclear weapons: mythbusting

Supporters of the UK’s nuclear weapons system often justify the amount of money spent and the dangers created with myths not based in fact. The most repeated is that nuclear weapons help to keep the peace, the so-called ‘deterrence’ argument.

This is the false belief that we will dissuade an ‘enemy’ from attacking if they know that we could retaliate with nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union may have avoided a direct war but that didn’t prevent their involvement in wars in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Possession of nuclear weapons did not prevent US defeat in Vietnam or Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. Since the first nuclear weapon was used in 1945, we have seen more wars than ever before, especially in the past few years.

Nuclear weapons actually make us less safe. Their existence means we have been dangerously close to nuclear war on at least 25 known occasions. Robert McNamara, the United States Secretary of State for Defence during the Cuban Missile Crisis, said ‘we have been very lucky’. This luck will not last forever.

There are many experienced military and political figures who confirm that nuclear weapons are not strategically useful. Senior military figures – including former head of the British Armed Forces Field Marshal Lord Bramall – agree, describing our nuclear weapons as ‘completely useless’.

With Donald Trump as US President, it is also crucial to dispel the myth that our nuclear weapons system is independent. Our nuclear weapon system is neither politically or technically independent. It has been assigned to NATO since the 1960s, meaning Trident could be used against a country attacking – or threatening to attack – one of the alliance’s member states. The system is also dependent on US technical support.