Astounding Naivety

On Tuesday Gordon Brown announced that he was considering cutting Britain's nuclear arsenal to encourage international co-operation and a 'new era of non-proliferation and multilateral nuclear disarmament'.

Britain has already seen its nuclear arsenal halved since Labour came to power in 1997. However Brown wants to meet other acknowledged nuclear powers and talk about the day when there are no more nuclear weapons.

Clearly, the man is delusional. Russia has just announced a massive campaign of re-armament, including beefing up its own nuclear arsenal.

Barack 'let's give peace a chance' Obama is interested, of course, but then for most sensible people that's hardly an endorsement.

The main argument in favour of cutting nuclear weapons is that it frees funding for conventional troops and the potentially life-saving equipment which they so desperately need as they fight in Afghanistan.

In my opinion this is a straw man, however - the government would most likely take the money and put it elsewhere.

There are several arguments against, mainly that we would leave ourselves vulnerable to blackmail and severe danger; the world is changing, and the days when only conventional Great or Superpowers have nuclear weapons is probably already distant.

Nuclear weapons come in for a lot of criticism, but I personally feel there's a lot to be said for the 'mutually assured destruction' model. Although there have been major conflicts during the late 20th Century, I feel the idea of a power balance which nuclear weapons bring has averted much greater catastrophes.

They are also serving their purpose in a modern context; for example the stand-off between India and Pakistan. Whilst this situation is obviously far from ideal or perfect, and nuclear weapons falling into the hands of a fanatical Islamic government is the stuff of nightmares, it will take a lot to convince me that India and Pakistan would not be fighting a full-scale conventional war or have fought several already without each living in the shadow of the other side's nukes.

As it is, they have largely stuck to the border skirmishes and terrorist attacks we see to this day.

Anyway, regarding the subject of Britain's nuclear arsenal, a lady called Helene Davidson wrote a letter to a free paper handed out at Railway Stations called 'The London Lite'.

I thought it was worth reproducing here, and as I have no link, you will simply have to take my word for it that I'm not imaginative enough to have made this up:

"We can't afford to properly kit out our soldiers in the field. It is outrageous to spend money on weapons whose sole raison d'etre is to end human society as we know it. The boys' toys mentality of governments means they regard war and possession of weapons of mass destruction as evidence of their manhood. Don't they have the brains to realise that the suffering and death of conflict does not determine who's right, but only who's left?"

Well, I think we know who's 'left' here, don't we? War is as old as human society itself, and a necessary evil.

The threat to the modern world clearly does not come from Britain as much as it comes from the rising powers of the Third World. Who knows how the rules of the game will change in future?

Nuclear weapons are designed to ensure everyone has too much to lose, not destroy human society. But the professional leftists won't be happy until we have no means of self defence at all, it would seem.