The situation involving a group of people, holding a gun to each other’s head, is not a sane situation. Nor is it going to prevent one of them from eventually pulling the trigger, which in turn, will set a domino affect rolling, in which all the people involved pull their triggers, and kill each other. The only way to stop that situation developing, is the outright ban on each of those people ever being allowed to own a gun.
Our current crop of Nuclear weaponry, consists of four Trident submarines with the capacity to hold up to 48 Nuclear Warheads, each eight times the power of the warhead that struck Hiroshima in the 1940s, killing 140,000 people. I’m not sure why we are tying in our foreign policy, with a weapon that can kill millions upon millions of people, whilst other nations (Norway for example) who do not wish to own Nuclear weaponry, seem to be coping just fine.
Gordon Brown has announced that he plans to cut the number of Trident Nuclear Submarines, from four to three when the time comes to update them. I’d assume this is some lame attempt to stick to the principles that we’ve seemingly deserted since signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty back in 1968, stating that we intended “to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament“. And whilst this is a step in the right direction for total Nuclear disarmament, it isn’t a big enough step. It is barely a step at all. The Submarines may be on the verge of being cut from four to three, but there is no talk of scaling back the 160 warheads Britain currently keeps locked away. We are still armed, which of course, leads to proliferation elsewhere. A seemingly endless Cold war mentality driven by fear and suspicion, is long out of date. Tident itself, does not need replacing.
We no longer have to worry about the Soviets. The fight we face today, is against an enemy that has no State. There is no Nation. If the largely falsely perceived threat of a unified “Al Qaeda” were to strike us with a Nuclear weapon…. who do we strike in return, especially against an enemy that is prepared to die for their cause? A farm in some obscure corner of Afghanistan? Perhaps we use the Republican American concept of just pointing to a Middle Eastern Country on a map and start to destroy it piece by piece? Or more likely, we aim the Nuclear missile toward their home in Birmingham……… not a bad idea actually.
What of Iran? That Country that poses less threat of a Nuclear attack, than Iraq did in 2002? In the 1970s, when the Shah was running the Country, and was far more evil and dangerous than the current regime in Tehran, the USA supported Iran’s nuclear program publicly. Purely because the West recognised the need, economically, for Iran to rely on Nuclear power. It freed up it’s oil supplies. Suddenly, the war men of the Republican Right have decided Iran poses a threat. In fact, Dafna Linza, writing for the Washington Post in 2005 states: “Ford’s team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium – the two pathways to a nuclear bomb.“
Quite coincidentally, the same people who were running National Security back in the President Ford era, supporting the evil Shah, were the same guys behind the immense suspicion and fear aimed toward the current Iranian administration; Wolfowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld. They were perfectly fine with Iran acquiring Nuclear technology, when it enriched their oil prospects…… but then, suddenly, in December 2007 Iran completely ceased trading oil inU.S dollars and in early 2008, Iran started trading oil primarily in Euros, and so threatened the US economy, which relies on selling mass reserves of the Dollar to other Nations who then buy Oil traditionally with. Not any more. The threat posed by Iran is miniscule when it comes to Nuclear technology. The treat, which goes unreported, comes completely from it’s new Oil-in-Euros venture.
By 2004 the World Bank had made loans worth up to £2.1bn to Iran. The World Bank, funded by the IMF, which in turn gets it’s funds from member States debts and donations; including $37.2bn a year from the USA. And so, some of the money that funds the perceived Iranian Nuclear program, is coming directly from American taxpayers, who are then told by their Politicians who don’t seem to have a problem, let alone mention this to their people, that Iran is a huge threat. YOU FUNDED THE THREAT! Those politicians of course will start wars, but be well hidden away whilst the bombs are dropped.
Now, for the sake of the boring, fatuous Right Winged argument that Iran actually does pose a threat to Global Security (let’s not forget that the biggest threat to Global Security over the past decade….in fact, since World War II… has been the USA…and that the nuclear “deterrent” hasn’t deterred Iraqi’s from killing our troops….and also coincidentally, the only nation to use a Nuclear weapon has been the USA), what do we do if we were to be attacked by an Iranian Nuclear strike? If New York, or London were hit by an Iranian Nuke, what then? If hundreds of thousands of American or British civilians are killed by an Iranian attack, how do we respond? Do we Nuke them? Another waste of hundreds of thousands of lives, living thousands more horribly burned and disfigured? Whilst our leaders who started the whole thing, are locked safely away in an underground bunker? It’s like saying “well, he ran down and killed my family member, so it’s only right that I run down and kill his family member”. If London were nuked (why am I even saying that? I sound like a Cold War fear mongering idiot), Trident submarines would come in no use whatsoever) It’s ridiculous. As seen with Hiroshima, the affects of a Nuclear strike, are horrific. It should never be repeated, or even threatened. And given the US and UK’s policy of using Iran for it’s own benefit over the past sixty years; overthrowing regimes, installing evil dictators like the Shah, referring to it as “evil” when it suits the West – it is largely unsurprising that Iran may attempt to acquire Nuclear weapons, they are obviously suspicious. If the US has the right to possess Nuclear weapons, so does Iran. Despite this, it’s overtly obvious that Iran, like Iraq, has no WMDs, because if it did, Israel would be straight in there, without a second thought. We now need to work toward better relations between States, between the West and the Islamic World, and install into the minds of the next Generation the need for a World completely free from Nuclear proliferation.
And lastly, when we apparently can’t afford decent equipment to protect and aid our troops in Afghanistan, why are we planning to spend close to £100bn, on updating an out-of-date Nuclear deterrent? Trident is an expensive waste of money, built around the Cold War mentality of fear, distrust, out right lies, and profiteering. We do not need it in a modern, civilised World. They are a disgrace to humanity. Japan has managed without them, Norway has managed without them, we can manage without them.
