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SECURITY worries, political shifts in Scotland, spending cuts and the looming deadline for renewal mean the UK’s nuclear weapons are under welcome new scrutiny.
Those who want to update the Trident system – four submarines based in Scotland carrying nuclear missiles – often focus on the jobs it sustains, keeping the UK “safe” and its support for science and engineering. Opponents talk about the vast casualties and nuclear winter if such weapons were used and the £100 billion cost.
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What’s clear is that the UK cannot afford the most expensive conventional military capabilities, such as aircraft carriers and an army that can support several big invasions, and pay for new nuclear warheads and submarines.
The Trident fleet will be retired in the late 2020s, but the time needed to build replacements means renewal decisions are just months away. So now is the time to show leadership and commit to decommissioning nuclear weapons. We can’t uninvent them but we can follow the lead of other nuclear capable nations that have chosen not to have them.
In any event, most crises we see around the world require political, diplomatic and aid solutions, not military ones. Strategic threats to the UK today are energy sources, resource depletion, climate change and cyber-security.
“Most of the crises we see require political, diplomatic and aid solutions, not military ones”
If the UK decided not to renew Trident, it could prevent job losses by redirecting the investment to restructure industries that maintain the fleet. A shift to marine engineering for off-shore wind and tidal power, or for building and maintaining naval defence vessels, would help this.
Nuclear engineers would still be needed to ensure warhead storage safety and to tackle our nuclear waste problem – including old reactors in naval dockyards. Freed up resources could be reinvested in university research, which faces constraints. Civil engineering and building could also be boosted.
All this would help rebalance the UK economy away from the finance and property sectors and create a new version of what former prime minster Harold Wilson termed the white heat of a technological revolution. The UK needs another revolution to exploit the social and human potential that is currently misdirected on nuclear weapons.
This article appeared in print under the headline “The nuclear option”