The UK government has unveiled a plan to replace Trident with a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Which recalls this exchange from 30 years ago.
You are here: Home / In Nuclear Deterrence, There is Nothing New Under the Sun
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
QB says
The title is misleading. There is no plan to replace the Trident II D-5 missiles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(missile)#Trident_II_.28D5.29_UGM-133A. The proposed plan is to replace some of the Vanguard-class submarines carrying them.
guesto says
Yes, but they SURELY have a rock solid, profoundly convincing argument for proceeding, which they must keep secret for our sake.
Toby says
That is exactly how I persuaded myself to support Bush on Iraq: surely there is better evidence they cannot publish for security reasons.
More fool me.
Don says
Nuclear deterrence has always had what looks like an intractable problem to me. On one hand, we have to assume our adversary is reasonable, logical, and acts on the basis of a careful cost-benefit analysis. On the other hand, we have to assume our adversary views us as mad bastards perfectly willing, if attacked, to blow up the whole world for spite. If either assumption is false there’s no deterrence at all.
Warren Terra says
An interesting and relevant note, especially to Don’s question: apparently one job of the new Prime Minister is to write, by hand, a letter to the captain of each missile submarine, to be placed in their safe, explaining what the PM thinks the captain should do if there’s a nuclear war and the captain can’t contact higher authority. When the PM steps down, the letters are collected and destroyed, still unopened. A knowledgeable source apparently revealed that one PM’s letter basically said that it would be immoral ever to actually launch the weapons – a letter created as a tool for the PM to posthumously ask the submarine to avenge London said it wasn’t worth it. Or at least that’s the possibly self-serving claim, decades later.
Toby says
Some of Roneald Reagan’s inner circle suspected that the President could not bring himself to order a retaliatory strike in the even of a nuclear war. Johh Matlock, his adviser on Soviet affairs, (1983 to 1987) told an interviewer “I think he doubted that, even if the United States was struck, that he could bring himself to strike another country”.
Reagan’s horror of nuclear war (given visual force in the fim The Day After) increased his readiness to do a deal on nuclear weapons, to the irritation of some Cold Warriors in his entourage.
I am relying on Richard Rhodes’ Arsenals of Folly here.
Toby says
I wonder how much this relates to the British fear of not being “at the top table”, and a British Foreign Minister “going naked into the conference room”.
Those subs were sure useful against Argentina.
James Wimberley says
As a Brit, I agree with Toby’s doubts. The argument for a British (or French) nuclear deterrent is much, much weaker than the argument for American (first-mover) nuclear deterrence. Who’s the enemy? They are only an insurance policy against future American isolationism, and far too expensive at the price. I think the British and French should offer to trade their spare wheel “deterrents” against a tougher non-proliferation treaty, including Iranian and Israeli nuclear disarmament.