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Trident Alternatives Review – An Irrelevant Waste of Resources

The government’s so-called Trident Alternatives Review (TAR), an edited version of which was made public today, failed to address the key question that the Lib Dems and many others have raised since the end of the Cold War: what alternatives to nuclear weapons could fulfil the UK security and deterrence missions that are assigned to (and claimed for) Trident.

Once the Lib Dems gave in to Tory insistence that the TAR must be confined to what other kinds of nuclear weapons might replace Trident, it was a foregone conclusion that it would back Trident like for like (with 4 submarines) or Trident lite (with 2 or 3 submarines).

“By failing to analyse non-nuclear options for deterrence and security, this sham review just exposes the illogic of Trident replacement. Trident is an outdated, pointless and costly irrelevance already, and the same goes for all the nuclear options, regardless of whether they are deployed by land, air or sea,” said Dr Rebecca Johnson, author of an influential study of Britain’s nuclear policies, titled ‘Worse than Irrelevant’ [1] and a UN book on nuclear diplomacy [2] and the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT).

Dr Johnson is also one of the organisers of the grassroots disarmament initiative Action AWE [3], which supports international calls for a global nuclear ban treaty and advocates that AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield should halt nuclear bomb production and be converted into disarmament and verification laboratories.

“Britain does not need any nuclear weapons,” Dr Johnson argued, “To stop this government spending over £100 billion on useless new bombs, civil society needs to get more involved and active, and refuse to support any MPs or candidates who support Trident replacement! By ignoring the fundamental option of nuclear disarmament, this review flies in the face of international and domestic developments. A global treaty banning nuclear weapons on humanitarian grounds has already been put on the agenda by over 120 countries, including NATO allies, and is likely to be negotiated within the next decade. Trident’s days are numbered with or without Scottish independence.”

Action AWE is a UK-based grassroots peace campaign to eradicate nuclear weapons by taking nonviolent direct action to halt nuclear warhead production at AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield, and undertakes education and outreach to raise awareness of the humanitarian, health and security consequences of nuclear weapons.

Upcoming Action AWE activities include:

• a Fast for Hiroshima & Nagasaki, 6-9 August, Burghfield & Paris (

  http://actionawe.org/paris-burghfield-4-day-fast-6th-9th-august-2013/)

• the AWE Burghfield Disarmament Camp from 26th August to 7th September 2013, including a big blockade of AWE Burghfield on 2nd September 2013 (http://tridentploughshares.org/awe-burghfield-summer-disarmament-camp-2013/ and

  http://actionawe.org/burghfield-blockade-leaflet-2nd-september-2013/)

Notes to editors:

[1] Rebecca Johnson, Nicola Buttler, Stephen Pullinger: Worse than Irrelevant? British Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, http://www.acronym.org.uk/sites/default/files/Worse_than_Irrelevant.pdf

[2] Rebecca Johnson: Unfinished Business: The Negotiation of the CTBT and the End of Nuclear Testing”, http://www.unidir.ch/pdf/ouvrages/pdf-1-978-92-9045-194-5-en.pdf

[3] Action AWE was launched in February 2013 and is supported by dozens of organisations nationally and internationally. For a list of supporters see http://actionawe.org/supporters/

Contact details:

Andreas Speck, 07973-683936 or [email protected]

Rebecca Johnson (currently at the IAEA/CTBTO in Vienna) +44 77 33360955 or [email protected]