Why we must not replace Trident

Replacing Trident will commit us to having nuclear weapons for 50 more years despite these important facts:

The enormous cost

• It will cost us at least £100 billion to procure and then maintain a new nuclear
weapons system.
• The current system already costs us at least £2 billion every year just to keep
running.

The majority of people are against nuclear weapons

• Poll after poll show that the majority of British people are against nuclear
weapons. For example 63% of the British public want spending cuts to include
scrapping Trident – BPIX/Mail on Sunday poll, 2010.
• International opinion – of most governments and people worldwide – is
strongly in favour of a global ban on nuclear weapons. A nuclear weapons
convention would ban them in the same way that other weapons of mass
destruction (chemical and biological weapons) are already banned.

They make us less secure and safe

• Senior British military figures have declared that nuclear weapons are
completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we
currently face or are likely to face, particularly international terrorism.
• There is no threat to our security from any other nuclear weapon state
according to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Instead it identifies the main
threats to our security as coming from terrorism, cyber-attacks and major
accidents3 (all of which nuclear weapons can never be useful against).
• Yet by having nuclear weapons the UK continues to encourage others to
develop them too. If we say we need nuclear weapons for our security then
any other country in the world can say the same, particularly those that are
more vulnerable or threatened.

The UK agreed to begin disarming in 1970

• The UK signed a legally binding international treaty many decades ago (the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which entered into force over 40 years ago)
agreeing us to negotiate in good faith the goal of general and complete
nuclear weapons disarmament.

It is illegal to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons

• The International Court of Justice in 1996 judged it generally illegal to use or
threaten to use nuclear weapons.

Read full briefing -12 page .pdf -from CND, :