Nuclear holocaust: once more for slow learners

I wake today to this headline:

Labour to join Tories in backing a £25bn deal to renew Trident fleet

and the story starts with this:

Labour will fight the next general election on a pledge to retain Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, senior party sources have said. 

So actually, it starts with a direct untruth: Britain doesn't have an 'independent' 'deterrent'. The nukes are largely built, maintained and in some cases rented from the United States. Americans build them. Americans maintain them. Americans provide the satellite targeting information required to fire them. Can we imagine launching one without American permission and technical help? I don't think so.

So not independent. What about 'deterrent'? Well, it's true that the UK hasn't got into any wars at all since it acquired nukes in the 1950s. Unless you count Northern Ireland. And Malaya. Kenya. Suez. Korea of course. A little covert involvement in Vietnam via the Commonwealth. Libya. The Falklands. Iraq (the first time). Iraq (the second time), Afghanistan, Mali, and of course Mr Cameron has now threatened us with 'generational conflict', which sounds like something from Orwell. Bombs have exploded on buses and on tubes.

So yes, it's true that Luxembourg, Andorra and the Vatican have refrained from raining death from above upon the UK, and that may be attributable to the 'nuclear deterrent' if you want to believe that. But the boffins in Tory and Labour think-tanks appear not to have noticed that the UK's enemies are not cackling dictators intent on wiping out their enemies. North Korea has a magnificent line in rhetorical invective, but its citizens eat grass and it survives on China's sufferance. China doesn't need to nuke anybody: it owns the US economy through its investment in American debt. Iran wants nukes because it feels threatened by Israel's nukes. India and Pakistan have nukes because they hate each other and fear China.

The UK faces no enemies who might be usefully dealt with through the judicious application of nuclear weapons. Its enemies tend to be suicide bombers from British streets. Nuclear annihiliation won't deter someone who welcomes death, and even the Tories' hatred of the North won't stretch to dropping 10 megatons on Bradford. The same applies to enemies from abroad. Are we going to nuke Somalia? Or the bits of Mali and Nigeria which harbour opponents? Can we guarantee that only the bad guys are atomised?

Would the UK drop nuclear weapons on non-nuclear enemies? The Americans did it to Japan and the world has been a sadder, more suspicious place ever since. Britain would be a pariah state for ever if it did so. What's the threshold for such an action? It's the act of a psychopath. Governments spend a lot of time condemning acts and groups as 'terrorism'. What is more purely, completely, terrorist than basing your political authority on the ability to kill absolutely everybody both now and in future generations in pursuit of a temporary disagreement?

The UK military knows this. It increasingly doesn't want £25bn spent on useless weaponry in a period of budget cuts, £25bn which would build a lot of ships and buy a lot of boots. There is no possible war using nuclear weapons that doesn't end in the wholesale destruction of entire countries and peoples. If it's true that the UK is in more danger now than ever (mostly, I submit, because it keeps invading places), it needs conventional weaponry: not Doomsday devices.

So that's the military case dismissed. On to the legal case. It is, and has been since international law was codified, illegal to target civilians. Yes, most countries have done so: Dresden, Coventry, most of Vietnam – but the rather thin defence is that they were 'collateral damage': not the intended target but unfortunate bystanders. It's Israel's standard defence for bombing Palestinian schools and hospitals.

You can't do this with nuclear weapons. A nuke atomises every man, woman, child, sparrow, gnat and flower over a huge area. It poisons the earth and air and water for generations. Any use of nuclear weapons is therefore illegal. The political defence of course is that possession of nukes makes the use of nukes less likely, through the deterrent effect – which is both madness and as I've explained above, ridiculous.

The only genuine defence for the possession of nuclear weapons is Labour Cold War hawk Aneurin Bevan's impassioned plea to the Party not to send him 'naked into the conference chamber'. It's instructive that he framed the possession of nuclear weapons in such terms: there is a distinctly sexual, phallic aspect to nuclear power. Bevin firmly believed that Britain had no credibility in world affairs unless it too possessed the power to kill millions of people and poison vast swathes of the planet. He may, sadly, have been right: under the soothing tones of our politicians, the only thing our political classes respect is savage violence.

This is the law of the playground, of the hostage taker, of the spree killer. Respect me, or I'll blow your head off.

I'm ashamed and disappointed that my party still clings to this doctrine. Underneath the bluster, it's cowardice: fear of the big boys pointing and laughing at the little boy who doesn't have a gun. It's time to grow up. Bevin's nukes were a prosthetic to wear in place of an Empire, part of the embarrassing and unseemly British obsession with remaining 'important'. It doesn't have to be like that. The world is full of decent, honest, principled and highly respected countries who don't, in the last resort, depend for their authority on possessing the ability to turn large areas of the globe into toxic cinders. Japan. Germany. Italy. Australia. New Zealand. Denmark. Sweden. Norway. Spain. Brazil. Chile. Canada. South Africa. Ireland. It's time to accept that possession of nuclear weapons is a tacit admission of political, diplomatic and moral failure: not of significance.

Labour has a chance to puncture the self-delusion of the bullies. It can divert that £25bn towards conventional weaponry if it must, or towards diplomacy. It can demonstrate that even for Security Council chair-holders, respect can be acquired without possessing the means to the Apocalypse. It can become a leading realist, showing the others that the nuclear obsession is a military and political dead end.

Sadly, Labour doesn't want any part of this. Not due to any principle, but simply because it is scared of the Daily Mail, which will echo cynical Tory accusations of being 'soft on defence'. It's not true, of course: Labour has shown an unseemly haste to get into any wars going, however illegal. But short-term tactics will always trump principle in this rotten excuse for a polity. I'm not surprised that the Conservative Party is and always will be keen on nukes: their politics are and always have been honestly and openly based on oppression, dominance and violence, because it believes that people are essentially animals. But Labour: Labour always professed to be more humane.

My politics are based on hope and aspiration towards a better future. Time and again, even my own party demonstrates that it prefers the certainty of small-c conservatism, war, cynicism, distrust and fear.

What did I tell you?

We should be playing Bullshit Bingo. After my little rant this morning about the 'independent nuclear deterrent' and Hillary Clinton's strategic intervention into the UK's budget decisions, out comes Mekon William Hague, and I could have written the script myself.

"The UK will remain, within the context of Nato, a military power of the first rank".

"Although we will have to make some adjustments and changes and no doubt reductions, I think America can be assured that we will still remain a very important ally and still pack a very important punch," Hague told the Council on Foreign Relations.

Speaking on Friday in Brussels, William Hague said the UK would remain within the context of Nato and would continue to have an independent nuclear deterrent, formidable intelligence agencies and flexible and highly deployable forces.

This is pathetic. This is Rocky claiming still to have it. It's the addict who claims to be able to give up any time. He's in denial. As a country, Britain's in denial. It's not a military power of the first rank at all. The US in in the first rank. China's in the second. Probably Russia, India and Israel next. Britain's well down the list.

The difference between Hague and myself is that I think that's a good thing. Let's be like the Scandinavians. Instead of demanding respect because you've got nuclear weapons, like a school bully, how about claiming the moral high ground by disarming the nukes, devoting the forces to peacekeeping, and promising to make amends for the British Empire. Thanks for WW2 and all that, but you've still got a lot to live down. Being the snide kid tagging along with the Fat American playground bully isn't principled, it's desperate.

Press Release from the Death Star

The newspapers are running a story that Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, is warning the UK and other NATO nations about cutting their defence budgets.

This is the most naked order from Imperial HQ we've seen in public for a while, which must mean they're worried, but it's far from unique.

We sometimes need to step back from the political rhetoric to look at the global political situation. When we do, it's clear that NATO is the equivalent of the Roman Empire's foederati: natives hired by the imperial power to tame them and to extend the empire's reach at low cost.

The US is, of course, much like Rome in that the entire economy depends on military spending: this is Marxism in its purest form. Whatever the Tea Party and their Republican friends say, they don't really want small government. They want heavily armed, globe-spanning government, just without any of the social stuff like Welfare, education and civil rights.

Reduce the massive armed services (the US spends ten times more on arms than the next ten countries combined), cut away the 'pork' of army bases, arms factories and so on, and the economy collapses. Entire towns will be devastated. Poor people wouldn't have an escape route via enlistment. Let's be clear: the US needs a permanent state of war to remain afloat.

Turning to the UK, it's time to honestly admit that it's a puppet. OK, British politicians might occasionally make a trade treaty decision or a fisheries agreement without Washington's approval, but on the serious stuff, nothing happens without Americans giving the word. Remember Blair's orders to his new Ambassador to Washington: "get up the arse of the White House and stay there' - keeping close to the Americans was and is far more important than the lives of Iraqis and British soldiers, more important than international law.

The more British politicians protest, the more pathetic it is. I have to laugh every time one of them says 'independent nuclear deterrent': Britain's nuclear weapons are made by, rented from and loaded by the US, and can't be launched without US permission. They don't even have 'Royal Navy' painted on them. Lockheed Martin make them, Halliburton put them on the subs. No US permission to fire = no firing. No spare parts, no computer upgrades, no movement from harbour without finding a US force waiting.

The UK is a shield and an aircraft carrier for the US, like the other 140 or so countries with US military bases on their land: if that's not a global imperial hegemony, I don't know what is.

So why is Hillary so upset? Perhaps she genuinely thinks that Britain's contribution to the anti-imperial bush wars which flare up here and there is important. But I doubt it. The US could swat like a fly any country in the world, without raising a sweat. No, Hillary's upset because our potential failure to invest in new weapons of mass destruction might indicate a failure of nerve, a little pinprick of self-interest. The US might look like a bully of it can't point to the nominal contributions of micro-states like Britain, Denmark and Italy - it needs cover to make itself look like a leader rather than a dictator.



Hillary, in short, finds our lack of faith in her - disturbing. Only at times of stress do we see the iron fist under the hegemonic velvet glove.

But don't worry. The Tories will always, always choose guns over butter, or child benefit. The Navy's been promised its two aircraft carriers, despite the lack of any actual aircraft to go on them (though the US is selling some…).

All's well. Go back to sleep.

Cowards

The Tories, as we know, are scum, as are their Lib Dem serfs. But what's becoming clear is that, for all their bluster, they're cowardly scum.

There are decisions that need making: whether or not to proceed with a new nuclear weapons system, and how to update the local government taxation system.

These are both decisions they're too scared to take - they can't afford the new nukes (thankfully), but their own voters and the Tory newspapers would rather we all starved than give up the chance to turn the planet into a poisonous hell.

The council tax is based on the value of your home. The valuations were carried out in 1991, since when property values have increased by a huge amount. But - Tory voters are loaded and live in expensive houses, and don't want to pay more tax.

What to do? What to do?

They've come up with a cunning plan. They're going to take all the hard decisions that ruin the lives of the poor right now - the poor don't vote, or vote Labour anyway. However, they're going to put off the nukes/council tax decisions until after the next election - when they'll be out of office. Then they can blame Labour for 'attacking the middle classes' and 'leaving Britain undefended'.

Scum, the lot of them.

'Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds'

So said Robert Oppenheimer, when he successfully detonated the first nuclear weapon.

I'm a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament because using or threatening to use weapons designed to kill civilians and poison the land for generations to come are immoral.

Have a look at this slideshow - a collection of weapons test photographs. They're awe-inspiring, artistic, often beautiful, but also a reminder that as a civilisation, we're far happier putting our money and expertise into destruction than creation.

Our government is planning to spend £20bn on a new generation of (illegal) nuclear weapons in the midst of a massive economic crash, because apparently the ones we have won't kill enough millions of innocent people. Currently, Britain rents nuclear warheads from the US (so much for the constant refrain of 'independent nuclear deterrent' - not independent and not a deterrent):

Each Trident submarine carries up to 48 nuclear warheads, each of which can be sent to a different target. Each warhead has an explosive power of up to 100 kilotons, the equivalent of 100,000 tons of conventional high explosive. This is 8 times the power of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people.  

Of all the government expenditure to be reviewed, the nuclear weapons programme is explicitly protected.

Even if we could afford it, it shouldn't exist. It's time countries earned respect for treating each other fairly and openly, not because some of them retain the ability to destroy the rest in minutes.

What on earth is happening to the Tories?

Some of them are becoming out-and-out beatnik hippy pinko liberals! Here's Sarah Wollaston, MP for Totnes, expressing the exact same sentiments I hold - and I'm a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Many of my constituents cannot understand why our strategic nuclear weapon is being left out of the strategic defence and security review, because the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons is one of the greatest threats to our existence. That voice has not been heard this afternoon. I hope that hon. Members will bear with me, because it needs to be heard.

At the heart of the 1968 non-proliferation treaty was a commitment to the goal of disarmament by recognised nuclear weapons states; it was the cornerstone of the pledge to the nuclear have-nots in order to stop them seeking to acquire their own weapons. Dissatisfaction among states without nuclear weapons at the lack of progress in achieving the aims of article VI is widespread. Let me remind the House that at the sixth non-proliferation treaty review conference in 2000 we signed up to

"an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed".

In renewing Trident, we break that pledge and remove our moral credibility. How can we begin to persuade nations such as Iran to step back from the nuclear cliff edge unless we are at least prepared to step back from the precipice ourselves? I am not advocating a unilateral approach, but if this obsolete, expensive and unthinkable weapon has any value at all, surely it is as the means to bring others to the negotiating table. I am rather tired of being told, "It cannot be done" and that to advocate nuclear disarmament is to be incapable of understanding the complexity of the issue. Nor do I accept the argument that these weapons cannot be un-invented; we cannot un-invent biological weapons, but nobody is suggesting that we take that route to mutually assured destruction.

My concern is that as time distances us from the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrific consequences of nuclear war become clouded and remote, and that we lose our sense of outrage. In the event of such an outrage-even with a dirty bomb-would we seriously consider nuclear retaliation? Against whom would we retaliate? I am not alone in believing that among the greatest threats facing us is uncontrolled nuclear proliferation and the risk of these weapons then falling into the hands of those who would not hesitate to use them. I have received a great deal of correspondence, as I am sure many hon. Members have, from constituents opposed to the renewal of Trident.

I would ask the Secretary of State to address those real and present dangers, as well as the unknown future threats, by delaying Trident in order to persuade others to join us at the negotiating table. 

I would rather have an effective Army, Navy and - I have an interest here - Air Force than spend at least £20 billion of their resources on a weapon that we can never use and that no longer acts as a deterrent. I call on the Secretary of State to delay his decision on Trident, not because I am an idealist, but because I am a realist.

I shall conclude by reminding the House that Alfred Nobel, of peace prize fame, was famously convinced that his invention of dynamite would make war too destructive to contemplate. We would be wrong to make the same mistake with Trident.

Does she not understand that the ability to kill millions of civilians in a nuclear holocaust is a core Tory belief? I can't see this going down well back at Tory HQ, but for now, let's all welcome her sound good sense. Stirring words indeed.

Free the Negev One

Mordechai Vanunu is an Israeli engineer who worked on Israel's illegal nuclear weapons programme. His conscience moved him to reveal the existence of the nuclear arsenal to the world, and he served 18 years, 11 in solitary confinement, after being lured from Britain to Italy and then kidnapped by the Israeli Secret Service, possibly acting on information received from the British intelligence service and disgraced mega-thief Robert Maxwell, who owned the Daily Mirror at the time.

After his release, the country which bills itself as the Middle East's only democracy restricted his freedom of movement, banned him from leaving the country and barred him from any contact with foreigners. Vanunu has now been returned to prison for this latter 'offence'. One of these foreigners was… his girlfriend.

He is now an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. Please write to your Israeli Embassy requesting his release. Don't give them too many personal details or you'll find an assassin using your passport.

Update: What were the Israelis going to do with their nuclear weapon? (Apart from threaten their neighbours, of course). Why, sell it to Apartheid South Africa. What a charming bunch of people. 


In the end, Israel 'only' helped with nuclear technology for SA to build its own nukes (which it later renounced when the ANC took power) in return for uranium for its own weapons of mass destruction. Here's Gary Younge's view:

 Israel was South Africa's principal and most dependable arms dealer. As we learn elsewhere in the Guardian today, it even offered to sell the South African regime nuclear weapons.

"Throughout the 70s and 80s Israel had a deep, intimate and lucrative relationship with South Africa," explains Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa. "Israel's arms supplies helped to prolong the apartheid regime's rule and to survive international sanctions."

Of course, there's no point complaining. Yes, the US has a law against funding countries with illegal WMDs, but realpolitik always, always, trumps morality and the law. Israel can do whatever it wants, to whomsoever it wants - witness the extremely muted UK, Irish and French response to the discovery that Israel used the passports of citizens for assassinations. Imagine the reaction if Iran did that…

They're all I've bloody got to eat!

Britain's juniper bushes are declining and only the scientists who spend most of their time designing more efficient holocausts can save them. What a lovely little PR puff. 

President Strangelove, I presume?

Just back from a swim (good job I have flexible work hours). Despite possessing the hydrodynamic qualities of a brick with an eating disorder, I managed my 40 lengths of backstroke in 27 minutes, so I'm feeling triumphant. And sick.

I see that everybody's jumping up and down about Ahmedinejad's re-election (if such it is). Plenty of people are screaming that Iranians shouldn't vote for a man hellbent on nuclear weapons. Er… isn't that what the UK has done every four years since 1950? That the US electorate has done since 1945? Etc. etc. I happen to be a CND member - and all the NPT-compliant states have signed a treaty committing them to abolishing nuclear weapons. Just as I do absolutely nothing to help, so do the big states. Worse than that, we allow India, Pakistan (mmm, stable relations), Israel and several other states to have them without any commitment to abolishing them.

What steps have we taken to abolish them in our own countries? Well, Obama's actually talking about reductions, but that's about it. The UK is about to spend £20-30 billion we don't actually have, on replacing Trident. Apparently, the ability to kill hundreds of millions of people in a few minutes isn't quite enough. We need more, bigger, missile to deal with… er… those pesky guerillas in Afghanistan. No, that isn't right. There's a definite threat from, well, someone, which can only be dealt with by turning entire cities to molten glass, whole civilisations to rubble, sterilising huge chunks of the earth's surface. It's just that I can't think of one right now.

Why shouldn't Iran have nuclear weapons? They're caught up in an insane race with Israel. The intellectual justification's very simple. It's all about having a huge, barely metaphorical penis. When Labour MPs and others objected to Britain pursuing a nuclear weapon in the 1940s, Aneurin Bevan, the British Foreign Secretary, clearly saw the ability to kill millions of people as a replacement for the British Empire, a justification for Britain remaining a powerful state rather than becoming a calm, civilised Scandinavian-style democracy: without nukes, he said, 'you will send a Foreign Secretary, whoever he may be, naked into the conference chamber'.

So there you have it. Without a nuclear weapon, Iran is another weird country holding the oil we all depend on. With it, they can negotiate on a slightly more equal footing. I know this is the politics of the madhouse, but we're all inmates…