I don’t know if we should scrap Trident and go with an

Comment on Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2010 General Election by David.

I don’t know if we should scrap Trident and go with an alternative system, but then that isn’t exactly what the Lib Dems are saying.

They are saying they might replace Trident AFTER a defence review (which we are well overdue for).

What I find disingenuous is the Labour and Conservative parties have ruled out replacing Trident before a defence review. I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be part of a defense review when everything else is, it doesn’t mean they WILL scrap Trident, but it should be discussed, maybe there are better alternative for less money.

The Lib Dems are right, a deterrent like Trident was designed in the cold war era when our biggest threat was nuclear annihilation at the hands of Russia. Although there is still a nuclear threat from that part of the world, it is no longer a serious organised threat, the cold war is well and truly over and we no longer see Russia as the enemy.

Now we have to worry about countries like Iran and North Korea and their goal to be nuclear powers. Is Trident an appropriate deterrent for dealing with potential future threats from countries like Iran and North Korea?

Then we have the threat of terrorism using nuclear bombs (most likely dirty bombs). Lets say London was hit with a dirty bomb by a rogue state, would we use nukes on them or like with Iraq and Afghanistan rely on conventional weapons?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, that’s the whole point of a defence review to explore our possible future defence needs and change defence accordingly and that might well mean replacing Trident with an alternative nuclear deterrent (none of the main three parties advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament).

BTW I agree completely with your comment and questions apart from the Labour bit, they’ve moved away from their unworkable (immature) CND type approach.

We were damn lucky in WW2 that we along with the Russians slowed the Nazi advance to a crawl while the US used it’s mighty industrial capacity to build a war machine that we (the allies) used to smash the Nazis and it’s allies out of Africa and Europe etc… and back to Germany using sheer force of numbers.

Had Hitler not made the mistake of switching the Luftwaffe from attacking RAF bases (they needed air superiority before they could cross the channel) to carpet bombing English cities, the war could have gone the other way (they almost crippled the RAF)! Early in the war the German army was better equipped, better trained and had better tactics than we did, had they got over the channel early in the war, we’d have been another stepping stone to Nazi domination of Europe!!! It’s a very scary thought.

David