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Essays Magazine Defence and warfare

Should Britain renew the Trident nuclear deterrent?

Britain's Trident submarines will last until 2025. Should they be renewed or can we survive without them?

By Lewis Page  
August 27, 2006
August 2006

Dear Rodric 30th June 2005

Labour returned to power pledging to settle the future of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Our Trident submarines will last until 2025. Neither of the main parties is likely to opt for disarmament and the electoral oblivion that would follow. Thus the real debate is about what nuclear weapons should follow Trident.

The bombs themselves are no problem. Many countries build them: Britain, the US, France, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan; three proper liberal democracies, and five other regimes ranging from a little bit worrying to quite bad news. By 2025 the club will be bigger,…

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Lewis Page

Lewis Page is the author of Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs: Waste and Blundering in the Armed Forces (Heinemann). Parts of this article were based on ideas developed in the afterword to the paperback edition, to be published in April

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