The cost of Lease-Lend during the Second World War ensured that Britain remained continually on the verge of bankruptcy, that we owed a debt so enormous that it was only in recent years finally paid off, and that the US required almost total subservience from the British Government.

Afghanistan and Iraq will cost us all dearly, in terms of finance and wasted lives, thanks to American insistence that we go to war. With a nuclear capability we still have teeth and should (the present Government excepted) remain independent of the US. As a British citizen and taxpayer the independence is something I treasure as particularly valuable, irrespective of cost.

DAVID SELLICK
Bisley, Surrey

Sir, Giving up our nuclear weapons and relying “on US capabilities” to defend us would be gambling with our children’s lives.

Nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented. We cannot be certain that we will never need them, so it would be very foolish to give up our capability. Nine states have nuclear weapons, and others have conducted nuclear weapons programmes in the past and (supposedly) given them up; some of those states have been unfriendly to the UK. Moreover, the US and the UK do not always agree on foreign policy. It would be very foolish to bet our future on US protection.

But there is surely no foreseeable need for wildly expensive stealth missile submarines. Let us scrap Trident and its replacement and maintain a relatively simple deterrent using weapons carried by manned bombers or cruise missiles.

JOHN STANNING
Winchester

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