IN his article Does Britain need nuclear missiles? No. Scrap them (Comment, last week) Michael Portillo entirely misses the point in arguing that Britain should unilaterally give up its remaining nuclear weapons. He is right to point out how much the world’s strategic landscape has changed since the end of the cold war and right to argue that we need useful power projection assets such as aircraft carriers and submarines.

But a decision to give up the UK’s nuclear weapons would, for all practical purposes, be irrevocable. A nuclear capability could never be recreated in time to respond to the changed international security situation that might make it necessary.

The sensible approach is therefore to retain a modest deterrent capability as a prudent hedge against a highly uncertain future. Who knows what the world will look like in 30 or 40 years’ time? Moreover, as the most favoured option is a life-extension of the existing missiles and submarines, in tandem with the Americans, this need not be at astronomical cost.

To give up nuclear weapons just when other countries are acquiring them would be both bizarre and irresponsible.

Dr Jeremy Stocker
Programme leader Nuclear Weapons & Strategy Centre for Defence & International Security Studies

BE PREPARED: Portillo’s case is encapsulated in a single, shallow proposition: “The case for Britain having an independent nuclear deterrent depended on the existence of the Soviet Union ... The Soviet Union collapsed long ago. There is no threat from China. The new nuclear weapons states ... do not have the capability to hit us”.

This makes no more sense than to argue for the abolition of the Royal Navy in the absence of identifiable threats in the 19th century or, for that matter, the abandonment of any insurance policy because we cannot predict what mishaps and disasters fate holds in store.

After the first world war, there was so little evidence of a military threat that each of the armed services was preparing its contingency plans against an entirely different potential enemy. After the second world war, there was an obvious Soviet threat but many of the conflicts which actually broke out caught us completely by surprise.

The lifespan of each generation of the nuclear deterrent is about 30 years. This is twice the period which encompassed the rise and fall of the Third Reich.

To renounce Britain’s nuclear deterrent would be an act of utter recklessness.

Of course, such weapons are not a sufficient counter to all forms of threat, but without them the United Kingdom would find its potential opponents far more likely to become its actual enemies

Dr Julian Lewis MP
Shadow Defence Minister House of Commons

STAYING INDEPENDENT: Portillo is wrong when he writes: “The case for Britain having an independent nuclear deterrent depended on the existence of the Soviet Union”.

There was another side. Prime minister Attlee decided to start up the British Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell in 1945 because American war-time co-operation in atomic research, etc, was stopping: he feared, he said, after Roosevelt’s death “a relapse into (American) isolationism”.

According to his biographer, Francis Williams, he later wrote: “We had to hold up our position vis-à-vis the Americans. We couldn’t allow ourselves to be wholly in their hands, and their position wasn’t awfully clear always.”

This is still the case.

Elizabeth Young
London W2