The secretary for defence, Dr John Reid, has given assurances that any decision on replacing Trident has yet to be taken and that there will be full parliamentary and public debate.

Yet despite the prime minister’s recent assurances that any decision will be taken in a far more open way than in the past, and that he was looking at how the government could assist the Defence Select Committee’s inquiry into the future of the strategic nuclear deterrent, Reid and the Ministry of Defence are refusing to give evidence to this inquiry. Why?

General Sir Hugh Beach
London WC1
Steven Haines
Royal Holloway University of London

FISSION IMPOSSIBLE? Today’s priority is how to reverse proliferation, which brings an increased risk of regional wars escalating out of control and of accidental use. State-run nuclear weapons programmes also offer the most likely route through which fundamentalist terrorists could acquire a nuclear device.

If the solution lies in diminishing the number of national programmes, can Britain achieve that goal while reasserting the importance of its own programme? Can we sustain nuclear apartheid indefinitely? That question receives a shrug in Whitehall. The alternative strategy is not to abandon Trident but steps towards a world in which nuclear weapons are increasingly marginalised. This is not the time for Tony Blair to replay irrelevant battles with “old Labour” unilateralists.

Dr Stephen Pullinger
ISIS Europe, Brussels

SPLITTING ATOMS: Last week Blair accused Iran of violating its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations and called for the United Nations security council to act. However, any replacement of Trident would likely constitute a breach of Britain’s obligation under article VI of the NPT to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”.

Kate Hudson
Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
London

MUTUAL STANDOFF: Blair says that a decision to replace or renew Trident will “probably be done in a far more open way than the decisions have been taken before”. Probably is not good enough. It is anyway meaningless as previous decisions were taken in total secrecy, and dishonest when work on new warheads is already under way.

The attorney-general’s office’s refusal to say whether it had been consulted about the legality of the current programme at Aldermaston can have only one interpretation. The pretence that updating the warhead firing mechanism is not in contravention of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty is a quibble about words that contradicts the intention behind the treaty.

The frequently repeated assertion that Trident gives us an “independent” deterrent is simply untrue when practically every aspect of the system is heavily dependent on America.

Turning to your editorial, is there any evidence that our possession of nuclear weapons gives us a place at the top table?

Breaking the treaty by renewing our Trident system would take us one step nearer a world ruled by mutual threat and fear. Is that what we want?

Robert A Hinde
Chair, British Pugwash Group
St. John’s College, Cambridge