THE American defence secretary of the Vietnam War era denounced nuclear weapons yesterday and urged the British Government not to develop a new system after the present Trident submarines are taken out of service.

Robert McNamara who played a major role in the formulation of America’s nuclear strategy in the 1960s, said in London that the development of new nuclear weapons was “insane and a waste of money”.

As The Times reported last week, the Government is reviewing possible options for replacing Trident, which is scheduled to remain in service with the Royal Navy until about 2025. Tony Blair has said he believes that Britain needs to retain an independent nuclear deterrent.

Mr McNamara, 88, whose regrets about the bombing of Vietnam featured in a recent documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, has recanted his former hawkish position on nuclear weapons.

Speaking at a conference, he said: “Despite the end of the Cold War 15 years ago, the US nuclear weapons policies are today essentially what they were when I was Secretary of Defence 40 years ago.

“If I were to characterise US and Nato nuclear policies in one sentence, I would say they are immoral, illegal and militarily unnecessary.”

He also described nuclear weapons as “very, very dangerous in terms of the risk of inadvertent or accidental launch, and destructive of the non-proliferation regime that has served us so well over the 40 years”.

Mr McNamara, the US Defence Secretary from 1961 to 1968, speeded up the modernisation and expansion of America’s nuclear weapons and delivery systems to deter the Soviet Union from mounting a surprise attack on the West.

However, in the post-Cold War world, he said that it was important for the US, Russia and other nuclear weapons states, such as Britain, to stop the development of new systems and to speed up reductions in nuclear forces.

Nuclear proliferation, Mr McNamara said, posed the greatest threat to humankind. “North Korea states that it has produced a nuclear weapon and that it will continue to proceed on that path,” he said. “Iran seems to be moving in the same direction. If proliferation proceeds, it will adversely affect the security of nations across the globe.”

If North Korea and Iran continued with their present programmes, Mr McNamara predicted that in Asia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would follow suit and in the Middle East, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria would also go nuclear.

He said that the five declared nuclear powers should be required to remove their nuclear forces from hair-trigger alert. Of the 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads deployed by the US, 2,000 were on hair-trigger alert, to be launched on 15 minutes’ warning “by the decision of one man”, the former Defence Secretary said.

In The Fog of War, he admitted that America had exaggerated the dangers it faced from the Communists of North Vietnam.

He also acknowledged that the US had underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs; and had failed then, and since, to recognise the limitations of modern, high-technology weapons.

Mr McNamara became disillusioned by the lack of progress in the Vietnam War when he was still Defence Secretary after failing to persuade President Johnson to stop the bombing of North Vietnam. He left office in February 1968 and became the President of the World Bank.

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