January 5, 2007 at 13:28:23

Trident the Deterrent - A Terrifying Myth

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Jim McCluskey (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Jim McCluskey - Writer

Trident the Deterrent A Terrifying Myth

The 20th century may well have been the bloodiest in human history. The number of people killed by mass murder, war and genocide during that period has been variously estimated at between 170 and 262 million (see APPENDIX). We are appalled by the size of these figures. How could human beings have behaved in such a way?

Yet we want Trident to be replaced by a newer and upgraded version. Prime Minister Blair has decided that it should be replaced. He has invited us to have a public debate about it. Perhaps then, before embarking on a public debate, we should ask ourselves 'Do we know what Trident is?' Surely a meaningful debate is dependent upon such knowledge. Do we know for example that, before upgrading, in its present form, when fully armed a single Trident submarine has the fire-power to incinerate between 100 and 200 million people. In other words a single Trident submarine has the killing power to carry out destruction of human life of the same order as all the mass murders, atrocities and wars perpetrated in the entire hundred years of the last century. We are appalled at the mass destruction of the 20th century yet we wish to upgrade a fleet of these machines which are capable of perpetrating much much worse. This is a bizarre ambition. How can it be? Surely there must be a sane explanation for this apparently grotesque goal.

Trident What is it?

Let us consider a little more closely what Trident is before moving on to the matter of considering why its existence is viewed as so desirable by our Prime Minister and some others. It can reasonably to supposed that if the reality of Trident was conscious in the mind of civic society those 'some others' would be much fewer than the statistics claim.
The word 'Trident' is batted around the media as though it were just another weapons system. This is not so. Trident is a weapons system with a power for destruction of Armageddon proportions. When we talk about Trident we are referring to a weapons system that comprises a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines armed with nuclear weapons ('Trident' is, strictly speaking, the name of a ballistic missile designed to carry nuclear warheads).

The Trident submarine is armed with 16 Trident II D5 ballistic missiles. Each submarine carries 48 warheads distributed among 12 missiles. Each warhead has an explosive power of 100 kilotons. A 100 kiloton detonation would have about 7 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb which killed 140,000 innocent people.

The submarine was originally designed to carry D4 Missiles which could hold the 100 kiloton warheads. Later the D4 was replaced by the D5 missile and this is able to carry the hugely more destructive 450 kiloton W88 warhead(1). This warhead is 36 times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and so this one bomb has the capacity to kill over 5 million people. That 5 million is the killing capacity of one bomb on one submarine which can carry many bombs and which is one submarine in a fleet of 4 submarines. . This means that (assuming 48 warheads are carried) each Trident submarine could kill between 100 and 200 million people. (America has 24 similar submarines).

Trident is not a deterrent

It seems to be taken for granted in all discussion about Trident that it worked as a deterrent during the cold war. It did not.

This was definitively illustrated during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Robert McNamara who was the American Secretary of Defence at the time said '...we came within a hairbreadth of nuclear war...' and 'It became very clear to me as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis that the indefinite combination of human fallibility (which we can never get rid of) and nuclear weapons carries the very high probability of the destruction of nations'(2).

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was one of President Kennedy's aides, informed us that 'this was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in human history'(2). Dean Acheson, who was an adviser to President Kennedy during the Crisis said "I wrote a note to President Kennedy congratulating him on his 'leadership, firmness, and judgement over the past touchy week'. It does not detract from the sincerity of this message to add that I also thought he had been phenomenally lucky"(3).

President Kennedy himself said the chances of a nuclear war resulting from the crisis was somewhere between 1 in 3 and fifty-fifty(2). These are not good odds. I certainly would not bet someone's life on them let alone the survival of the human race. These odds are much worse than those when playing Russian Roulette. In fact they are little better than we get from the toss of a coin. A simple thought experiment should make the matter even more clear. Imagine that a man with a huge nuclear arsenal says he is going to toss a coin and if it comes down tails there will be a global nuclear war but if it comes down heads there will be no war. This is a 50-50 chance. He tosses the coin and it comes down heads. Would it then be reasonable to keep tossing the coin in the belief that it will continue to come down heads? I don't think so. Yet this is what we are doing by continuing to rely on nuclear 'deterrence'. We are betting the survival of humanity (or most of it) on the assumption that every time there is a crisis the coin will come up heads.

Armageddon - Trident is an Armageddon machine.

There is a good reason that long-range nuclear missiles are carried by submarines. Since the warheads are in submarines they can be continually on the move and since the missiles are long-range their possible location at any particular time covers a huge expanse of the ocean as far as an enemy is concerned. In short their location is unknown so they cannot be destroyed by a pre-emptive strike from the enemy. However if only one missile was fired the submarine would quickly be located and destroyed. Consequently Trident submarines are designed so that they can discharge all their weapons at the same time1 (within ten minutes). . It would therefore only be used after an attack unless the British (or American) government itself decided to start a Global Nuclear War. If they were used, these weapons would be fired as an act of revenge. They would be used after an enemy had launched a major attack; after, in other words, all is lost. The Trident submarine is an Armageddon machine.

This deterrent system is very appropriately known as the MAD system of defence. As well as signifying the system's true nature the MAD acronym stands for Mutual Assured Destruction. Those who advocate the use of the MAD defence claim that they are being rational. There is a very strong case for challenging this claim.

1 | 2 | 3

N/A

I had a consultancy practice in Landscape Architecture from which I have now retired. I am also a writer and painter. I have become increasingly concerned at governments'continuing, and counterproductive, use of violence to solve conflicts. With (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Contact Author

Contact Editor

View Authors' Articles

Book Recommendations for "War Nuclear World"

World War III: Nuclear War
by Gary L. Wilson

$29.95
Lowest New Price $15.00
Number of pages: 340
Publisher: PublishAmerica

Ten To Midnight
by Toby Emden

$21.95

Number of pages: 500
Publisher: Stingray Books

The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War
by Paul R. Ehrlich

$18.95
Lowest New Price $3.91
Number of pages: 268
Publisher: W. W. Norton