Knives and Bombs

A friend of Dorothy Forsyth has asked: “ If England disarms and a country like Iran gets nuclear weapons. What do you do if you are attacked - like if a man with a gun threatens you, and you have no gun he can just shoots you”. Here are some answers.

• Iran may or may not be developing nuclear weapons. It may the aim of the leadership to be thought to be developing them as a symbol of national virility. This is why some politicians want a nuclear capability - to try and be taken seriously. It's no different with the UK. Ernest Bevin said, in the 1940's, that we must have the bomb "with a bloody great Union Jack on it". They are nothing but an expensive, immoral, illegal and useless stick-on hairy chest.
• A country like Iran would not attack us. It would not have the capability, or any reason, and to do so would be national suicide. Besides this, such countries (and this includes North Korea) want nuclear weapons for purely regional reasons. Iran is surrounded by nuclear weapons - from India, Pakistan, the US fleet, and above all, Israel. It is a Middle-East problem which can only be resolved by making that area nuclear-free.
• Iran's nuclear weapons are wrong because ALL nuclear weapons are wrong. There are no "responsible" nuclear states. No one willing to use devices of such indiscriminate awfulness can be called responsible.
• We cannot have "deterrence" unless we can convince people that we are willing actually to use nuclear weapons. But to do so would be a policy of madness and criminality on a massive scale which would dwarf the Nazi Holocaust. It would also be grossly illegal - and we are supposed to be a law-abiding people. Do we really want to base our security on the threat that we might one day be willing to act as criminal lunatics?
• Nuclear weapons do not stop defeat. The Americans were defeated in Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan, and when Argentina attacked the Falklands, a British possession, nuclear weapons were irrelevant.
• This is where the two men in a room with knives comes in. It is the argument used by juvenile gang members. The answer is not to join the knife game in the first place. Only a very small minority of countries are into the nuclear weapons game or want to be. Many live quite safely and happily without them.
• Yes, there is a risk that you or I may be faced by a man with a gun. But we do recognise, in this country at least, that carrying round a gun "just in case" only adds to the problem. In fact it's illegal. In the USA, where people are allowed to carry guns, gun crime is much higher.
• Carrying a gun is not just like having a mobile in case you break down. It's not an add-on to your normal life. You have to know how to use it, be trained to discriminate between valid and invalid use, and be willing to overcome the inbuilt revulsion most of us have against killing. In short, carrying a gun makes you a different sort of person. If enough people routinely carry them, it makes our whole society a different one too.
• The same is true of nuclear weapons. They are not just another weapon. Our brightest scientists have to devote their lives to making them work better and the highest quality service personnel frequently rehearse launching the missiles. This becomes so routine that the real thing would be almost indistinguishable from the rehearsal. This does something to the mind and spirit of the people involved and to our country.
• It is a matter of balancing risks and outcomes. The minor risk of confronting a gunman is outweighed by the major one of becoming a gun-carrying person who may well be tempted to "take the law into his own hands" or kill someone innocent in a moment of panic. So too with nuclear weapons. There is a small likelihood of a real threat to our national existence - meaning the obliteration of millions of us in this country and not just "national interest" or regime change. But this has to be balanced with the near-certainty that while anyone possesses nuclear weapons they are going to be used, given enough time, through accident, miscalculation or sheer bloody-mindlessness.
• The real answer to the problem of nuclear weapons is their global elimination backed up by a strict international inspection system to prevent states hiding some warheads "just in case".

George Farebrother