CND today said the continued exclusion of Trident from the Strategic Defence and Security Review was illogical given the compelling case for nuclear disarmament laid out by Liam Fox in his latest speech.
CND welcomed Dr Fox’s statement that defence strategy should be led by foreign policy and that the review should ‘put the cold war to the bed’. The logical conclusion therefore would be to scrap Britain’s costly cold war legacy, the submarine-based Trident nuclear weapon system, in order to meet our foreign policy commitment of nuclear disarmament, under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
CND also called into question how Dr Fox could carry out the review, without considering nuclear weapons, when he says he has not yet reached an agreement on the funding of Trident replacement with the Treasury. Dr Fox has already stated his desire to avoid ‘salami-slicing’ spending cuts that ‘cut a bit of everything’, and a willingness to ‘let go some of the legacies of the past’. Trident and its replacement remains the obvious candidate.
Kate Hudson, CND Chair, said, “Liam Fox has today made a compelling case for nuclear disarmament – all his arguments point in that direction. The exclusion of Trident from the review is completely illogical. Even in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, before the final Vanguard submarine had been deployed, Trident was considered at length. A review now, before a new generation of submarines is ordered, and which seeks to move on from the cold war, can only do one thing – scrap Trident.’
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1. For further information and interviews please contact CND’s Press Officer, on 0207 7002350 or 07968 420859
2. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is one of Europe’s biggest single-issue peace campaigns, with over 35,000 members in the UK. CND campaigns for the abolition of all nuclear weapons everywhere. www.cnduk.org