I need to say Steve Topple’s article on Trident is excellent and I recommend reading it. I haven’t written any op-eds on the Trident missile renewal debate in the UK, but if I allowed myself, it couldn’t compete with Steve Topple’s.

Steve covers some aspects of the debate that just haven’t been heard, lamentably, and explains that UK-based banks cynically facilitate investment into both the UK’s nuclear arsenal and the Russian arsenal. In effect, Trident is owned by banksters.

Unlike Steve’s article, most of the debate on the issue focuses on morals, or whether the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent is really “independent” or in fact Trident is owned by the faraway authorities in the US to use this country as a sacrificial pawn in their own defence strategy.

My own criticism of Trident is a little less detailed and expertly than Steve Topple’s. I just find it absurd that small countries with questionable importance need to have vast nuclear weapon deterrents. In my view, these systems make small countries a target of endless criticism, distrust and ultimately nukes in the first place rather than deterring anyone. We become a prime target for terrorist organisations and foreign powers by pointing nuclear weapons at people and trying to be a leading military power, when this is simply unnecessary. At fault are warmongers whose greatest fear is not that we will be nuked, but that we won’t be able to nuke people.

Who do small countries like Israel and the UK think they are kidding with their nuclear “deterrent”? Clearly, as small countries, they have no hope of survival in a nuclear war and no possible rationale for a “first strike”. The idea of them threatening anyone with a nuclear war is absolutely crazy. A massive country like Russia would endure tremendous damage from a nuclear attack, but not total extinction. A country as vast as theirs could still hide a lot of fighting potential and evacuate a lot of people even in the most extreme war scenario. But the UK would be destroyed absolutely.

The very existence of the British people would end within a few minutes in the event of a nuclear war with Russia. As such a small country, there would be nowhere to run. Ports would be destroyed, airports smashed, cities reduced to ashes, the very land contaminated with lethal doses of radiation, all food radioactive, the already miserable torrents of rain we walk through would become poison to all that moved on this island. Even the people who managed to creep away into deep, dark hiding places would emerge only to die as soon as they ate or drank anything. It is likely that almost all the animals living in Britain would also perish as a result of the radiation and poisoned water. Is this what we’re telling the Russians we are prepared to do to ourselves?

Everything bigger than the rats would be dead. Meanwhile, some millions of Russians living in remote regions might still be alive and well, drinking water that was unaffected by the nuclear fallout, eating food not contaminated by radioactive dust and debris. There might even be divisions of Russian troops still alive to fly out from somewhere in Siberia’s vast territory and plant their flag on the smoldering heap left of London. Maybe not the great victory over “aggression” Britain’s leaders may have had in mind.

Our politicians should not be acting smug about what they’ll do to Russia in a nuclear war. They should be very scared about what Russia would do to them, and the rest of us including all the innocent animals unfortunate enough to to be born on a crazy island run by crazy nuke-waving warmongers and loons. How can anyone vote for those people?