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March 19, 2007
Fractional reserve deterrent
Over at Ministry of Truth, Unity has published an excellent fisking of Tom Watson's arguments for the replacement of Trident.
Not only is it an excellent debunking of the myth that we need to replace Trident for reasons of national security (I've yet to be presented with a single genuine scenario in which posession of Trident or its successor would be of benefit), but it also accepts that abandoning the deterrent would be a massive gamble.
Giving up our nuclear deterrent would entail a massive gamble. Like it or not, the nuclear genie has been out of the bottle for more than sixty years, and there’s no putting it back in. Nuclear weapons and a nuclear deterrent are a fact of life and, being realistic, the only feasible way of moving to position in which nation states do not possess such a deterrent would be to develop a global deterrent under the aegis of a supranational organisation like the UN or a very unlikely future NATO that included in its membership all five of the original nuclear powers (USA, Russia, China, France and the UK).
Effectively the posession of a nuclear deterrent is a form of insurance, one country insuring itself against the threat of nuclear attack by another. But where it differs from conventional insurance is that any country that desires such protection has to spend vast sums of money. And like all insurance policies, if you never claim then the money is gone.
But what if it were possible to buy nuclear deterrence as a form of insurance from a body such as the UN? Effectively any nation on the planet could have a nuclear deterrent without the crippling costs of development, and the threat of the existing powers stomping all over them.
Initial thoughts might be that the number of weapons required to provide global deterrent is simply too large, that manufacturing those weapons would be prohibitive. The world of banking has a solution, specifically fractional-reserve banking. With a fractional-reserve deterrent, more nations could have a call on the deterrent than weapons exist to fulfil the requirement. The assumption is that not all nations would need their deterrent at the same time. It could be seen as a step towards reducing the number of warheads in the world, helping to support the Non-Proliferation Treaty and let countries spend money where it matters, helping the less well off.
Posted by Clive on March 19, 2007 11:16 AM in the category