Skewered on Trident

With many getting hot under the collar about North Korea's ridiculous bluster, as Kim Jong-Un seeks to shore up his domestic power position, yesterday David Cameron sought to bolster his own position with some red-meat talk about Britain's "independent nuclear deterrent" or rather 'independent' nuclear 'deterrent'.  Using North Korea as an example of the need to keep Trident is an argument even more intellectually bankrupt than Tony Blair's claim that Iraq could launch WMD in 45 minutes.
It's all about interests and Britain has had no strategic ones east of Suez since it gave Hong Kong back to the Chinese in 1997.  While Iraq was found to have no WMD (as was pretty clear from Hans Blix's reports before the 2003 invasion), there were British bases on Cyprus as potential targets, though given the welter of important places to destroy in the region, I doubt Iraq's defence ministry cared one jot about the Cypriot installations.  This just shows the depth of rigour in Cameron's argument.  It's just a shame that no-one picked him up on it, with Labour haunted by their 1983 manifesto ('the longest suicide note in history') and a right-wing backlash and the Liberal Democrats choosing to pick fights they know they can win.
Of course, David Cameron was showing his commitment to shipbuilding in Scotland as well but if we need nuclear-armed submarines to keep the shipyards afloat, that is egregious discretionary spending.  If current welfare policy is accused of subsidising the undeserving ('products of a welfare culture' as The Forgers' Gazette would have it), this is an insane large subsidy for a few thousand jobs - money that could be spent on retraining all those employees with much to spare or if it is about shipbuilding capacity, many destroyers that will be need to protect the new aircraft carriers.
And as for those aircraft carriers, the first one coming into service in 2018 will be immediately mothballed.    Cameron says we need Trident to protect us against threats like North Korea but South Korea and Japan don't have nuclear weapons as they know the United States would obliterate North Korea in the event of war.  Britain's submarines by contrast patrol the North Atlantic (when not laid up in harbour, as any one of the three, that's right a measly three, is constantly).  Cameron did away with our previous aircraft carriers in 2010 believing that we wouldn't face threats over the coming decade; now he's changed his tune on threats but he is Mr U-Turn after all.  Aircraft carriers are essential for power projection, nuclear-armed submarines are not.  It was the presence of aircraft carriers that won the Falklands War, not submarines (whose nuclear-tipped weapons, even in a live war, were not used).  In the Libyan revolution in 2011, the French could send an aircraft carrier of the African coast, while Britain had the indignity of flying all the way back and forth from Sicily.  Our nuclear weapons were inappropriate in such a situation.
They aren't even independent, unlike that of the French.  The UK can only use them in conjunction with the Americans and not before.  It is the fob on the keyring for the ignition keys of the American juggernaut.  It is the public that gets fobbed off though.  Without Trident, the deficit could be cut much, much faster, yet ordinary people must suffer for this white elephant non-weapon that we don't even have control over.  Who exactly are we deterring?  Precisely no-one.  The Russians may like a bit of nationalism but they prefer the goodies that come with being the global liberal order - warmongering is not their thing towards western Europe.  Iran is contained by both the USA and Israel.  And regarding British strategic interests, that is it.
On bare-faced shame, Cameron's statement in Scotland (where a majority oppose nuclear submarines being stationed - so much for shoring up pan-British support ahead of the referendum next year) is on a par with a Labour MP on Newsnight who, in the wake of the Serious Fraud Office dropping its corruption case in 2006 regarding the al-Yamamah BAE-Saudi Arabia deal, effectively condoned corruption if it safeguarded BAE jobs in his constituency.  While the Labour MP showed himself to be worthless moral exemplar by being honest in not caring about corruption, Cameron is the same by lying to the British about the need to guard against North Korea.
Essentially, it is willy-waving but with Britain only outshining North Korea and possibly Pakistan of the official nuclear club, it is not a very impressive member in all senses.  It is like the man who buys a gun through a sense of personal inadequacy more than anything else.  With a veto on any institutional changes, the British permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council is not in any threat, despite its anachronism, should we ditch nuclear weapons.  The Americans might not be happy about having to shoulder a bit more of the burden of the North Atlantic, but it would be only a minor irritant for them (and they might even agree to it willingly if the UK supplemented its military capacity in other sectors).  It is not the Cold War anymore when there was a need for a united front.
To get rid of nuclear weapons would be an immense moral statement and a sign of strength in ourselves as a country, not a weakness.  North Korea would probably still continue with its own nuclear programme but would have even more international opprobrium placed on them - if Mr Cameron was more steadfast in his Christianity, he would know that by setting this moral example to the North Korean leadership, it "would heap burning coals on their heads."  Do as I say, not do as I do is a one-way street of ineffectiveness (what India called 'the nuclear apartheid' that it was determined to break).  Although South Africa developed nuclear weapons for internal use, it was greeted very positively around the world when they renounced their capability.  Pretoria doesn't feel threatened by Pyongyang.  North Korean hackers are the real threat to the commercial well-being of the West.  Beefing up cybersecurity is the cheapest and best defence the UK really needs.  Having the best brains working on this, is the real independent deterrent to state-sponsored capacity.