{"id":10875,"date":"2020-05-03T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T06:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=10875"},"modified":"2020-05-02T09:49:58","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T09:49:58","slug":"nuclear-threat-yes-pandemic-threat-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2020\/05\/nuclear-threat-yes-pandemic-threat-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear threat yes, pandemic threat no"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We now know that the government was warned last year that a viral pandemic posed the greatest potential threat to the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a confidential briefing from the Cabinet Office, which was leaked last week, ministers were told that tens of thousands of lives could be at risk if an outbreak occurred. Among the recommendations were stockpiling PPE (personal protective equipment) and establishing plans for a contact tracing system.<\/p>\n

It was not the first time that warnings fell on deaf ears. In 2014, the Ministry of Defence\u00a0advised<\/a>\u00a0that \u201calertness to changing trends\u201d was vital to mitigating the likelihood of a pandemic. Senior civilian and military officials promptly shoved the report into a drawer where it was left to gather dust.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, the austerity programme carried out over the last decade has led to significant cuts to government projects and public services, including the NHS, that would ready us for a pandemic. There has, however, been one notable exception to the cuts \u2013 the country\u2019s nuclear weapons arsenal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No use<\/h2>\n

Tens of billions continue to be spent on weapons that are of no use against the types of attacks judged a possible threat to the UK in the government\u2019s\u00a0National Risk Register<\/a>. The latest register, drawn up in 2017, refers only to the need to protect nuclear power stations and the possibility of chemical, biological and nuclear material attacks by terrorists. But it adds that terrorists\u2019 use of conventional weapons is \u201cfar more likely\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Successive governments have described Britain\u2019s nuclear arsenal as an \u201cultimate insurance\u201d against an attack, or blackmail, by a foreign power. If that is the case, then why did the government not increase its healthcare spending as insurance against what it knew was a far greater threat \u2013 an infectious pandemic.<\/p>\n

Defenders of Britain\u2019s nuclear weapons argue that they are needed for political reasons, to preserve Britain\u2019s status as world power. But arguments about whether nuclear weapons would ever be considered a realistic or effective threat against a potential aggressor are dodged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The lack of credibility surrounding Britain\u2019s nuclear weapons is, in this writer\u2019s view, perfectly illustrated by David Greig\u2019s play, \u2018The Letter of Last Resort\u2019. In it, the prime minister, on her first day in office, discusses with a senior Whitehall official the instructions she will give a Trident submarine commander in the event of a catastrophic attack on Britain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c\u2018To write \u2018retaliate\u2019 is monstrous and irrational. To write \u201cdon\u2019t retaliate\u201d renders the whole nuclear project valueless,\u2019 she says. \u2018Yes, madam,\u2019 says the official.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Britain\u2019s nuclear weapons are being modernised at a cost of more than \u00a3200bn, a figure the MoD does not dispute. Trident was\u00a0once described by Jon Thompson<\/a>, when he was the ministry\u2019s top official, as the single biggest future financial risk Britain faced. \u201cThe project is a monster,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The project, as the\u00a0National Audit Office<\/a>, parliament\u2019s financial watchdog, has repeatedly pointed out, has been beset by delays and technical problems. It also skews the defence budget, diverting resources that should be spent on cyber security and military support for civilian authorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While billions are being spent on our nuclear deterrent, British troops were deployed without adequate equipment,\u00a0including body armour<\/a>, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now, in the midst of the pandemic, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and care home staff, are under-equipped. The government was ill-prepared over the coronavirus crisis, and was ill-prepared for the invasion of Iraq and the counter-Taliban campaign in Afghanistan. The parallels are not exact, of course, but in both cases failures of government have led to avoidable deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These failures are the consequence of a dangerous mindset that has imbued Whitehall for far too long: a reluctance to speak truth to power combined with cognitive dissonance. The government ignores whatever it finds uncomfortable and insteads dictates its actions on the arrogant assumption that Britain, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear power, will somehow be protected from the afflictions facing other countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An internal Ministry of Defence document submitted to the Chilcot inquiry into the invasion of Iraq bluntly stated: \u201c\u2026 the UK military was complacent and slow in recognising and adopting to changing circumstances.\u201d It concluded that the \u201cMoD is good at identifying lessons, but less good at learning them.\u201d The same could be said of the government\u2019s pandemic planning.<\/p>\n

First published by openDemocracy<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Image via Ministry of Defence vODL 1.0 on Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘While billions are being spent on our nuclear deterrent, British troops were deployed without adequate equipment,\u00a0including body armour, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now, in the midst of the pandemic, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and care home staff, are under-equipped.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[706],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}