Imagine two neighbours. One has a giant dog, so aggressive and loud that anyone passing by the house will be greeted with the howling that would make your heart rumble. The dog is getting old but still can scare the living daylights out of passer bys.

Now multiply this situation for the entire neighbourhood. Worse still hold that thought and extend it to the next town, city and country. One can not go to sleep at night as the scary noises would keep everyone awake. Would the offensive stance stop those without an aggressive dog from getting one or consider breeding one?

Now replace the dog with a weapon. A weapon so mean that if fired would not only kill the user but the entire neighbourhood. By the way the country next door are going to the science labs, libraries and online to find out how to build such a weapon. Once assembled if they were ‘set upon’, they could use the same weapon back. Result, inhalation! No one wins as generations of survivors scurry across the Earth in a scene from Mad Max, one, two and three – chasing after oil in a baron desert wasteland or Planet of the Apes – rush to the end of the original film at this point and consider Charlton Heston’s the view from the shore.

The current UK debate about replacing Trident could be considered a farce. Figures of up to £20 Billion and large defence contracts are being touted. We seem to be given no choice on the matter – even though we are asked about our opinion. A report may argue the pros and cons yet ultimately we do not have the power to decide to halt such investments or the consideration of an alternative strategy.

The press appear to be polarising two views. Firstly, funding social urgencies like the National Health Service Vs The cost of defence and secondly, resistance to ‘rouge’ states. It appears that no one is considering the reduction, centralisation, efficiency and risk model for continuing with investment in such technology.

We all know that one bomb can cause devastation, can we not consider a strong alliance of nations. Or, have I missed something here? Is it a situation that a military economy is what politicians fear will be affected? Interestingly, we do not get to hear about the arms market, controls on mining nuclear product and increased intelligence to track such dependant substances. I remember listening to an excellent BBC Radio 4 interview where a reporter had met a number of country representative from country that were on the brink of war meeting-up casually looking for arms bargains.

In the case of the lethal dogs, if they are given no dog food, they will simply not survive. In the case of them acting as deterrents, instead of offering a sense of security the result is clear, it simply escalates the level of power each neigbour believes it requires to partition each other.

Categories: 2006, Nuclear War