Unnecessary evil

Douglas Gibb (Letters, 20 January) says that major conflict ceased at the end of the Second World War. All except conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East (frequently), Lebanon, the Balkans, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan (several times) the annexation of Crimea, Ukraine and Syria, to name but a few.

The consistent theme here is that the existence of nuclear weapons did nothing to prevent these conflicts.

Mr Gibb also states that “it is a condition of US membership of Nato that European countries maintain a nuclear capability”. That’s odd, because there are seven countries in the world with some kind of nuclear cap­acity and 29 members of Nato, so something does not add up.

Apart from that, the recent past ­secretary-general of Nato was from Denmark and the current secretary-general is from Norway. Neither country has nuclear weapons, so how on Earth did the US allow it?

Fortunately, if recent polls are taken into account, Mr Gibb and other apologists for this obscene and redundant weapon are in a minority, as 59.9 per cent of Scots citizens have indicated their ­opposition to Trident.

Mr Gibb is, however, half right: nuclear weapons are evil, but hardly necessary or effective in the current geopolitical situation.

Douglas Turner

Derby Street

Edinburgh