Trident: Yes or No?

YES

There is still the need for a deterrent against nation states which may acquire or already have acquired a nuclear capability. The question is more whether the UK should do this itself or whether it should rely on the extensive deterrents of the US, which is essentially the arguments of the Germans and Japanese for not having them.

The British tradition is different in that we’ve had a long standing agreement with the US that we will maintain our own capability.

Looking to the future, one has to bear in mind that it is not guaranteed that our close relationship with the US, although enduring at the moment, would always be so close.

Not so much in exchange of information, but more whether the US would maintain its guarantee that it would put itself at risk by using nuclear weapons in support of the UK.

It would expect more of Europe in terms of maintaining its capability particularly as a deterrent, not just nuclear but conventional capability.

This is going to be a big issue in the future and is one of the reasons for the Franco-British treaty. One of the important long-term reasons for that treaty is to maintain at least sufficient capacity when the Americans are busy elsewhere.

There are nations which are not easily deterred because won’t act they perhaps rationally in the way the Soviet Union used to do. But there are still nations, and there could be emergent nations, who have developed a deterrent and we are one of the nations who do have this capacity to deter that.

Russia is also a problem at the moment. I’m not suggesting we’re going to be threatened by Russia, but the nuclear deterrent is a huge key to Russia’s status and it would be unpredictable in the longer term, but there’s also China and Iran. It’s about dealing with the uncertainty of the medium to long term, not necessarily the immediate problem.

The decision is very much a political one which is do we see ourselves as one of these top nations which has the deterrent and are we prepared top pay for it.

• Michael Codner is the director of the Military Sciences Department at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

Nuclear weapons cost the British taxpayer an enormous amount of money, but even if they were cheap we shouldn’t have them.

The Trident force is primarily designed to be used in a simultaneous attack by two submarines, carrying a combined total of 80 nuclear weapons.

The result would be death and destruction on a scale and with a speed which is beyond all human experience and which is impossible to fully comprehend.

There would be no survivors within one mile of each of the 80 nuclear explosions.

Many others, further away, would be killed by blast, heat and radiation. Each explosion would throw massive amounts of radioactive soil and debris into the air.

This lethal fallout would then be scattered over hundreds of miles and would contaminate the environment for centuries. The immediate death toll would be between five and ten millon, with many more fatalities in later months and years.

Whatever the result of the independence referendum, Tony Blair’s plan to keep nuclear weapons in Scotland until 2060 is no longer credible.

In the event of independence, a Scottish Government could remove these weapons of mass destruction from our hills and lochs. It could insist that Trident was de-activated within seven days and that all of the nuclear weapons were removed from Scotland within two years.

This would mean nuclear disarmament for Britain, because there is nowhere else where Trident can be based. Alternative sites in England and Wales were ruled out in 1963 and again in 1981.

The arguments against each of these other locations are stronger today than they were then. British nuclear disarmament could have a dramatic effect on the global problem of weapons of mass destruction. So we have a special opportunity and responsibility to make the planet a safe place.

• John Ainslie is the coordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament