My book Security without Nuclear Deterrence, a new edition of which was published last year in the UK, explains my gradual rejection of pro-nuclear deterrence indoctrination as a former operator of British nuclear weapons.
The naked nuclear emperor
In it I chronicle how the US politico-military-industrial complex, drawing the wrong lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in denial about the horrors it had unleashed on humanity, seized upon the bogus mantra of nuclear deterrence to play upon people’s fears and justify sustaining the unaccountable, highly profitable scientific and military monster spawned by the Manhattan Project.
Since then the principal guardians of nuclear deterrence – the western group comprising the US, UK and France – have struggled to provide intellectual coherence as endless adjustments to the theory and doctrine were made to accommodate the latest expansion of the nuclear arms race it had unleashed. Uncritical repetition by posturing political leaders, careerist experts and mainstream media of simplistic soundbites gave it the aura of a state religion, to the point where it echoed the fable of the emperor with no clothes.
