Ukraine crisis makes Scotland and Trident prime targets, campaigners warn

While supporters of the Faslane-based weapons of mass destruction claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s threat to unleash nuclear war means it would be folly to ditch them, Scottish CND told the Sunday National that the opposite is the case.

Its chair, Lynn Jamieson, said the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine only underlined the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons.

She added it would be “utter folly” for Scotland to give up its radical opposition to Trident – even though the current risk of nuclear war “is close to what it was in 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis”.

READ MORE: Anti-nuclear pressure groups urge governments not to risk nuclear war

She said: “At present, due to the Faslane/Coulport complex, we are a prime target for nuclear attack and the launch pad for the commission of mass murder.”

Jamieson stressed that maintaining nuclear weapons was colluding in the “perverted and bankrupt logic of ‘deterrence’” which should have ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“The fact that instead nuclear weapons were ‘modernised’ and the Nato nuclear alliance expanded has contributed to Putin’s own distorted view of the world,” she said.

Jamieson added that the nuclear weapon system was putting the Scottish population at risk every day in “multiple mundanely deadly and potentially terrifying ways”.

The SNP and Scottish Greens both support nuclear disarmament and Jamieson said that if Scotland becomes independent and managed to get rid of the UK’s nuclear weapons, it would have the legal backing of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which came into force last year.

“The current crisis must not be allowed to lock us ever more tightly into our narrow and sectional interests,” she said. “We co-operate or we perish.”

Veteran anti-nuclear campaigner Brian Quail, who joined protesters at the Faslane base last Wednesday, said the “sheer madness of nuclear ‘deterrence’” was inescapable.

“Trident doesn’t deter anybody from anything,” he said. “It didn’t deter Putin from the madness and cruelty of the Russian attack and will play no part in our and Ukraine’s survival from this nightmare. This must be clear to every sane person.”

Green MSP Ross Greer (below) said Putin’s invasion of Ukraine emphasised the “terrible threat” of the weapons and the need to push for global disarmament.

“Expecting hostile states like Russia to unilaterally disarm is obviously unrealistic, but where nuclear powers have collectively agreed to reduce their stockpiles, progress has been made,” he pointed out. “The UK renewing rather than reducing its own nuclear arsenal just perpetuates nuclear escalation.

“Rather than stockpiling ever-more deadly weapons of mass obliteration, the best thing that this generation of political leaders can do for peace is to ensure that we finally eliminate nuclear weapons for good. I look forward to the day when an independent Scotland can join the 86 nations that have already signed the UN anti-nuclear weapon treaty. They have no place in a human rights-based foreign policy and will have no place in an independent Scotland.”

However, Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, said to drop Trident now, when Russia was invading Ukraine and threatening to use nuclear weapons, would send the wrong message.

“Even if you are not a supporter of nuclear weapons this would seem to be the wrong time to say we are getting rid of them because you are now having them used in threatening behaviour against you,” he said.

He added that an independent Scotland would neither want to be a nuclear power nor have the funds to maintain Trident but the process of ditching them would be of vital importance.

“The key thing is how they get rid of them,” he said. “If they are just ordered out and the UK is forced to get rid of them that is a disastrous negotiating strategy. It’s not a question of whether they will be kept or not; it is whether there would be a co-operative negotiating strategy with the UK.

“The idea that you would somehow have aggressive, angry negotiations at that point is ridiculous and people who think Scotland could afford that would be damaging an independent Scotland. It’s not a very good lever if you want to get a good deal.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government firmly opposes the possession, threat and use of nuclear weapons and supports worldwide nuclear disarmament with a strong belief that a world without nuclear weapons is safer for us all.”