CND Press Round-Up - 15th March 2021
Posted: 15th March 2021
Please find today’s press round up below. We are expecting this week to be a busy week insofar as the Government outlines the findings of the Integrated Review tomorrow, including an expected commitment to increase the number of Britain’s nuclear warheads. Thank you for your continued useful feedback and support.
Nuclear Weapons
Trident
The primary story developing over the weekend of interest to CND members is of course that the government plans to increase nuclear warhead numbers for the first time since the end of the Cold War. There is speculation that the move, which will be formally announced tomorrow and runs contrary to the UK’s obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is intended to convince U.S. legislators to speed up funding for the development and roll-out of the W93 warhead system. It is expected that a further Commons vote will be required in order to gain approval for a new warhead.
In the Scottish nationalist paper The National, Alison Phipps has a comment piece in which she draws a link between the cuts to international aid, including peace activism and alternative conflict resolution, and the increase in the number of warheads.
Iran and Israel
The Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and the Chief of Staff of the IDF, Aviv Kochavi, will lobby against the resumption of the Iran nuclear deal in a scheduled trip to Austria, France and Germany, according to reports in the German press. This follows on from bellicose rhetoric about military action against Iran from senior Israeli officials last week.
Anti-war
Integrated Review
Ahead of the publication of tomorrow’s Integrated Review of foreign, defence, security and development policy, the House of Commons Defence Select Committee has published a report entitled ‘Obsolescent and outgunned: the British Army’s armoured vehicle capability’. The report heavily criticises the Army’s attempts to test, build and deploy a new generation of tanks and armed vehicles as ‘woeful’ and says this puts British forces at ‘serious risk’ in a conventional war. The Committee wants to see more funding for this included as part of the outcomes from the review. The Labour Party spokesperson is quoted as saying ‘Our Army would currently be forced to go into battle with out-of-date armoured vehicles that could be heavily outgunned. Nothing characterises Boris Johnson’s ‘era of retreat’ over the last decade more starkly than this.’
In today’s Daily Mirror, there is an article framed around the comments of Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert, that a ‘Covid-type virus’ has the potential to be exploited as a weapon by non-state actors. He has called for focus and further investment in biosecurity as part of Tuesday’s review. The ex-officer is quoted as saying ‘I hope the politicians are not over-prioritising bombs and bullets when pathogens actually pose a more realistic threat to British lives’.
U.K.-China Relations
The diplomatic editor of the Guardian, Patrick Wintour has a piece in today’s paper, which, though ideologically blinkered by the assumptions of the foreign policy establishment, provides context for the Government’s ‘tilt to the Indo-Pacific’. This article does point to the risk that in following on any potential U.S.-led strategy of confrontation with China in the region, there exists the risk of ‘economic disengagement’. The Prime Minister’s new brother is quoted as saying that, for the Conservative Party, ‘Sinophobia is the new Euroscepticism’.
Nuclear Power
U.S. Clean Up of Nuclear Waste
The new leadership of the U.S. Energy Department has set out its priorities in terms of cleaning up redundant nuclear sites for the coming year, according to the Associated Press. Politicians in the state of New Mexico, where the Los Alamos site is located, have criticised what they see as the slow pace of clean up, with current projections suggesting it will take a further thirty years to clean up the site.
With best wishes,
Michael Muir
Press and Communications Officer
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament