Your correspondent B Gibbs (letters April 21) shows a touching but misplaced faith in a nuclear deterrent.
As the Green Party has long argued, the nuclear deterrent is a myth. It doesn’t work.
The UK’s nuclear arsenal did not deter Argentina from invading the Falklands nor have Russia’s nuclear weapons stopped the Ukraine from defending itself against Russia.
These weapons have not created peace: Tony Blair involved this country in war seven times. The British Army is currently involved in active conflict in Afghanistan.
The fallacy of the nuclear deterrent is also underlined by the 1996 ruling of the International Court of Justice that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law.
As to the statement that we would be no good as "an allied nation in the event of a nuclear attack": were such an attack to take place we would all be dead and large swathes of the planet would be uninhabitable.
Peace is not created by having weapons; it is created by active peacekeeping as pursued by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (1) and good relations with other nations, not coveting their resources for ourselves.
HAZEL DAWE
Treasurer, Oxfordshire Green Party
Bulan Road, Oxford
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