Disarm for peace

Earlier this year I delivered a lecture on mission in St Nicholas' church, Leipzig, where, in 1989, the peaceful revolution which brought down the Berlin wall and restored unity and democracy to Germany began. And it started with prayer.

I have since wondered what issues Christians need to pray about to bring change to our world, and to witness to a different set of values. And, I believe, one of these issues must be the proposals  to replace Trident.

This is a particular issue for us in the Oxford diocese, since these American weapons systems are built in Aldermaston. And although we have been promised an open parliamentary debate on the matter before work goes ahead, there is evidence on the ground to suggest that Aldermaston is already gearing up for production.

Do we need more nuclear weapons? Our current systems will be operational well into the 2020s - an arsenal that costs around £1 billion every year to run, and will cost at least £25 billion to replace.

Strong moral arguments, based upon the Christian Just War theory, lead many Christians to believe that, because there are no circumstances where using nuclear weapons could ever be justified, we should not possess them at all. Even those who support the idea of a nuclear deterrent are dubious about the wisdom of replacing Trident. The arguments are legal, fiscal and military:

Replacing Trident almost certainly contravenes Article 6 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed by the UK in 1970, committing countries that, at that time already possessed nuclear weapons, to step back from an arms race.
As Kofi Annan points out, 'the more those States that already have them increase their arsenals or insist that such weapons are essential to their national security, the more other States feel that they must have them too'.

We only have to look at what has been happening recently in Iran and Korea to see the truth of these words. But, what moral right do we have to tell other nations that they cannot have what we deem so essential?

Financially, how else could we spend the money? It will probably come from cuts such as other areas of military spending. Yet most military strategists recognise that nuclear weapons have no strategic role in the kind of conflicts the world faces today. A nuclear weapon is not much use against a terrorist with a bomb in his knapsack. The military want more troops, properly resourced, not more nuclear weapons.

And, when you realise that £25 billion pounds could buy 60,000 newly qualified teachers for the next twenty years, scrapping student top-up fees for the of the next ten years, or protecting 900 million acres of rainforest; or that a recent Mori poll found that 54% of British people were opposed to this costly misadventure, you start to think this is, indeed, something that Christians should be concerned about.

How can we campaign to make poverty history while we accept the presence of and the expenditure on these sophisticated weapons of mass destruction?

I write this article as Bishop of Reading, with Aldermaston just around the corner from where I live. I realise that some readers of the Door will earn their living working there.

But, I believe that Aldermaston has an important future - an international role in the work of de-commissioning. As the world wakes up to the irrelevance of nuclear weapons in today's world, and as Christian people start asking our Government to honour the commitment it made, Aldermaston may have important work to do.

This is no longer an issue of left or right. The cold war has ended, and any justification for nuclear weapons has ended with it. As we face new global challenges our country has an historic opportunity to make a difference for peace. The peace that we find in Christ.

But, Christian peace is not just the silence after the guns have finished firing. It is reconciliation painfully embraced. It is the presence of justice as well as the absence of war.

We have an opportunity to initiate a campaign to reduce the horrifying stockpile of weapons that endangers our world. By taking such a step we gain the right to speak to others about how they may get rid of theirs.

We can make the world more secure. All this can flow from our praying for peace, and by becoming the answer to our own prayers, and by calling for a full parliamentary debate on the replacement of Trident.

The Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell is the Bishop of Reading

To find out more, or to start a debate in your church - read  Britain's Bomb: What Next edited by Brian Wicker and Hugh Beach (SCM) or download Trident: UK nuclear weapons at a crossroads, a briefing from Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.