The military myth - and the alternative
The current rush to military build-up and nuclear power are based on complete myths. A rational response would have ruled out these moves on their own terms.
On Saturday 1st November at Adelaide Baptist Church in Glasgow, Scottish CND will host a major conference focused on the threat posed by nuclear weapons to Scotland’s security, economy and environment.
Eighty years on from the ill-informed jubilation at the first catastrophic atomic explosions at Trinity, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear technology is being once more promoted as a silver bullet that resolves global problems and boost fortunes of their possessors.
In the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, the UK government proposed more nuclear weapons as a solution to heightened geopolitical tensions. At the same time, massively increased spending on new nuclear programmes is presented as an engine for desperately-needed economic growth. Further, slashing regulations in order to scale up nuclear power projects across the country is argued to be a sensible response to the intensifying climate and ecological crisis.
But what if a ‘nuclear strategy’ for security, economy and environment were in fact not a solution but a major liability in each case?
1. The Myths of 'Deterrence' Doctrine
The current era of seemingly permanent war has emerged within the prevailing geostrategic framework of “nuclear deterrence,” which claims to maintain a balance of threat which prevents conflict. Six of the world’s nine nuclear powers have been directly involved in conflict in 2025: Russia in Ukraine, the US, Israel and UK in Palestine, Yemen and across the Middle East, and India and Pakistan with one another.
The number of potentially catastrophic near-misses and accidents will never be known, though Cold War history also shows that nuclear build-up actually escalates tensions and increases the risk of nuclear war rather than underpinning security. Many analysts believe that we are now as close to nuclear war as any time in history. Having nuclear weapons just an hour’s drive from Scotland’s largest city puts the Scottish population on the front line of such a conflict.
The uselessness of nuclear weapons for anything other than the omnicidal end of all life is becoming more obvious as technological developments dramatically transform war fighting, and undermine 20th century assumptions about military might.
How will the UK’s nuclear submarines fare when inexpensive underwater drones are developed? If Ukraine can disable Russian nuclear bombers with a truck’s worth of cheap drones, why wouldn’t the UK’s F35 fighter jets, at approximately £100m per unit, be similarly vulnerable? And how could nuclear weapons possibly defend against cyber-attacks that many analysts argue are the most serious threats to national security today?
The indiscriminate killing of every living thing, the radioactive legacy ensuring ill heatlh for successive generations and catastrophic disruption of the climate make nuclear weapons immoral and unimaginably dangerous. But it is also increasingly obvious that they are of no value even in strictly military terms.
2. The Myths of Nuclear-Military ‘Keynesianism’
In terms of industrial and economic policy, military spending has long been understood to be amongst the least efficient means of stimulating economic activity with state investment.
Firstly, because the outputs of the military industries usually have net-zero benefit to the general economy; at best, tanks, fighter jets, and nuclear bombs sit idle in warehouses, siloed from other economic activity. At worst, they are used to kill people in far-off parts of the world.
By contrast, investments in public transport, healthcare, quality affordable housing and education have massive compounding benefits ranging across economic sectors. An educated, healthy, housed and mobile workforce is the very DNA of a successful economy - not whether it possesses nuclear bombs.
A 2021 Oxford Economics study found that every £1 invested in Britain’s railways produced £2.50 of economic activity elsewhere in the economy. Research on military expenditure is not so positive - in 2021 a RAND corporation review found that every $1 of military spending produced only between $0.60-$1.20 of related economic output, while civilian investments provided at minimum $1.50.
“Doubling down on nuclear energy has in fact so far raised bills, will require carbon-intensive construction projects and rely on even more carbon-producing and environmentally destructive uranium mining abroad”
Secondly, since the military industries are highly (and increasingly) capital intensive, military expenditure also has one of the worst cost-per jobs ratios of any economic sector. Recent Scottish government research found that the military industries ranked 70th out of 100 sectors in terms of jobs returned on investment, with healthcare ranking first.
A 2025 report by Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) described how a $1.5bn investment in munitions factories would support a mere 1000 jobs, a “staggering” cost of £1.5m per job, and noted that ratio of cost to jobs within the military industries is increasingly less in the favour of jobs.
What would our society be like now if hundreds of billions had been invested in people rather than spent on nuclear weapons? At a time when public investments are desperately needed after over a decade of cuts and fiscal strain, building an industrial programme based on nuclear militarism will lock in years more national decline in the UK, whilst making the world an even more volatile place.
This was understood by TUC delegates who recently voted to oppose the UK government’s military spending hikes. Trade unions are increasingly recognising that a war economy will come at the cost of investments in under-resourced areas of the UK economy, public sector jobs and wages.
3. The Myths of Nuclear Power
Finally, the UK government is counting on nuclear power as their strategy for reaching net zero, and no longer hide the deep interconnection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In extolling synergies across nuclear industries, their Industrial Strategy of 2025 effectively admits that UK nuclear weapons production needs the support of a nuclear power industry:
“Our civil and defence nuclear capabilities – sharing many requirements for technology, expertise and infrastructure – are the bedrock of the country’s energy and national security.
As we invest in the future of our nuclear deterrent, we will continue to increase collaboration and alignment between both capabilities to maximise the benefits.”
Massive investments in nuclear power projects must therefore be understood in the context of a blinkered commitment to continue producing nuclear weapons, and these investments are indeed massive. The Hinkley C project is estimated to cost well over £40bn, Sizewell C up to £100bn and a new nuclear waste dump (deemed indispensable by industry figures) has been costed at between £20bn and £53bn.
Resources of this scale could easily be directed towards measures that would genuinely reduce the UK’s carbon footprint, such as upgrading the capacity of the grid to enable full benefit from renewables, a mass housing insulation programme and funding a national energy company, all of which would likely reduce bills in the process.
Instead, doubling down on nuclear energy has in fact so far raised bills, will require carbon-intensive construction projects and rely on even more carbon-producing and environmentally destructive uranium mining abroad. So much for clean, green energy.
Join us on Saturday 1st November!
Military and nuclear spending will not achieve the national renewal we need, nor address the challenges of the 21st century. Scottish CND believes a different future for Scotland is possible - and we’ll be setting out an alternative vision at our November 1st conference in Glasgow focused on common security, defence diversification and a just energy transition. Join us to learn more and help build the movement for a safer, more prosperous Scotland!