The proposed US strategic defence system has unsettled many. The real reason for the threatened Cold War-II is the demand of arms merchants and weapons manufacturing industry who are calling the shots. He believes that there will be backlash in Europe against the US owing to its NMD policy which risks a new nuclear arms race. He said that the Royal Navy wanted nuclear disarmament, and would support it if a conventional role could be found for the Trident nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines. There is reviving pressure from the UK anti-nuclear movement for Prime Minister Tony Blair to break away from the US on this issue in the next five years.
Nuclear deterrence requires a conditional intention to commit a monstrously evil act.
To live by threats and menaces is evil. In so doing, the nuclear states place national sovereignty above the safety of the planet, and threaten a greater evil than they purport to prevent, while they selfishly and irresponsibly pursue the chimera of total security for themselves and their allies. Moreover, they pervert the truth in claiming that this is necessary, when nuclear weapons are a pre-eminent and growing cause of national and global insecurity, and there are safer alternatives. He also cited the 1996 Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice which was a historic breakthrough by implicitly condemning nuclear deterrence as illegal. Dr Kate Dewes has played a very active role in mobilising people across the world and particularly in New Zealand, against the nuclear threat.