I read a handful of history books in 2007. They described the hundreds of thousands who died horribly as the Byzantine Empire collapsed; and the millions who died senselessly, a prey to vanity, in the Napoleonic Wars; and who spent their last hours wallowing in the mud of the First World War. I tried to imagine what history might be like if it was written by the comfortless dead, and not by the lucky living. It would, it seems to me, be an angrier history. The living tend to conclude, broadly speaking, that ‘it was worth it’. Their own lives and freedoms seem testament to that. The dead, by contrast, might conclude that it wasn’t worth it, that their deaths were unnecessary, that the price was always too high, and that the creation and use of weapons is one of the most repellent human traits.

Beacon fires ablaze everlasting,
no end to forced marches and war,

Isn’t it clear that weapons are the tools of misery?
The great sages never waited until the need for such things arose.

Li Po (701-762), from War South of the Great Wall [Trans. David Hinton]

Why do we do this? Other social animals don’t. Beehives don’t echo with gunfire. Ants don’t cherish an ability to blow the anthill to infinity. Dolphins don’t pride themselves on their dolphin-killing skills. Penguins don’t spill penguin blood. Perhaps it is an evolutionary strategy we have developed to combat the negative effects of our own fecundity. We could do better.

One of the most depressing moments of 2007, and one I cannot quite massage into forgetfulness, was the vote by Britain’s House of Commons in mid March to spend £20 billion on renewing Britain’s Trident system of nuclear defence. I hope every MP who voted for this is, in their quieter moments, troubled by its implications.

The sum itself is enormous. Counting out a billion seconds would take 31 years. A billion hours ago returns us to a period which pre-dates human history. Times twenty.

This money could be a creative force. It could be taken to those who need it for health, for food, for shelter. It could build and nourish. It could, indeed, strengthen the peace-bringing or peace-keeping role played by our soldiers, sailors and airmen. Instead it is to be squandered on weaponry which serves no purpose. Our geopolitical significance does not justify possession of these unusable weapons. Indeed nothing justifies the possession of these weapons — yet the world is now so full of them that dismantling the arsenal will take many years of intricate negotiation. The task which awaits us is akin to unpicking, painstakingly, strand by strand, an attic full of poisoned cobwebs.

Britain should take a lead in nuclear disarmament. It is ideally placed to do so. Leadership in this field, it seems to me, has been abandoned by those on whom this responsibility chiefly devolves. This makes our lectures to Iran and North Korea hollow ones. No one can regard Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons at the present time with equanimity, given the conflicting pressures within it and the apparent fragility of its political systems. Weapons exist to be used. Religion, nationalism and sectarianism will always provide the justification for this. If nuclear weapons exist, sooner or later they will be fired in earnest, killing extravagantly. If we wish to stop this happening, we need to begin the long journey towards their universal decommission.