UNUSUALLY in the last week of this parliament, foreign affairs debates have become more significant, and I hope that the election campaign also includes a serious debate on Britain’s role in the world.

On Monday there was a debate on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Britain’s role in the review conference which takes place at the UN from the end of April.

The treaty was one of the most hopeful agreements reached at the height of the cold war, when all signatory nations who did not hold nuclear weapons committed to never possessing them and the (then) five declared nuclear weapons states committed to taking steps towards disarmament and not exporting nuclear weapons technology.

It has had some considerable success, notably in achieving nuclear-free continents South America, Africa, and the very large central Asia nuclear weapons-free zone.

However, the future of the non-proliferation process is under enormous threat from the lack of agreement on non-trading of fissile materials and the lack of a conference on the Middle East weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone.

Nuclear weapons are held by the five declared states — Britain, France, Russia, China and the US, but also by India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.  In the case of India and Pakistan there is the strong possibility of renewed talks between both countries as a way of reducing the threat, and the engagement of North Korea through the six-party talks does provide the possibility of removing that source of nuclear weapons.  

The danger if this is not achieved is that Japan, already under a right-wing government and already ditching its peaceful foreign policy in favour of rearmament, will use its huge nuclear power industry to enrich uranium to weapons grade, and thus develop nuclear weapons.

In the case of the Middle East, Israel has nuclear weapons that were secretly developed at the Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert with technology obtained from a number of sources including France.  

The revelation of Israel’s nuclear weapons came only after Mordechai Vanunu, who worked there, told the world about this frightening development. The price he paid was enormous, being lured from Britain to Italy where he was drugged, kidnapped and taken to Israel.  

Vanunu spent 18 years in prison (13 of them in solidarity confinement).  No reply was ever given to concerns that were made about Israel’s refusal to first acknowledge that it possesses nuclear weapons and second ratify the NPT and a range of other nuclear weapons-restricting agreements.

He declared both his wish to see the end of nuclear weapons and also his wish to see peace in the Middle East.  Since then he’s been placed under restrictions and unable to leave Israel, mostly remaining under house arrest.  He is one of the heroes of the peace movement and should be applauded as such.

At the last preparatory committee for the NPT review there was deep anger amongst many Arab League states at the failure to convene a Middle East conference which would bring Israel and Iran around the same table.

Every country represented in New York spoke in favour of the conference which the Finnish government has been tasked with organising. It still has not happened and thus the whole NPT process is at risk if either Arab League countries walk out or they announce that because of the failures of the process they in turn will develop their own nuclear weapons.  The dangers are immense.

The British government’s contribution to all this is a depressing repeat of cold war rhetoric with claims made by both Conservative ministers, some Lib Dem spokespeople and Labour opposition spokespeople that Britain needs nuclear weapons for its own “security.”

By this logic, every country in the world could claim it needs nuclear weapons for its own security because others do have them. Interestingly, a very substantial number of candidates from most parties in the run-up to the May general election have declared their opposition to nuclear weapons, and more specifically to the renewal of Trident nuclear missile system and the £100 billion bill attached to it.  

There have been open declarations from 75 per cent of Labour candidates responding to the CND survey and opinion polls indicate growing opposition to nuclear weapons. The Scottish National Party’s opposition to Trident is well known, as is the opposition of most Scottish Labour candidates, which makes for a very interesting scenario after May 7.

Nato requires all its member states to spend 2 per cent of their GDP on defence, and the demand of a US Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno that Britain spend even more on defence in order to bolster Nato in Europe is dangerous and depressing.

Britain is the fifth-largest defence spender in the world and has an enormous arms industry.  We have a foreign policy which increasingly looks as if it’s led by the interests of the defence industry more than anything else.

Thus Britain soft-pedals on human rights abuses in Bahrain in the interests of selling weapons and opening a base, and is remarkably muted on the systemic human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia — a country which has been the recipient of enormous arms sales mainly from Britain but also from the US.

We need a very serious debate about the role of Nato in its eastwards expansion, and the way in which Britain is turning into a cheerleader for massive rearmament across Europe.

A wholesale disarmament and security agreement would release vast financial resources that could be spent on something far more useful than WMD.

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North.