Correspondent Geoffrey Bulmer (Not Left Defenceless, 19.1.07) says the flaw in my argument is that "a country must have nuclear weapons to defend itself".

I was responding to his opinion (Nuke Terror Cell, 11.12.06) that there is no longer a case for Britain to have nuclear weapons because "the cold war ended in 1990, Russia has changed" and "there is no major state with a hostile approach to Britain".

He writes that our enemies now are "small groups of assailants who operate as guerillas" against whom nuclear weapons are no defence.

Using that argument, Russia and America should also dispose of their nuclear weapons.

If past governments worldwide had based their defence policy on perceived present day certainties we would still be fighting with bows and arrows.

These "small groups" as he describes them are united by ideology and are determined to impose upon the world their extreme form of Islam. Suppose they gained control of a State and nuclear weapons? With the help of Pakistan, and finance and modern weapons from America, the Taliban became the government of Afghanistan.

This resulted in passenger air liners being deliberately crashed into American skyscrapers and British soldiers losing their lives in Afghanistan in an attempt to prevent the Taliban from regaining power.

If the Taliban succeed, then the scenario of an enemy state dedicated to our destruction that Geoffrey Bulmer assures us has disappeared forever, will be back.

And, as these fanatics say, they "love death, and the decadent Westerners love life". That is why these fanatics will stop at nothing and are convinced they will win.

BERT WARD, Linthorpe, Middlesbrough