Encouraging nuclear proliferation

Talk about encouraging nuclear proliferation, it would be hard to do much more to encourage it than Tony Blair just did:

Tony Blair has argued that Britain needs to buy a new generation of nuclear weapons because it might not be able to rely on the United States to protect it if it were attacked. The Prime Minister, who flies to Washington tomorrow to discuss an exit strategy from Iraq with George Bush, surprised MPs by suggesting Britain could not take America's support for granted as he announced the Government was backing a submarine-based "son of Trident" system.

If Britain can't count on the U.S. to protect it, then nobody can. That means that Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, New Zealand, ... you name it, all need to get nukes of their own.