Peter Moffat (Letters, 9 May) misses my point (Letters, 25 April). As my late friend Sir Michael Quinlan, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, always insisted, you can’t have a deterrent unless you are willing to use it. And our nuclear weapons have always been targeted on cities. Hence any use of them would mean obliteration of innocent civilians living there. And such obliteration would inevitably be murderous. Of course the men in the submarines don’t want to commit murder, but just to serve their country. Nevertheless pressing the button would entail the unwanted but intentional (i.e. murderous) killing of those innocent civilians.Michael Quinlan used to argue that such deaths would not be “intended” but his argument was fallacious.Brian Wicker, Pax