A trident has three prongs. In political terms there are three ‘prongs’ on offer now in the Trident nuclear debate.
One prong says do away with Trident altogether, and with it Britain’s allegedly ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent. Another says keep it, but offer a 20% reduction in the number of missiles (this is the option favoured by the Blair/Brown/Cameron ‘BBC’ consensus). The third prong also says keep Trident, but suggests a 50% reduction in the system’s capability.
All three options have their problems. The straightforward elimination of Trident has the advantage of being in a principled unilateralist tradition, but is not really practical politics. It is unlikely to be adopted by any of the three major parties. It would, if adopted as Government policy, leave Britain without any cards to play in subsequent nuclear disarmament talks.
The ‘BBC’ option of offering a 20% reduction is really a fig leaf to hide the true intention to keep Trident or its successor system forever and a day. It is justified on the grounds that we don’t know what threats may emerge in the future, and therefore need to “keep hold of Nurse (Trident) for fear of something worse”. It is a fudge that would do nothing to persuade states such as Iran to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions. I strongly suspect that it is inspired more by a desire to placate the Bush administration than by anything else.
The third option of keeping Trident, but offering a 50% reduction in capability, is the one favoured by Ming. It is justified on the same grounds as the Blair policy – but the Liberal Democrat leadership has failed to identify any conceivable scenario in which a renewed Trident would be a credible deterrent to some enemy of Britain. The 50% reduction has been put forward no doubt as a genuine effort to kick start nuclear disarmament and persuade other states not to go down the nuclear weapons route. But walking into disarmament talks and offering an immediate 50% reduction with nothing in return is not really a very useful negotiating ploy. Without a link to French or US nuclear reductions the gesture is likely to be somewhat meaningless.
There is a fourth option, which also has major problems. This is the idea of abandoning Trident and developing a European deterrent, perhaps in partnership with the French. The LDEG (Liberal Democrat Europe Group) has advanced the case for this notion. While this is superficially attractive, particularly given the Party’s pro-Europe credentials, it is also not practical on several grounds. The idea of Chirac, or any other French President, agreeing to pool the French deterrent with the rest of Europe is fantasy. Even if this hurdle were overcome a nuclear deterrent with more than 20 fingers on the button is scarcely credible. Europe standing separate from the USA but armed with a nuclear bomb of its own is not a prospect that is likely to persuade would-be nuclear powers not to join the nuclear club.
The Party’s stance before the Ming initiative of December 2006 contains the seeds of a solution. At that time the “line” was that no decision need be taken for several years yet. The implication being that Britain could use its possession of a nuclear capability as a means of negotiating significant reductions in the world’s nuclear arsenals.
There is to be a review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) this year, followed by a major international conference on NPT in 2010. A viable British policy would be to keep Trident, but put the whole of the Trident system on the table at these talks. Britain would offer to abandon the whole of our nuclear deterrent if other nations will follow with serious reductions in their nuclear stockpile and capability. If (and it is a big if) the French, perhaps under a different Presidency by then, could also be persuaded to follow suit the prospect of a nuclear-free Europe would open up.
Besides being a credible alternative such a stance would have clear party political advantages for the Liberal Democrats. It would mean that our MPs could vote against the Blair/Cameron fudge with a clear conscience. This policy could unite both unilateralists and multilateralists within the Party. It would provide us with a distinctive policy we could sell on the doorstep. If adopted it might also avoid a clash between activists and leadership on the conference floor.
John Thomson is a Liberal Democrat activist in Western Counties.
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13 Comments
Interesting.
Thought a cynic might say that the position is a fudge in itself.
Saying that a decision is not needed would be portrayed as a fudge. If the worry is to unite the party over voting against the Blair/Cameron et al 20% reduction, I don’t see why they can’t do that on the basis as we think there should be a much bigger reduction – just that some of us think that it should be a complete reduction, others only 50% . . .
Check out Linda Jack’s Blog http://lindyloosmuze.blogspot.com/index.html
Looks like Bruce kent agrees with the FPC motion!!
“There is no need to make one now. We are all being forced onto the Blair timetable. A decision on renewal can and should be deferred until 2010, after the next review conference of the nuclear non -proliferation treaty. At least by then we will see if abolition negotiations have made any progress. By that time too there will have been some chance of a genuine debate within this country.”
Agree with previous comment. Cannot see how the position espoused by John Thompson will unite activists and leadership, I for one would not support it. The problem of Trident is that it is not an issue many people feel able to compromise, or accept a consensus on. Its a bit like trying to find a compromise on murder, you think its OK I think its wrong, so where’s the compromise? What has been illadvised, illconceived and illjudged in all of this is the notion that the FPC motion to conference would attract a consensus……..yeah right!
On the wider issues of this debate, Quakers in Scotland have produced a briefing paper for those lobbying Tory MPs. The basic point is that Tories are unlikely to be swayed by general disarmament rhetoric but there are specific points where Tories have expressed grave concerns over UK Nuclear weapons and these arguments might carry weight.
The paper includes extracts from the transcrips of a 1998 debate by Edinburgh Tories on UK nuclear weapons where apparently Robert MacNamara (Former US Defence sec) and Field Marshall Lord Carver (Former UK chief of General Staff)made a powerful case agaisnt an UK ‘Deterrent’. Malcolm Rifkind made a response.
The briefing is not online unfortunately – – you are supposed to contact author and get a printed copy for £1.50 – I do have the address (not phone or email) so if someone in Edinburgh fancies making contact maybe we coudl get permission to make an electronic version available…
Sorry John but I’m not convinced.
The problem I see with your solution is that it begs the question what is our alternative if at the 2010 NPT conference the other nuclear powers don’t agree to cuts. If they don’t then we are in the same position as now but three years closer to Trident needing a replacement.
For such a position to carry weight it would need to be backed up by moves to replace Trident so we could say “this is what we are willing to give up.”
I also think you attach rather too much weight to the French deterrent and a “nuclear free Europe”. That rather ignores Russia! I also, and as I’m not a senior diplomat I can say this, have more long term concerns about Russia having a significant nuclear capability than most other powers.
The combination of a fragile, and rather dubious democracy, desire to control or at least have neighbouring states subservient and Russia’s likely dominiant position in energy supply terms creates some rather extreme worst case scenarios.
‘Trident’ is a rotten herring in all this.
The Nuclear Weapons complex keeps getting renewed mostly silently and without public debate bit by bit over the years. For example the most important decisions made recently have been to install new development facilities into AWRE Aldermaston. No discussion, of course.
The way the discussions on the ‘Nuclear Matter’ is managed is to have periodic selective consultations on bits and bobs and then take this as endorsement for the whole. Thus the so-called Trident debate now, which isn’t really even about the Trident Missile.
If we were having a proper national debate over the possibility of 50 years more of UK Nuclear Arms a proper White paper would be presented listing amongst other things:
1 The complex of nucleaer installations and the rolling ivestments that are taking place and that would be needed to maintain and develop nuclear weapons systems.
2 The parallel developments in non-nuclear weapons systems some of which could supplant ‘nuclear’ devices.
3 The Industrial interests that are served by developing and deploying these systems and the economic pressures thesse place on the government to make decisons based on industrial rather than security criteria.
4 How the industrial sectors of the UK Nuclear Weapons system relate to the patterns of possible corruption in the gerasl arms trade. (The current Saudi-BEa matter is an interesting litmus paper in all this).
4 The opportunity costs imposed on the military by having to pay for such systems as against other weaponry and equipment.
5 The political constraints including constraints on independent judgement of UK National Interest placed on the British Government through dependence on US co-operation at multiple complex points in the overall system.
6 In particular, the lessons we have learnt from the ongoing Iraq war about the pressures that can be put on the UK by the USA contrary to UK interests and the extent this is possible because of hidden pressure points in the Nuclear complexites.
7 A proper audit of the financial costs.
8 A comparison on what strategic and security issues would persuade Britain to become a nuclear arms power if it was not oen already, and an examination of how these schenarios compare to projected real-world security developments.
No such comprehensive debate is possible because no such proper outline of the system is ever presented to Parliament or the people. Instead we are diverted (as in the current White Paper) into contemplating one widget.
Parliament should now refuse to give penny-package approval for the so-called Trident renewal, and insist on a proper presentation of the entire issue.
This presentation should include a thorough analysis of the costs and opportunities of the UK withdrawing from nuclear weapons deployment.
After all, if the political position is that the UK is willing to negotiate away its nuclear arms, what happens if the world says “OK lets cut and abolish?”. It would be embarrassing, let us say, to find we didn’t know how to do this nor what it would cost.
In the absence of such a comprehensive analysis and in particular in the absence of a strategic review to facilitate any degree of future disarmament from Unilateral Action to negotiated tranches, the proposal to approve new Vanguard class submarines at this time should be turned down.
We do not need to put forwards proposals for alternative patterns of widgets like 50% cuts in warheads.
I disagree with the author’s opinion on unilateral Trident removal on pure pragmatic, not unilateralist, grounds – simply speaking it’s no longer tactically essential, with our European neighbours being highly unlikely enemies and with any more distant future assailants almost certain to impuge the wrath of other nuclear powers.
In practical terms, we’d only ever “push the button” if it was the only option to ensure our survival as a nation, which in any case is the only circumstance that the International Court of Justice has failed to rule out as a possible justification, and in this interdependent world it’s practically impossible to imagine such a cataclysmic scenario that didn’t pose such a threat to another nuclear power.
For a country of our economic power and limited military spending, I’d suggest our military interests would be better served by enhanced conventional forces. I don’t agree with some who see Trident as a big “pot of gold” to fund the domestic initative of the day; our armed forces and security services are (and will planned cuts will increasingly be) overstretched, under-resourced. I’d argue that these threats to military funding pose a greater threat to national security than some speculative failure to be able to respond to some unfathomable apocalyptic future where it is we – and only we – that are fighting for our surival.
Having said that, I’d nevertheless like to point out for the purposes of balanced debate the existence of a “fifth option”. While the existence of ’27 fingers’ on a nuclear deterrent is not credible, the situation is far more credible with 2 – that of a bilateral deterrent between the British and the French. While not my first choice, if tactically we were certain about the need for an deterrent independent from the United States the French would be our most obvious ally – and although there are arguments against it – cannot be as easily dismissed as the “European option”.
Linda Jack’s point (Feb 12th) on ‘the murder issue’ is a good one. But in terms of current tactics the conclusion is not necessarily what she suggests.
Perhaps we could look at this with a historical example.
The campaign against slavery got under way in earnest in the 18th century. Many campaigners rightly felt that nothing less than complete abolition, unilateral if necessary, was moral or desirable. Every day that slavery existed saw crimes against humanity, the guilt being on the people in the beneficiary societies. If a chance to abolish Slavery outright ever came up it needed to be seized.
But the 18th Century campaigners recognised that there was an enormous amount of education and social adjustment needed to get to that goal and make it stick against vested interests entrenched in the system. So the first campaign was against the ‘Slave Trade’. Campaigning against ‘The Trade’ was the equivalent of a ‘multilateral nuclear disarmament policy’. That united a far wider constituency into an ‘agreement to proceed’. Working on that ‘agreement to proceed’ helped everyone learn.
And it worked. Without compromising the ideals of the total abolition campaigners.
Can we do this again now?
The main point though was that the campaign against the Trade was deadly serious. They really meant it. Any multilateralist (so-called) approach has to show that it really ‘means it’ and is not just an additional smokescreen for perpetual delay and de-facto renewal decisions for nuclear arms.
Hywel Morgan’s point (Feb 12th) about being three years closer to a forced Trident decision in 2010 emphasises the need for clear thinking now. I agree.
We need to go into the NPT re-negotiations saying ‘ this is what it means to be a nuclear weapons power, these are the costs we have to bear, these are the distortions to our defence and security systems, this is the impact on our political processes’.
We have to have a very clear idea of the shape and interconnections of the whole Hydra and what it would take to make a fundamental change.
We need in short a complete audit of the system and its consequences, and publish this. Nothing like this exists at the present time. The information in this audit is essential for clear decision making whether the decision is for unilateral renunciation of nuclear arms or for staged withdrawal from nuclear arms.
This would help shape the debates in other countries – do they really want to end up with the same horrible choices.
The only reason for not demanding such a comprehensive audit now is to ensure that the future debates are characterised by misinformation and misdirection – fake multilateralism as a smokescreen.
Getting such an audit into place would in my view be by far the most effective step we could take to genuine control and real disarmament.
In my view the most positive outcome of the debate on LibDem polices on these issues is if we emerged with a comprehensive call for such a public audit, and refuse outright to make unnecessary ‘interim’ development decisions which allow the smokescreens to continue.
Chris Nelson’s point about the over-stretch in equipping the armed forces (and the need to avoid looking at the costs of the nuclear forces as a pot of gold for domestic spending) is a powerful one that needs serious examination.
There are certain points that need to be covered in any comprehensive audit of the Nuclear System.
I believe that at present the Defence Forces refuse to take on to their budgets the whole cost of the ‘Nuclear Arms System’. They apparently regard it as a ‘political asset’ for the UK rather than a viable weapons system and insist that a considerable tranche of the national expenditure on creating and maintaining this comes from budgets outside the defence estimates.
If correct, this may mean that nobody, including the Treasury, actually knows what the system costs.
It also means that Defence Chiefs can avoid having to make certain decisions on equipment priorities – so long as they get something like the expenditures they need for the systems they consider essential.
A proper audit of the whole system should reveal these hidden costs.
The audit should also insist that the Defence Chiefs prioritise their strategies and equipment development requests inclusive of bearing the costs for any Nuclear elements.
Where would they put these in a prioritised list? Would people within the Defence Establishment who have doubts about Nuclear Deployments feel able to express these?
I suspect that there would be some surprises.
This is by way of thenk you to all those who have responded to my original piece.
I can’t answer all the comments individually, but I hope you will all see that I was searching for an alternative to the “bidding war” between Blair (cut 20% but keep Trident) and the Lib Dem leadership (cut 50% but keep Trident.
An amendment to the leadership motion has now been published and this may provide a way forward.