The world is a better place because of the role Britain plays internationally through aid, diplomacy and, when necessary, using force sanctioned by international law. It is worth remembering the many Libyans and Sierra Leoneans who are alive today because of the actions of Britain’s forces.
Yet at a time when the government is preparing to spend at least £25 billion on replacing our Trident nuclear weapons, it is making cuts to the conventional forces that make such interventions possible. There have been £74 billion of defence cuts to date, with another £3-5 billion due to be announced before the Easter recess. Unless something changes the Trident programme will go ahead without any serious debate, even though the Soviet Union which provided its rationale collapsed more than two decades ago.
We should be grateful that as a result of Liberal Democrat insistence, the primary investment decision on Trident (‘Main Gate’) has been postponed until 2016. It is also good news that Nick Harvey has successfully pushed for a study of the alternatives to Trident. We believe this study should be significantly expanded to explicitly consider the alternative of getting rid of Britain’s nuclear weapons altogether.
Whether Britain needs nuclear weapons is the subject of a new CentreForum report ‘Dropping the Bomb: a post Trident future’, launched this week.
Our conclusion is that there is no credible threat to the UK now or in the foreseeable future where British Trident missiles would make a contribution to our security. In our analysis, this is as true for Iran, Pakistan and North Korea as it is for Russia and China. Reasonable people can differ about whether there was a need for Trident in the depths of the 1980s Cold War, but there is simply no strategic (much less financial case) for replacing Trident today.
We examine in detail the alternatives to Trident, including the cruise missile option, and find that they are either technically unproven, fiscally uncosted, militarily ineffective, strategically destabilizing or a combination of all four – as the Sunday Times pointed out a fortnight ago.
There are essentially two options: a like for like replacement of Trident with ‘continuous at sea deterrence’ (known as CASD) or non-replacement. And if we don’t need to replace Trident in 2028 because it fulfils no strategic role, why waste money on it until then?
What do we propose instead?
We propose a costed plan of eight interlocking recommendations, which withdraws Trident from service immediately, refocuses AWE Aldermaston’s work on disarmament verification technologies, and invests in the conventional forces to allow the UK to meet its global commitments. As part of this we propose converting the existing submarines to carry conventional cruise missiles to bridge the long range strike gap to the new carriers. It would provide a balanced UK military to maximise our ability to be a force for good worldwide. In the very unlikely case of a new Cold War, it would provide us with the option to return to fielding nuclear weapons.
We keep hearing that “to govern is to choose”, and as Lib Dems, I’m delighted that we choose through vigorous debate. So let’s have the debate about moving beyond the Cold War and focusing our defence spending where it can make a real difference..
Toby Fenwick is author of the CentreForum report ‘Dropping the bomb: a post Trident future’
* Toby Fenwick is a Research Associate of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has written extensively on the UK Trident programme, and served on the party’s last Trident Working Group. This article is written in a personal capacity.
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20 Comments
Delighted to see this intiative from Centre Forum.
It wasn’t long ago when CF organised it’s resources at a Lib Dem conference to support Ming Campbell in insisting that Trident should be replaced. No doubt different people were involved then but it does seem extrordinary how long it has taken for the political establishment to come to terms with reality.
I think a useful next step would be for CF to calibrate how useful our interventions are around the world- where they have succeeded (Sierra Leone) and failed (Afghanistan and Iraq). How much should we be spending on our military?
Particularly useful in the run up to the next war in Iran, of which the consequences I think wold be appalling (and the Lib Dems should not support it).
On the latter point there is probably not much time.
On a general point; CF has improved greatly in my opinion over recent months, keep up the good work!
[repeated for poor spelling – feel free to delete the comment above Mr Mod]
re: it being time to drop trident.
If………………. we explicitly promise a comittment to retaining the core defence budget (i.e. not including operations) above the 2.0% of GDP NATO minimum…………. then I am willing to at least listen to the proposal, given that it is growing ever harder to manage power-projection in a sovereign and strategic manner whilst also keeping nukes.
If……………… this is just some wet and limp-wristed Lib-Dem wheeze to get rid of nukes and spend the money on ever-so-nice social causes…………….. then I will completely and utterly reject any and every attempt to bring this into public debate.
Really, the ball is in your court……………
Defence always gets shafted, so you will understand my caution in the matter.
Trident is reaching its end of life, but there is no need to dispose of it immediately. As soon as you say that it sounds more anti-nuclear rather than being pragmatic. Any change needs to make sure it does not leave a vacuum or it will get zero support and plenty of argument.
The main problem is that there is genuine disagreement as to what our role should be, can be, and will be in the future, let alone working out how we need to be armed to fulfil our role.
Although Trident as it stands and Polaris before it were very much cold-war weapons, the people that are opposed to Trident or a nuclear replacement now are often the same that were opposed even during the cold war – that can undermine arguments before anyone even opens their mouth.
We also have the problem that some see another type of cold war looming, but this time with fragmented smaller states having nuclear weapons rather than one big enemy state. There is a genuine, practical argument that the USA has all the nuclear weapons that the West needs for its side of the nuclear balancing act, but there is also discomfort about being seen to be quite so beholden to a foreign power.
Contradictions all over the place, basically, and to find a genuine solution it seems that setting up a stall first is probably a bad idea. Inevitably it will be back to the situation where those people who are not actually actively in government roles have the luxury of saying all sorts of wonderful radical things from completely no nuclear to armed to our teeth, while those in government are stuck with the reality of knowing that no solution is ever going to be easy or appeal to the far ends of each argument.
So, it is back to working out our role – and not what we would like it to be to neatly fit which ever philosophy we are comfortable with, but what we can practically achieve and what will help most in the global community given our budget.
And good luck to anyone who wants to try and wade through that particular quagmire!
Note: I am a great believer that the higher the cost of policy then the more vital it is to park idealogical beliefs before attempting to find a solution.
I don’t support the replacement of Trident but I do support using any money saved for the construction of more SSN’s – that is nuclear powered attack submarines. The reasons are simple;
1) To maintain the skilled work force and ability to produce nuclear submarines you have to have a regular order (I read somewhere one every 22 months but don’t quote me on that). The construction of the 7th Astute is being stretched to cover for the delay in ordering the V-class replacement. This is going to cost so much it that apparently it would have been cheaper to order an 8th Astute.
2) The current fleet of SSN’s is shrinking fast and the planned 7 Astutes, although individually very capable, will be too small in number to perform all the roles required of them. The modern nuclear attack submarine is the “battleship” of the fleet, as well as providing over capabilities such as intelligence.
3) A continuation of the current Astute design would be the simplest option but we could also consider a Astute “Batch 2” with vertical launch tubes for cruise missiles. As the article says, cruise is not a good nuclear deterrent but is an excellent conventional deterrent, as well as being usable in support of British troops/interests.
Soft power is crucial but so is hard power. 12 SSN’s will be an affordable, significant piece of hard power, which can support our troops abroad whether on humanitarian operations or defending our interests. By all means cancel the V-class/Trident replacement but replace it with more submarines.
A simple question remains. Can you conceive of any occasion when the British might wish to independently use a nuclear weapon of any kind? Are we likely to throw a missile at Moscow or Tehran or Damascus or anywhere else without American consent? Of course not.
A weapon is only a deterrent if it stops someone else and it is only independent if it would be used alone. Would Trident or its replacement stop someone exploding a dirty nuclear bomb on Trafalgar square? Of course not.
Britain’s supposedly independent nuclear deterrent is cold war hangover which has no meaningful application in the 21st century. Not replacing it in 2016 will free up cash to spend on something worthwhile.
I can’t imagine a scenario where there would be no alternative but Trident. But I realise I am no military or political expert, so I have some simpler questions:
1. If Trident is scrapped, how long would it take to rebuild a similar capability if we thought we needed one?
2. How far ahead would we be able to see in order to make the decision to rebuild in time?
3. Can we see that far ahead?
Why would we want to build more nuclear SSNs (than are already planned)? If we are going to build more small reactors, we may as well power our cities with them rather than subs?
If we have to have nuclear weapons, lets have something cheap like nuclear capable cruise missiles. Cheap as chips by comparison and you can still hide them on subs. Trident is overkill. Replacing Trident like for like is overkill. We aren’t the British Empire anymore.
As the most realistic nuclear threat to the UK seems to be from non National source I fail to see who we would point any nuclear weapon at. For example, if Islamic terrorists managed to detonate a nuclear device during the Olympics. Do we pick a country at random ?
We are no match for Russia or China unlikely to be in range of Iran or North Korea and have good relations with the US and Israel. So if we are attacking none of those, using a nuclear weapon would be like removing a tooth with a JCB. The Tooth would come out but the head (in fact the whole body) would be destroyed….
MAD was always mad and they are now more pointless than ever….
@ Gareth Jones – “To maintain the skilled work force and ability to produce nuclear submarines you have to have a regular order (I read somewhere one every 22 months but don’t quote me on that)”
Correct, the conclusion of the DIS was to to maintain nuclear submarine building as a viable industry for the future would require a minimum of 11 boats built on a 22 month drum-beat and with a 22 year service life.
This to be divided into two classes to ensure that design skills remain current/cutting-edge, but not necessarily with a SSN/SSBN split (could be two concurrent classes of seven SSN types).
@ Alistair – “Why would we want to build more nuclear SSNs (than are already planned)? If we are going to build more small reactors, we may as well power our cities with them rather than subs?”
Because we rightly calculated that world-class SSN’s are a strategic asset that few others can compete with, and thus represents a degree of overmatch that makes contemplating war against the RN very difficult to swallow. However, as above, they are expensive and require a minimum investment in design [and] manufacture in order to keep viable.
There are two arguments here that surprise me, in a negative sense, and yet they give hope. Jedibeeftrix’s “weak and limp-wristed Lib-Dem wheeze” sounds like the sort of lip-curling contempt (so often an alternative to serious debate) I would expect not to flourish in a Liberal party, even ignoring the no doubt unintended homophobicovertones. Others seem to be sayinf that, yes, Trident is pointless and the money could be better spent, but we’re unhappy about supporting its removal because the wrong sort of people (anti-nuclear activists, peaceniks etc) seem to be supporting it. The argument should not be about who’s suppporting it, but about what the effects of the different policies would be.
However, both arguments come from people who might well in other circumstances be supporting a nuclear deterrent, but can see the strength of the case against the renewal of this one – so clearly relative hawks are reconsidering.
To come clean about my own position: I opposed unilateral nuclear disarmament during the Cold War because I could not see a unilateral UK decision being helpful to world nuclear disarmament, but changed my position after the end of the Cold War because people seemed to be forgetting the very real remaining dangers from nuclear arsenals and because, since we no longer had two blocs facing up to one another, I could no longer see that a moderate Britain at the nuclear table could make much more difference to the big players’ decisons than if we were non-nuclear. So yes, I do not love nuclear weapons, but I seek practical solutions to the dangers – and I too can imagine no circumstances in which Trident would be used except in support of a U.S. nuclear strike.
Interesting in the discussion “Europe” hasn’t been mentioned, even in passing…
Yes I know that we (GB) seem to like doing the “hokey cokey” when it comes to Europe, but both our role in Europe’s and Europe’s role in our defense needs to be factored in.
In tandem, the decision regarding nuclear weapons should take account of ‘our’ (GB and other nations) nuclear power strategy. Currently, ‘our’ nuclear industry is Uranium-based, a legacy from the development of the atom bomb and the need to have a capability to produce weapons grade materials – the primary reason for concern over Iran et al. Hence as Chernobyl and Fukushima show, you don’t always need nuclear weapons to cause nuclear damage to a country.
However, we know that nuclear power can be generated more safely from Thorium-based fuels, which can’t be converted into weapons grade materials. So a decommissioning could free up Uranium focused R&D etc. to develop Thorium (the main problem with Thorium is that R&D was diverted onto Uranium, to enable the building of weapons, the Cold War then perpetuated this R&D bias.). Given that (largely because of Fukushima) the world is reassessing their (uranium-based) nuclear power programmes and that GB is about to commence on a nuclear building programme, now would seem to be a good time to be making these hard decisions.
I think there’s also the issue of whether you need a strategic nuclear deterrent in the post Cold-War world, vs whether you remove all nuclear weapons entirely.
Trident is designed to be the minimum strategic deterrent – 4 subs; one on station, one on the way out, one on the way back, one in dock. The “enemy” doesn’t know where it is and so can’t hit it before it can launch its missiles . You could have a tactical nuclear deterrent based on tomahawk cruise missiles. They are more vulnerable than trident because they have to be launched from ships or aircraft, which are easier to find and take out with a first strike. But would be sufficient deterrent for more limited nuclear powers than those with ICBMs.
These days global reach would seem to be the imperative, and that means aircraft carriers and the means of moving troops and their equipment about quickly.
Just to add to and close off my digression into Thorium, the article http://www.resourceinvestor.com/2006/02/07/thorium-an-alternative-to-uranium provides a very level headed view of Thorium including it’s potential role in the disposal of weapons grade nuclear materials.
I agree with Tabman, global reach has been important, as demonstrated by the various conflicts we’ve seen and been involved in since the Falklands in 1982 and has probably become more important as the role of the military has increasingly become that of first line law and peace enforcers in conflict zones. And with the massive advance in military technology we’ve seen in the last 30 years alternatives to Trident maybe viable.
@ Simon – “Jedibeeftrix’s “weak and limp-wristed Lib-Dem wheeze” sounds like the sort of lip-curling contempt (so often an alternative to serious debate) I would expect not to flourish in a Liberal party, even ignoring the no doubt unintended homophobicovertones. ”
My most frequent complaint about the Lib-Dem’s is that they have existed for so long in the hot-house of perpetual opposition that they have ceased to make the argument for difficult positions when the positions lead to uncomfortable compromise and painful consequences.
A case in point is Lib-Dem foriegn and Defence policy that I have regarded as a shambles since i first started reading it:
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/britain%E2%80%99s-future-strategic-direction-7-whither-will-the-lib-dems-lead-us/
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/britain%E2%80%99s-future-strategic-direction-7-%E2%80%93-taking-another-look/
I live in hope that five years of seasoning will sharpen up the flaccid, lazy and quellerous defence and foriegn policy evident in years past.
If I am particularly scathing on this issue it is because defence and foriegn policy to me are the most interesting and relavent facet of politics, and much as i am right-of-centre I recognise that Labour at least percieve Britain as a global power with global responsibilities*, and thus desire to maintain sovereign and strategic power projection.
Lib-Dem’s have yet, as far as i know, yet to make this intellectual leap.
* for all that there execution has been spectacularly incompetent
re homophobic overtones:
fear not, the term “limp-wristed” was used to indicate a general ‘wetness’, such as a poor handshake insomuch as it might indicate a lack of ‘bottom’.
@Tabman, you can launch a cruise missile from a submarine. If you couldn’t they would be a completely ineffective alternative to Trident. They are vastly inferior as they can be shot down and they can’t travel as far so the sub has to be closer to the target. They also would not be as destructive.
I wrote the paper, and am grateful to all for your interest. The paper is available from http://centreforum.org/assets/pubs/dropping-the-bomb.pdf.
@Geoffrey Payne: this should be the first of a series of papers. The next one is about the UK’s role in the world.
@jedibeeftrix: Yes, the eight recommendations are there to be taken together. Meeting the NATO 2% of GDP target is explicitly stated, and the increased Astute buy is designed to protect the industrial base out to 2030 to allow the replacement of Astute in due course.
@Liberal Majority: strictly speaking, Trident isn’t approaching the end of its life – the missile and the warhead will go onto 2042, and the subs are good for another 10-15 years. But if there is no need for Trident – and the paper concludes that there is not and will not be – there’s no point in continuing to keep it through to 2030. Instead, I propose to convert the existing Trident submarines to fire conventional cruise missiles to provide a bridging long-range precision strike capability through to the mid-2020s until the carrier groups are available. All of this is costed in the report – see the chart on p. 52.
@Roland: Europe – in these terms, France – is considered in the paper. Unless you’re prepared to have jointly crewed missile submarines, then you’re unlikely to save too much cash. And joint crewing immediately precludes the independence which is allegedly at the core of the case for Trident.
@ Tabman / Alistair: Yes, and there are other problems with the use of nuclear cruise missiles, notably signalling, provision of warhead and missile, and where you can send the submarines. See page 36 of the report.
Again, many thanks for your interest.
Toby
Thank you toby.
Yes, I am aware of the conclusions, it is an interesting paper, rather I worry that lib-dens will seize on the nice bits (an excuse to ditch nukes) while blissfully ignoring the compensating. Commitments (2.0% of gdp and sub industry).
Kind regards
Jbt
@Toby – Europe: Anglo-Franco operation
I’ve quickly skimmed through the paper and one thing that comes out is that the reasons for ruling out French involvement effectively also apply to an EU defense scenario. Hence I would take it that (for the foreseeable future) you are also against any arrangements that would give the EU control over the deployment of the UK’s forces.
@jedibeeftrix: A fair point, which is why we’ve stressed the interlocking nature of the recommendations; you can’t cherry pick between them.
@Roland: I’m not per se against EU-led operations, indeed quite the reserve where they are appropriate. But it is clear that NATO has the organisational capacity and expertise to be the hub of out military planning in the foreseeable future.