I have spent much of the campaign so far wondering when issues of foreign policy would be discussed. This open question soon morphed into a desperate cry for someone, anyone to talk about what goes on beyond the shores of these islands and what Britain can or should do about those events. The 7-way debate that we were graced with by ITV proved to be as devoid of these questions as the rest of the campaign, for even when issues such as immigration floated in, they were stripped of an international context.
So it was that I had essentially resigned myself to a campaign devoid of hard questions about big problems, until today’s news headlines sparked a moment of hope. Trident had risen from the depths to push itself, and surely with it bigger questions about Britain, onto the agenda. At last, I could have almost cried, we can have the debate!
But it seems it is not to be. Most of the quotes given to the media on this have reduced Trident to an item of expenditure devoid of any foreign policy context, or have shown a woeful misunderstanding of basic nuclear strategy. We have had the Defence Secretary trying to somehow line up Ed Miliband’s beating his brother to be Labour leader as impairing his ability to make good security decisions. We have had Conservative MPs tweeting about how Vladimir Putin would prefer Ed Miliband in Downing Street. We have had Owen Jones accusing Michael Fallon of being anti-Semitic for using the phrase “stab in the back”. None of this, of course, is actually meaningful discourse of any kind. It’s the sort of playground politics most of the people involved in this argument have likely loudly denounced at some point.
What we are facing is, essentially, an existential question – what is Britain for in the world? Any good strategy must start with the end, and then work out the means. It is essentially meaningless to debate Trident, for example, without first being absolutely clear as to what you think Britain should do in the world; such a massive commitment of money, manpower and industrial effort needs to be placed in that sort of context. It is equally meaningless to debate Britain’s relationship with the EU without first deciding what Britain’s role in the world should be. If this is not an easy question to answer, it is partly because we have become adept at scuttling away from it in recent years.
After the election, we are meant to have a new Strategic Defence and Security Review; we will also, as a party, have votes to face on Trident and on the events that govern so much of foreign policy practice. As a party, to have any hope of a coherent answer in any of these debates, we need to first of all understand and clearly articulate what Britain is for in the world. Without that, we are left with an argument as impoverished as today’s squabble over Trident.
* Tim Oliver is a party member in Leeds, who has recently submitted a PhD on British foreign policy at the University of Hull.
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34 Comments
“have shown a woeful misunderstanding of basic nuclear strategy”
Perhaps because there is not and never has been any such thing.
David-1; news, perhaps, to men like Bernard Brodie and Lawrence Freedman, who wrote extensively on nuclear strategy.
I agree with david-1. If you want to look at basic nuclear strategy you just have to look at what the Rand Corporation puts out – it was wonderfully satirised in Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, which is as relevant today as it was when it first came out in 1964.
I get more moved by the question “What is in the UK’s national interest?” than “What is the UK’s role in the world?”.
I worry that once you start talking about an idealised role then it leads you to do things against the national interest, just because you believe it to be morally right. It opens up a number of dangerous options that I think should be locked away.
I’m genuinely undecided on Trident, but if we got rid of it I would probably want the whole lot ploughed into the Defence budget. Getting rid of Trident and cutting the defence budget would weaken the UK too much. I believe.
There seem to be several options between no nukes and a four boat I CBM System.
The question is whether we’re prepared to settle for less than Trident.
One thing that I might add is that I’m just pretty irritated by this Conservative assertion that the SNP and Miliband are going to do a deal and get rid of Trident. There is absolutely zero chance of anything like that happening. Labour’s policy is actually pretty close to the Tories.
From my personal perspective, and you can call me an old-fashioned hippy if you like, is that we would do a lot more good in the world by spending the Trident money on international aid. I don’t like having weapons of mass destruction whose only purpose is to kill innocent civilians and for me getting rid of them is an important point of principle. I realise I am in the minority though.
“It is essentially meaningless to debate Trident, for example, without first being absolutely clear as to what you think Britain should do in the world”
Good article, my thanks. Very nice to see a spate of FP/Defence articles on LDV in recent weeks.
To address the quite above:
If Britain is to use [both] its wealth (to fund a defence capability), [and] its will to use it (for elective warfare), then it is important it has the absolute security at home that permits it engage the sum of its military capability in projecting military force into remote corners of the world.
This security is had by the following means:
1. A friendly region (europe) in which we remain (the preeminent) military power.
2. A network of military and civil alliances into which all parties have surety that co-signitories accept their responsibilities.
3. A geographic advantage of our island nation which means we need not fear neighbouring tanks rolling across the border on a friday afternoon.
4. A Continuous At Sea Deterrent that means it matters not if our military capability is stuck in a landlocked desert at 1000 metres above sea level.
Unlike our continental neighbours, who remain unable to call upon all of these advantages, our Armed Forces are almost uniquely configured for power projection not territorial defence:
No massed tank dvisions, No endless ranks of conscript infantry. No thousands of artillery pieces
Instead, we’ve blown our cash on the strategic enablers that us to project power at a distance, so although it looks rather weedy in top-trumps terms we can plan, initiate, insert, prosecute, and conclude a theatre-level combined-arms operations wherever we are needed.
There is no other nation on this earth besides the US that can do this, and it requires:
The Naval and Airforce logistics tail to support this. The Airforce C3 assets to control the battlespace. The Army logistcs tail to support this on the ground. The carriers to bust the door in, and secure the the ground war thereafter. The Navy to sustain Strategic Lines Of Communication. The divison level assets able to operate from beyond Northwood.
This army would not be much use against the Third Soviet Shock Army in the Fulda Gap, but it is not expected to succeed in that.
In part, this risk is acceptable because Trident means no one would dare. So we can carry on doing the difficult jobs in international relations, and that is why £2-3 billion per annum is justified.
Not too much of a minority, Caron. The last conference vote on this (was it in York?) was close; it was probably decided by the “pay-roll vote”, leaving me with a suspicion that quite likely a majority of Lib Dem members are against renewing Trident.
For me it’s a no-brainer, not because of happy memories of Bertrand Russell speaking for CND in Trafalgar Square but because Britain’s “independent nuclear deterrent” is a delusion; what it really amounts to is that we’re paying for part of the US’s nuclear submarine fleet.
I think its pretty obvious in an ideal world that very few people would choose to have or support the idea of nuclear weapons.
Its just unfortunate we don’t live in an ideal world, and where there’s lots of policy options where we can afford to be radical to our very core, playing with an existential threat like this, is one where I think it is perfectly reasonable to be practical and pragmatic.
Which leads me to a similar policy position as Tim , we eed to ask what our place in the world is, and respond accordingly, the right position I hope is international power that wants to keep influence.
@ Tabman – “There seem to be several options between no nukes and a four boat I CBM System. The question is whether we’re prepared to settle for less than Trident.”
There is only one sensible option between no nukes and a four boat CASD, which is a nukes-in-the-cupboard strategy combined with a [credible] means to rebuild the capability to deploy them on active service.
This is because four boat CASD is the most cost effective and capable nuclear deterrent possible given that nuclear boats (of all types) are deemed a strategic capability. Nuclear boat building and design requires the following considerations:
a – DK Brown believed four is the optimal production run for a high-tech/high-cost item like an SSN
b – The DIS requirement is for a new design every eight years in order to maintain design currency
c – The DIS requirement is for a new boat to hit the water every 22 months to maintain manufacturing
d – A fleet size that can meet “a”, “b”, & “c” without needing a service-life apt to give the Treasury apoplexy
Three boat CASD costs 90% as much as four CASD, yet provides only 60% of the utility.
Two boat CASD is even worse, pushing further distortions onto an already marginal industry.
To quote Malcolm Chalmers of RUSI: “If you end up going for an option which steps down the ladder but you don’t save any money it’s a political non-starter,”
In my (oh so terribly) humble opinion, the only option that provides a significant saving and yet still a functional deterrent capability is nukes-in-the-cupboard with a common fleet of SS(B)N attack submarines, fitted with four Common Missile Compartments, and a rental agreement for a dozen Trident D7 missiles from the Yanks. No boat on active patrol with a full warload would be needed.
“Existential threat” is a risible phrase that can be employed at will to justify all manners of evil. It is a very easy business for politicians and “strategists” to ratchet up paranoia until every blown nose abroad sounds like la patrie en danger.
Mr Oliver, Mr Emmerson, and people like them cannot trot out these words and expect others to stand in awe. If they think they have a case, they must say in specific terms:
1) What is the threat?
2) Where does it come from?
3) In what respect are nuclear weapons an answer to the threat?
4) What scenarios do they see in which that threat would be met by them?
5) How realistically likely are these scenarios?
There’s another side to this which I think is taken pretty seriously in arms controls circles, though you’d need to find an expert to make sure.
If the UK gave up nuclear weapons it would still be able to make them fairly quickly.
In some imagined future an enemy looking at us would have the choice of waiting for us to get nukes, or nuking us before we got them. As construction can be carried out essentially secretly they would never know in advance when it would be too late to send their nukes over, so there’s a strong incentive to initiate and get in a strike without retaliation.
Usually people against trident say a situation where they could be needed is very unlikely, which is true enough. But the argument above shows that not having them makes it much more likely, the enemy has to fire their nukes before they really want to in order that they strike before the UK has built a response. Not having nukes is one thing, not having them but being able to build them quickly makes you a bigger target.
That said, the article is right. This is sort of irrelevant if we’ve not decided on what britain should be in the world.
Jedibeeftrix
You set out some clear thinking on why we might want Trident:
” it is important it has the absolute security at home that permits it engage the sum of its military capability in projecting military force into remote corners of the world” / “doing the difficult jobs in international relations”
This need to guard our backs seems premised on our continuing with military adventures that do not command wide support. If we restricted ourselves to joining in United Nations peace-keeping the need would be far less pressing.
So I think the big divide is between those who think our military adventurism (e.g. in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya) is something we will want to repeat, in which case yes perhaps we need Trident; and those, including myself who believe it has been immoral and counter-productive, and that we should instead do all we can to support a more consensual international approach to peace-keeping.
Thank you Jedi for writing some really engaging stuff on this and my other recent post on LDV; I promise to get back to you in more detail when I am less sleep-deprived!
A good article and interesting comments, especially from jedi. From my (limited) understanding of the logistics I agree that reducing the submarine fleet to three would not provide continuous at sea deterrence and is not a sensible alternative.
To those who support unilateral nuclear disarmament as a matter of moral principle (which is one if the two main arguments put by the SNP, the other being cost), I cannot see how it can be immoral for us to have Trident but morally acceptable for us to shelter under the nuclear umbrella of NATO. Although most NATO members are non-nuclear states, they have all signed up to a defensive alliance which has nuclear deterrence at its core. A number of them host US nuclear weapons on their soil and carry them on their aircraft. The SNP’s old policy of renouncing NATO membership as well, while fundamentally ill-judged, at least had the virtue of consistency. Their current one does not reject nuclear defence so much as subcontract it to the Americans and French.
If we are going to replace Trident then I believe that the only means of delivery that should be considered is the ‘continuous at sea’, 4 boat solution. Toby Fenwick argues well for an airborne delivery system based on stealth technology but there are vulnerable areas – from airfields and silos open to a ‘Pearl Harbour’ first strike scenario to the point where stealth aircraft have to air to air refueling with non stealth tankers. I asked him about the ability for our future F35s being able to carry Trident in a ‘clean’ configuration and whilst I accept his assurance that they can do so, I am still uneasy.
I have no confidence in Lib Dem policy on this matter. Three submarines holds us open to the same first strike operations mentioned above,
So, if we are to have a nuclear capability then a four submarine option is the only viable option. However, whilst foodbanks are prevelant, whilst austerity is continuously visited on the poor and whilst our armed forces are suffering their cuts to the bone we cannot afford a nuclear option.
@ Denis – “So I think the big divide is between those who think our military adventurism (e.g. in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya) is something we will want to repeat, in which case yes perhaps we need Trident; and those, including myself who believe it has been immoral and counter-productive”
Nothing wrong with that view, but public opinion is returning to the historic norm in supporting an activist foreign policy capable of sovereign and strategic power projection:
http://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/internationalism-or-isolationism-chatham-house-yougov-survey
Post Iraq/Afghan support dipped to about half, unsurprisingly, but it has now recovered. Fortunately AFAIC.
Also, in a similar vein to Alex’s point about subcontracting our NATO nuclear umbrella out to the French and the US; the job still needs doing, and I think it would be immoral of us to do the same vis-a-vis our UNSC responsibilities.
@ David-1 – “Mr Oliver, Mr Emmerson, and people like them cannot trot out these words and expect others to stand in awe. If they think they have a case, they must say in specific terms:”
May I direct you to the National Security Strategy:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61936/national-security-strategy.pdf
And this section in the forward:
“In order to protect our interests at home, we must project our influence abroad. As the global balance of
power shifts, it will become harder for us to do so. But we should be under no illusion that our national
interest requires our continued full and active engagement in world affairs. It requires our economy to
compete with the strongest and the best and our entire government effort overseas must be geared
to promote our trade, the lifeblood of our economy. But our international role extends beyond the
commercial balance sheet, vital though it is.
Our national interest requires us to stand up for the values our country believes in – the rule of law,
democracy, free speech, tolerance and human rights. Those are the attributes for which Britain is admired
in the world and we must continue to advance them, because Britain will be safer if our values are upheld
and respected in the world.
To do so requires us to project power and to use our unique network of alliances and relationships –
principally with the United States of America, but also as a member of the European Union and NATO,
and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We must also maintain the capability to act well
beyond our shores and work with our allies to have a strategic presence wherever we need it.”
“What we are facing is, essentially, an existential question – what is Britain for in the world? ”
A very good question
Jedi
That National Security Strategy has fine words – “Our national interest requires us to stand up for the values our country believes in – the rule of law, democracy, free speech, tolerance and human right”
– but as the Chatham House survey you linked to shows, they’re a minority view: “While more than two-thirds of Liberal Democrats and half of Labour supporters say they support an ethical foreign policy, only one-third of Conservatives and just 17% of UKIP voters do “.
Like the majority of the public I support those values – though I prefer to rely on the UN Declaration of Human Rights rather than calling them “British values” – and I’m in favour of “an ambitious British foreign policy and leadership role”.
It’s just that I don’t see our recent violent history as promoting either.
Denis, it also says:
“It is in this context that this edition of the Chatham House–YouGov survey explores attitudes to
international affairs among the British public and opinion-formers. The results indicate that there has
been no clear movement towards isolationism: in fact, in some policy areas the reverse appears to be
true. Overall, there is support for an ambitious British foreign policy and leadership role.
•
Majorities of the public and opinion-formers say that the UK should aspire to be a ‘great power’
rather than accept that it is in decline. 63% of the public and 61% of opinion-formers support
this view, the highest level since the survey was first conducted.
•
A majority of the public says that the UK has a responsibility to maintain international security,
provide troops for peacekeeping missions and help lead the global response to climate change.
At the same time, the public’s attitudes are marked by a degree of caution and defensiveness. They
are sceptical of intervention in support of uprisings overseas, think foreign policy should focus on
protecting the UK at its borders and remain unsupportive of development aid spending.
•
For the public, border protection and counterterrorism continue to be the most important
international issue, as has been the case in the past two editions of the survey. Opinion-formers,
meanwhile, think promoting British business and trade should be the main focus of foreign policy.
•
Among both the public and opinion-formers, international terrorism is most widely identified as
a threat to the British way of life.
•
Only 17% of the public say that the UK has a moral responsibility to support popular uprisings
against dictators.
•
The proportion of the public who think that the armed forces do the most to serve UK interests
abroad has fallen from a peak of 53% in 2011 to 38% in 2014
A mandate for Greater Belgium it is not.
The other options I’ve heard mentioned are SLCMs and ALCMs.
The former are mounted in submarines so the same logic as CASD applies to the boats; four guarantees one is always available. The issue then becomes one of the relative cost of a ballistic missile vs a cruise missile and their relative effectiveness. AIUI ballistic missiles are best because they can’t be shot down. However am I correct in thinking SLCMs can go in cheaper boats?
ALCMs are much cheaper but much more vulnerable and are range limited.
Denis M “This need to guard our backs seems premised on our continuing with military adventures that do not command wide support. If we restricted ourselves to joining in United Nations peace-keeping the need would be far less pressing.”
If history teaches us anything it us to expect the unexpected when it us least expected.
the biggest black mark against nuclear cruise is that it increases uncertainty, and therefore increases risk that the principle that MAD fails to [deter]. the need to ready a unit, and possibly to preposition it, is a signal that others will look for and respond to in their own readiness preparations. accidents happen, and with nukes that could be catastrophic.
escalation in military-speak.
if people detect a seaborne cruise missile launch they’ll be a lot less twitchy if they have certainty that we just going to park 500kg of high explosive in some dictators office, if they think it might include nukes…
the same can be said of fighter/bomber launched cruise missiles. it would be from a dedicated squadron, will people get twitchy if we deploy that unit to Cyrpus, or onto a carrier parked off the Norwegian coast.
much as I like the idea of ballistic conventional weapons for global strike, a version of the kinetic harpoons if you will, the fact that they too would create this uncertainty vis-a-vis trident rather takes the shine of them.
we get an extremely cost efficient deterrent courtesy of the yanks, using their missiles and missile compartment with our warheads and boats, and i’m not at all convinced it would be cheaper to create our own cruise based deterrent.
certainly less effective, and less conducive to deescalating a crisis!
The issue (which is not just for Liberal Democrats) is one of democracy.
It is summed up by Denis Mollison in his first comment –
” …Denis Mollison 9th Apr ’15 – 4:59pm
Not too much of a minority, Caron. The last conference vote on this (was it in York?) was close; it was probably decided by the “pay-roll vote”, leaving me with a suspicion that quite likely a majority of Lib Dem members are against renewing Trident.”
Similarly, a majority of general election candidates for Liberal Democrats, SNP, Labour, PC, Greens, SF, SDLP, Alliance are probably also against renewing Trident.
Even some Conservatives such as former SofS for Defence, Michael Portillo, are opposed to renewing Trident, not to mention several golf clubs full of Generals and Brigadiers who think it is militarily barmy to spend money on renewing Trident.
A small minority of front benchers from two other parties persist in the delusion that Trident renewal would be worth £100 Billion. The pay-roll vote does the rest, immune from logic or rational debate.
They are whipped up by media moguls whose interests diverge from our national interest, indeed whose willingness to support wars and armaments over the last twenty years has created ISIS.
A small minority is imposing its views on the majority.
This mania is given support from the BBC which seems to be stuck in a time-warp of 1950s Labour Party Conferences, when the Dimbleby brothers were new to TV.
As Denis Mollison sums up —
“…Britain’s “independent nuclear deterrent” is a delusion; what it really amounts to is that we’re paying for part of the US’s nuclear submarine fleet.”
Thanks Jedi, interesting and informative
I’m with Michael Portillo, the former Tory defence secretary, on this one. Trident serves no military or security purpose. There are no conceivable circumstances under which we would use it and there is no enemy we face or will face that is deterred by it. It is purely a symbol. I doubt any serious, senior politician really believes we should be spending 100 billion purely for reasons of national prestige but they fear puncturing the electorate’s illusions. We are no longer a ‘great’ power. It’s time to grow up.
Joh illey – “As Denis Mollison sums up —
“…Britain’s “independent nuclear deterrent” is a delusion; what it really amounts to is that we’re paying for part of the US’s nuclear submarine fleet.””
Howcome? Genuine question.
@ AndrewR – “I’m with Michael Portillo, the former Tory defence secretary, on this one. Trident serves no military or security purpose. There are no conceivable circumstances under which we would use it and there is no enemy we face or will face that is deterred by it”
As long as you don’t see it as a bankable saving, then fine. We’d still need nuclear (attack) submarines, and we’d still need to abide by the dictums above, so; new design every nine years, new boat every 27 months, 27 year service life (as much as you could stretch it), which leaves a requirement for 12 boats to maintain a viable industry.
We’d also have a long term need for much of aldermaston under a nukes-in-the-cupboard scenario, even even with unilateral disarmament due to the requirements of our non-prolifieration duties.
Quite aside from that, much of the remaining infrastructure would take decades to fully decommission.
And then, you need to revisit your national security startegy’s risk profile and the Defence Planning Assumptions that arise from it, because in removing the security of CASD you will need to invest in conventional deterrence to make good on that deficit. You won’t find £8b for the NHS under that sofa!
Tabman – we are reliant on US technical support –
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/defence-and-security-blog/2014/jul/01/trident-nuclear-weapons-uk
I have also read that firing Trident requires access codes which the US could refuse; even if that’s untrue, it’s close to inconceivable that we would use Trident without US consent.
Denis, we have independence of operation, not independence of acquisition:
https://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/britainss-nukes-independence-of-operation-not-of-acquisition/
The benefit being that it appears our deterrent costs roughly half what the french spend on theirs.
The matter of the nuclear deterrent is the most controversial area of cooperation if only because of our technology relationship with the US through shared facilities such as Aldermaston, but rumours in the news suggest this collaboration was agreed with the US beforehand therefore we must assume that sensitive areas will be thoroughly fire-walled on both sides. The lack of protest and outrage from the other side of the Atlantic indicates that the US is satisfied with the security arrangements surrounding sensitive technologies. It has been suggested that ‘downstream’ effects will result in a joint deterrent but given that the French deterrent costs nearly double our own, which is itself heavily subsided by sharing with the US, it is difficult to imagine that any putative French/UK deterrent would prove as effective or as cheap as that which is possessed now. It would in any case only swap one technology dependence for another and thus fail to answer the biggest objection which lies around its independence.
Dennis M. Thanks. Our missiles are part of a pool with the US but that is through choice. The French have their own ICBMs si I’m sure we could develop them if necessary
Tabman 10th Apr ’15 – 7:26pm
“………Our missiles are part of a pool with the US but that is through choice. ”
Oh really? Who made that choice? Are you suggesting that the USA had no opinion on the matter ?
I
Good article – I’ve also been very sorry to see so little public and media interest in international affairs.
I’ve written about Syria a fair amount (such as currently here: https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-the-humanitarian-catastrophe-in-syria-and-the-need-for-a-nofly-zone-45405.html) and a question I have constantly been asking of decision makers is ‘what are we trying to achieve?’ How can we expect to have a useful policy on Syria if we don’t take enough interest to work out what outcome we’d like to see?
As for the nuclear / Trident issue, jedibeeftrix writes very well on the subject. Personally I think we should go with a ‘nukes in the cupboard’ strategy, although Toby Fenwick’s proposals have merit too. I come to that conclusion after thinking about ‘what Britian is for’. And in fact, although I want Britain to remain able to project power abroad, I actually see Trident as being a hiderance to us doing that, as it sucks resources out of more useful bits of the armed forces. There have been some really interesting articles in recent months by US generals basically writing the UK off as a useful ally because of the weakness of our conventional armed forces.
Putting aside arguments as to whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, there’s no getting around the fact that our military strategy was a failure in the first two examples, and our military weakness prevented us from seriously considering anything besides an air war and some special forces in the third. (Again, leaving aside whether or not it would have been wise to have deployed troops to try to keep the peace in the aftermath of Gadafi’s overthrow, we didn’t have the forces to even contemplate doing so.)