The bullet points below summarise what I take to be the main lines of the arguments for and against Britain renewing its nuclear deterrent capability. A decision on this is due to be taken by the Government in 2016. The timetable is necessary because some of the equipment used by the current deterrence system - the submarines - is due to be retired during the 2020s. The issue is thus likely to feature prominently at the likley General Election in May 2015, especially as there are genuine differences between the three main parties on the issue. As of the time of writing in 2013, the Conservatives are the most pro-nuclear party and the Liberal Democrats the most anti, with Labour somewhere in the middle.
Arguments Against (Principled):
- Disarmament by Britain may encourage others to follow suit.
- Cost: spending on nuclear weapons is a disgrace when so many go hungry.
- Use of nuclear weapons is against international law.
- Use of nuclear weapons is necessarily immoral.
- Some other countries seem to get by just fine without it.
- The nuclear deterrent is a case of generals fighting the last war.
- Cost: Britain can no longer afford it.
Arguments For Renewal:
- It buys us a seat at the top table.
- The program keeps a significant number of people in work.
- The threat from North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states.
- Nuclear deterrence makes conventional wars less likely.
- Climate change implies an uncertain future for the world.
Section 1: Arguments Against (Principled)
1.1: Disarmament as a way of encouraging others to follow suit
I think that the weakest of the arguments against nuclear disarmament is that it might be expected to promote general disarmament. The basic problem with this argument is that it greatly overrates Britain's influence in the world. I find it highly implausible that British disarmament would bear significantly on the decisions of other nuclear powers, such as China, India, Pakistan, Russia and Israel, each of which will have become nuclear states for reasons that seem utterly compelling to them, and would be baffled at the suggestion that they should disarm just because Britain has. To the extent that other nuclear powers took note of British disarmament at all, they would probably interpret it as a sign of weakness.
Furthermore, there are already countries that have given up nuclear power status, having formerly possessed weapons (notably South Africa), but this does not seem to have inclined other nuclear states in general to give up in imitation. (In South Africa's case the major reason for giving up its weapons program was to help bring about an end to the country's international isolation - a factor that does not apply to most other nuclear states, including Britain).
1.2: Spending on nuclear weapons is a disgrace when so many go hungry
I think that this attempt to link the issues of nuclear deterrence and famine relief fails, for the following reason: the first duty of any government is to protect the safety of its citizens. This means that helping people out in other parts of the world, however desperate their plight, must have a lower priority than self-protection. Of course, if nuclear deterrence turns out not to be necessary for our self-protection, then the money spent it should indeed be spent on something else - quite possibly on aid to the hungry. But to establish that this is the case we would need an independent argument to demonstrate that nuclear deterrence is unnecessary for self-defence, and that argument alone would settle the issue concerning the renewal of the nuclear deterrent, with no need to refer to the desirability of alternative spending priorities.
In actual fact, we are not so short of money that we are forced to choose between maintaining our defences and meeting our obligations to the world's poor. We rank reasonably well in the OECDs league table of international aid donors - 9th out of 23 in the rankings according the the percentage of GDP spent on overseas aid in 2009 (and the 8 countries that ranked higher than Britain were all smaller countries, each having at most a quarter of Britain's population). Of course, someone may take the view that the OECDs performance on aid is not good enough and that we therefore ought to donate much more. But if we are to do this we must identify some other item of expenditure that we can do without, and I can see no particular reason why the nuclear deterrent should automatically be chosen for this role, as opposed to, say, some part of the 95% of the national defence budget that is spent on non-nuclear defence. And with any of the defence budget, if it is not necessary for our defence, then it should be scrapped regardless of whatever else the money will be spent on, and if it is necessary for our defence, then it should not be scrapped, again regardless of whatever else the money could be spent on.
In practice, the point of linking the arms industry and global poverty in this way is to appeal to the emotions, rather than to make a strictly rational argument. We should, however, prefer rational argument to emotional pleas in a case like this one where the issues are complex, and the consequences of a poor decision could be far-reaching.
In practice, the point of linking the arms industry and global poverty in this way is to appeal to the emotions, rather than to make a strictly rational argument. We should, however, prefer rational argument to emotional pleas in a case like this one where the issues are complex, and the consequences of a poor decision could be far-reaching.
1.3: The use of nuclear weapons is against international law
The legal arguments surrounding this seem to be fairly involved (see this Wikipedia article for a more detailed discussion). In one sense the use of nuclear weapons is illegal, as it almost inevitably involves civilian casualties on a huge scale, and hence fails to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, as customary international law requires. On the other hand, there seems to be some doubt about whether it would be illegal to use nuclear weapons in "extreme circumstance[s] of self defence" (ibid.), and also about whether the illegality of using the weapons also translates into its being illegal just to possess them if they remain unused. However, rather than get stuck into these debates (which probably requires legal training), I want to instead explore a quite different possibility - namely, that there are some circumstances is which it would be prudential, and perhaps even morally right, to set international law aside.
Laws play a role in complex systems of social organisation (civilisations) that preserve peace and order and thus enable the individuals who participate in them to enjoy satisfactory lives. People who live in organised societies learn to regard obedience to the law as both prudent and morally praiseworthy, as they must for society to remain organised. However, whilst the normalisation of these learned associations is a necessary condition for the preservation of civilisation, it is probably not a sufficient condition. For instance, natural disaster, economic collapse or defeat in war could all bring about the collapse of social organisation and a descent into lawlessness. Should such a collapse happen, then most of the people who live through it will retain the learned associations that automatically prompt them to obey the law, even though law and order has broken down. But, should they continue to act on the prompts as they would have done before the collapse? Would it, for instance, be prudent (or even moral) to refuse to take food from shops without paying, even if civilisation had irretrievably broken down and there was no means of paying? I think the most sensible judgement would be that at least some of the laws which previously governed the exchange of goods had become inoperative and so should be disregarded.
International law plays the same role in the "international community" as domestic laws play within individual countries - that is, it defines and reinforces an ideal of civilized behaviour which, as long as it remains generally accepted, should preserve a relatively peaceful state of affairs in that community. However, the international community is much more volatile than the domestic societies of all but the most unstable individual countries. I conjecture that this is because the norms that underpin social organisation evolved first amongst small groups, and refinements of those norms that underpin larger social units only began to evolve as transport and communications technology improved and commerce spread. A truly global community has only begun to emerge in the last five centuries or so, and is thus still relatively immature. This immaturity makes it prone to occasional lapses back into the chaotic Hobbesian "state of nature", as happened between 1914 and (roughly) 1953, when an international order that had been relatively settled for most of the nineteenth century suddenly collapsed into a series of world wars, violent revolutions, totalitarian dictatorships, civil wars, genocides and other mass killings of civilians (including the only ever uses so far of nuclear weapons). The international order has again remained relatively settled since 1953 (the end of the Korean War, since when the acknowledged Great Powers have never been directly at war with each other), and this long period of relative calm has encouraged the development of a substantial body of international law, and the establishment of international courts to interpret it.
It is right that we should abide by international law for as long as the current international order remains relatively settled - and this means that any actual use of nuclear weapons is clearly off-limits. But does this also mean that we should not possess them either, on the grounds that there is no point in buying a weapon that you are definitely not going to use under any circumstances? Not necessarily, because there is no guarantee that the international order will remain stable - indeed, another reversion to chaos could quite conceivably be triggered by the fallout from climate change some time in the 21st century. If that were to happen, then laws drawn up in more peaceful times would cease to be reliable guides to morality and prudence, so that it might be right to set them aside in some circumstances. Judging by the Wikipedia debate referenced at the start of this section, some legal judgements already incorporate caveats that allow for this setting-aside in case of extreme national emergency; but as this appears to be a point of controversy amongst legal experts I have chosen to make a political case for, in effect, treating the law as if it does contain those caveats. If it did not contain them, then the law would have failed to recognise the nature of the political realities that bought it into being - that the law is an artifact of peace; and that, although the law helps to preserve peace, it is not so much use in bringing peace about in the first place.
The major upshot of all this is that we can purchase and own nuclear weapons with no intention of using them save in a dire emergency comparable with the World Wars of the early 20th century - and we can do this consistently with international law, unless the law is interpreted in a way that makes it an ass, in which case we are justified in ignoring it. A secondary upshot is that it is better that the law should allow appropriate leeway to deal with such emergencies, as this will increase the chances of building a continuous legal tradition robust enough to survive periods of chaos in international relations.
1.4: Use of nuclear weapons is necessarily immoral
OK, so lets imagine that we do enter another Hobbesian "state of nature" in international affairs sometime in the fairly near future. Could it ever be moral (as opposed to prudential) to use nuclear weapons in such a situation? Considering the last chaotic period, 1914-53, may provide some clues (incidentally, I think there have been other chaotic periods, at least in European history: 1618-48 and 1789-1815 for example; but 1914-53 looks to be the only world-wide example).
First question: considering the global power struggle that took place in the early 20th-century as a whole, is it possible to say that any party to it was more moral than any other party? It is plain that the key players (Britain, Germany, France, the USA, Russia, China and Japan) would have stopped at almost nothing to secure victory over their rivals. As an example, Winston Churchill, who led Britain from 1940-45, was a staunch lifelong anti-Communist - but when it became necessary for Britain to ally with Soviet Russia he did so without any hesitation, famously commenting that, had Germany invaded Hell, he would "at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons." Innumerable other examples could be deployed to make the same point - that once national survival became the over-riding priority, every other consideration went out of the window. Since all of the powers would have slaughtered innocents in order to win (and most of them did), how can we regard any of them as "moral"?
Of course, it was to be expected that once one power (or a combination of them) had prevailed over the others, then some semblance of international order would be restored, and all countries could resume (relatively) civilised behaviour. But as this could be expected to happen whoever won, it is not enough to confer superior morality on any party to the conflict to observe that that party is fighting to restore order - they were all fighting to restore order, i.e. their own.
I suggest that the only way we can make a moral distinction between the warring powers is to ask what kind of world order they were each seeking to establish, and which among them would best promote human flourishing in the long run. This is ultimately a political judgement, but that doesn't mean we should be shy of making it. After Britain and France had thrown in their lot with the USA the three of them stood for what we now call "liberal democracy"; Russia and (from 1949) China stood for what might loosely be termed communism; Germany and Japan (from the 1930s until their respective defeats in 1945) stood for what be loosely termed fascism. I think that liberal democracy is by a long distance the least bad of these three alternatives, and on that basis I argue that the Western Allies had right on their side in during this period of conflict.
So, does this make the USA's use of nuclear weapons in 1945 morally right (or, for that matter, Britain's use, in 1942-45, of aerial bombing tactics designed to cause mass slaughter on a scale comparable with that caused by the later nuclear strikes)? Or, to resort to cliche, does the end justify the means? Well, actually, I am not saying the ends justify the means, but something a little more complicated: the means being used by all sides were such as to turn the struggle into a free-for-all; and, given that this was so and that the Allies couldn't do anything to change it, the extreme undesirability of a victory for the totalitarian states imposed on them a duty to pursue victory by whatever means were necessary.
Given this intellectual framework, the 1945 nuclear attack on Japan can be justified. Clearly, if by some (extraordinarily improbable) sequence of events, Japan were to acquire a Fascist-inclined government in a 2013-world otherwise unchanged from our own, we would not deal with that situation by attacking Japan with nuclear bombs - and nor would we be justified in doing so. Most likely, we would deal with Japan in much the same way that we generally deal with "rogue states" - a mixture mainly of economic sanctions, diplomatic cold-shouldering and defensive military alliances with neighbouring states. But, whilst the real-life Japan of 1945 had already been divested of most of the overseas conquests it had been making since 1931, and probably lacked the capacity to launch new wars of aggression, the real issue was the need to restore international stability and order in the name of liberal democracy - something which, because of the particular way the struggle had evolved, required the unconditional surrenders of both Germany and Japan. In Japan's case, it was judged necessary to demonstrate a willingness to use the "most cruel" new weapon in order to bring this about quickly.
I realise that all this pragmatism sounds rather brutal; but I think it is important to recognise that: (i) liberal democracy's emphatic defeat of its enemies in WW2 has been essential to the spread of the democratic way of life after 1950 to not just Europe and North America, but much of Asia, Latin America and (more recently) even Africa and the Middle East; (ii) this spread has already improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and has the potential to continue; (iii) that this good outweighs the harm done to the smaller numbers of innocent victims of Allied nuclear (and conventional) bombing; and that (iv) the Allied leaders were fully aware at the time of the bombings that something like (i), (ii) and (iii) were likely to transpire - witness Churchill's 1940 prophecy that should the Allies win "all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands".
The actual use (as opposed to mere possession) of the nuclear bomb would, I concede, require something analogous to these extraordinary circumstances in order to be morally justified. An opponent of nuclear weapons might then argue that such circumstances are so unlikely to occur again that the possibility should be discounted. However, any such argument must be premised on the stability of the current liberal democratic international order - and, as many critics of nuclear weapons are also unimpressed with liberal democracy, this line of argument may not appeal to many of them. In any case, the significant possibility of catastrophic climate change undercuts the premise. I therefore conclude that the future occurrence of circumstances that would make the use of nuclear weapons morally justified cannot be ruled out.
This concludes my treatment of what I have dubbed the "principled" arguments against nuclear weapons. As the first two of those arguments (for British disarmament as a way to promote general disarmament; and for using the money spent on nuclear weapons to alleviate world poverty) are, in my opinion, relatively weak, I have dealt with them quite briefly. The other two arguments against nuclear weapons (on the grounds of the illegality of actually using them; and, finally, of the immorality of so doing) I have treated at greater length, because I think that some interesting philosophical territory needs to be traversed in the search for acceptable replies to them. However, I think such replies, along the lines I have sketched out, are available, and, given the more thorough treatment that I haven't the space for here, would be enough to do the job of answering all of the "principled" objections to nuclear arms.
Section 2: Arguments Against (Pragmatic)
Now, it is time to turn to what I have called the "pragmatic" arguments for Britain abandoning its deterrent in the review scheduled for 2016.
2.1: Some other countries seem to get by just fine without it
A pretty diverse collection of countries do seem to get by just fine without any nuclear deterrent capability, in the sense that their populations do not show obvious signs of living in fear of nuclear attack - for instance: Spain, Belgium, Poland, Sweden, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Mexico, and the entire continents of South America and Africa - that is to say, countries that are not at all similar in their general political orientation, and many of which are far from having any discernable history of pacifism. Indeed, only 9 jurisdictions out of a total of 206 currently possess nuclear weapons. So, why don't we just join the non-nuclear club, and save ourselves a whole load of money and hassle?
The thought is reinforced by a quick look at the nine nuclear states. Five of them rank in the top ten of the world's most populous countries, and so might be expected to be prepared to shoulder the costs that come with playing a leading role in world affairs. Of the others, Israel counts as a special case owing to its unique security situation; and it doesn't seem like a recommendation for any club that the North Korean dictatorship can be numbered among its members. The numbers are made up by Britain and France, both of whom became permanent members of the UN Security Council after WW2, largely on account of the influence they used to have in the world before that conflagaration, rather than the influence they still have. Arguably, it is their attachment to their status as permanent members of the Security Council which explains their enthusiasm for nuclear deterrence, rather than any real security needs (the five permanent members are the same five countries to be the only ones recognised as "legitimate" nuclear powers under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - a congruence that seems to imply that giving up nuclear weapons might lead to a downgrade of status in the Security Council - I will say more about this in section 3.1).
So is it about time we hung up our warheads, pinned up a "Dun-Nuking" sign over the white cliffs of Dover and retired peacefully from the world stage? I think there are two points that tell against: firstly, there is a moral consideration resulting from our former possession of a large colonial empire; and, secondly, there is the fact that we have a tradition of involvement in world affairs that once gone would be hard to re-build. (Because this is the "pragmatic" section of the essay I think it is appropriate that my treatment of this question helps itself to the implicit assumptions that being prominent in world affairs is virtuous, and that maintaining a nuclear deterrent is an effective way to achieve such prominence. I am taking the pragmatic aspect of the debate to centre around the question of how virtuous Britain should seek to be in its current circumstances).
So is it about time we hung up our warheads, pinned up a "Dun-Nuking" sign over the white cliffs of Dover and retired peacefully from the world stage? I think there are two points that tell against: firstly, there is a moral consideration resulting from our former possession of a large colonial empire; and, secondly, there is the fact that we have a tradition of involvement in world affairs that once gone would be hard to re-build. (Because this is the "pragmatic" section of the essay I think it is appropriate that my treatment of this question helps itself to the implicit assumptions that being prominent in world affairs is virtuous, and that maintaining a nuclear deterrent is an effective way to achieve such prominence. I am taking the pragmatic aspect of the debate to centre around the question of how virtuous Britain should seek to be in its current circumstances).
The first point is simply that, owing to the history of the past 500 years, it would be a very different matter for Britain to opt out of international affairs than it would for Sweden, Poland, et al. A significant part (how much is anyone's guess) of the UK's wealth exists because of its dominance of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries - a fact which does not apply to most other countries. Whether or not our gains were well-gotten is only marginally relevant to this point, which is that we gained handsomely from an international system of free trade and colonial governance that we put and place and laregely ran for a couple of centuries or so. In doing this we shaped the histories of many countries for both good and ill. To the extent that has been to the good it is only natural and right that we should want to defend our legacy; and to the extent that it has been to the bad it is equally natural and right that we should want to atone for the resulting damage. Both impulses tend towards the UK's playing a larger role in international affairs than countries which have a smaller share of responsibility for the world's being the way it is today.
The second point concerns tradition; that is, established custom and practice. Britain is simply used to playing a large role in international politics. This is a matter of its voters, politicians, soldiers, diplomats, journalists, etc., etc. having certain kinds of expectations about what goes on. But it is also a matter of the expectations of different groups being interconnected in a fairly complex way: for instance, we have a tradition (unlike Sweden) of producing young people who actually want to fight in wars; and journalists and other opinion-formers who will judge a government (in part) by its ability to maintain Britain's traditional "punching above our weight" stance. My (admittedly speculative) proposal here is that these two apparently disparate traits (as well as others) have co-evolved in a way that makes us specially equipped to play a prominent role on the world stage; and so if we were to precipitately abandon this role then several aspects of the national psyche would be thrown out of kilter, resulting in a collective feeling of disorientation.
Of course, the argument of the previous paragraph should not be used to try to prove too much: that our current role in the world should be perpetually preserved. If it is allowed to stand it shows only that changes in our role should be gradual, in order to allow our national character time to adapt (this actually fits well with my overall conclusion, which I will start developing in the next sub-section). It also suggests a converse point which reinforces the conclusion: that some of the countries which will eventually need to play a much larger international role (e.g. Brazil, Germany, Nigeria, India) may also need time to adapt to their new roles, for similar reasons. And also another point: that countries that have been pacific for a long time (e.g. Sweden) are to some extent locked in to staying that way - and this undermines any attempt to take those countries as role models for Britain, which is not similarly locked in. Given the undesirability of all advanced countries becoming pacific at the same time, it is best to tolerate the fact that accidents of history have made some pacific and others warlike. As one of the (relatively) warlike countries, we shouldn't be jealous of the pacific countries, as what their status gains them in money and comfort, it also costs them in prestige and influence; instead, we should aim to play our allotted role with good grace for as long as it lasts (which won't be forever).
Of course, the argument of the previous paragraph should not be used to try to prove too much: that our current role in the world should be perpetually preserved. If it is allowed to stand it shows only that changes in our role should be gradual, in order to allow our national character time to adapt (this actually fits well with my overall conclusion, which I will start developing in the next sub-section). It also suggests a converse point which reinforces the conclusion: that some of the countries which will eventually need to play a much larger international role (e.g. Brazil, Germany, Nigeria, India) may also need time to adapt to their new roles, for similar reasons. And also another point: that countries that have been pacific for a long time (e.g. Sweden) are to some extent locked in to staying that way - and this undermines any attempt to take those countries as role models for Britain, which is not similarly locked in. Given the undesirability of all advanced countries becoming pacific at the same time, it is best to tolerate the fact that accidents of history have made some pacific and others warlike. As one of the (relatively) warlike countries, we shouldn't be jealous of the pacific countries, as what their status gains them in money and comfort, it also costs them in prestige and influence; instead, we should aim to play our allotted role with good grace for as long as it lasts (which won't be forever).
2.2: The nuclear deterrent is a case of generals fighting the last war
The objection here is that Britain's continuous at-sea nuclear deterrence system was designed for the Cold War, which finished in 1991. The threats we face today - small groups of terrorists that can flit from one place to the next - couldn't be more different than that posed by the Soviet Union - a huge, monolithic empire sustained by conventional and nuclear armed force. If our conventional and nuclear forces (roughly) matched that of the Soviets, then we could contain them within fairly settled border long enough for the limitations of their economic system to become a crippling disadvantage to them. Meanwhile, mutual deterrence ensured that a pre-emptive nuclear strike by either side was too risky to be worth seriously contemplating (although apparently Mao Tse-Tung would have been up for it if the Soviets had been).
Today, there is nothing like that nuclear stand-off between two global systems of thought, although there are more limited actual and potential nuclear stand-offs, e.g. India/Pakistan, North Korea/USA, Israel/Iran. Given that Britain is remote from those more limited stand-offs, and likely to remain so, does not the (apparently irrevocable) end of the global stand-off render our deterrent redundant? What is needed now is not a bomb that can flatten whole cities, but precision instruments that can target individual al-Qaeda safe houses or training camps. The argument suggests the conclusion that, given the nature of our most likely future enemies, nuclear weapons are simply a waste of money.
Of course, the terrorists might in theory acquire nuclear bombs, either from a rogue state or from criminal elements (although this seems to be unlikely just at the moment). But if they did, would our bombs be as effective a deterrent to the enemy as was the case in the Cold War? Well, you clearly can't flatten a whole city of innocents just to wipe out a few terrorist cells - and in any case many of them have little to lose, having already embraced martyrdom; so maybe our deterrent would become ineffective against a terrorist group that acquired nuclear bombs but still retained full independence of action. But in the event that they acquired bombs with the help of rogue states, then those states would want some influence over their use; and deterrence should still work against rogue states, whose leaders have plenty to lose. In practice, this probably serves as more of a deterrent against rogue states sharing any of their nuclear capability with terrorists in the first place, as any nuclear strike by terrorists would probably bring down fierce (possibly nuclear) retribution on rogue states, who would likely be blamed for the attacks even if culpability could not be proven. Indeed, the 2003 invasion of Iraq following the mass murder in New York in 2001 could be read as a sign of just how the world would react to such an attack.
The argument of the preceding paragraph suggests that our possession of a deterrent does in fact restrain terrorist behaviour, albeit indirectly. I also think that another strong argument against the obsolescence of nuclear weapons is available, in the form of climate change. The fallout from climate change is likely to be quite dramatic, but no-one knows exactly what it will be, or how suddenly it could strike. Conceivably, it could set the Great Powers of the world against each other in a way that hasn't been seen since the first half of the 20th century, in which case we would want to be well armed. As I will elaborate this point further later on I won't labour it here. Instead, I'll conclude by conceding that the argument against renewal from obsolescence does have some force; at least to the extent that we no longer need an arsenal of weapons capable of matching the Soviet Union's arsenal. Continuous at-sea deterrence doesn't seem relevant to dealing with terrorists or rogue states, who would most likely be able to deliver just one strike, rather than the kind of strategic attack on our communications and defence network designed to destroy our ability to respond. So, although the end of the Cold War might not have made nuclear weapons obsolete per se, I think it does give Britain good grounds for seeking out cheaper options than the current system, which uses four submarines on the basis that one is normally holed up in maintenance, and two more are quite likely to be in port or in use on training exercises. If deterrence (against terrorists and rogue states) doesn't need to be absolutely continuous then perhaps we could go down to three, or even just two submarines.
2.3: Cost: Britain can no longer afford it
Which brings us neatly (I hope) onto the subject of cost. I have found it a little tricky to find out how much the costs actually are, as the Trident system is quite complex. As well as the four Vanguard-class submarines, there are the actual missiles from which the whole system gets its name; and then the warheads; then the bases at Faslane and Coulport; then the infrastructure tied up the command & control systems; then the running costs. The most expensive elements in the system are hardware items, for which the cost is most properly represented as an annual depreciation charge (rather than the one-off outlay that shows up if you focus on cash-flow) - but what that charge should be depends on how long the hardware is expected to remain in use; and there is considerable controversy about this point. The 2006 white paper that proposed a full-blooded replacement for Trident that would retain fully continuous at-sea deterrence, put the costs at £20bn capital outlay, and £1.5bn running costs (2006 prices). Given a lifetime for the replacement of 20 years that makes the annual cost £2.5bn per year, which is just over 5% of the defence budget, which in turn takes just under 3% of Britain's GDP (it is worth noting that critics of the program dispute these figures).
As I don't want to get bogged down in budgetary detail, I am going to offer some fairly impressionistic observations:
- Firstly, the cost of replacing Trident clearly isn't going to bring us to our knees as a nation.
- Also clearly, we shouldn't expect other areas of life to be transformed on the back of diverting funds away from nuclear weapons, given the relatively modest size of our overall budget they currently take.
- Even more clearly, the sums involved are very substantial (the expense is in the same ball-park as "HS2" - the extension of high-speed rail to the North of England - to which cost has been a prominent objection).
- And, the spending is optional, in the sense that we don't absolutely have to do it. This is in contrast to many areas of spending (health, education, pensions and so on) in which the effects of a simple cessation of spending would be immediately catastrophic.
- As of the time of writing (2013) Britain is running a large public budget deficit, equivalent to 7.4% of GDP.
- Therefore, the Trident renewal decision should be very carefully scrutinized with a view to making savings.
The arguments put forward in sections 1.1 - 1.4 and section 2.1 tend to suggest that Britain should keep some form of nuclear deterrent, whereas section 2.2 suggests that the Trident system gives us more deterrence than we really need going forwards. Combining the strong pressure to look for savings discussed in this section with the opportunity to find them offered by 2.2 suggests that we should look to retain some kind of deterrent, but at lower cost than in the past.
It now just remains to run through various arguments sometimes made for nuclear deterrence, to see if any of them will force a change to this putative conclusion.
Section 3: Arguments For Renewal
3.1: It buys us a seat at the top table
This point seems to crop up quite often in political discourse on the subject. The thought is that, were we to give up the independent deterrent, we could expect to lose our traditional status as one of the more prominent countries in world affairs. As a particular symbol of this more general loss, we might be expected to have to give up our permanent seat on the UN Security Council (one of the five seats, out of the total fifteen, that carries the right to veto any resolution).
I think that, as argument in favour of deterrent-renewal, this point has a fatal weakness that is not normally recognised. To get straight to this weakness, I will grant the implicit assumptions that (i) a high place in the world is a good thing; and, (ii), that abandoning or downgrading our deterrent might compromise this place. My point is that places on the UN Security Council (and other bodies) are not actually for sale - so no-one can "buy" them. Therefore, if we spend £25bn on weapons because we take ourselves to be buying such a thing, we are highly likely to be disappointed with the results.
This is because much of the institutional framework within which world politics is conducted is simply out-of-date. The UN, for instance, dates back to the immediate aftermath of World War II - a moment in history when the British Empire still (notionally) ruled a quarter of the globe, the USA and Russia were the only truly global powers, and Europe was divided, occupied and in ruins. The pressures mounting for reform of that institutional structure arise from the dramatic changes in the world balance of power since 1945 - namely: the emergence of a united and independent Europe; the rise of regional superpowers such as India and China, Brazil; and rapid economic growth and industrialisation that makes a nonsense of the old idea of a "third world". These pressures have already resulted in the effective replacement of the G8 by the G20 as the world's leading economic forum (diluting Britain's share of that table from 12.5% to 5%), and are certain to lead to reform of the UN at some stage. It is surely incredible to think that Britain could hold up this reform by pointing to its continued possession of nuclear weapons.
I therefore conclude that this argument for the renewal of the deterrent, although popular, actually has no force at all.
3.2: The program keeps a significant number of people in work
Estimates of the number of jobs that depend on the Trident program vary. In this linked press article (Herald Scotland Press Article) different parties claim that the number could be as low as 520 (if only direct employment is counted), or as high as 11,000 (if estimates of indirect employment effects are allowed). As it would take a lot of digging around into the facts to establish which of these figures should be believed, and I have not really got the inclination or time to do this, I prefer to make two points that are not so dependent on these disputed facts.
Firstly, if no-one ever got made redundant from any job, our economy could never evolve. If the argument for renewal on employment grounds is framed as an argument against any changes whatsoever that will have employment effects then this would be an absurd consequence for that argument. Therefore, the argument is only good (if it is good at all) for resisting over-rapid change in employment patterns. Which in turn leads to my second point: that even 11,000 job losses spaced over 20 years (the approximate time-scale of the renewal project) still works out at only 550 losses per year, which is fairly small in terms of the Scottish economy's ability to absorb them and retrain the workers for other jobs. Abandoning Trident will therefore not create a situation similar to that in 1980s Britain when whole regions of the country rapidly deindustrialised leaving workers with little hope of re-training and finding other jobs. For the individual workers involved, any job losses may be a severe setback; but as a society, we generally accept that the aggregate balance of advantage must prevail over individual interests in collective decision-making.
My conclusion is that our second (politically popular) argument for renewal is in fact just as duff as the first.
3.3: The threat from North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states
This, I think, is a more promising argument. On the face of it, if rogue states have (or may soon acquire) nuclear weapons, then surely we need the ultimate insurance policy against becoming a target ourselves? When I touched on this point briefly, in section 2.2, I suggested a counter-argument, that the rogue states are geographically distant from Britain, and that we were not their principle adversaries. However, this counter-argument leaves several hostages to fortune - that the geopolitical situation won't change; that existing rogue states won't develop long-range missile technology; and that people who generally detest our way of life won't take nuclear disarmament to be a sign of weakness. As any of these situations could change quite quickly, and it takes a very long time to commission submarines and missile systems, we need to consider threats that might possibly emerge during the lifetime of the system rather than just the threats that are immediately apparent now.
The answer to these points developed in section 2.2 conceded that, although the ultimate insurance policy was still worth having to deal with these possible future threats, it no longer needed to be an insurance policy against a co-ordinated pre-emptive nuclear strike such as was envisioned at the height of the Cold War, as no rogue state is close to being able to launch such an attack - and, plausibly, none could ever get to this stage because the existing Great Powers would combine to prevent this. This line of argument tends to suggest that Britain should continue to have a deterrent, but a cheaper one than the one it has at the moment.
3.4: Nuclear deterrence makes conventional wars less likely
The claim that nuclear weapons make conventional war less likely is hard to evaluate, because the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons in the era 1945-present has coincided with other trends that might also be expected to make conventional wars less likely (at least among leading states). One such trend is the increasing interdependence of the leading economies; another is the spread of democracy (democracies are less likely to go to war with each other); another is that better education and greater prosperity make people less susceptible to war-like ideologies. Nevertheless, there may be something in it. As a thought experiment, imagine that the combatants in Europe's ideology-fueled 17th century bloodbath, the Thirty Years War, had each been given the nuclear bomb on the eve of the war's beginning in 1618. It is at least imaginable that the sheer horror of nuclear war would have motivated them to negotiate an armed truce sooner than they in fact did, prompted by sheer exhaustion, in 1648.
However, whether this is plausible or not is a somewhat academic point. The argument we are considering here was a popular argument at the height of the Cold War, but is less often heard today. I think this is because there now seems so little hope that nuclear weapons could ever be fully got rid of. Therefore, we have just got to live in a nuclear world anyway, regardless of whether there are fewer conventional wars because of it or not. I conclude that our fourth argument for the renewal of deterrence lacks persuasive force.
3.5: Climate change implies an uncertain future for the world
I think that this is much the strongest of the positive arguments for the retention of the deterrent. As of 2013, it seems most unlikely that the world will meet its target of limiting global warming to within 2 degrees celcius compared with pre-industrial times. This failure will most likely lead to severe disruption of the existing international order in the coming decades, as climates change, crops fail, and excessive summer heat threatens to make large areas of the globe uninhabitable. We can reasonably expect that this may well increase international tensions - even that it may reverse the trend of the past few centuries to diminishing incidence of human-on-human violence generally. In this new world it would be unwise for Britain to depend too heavily on the USA for its security, as US interests may come to differ from Europe's, not least because the wide geographical separation means that climate change may affect the two continents differently.
So, is this argument so powerful that it actually demands a stronger conclusion than the one towards which I have, thus far, been groping? That is, if the climate threat is so serious, shouldn't Britain keep the full weapons capability that it has now, rather than the half-way house capability argued for in sections 2.2, 2.3 and 3.3 above? Actually, no - because two considerations tell decisively against the more drastic conclusion.
Firstly, there are still no likely adversaries out there who in the near-future could launch a mass co-ordinated nuclear strike against the UK, such as would disable it from retaliating, and hence no need for continuous at-sea deterrence. Secondly, climate change is not expected to happen suddenly; so, if it does produce a more dangerous security environment it will do this gradually, so that reducing our capability now will still leave us with enough time to re-expand our capabilities later should the need arise. It would, however, be better not to get rid of our capability altogether, as the loss of skills and infrastructures involved would make that a more difficult decision to reverse.
Summary and Conclusion
Considering the arguments against ever using nuclear deterrence on principle, I have argued that:
- unilateral disarmament would not promote universal disarmament, because it would most likely be understood by others as either incomprehensible, or else a sign of weakness.
- attempts to emotively link the issue of deterrence to other global problems, such as hunger, are misguided, because the defence of its own citizens is the first duty of any government.
- international law does not clearly forbid the ownership (or even the use) of nuclear weapons (although the correct interpretation of the law is a matter of dispute). In my opinion, it should only limit their use to occasions of dire national or international emergency, such as World War II.
- moral law does not clearly forbid the use of nuclear weapons in all circumstances, e.g. use of the bomb at Hiroshima appears to have led to a net reduction in loss of life, taking into account the many lives that would have been lost in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.
The first batch of arguments thus suggested no reason not to renew. Considering the more pragmatic arguments against Britain deciding to renew its nuclear deterrent in its 2016 official review, I have argued that:
- we should not aim to become just like those other countries that do not have the bomb, because that would involve casting aside too much history and tradition.
- although the form in which we have nuclear deterrence at the moment has been conditioned by the nature of the threat from the Soviet Union, there are still threats in the present and in the future that require the use of deterrence (albeit in a less expensive form).
- the sheer cost of the systems has become a problem for us, owing to the general need for austerity.
The pragmatic considerations thus suggest renewal in cheaper form. So, could a consideration of some of the most popular arguments for deterrence pull the argument back the other way, towards full renewal? No, because:
- nuclear weapons do not in fact buy us a seat at the top table, because these seats are not for sale - the reform of international institutions to reflect the rise of the former "third world" is simply inevitable.
- we should not commit to a 20-year, £25bn project merely in order to save what would at most be a few thousand people from having to re-train in new careers.
- rogue states, although a real threat, are unlikely ever to be able to pose the existential threat to the UK once posed by the Soviet Union.
- people no longer see a close relationship between nuclear weapons and the incidence of conventional war.
- climate change will take time, giving us leeway to increase our deterrent capability later if the international security situation starts to deteriorate.
...all of which leads us to the (somewhat boring, I'm afraid)
conclusion: Britain should use the Trident renewal process to downscale
to a cheaper system of nuclear deterrence - perhaps one based on two,
rather than four, submarines.
One final point to note is that most of the arguments to this conclusion will also apply to France, which therefore
may well also be in the market for downsizing its deterrent. This
suggests that it would be a good idea for the two countries to extend
their recent (2010) Lancaster House treaty on mutual military
co-operation to cover nuclear deterrence (it already covers some aspects
of nuclear stockpile maintenance). Although there is some loss of
national sovereignty involved in such collaboration this can be
considered low-risk, as the countries have already been joint members of the EU since 1973, are closely connected by trade and geographical ties (e.g. the channel tunnel). Geographical closeness also lessens the likelihood that either climate change or geopolitical developments will have drastically different effects on the two countries. An Anglo-French deterrent might also be a candidate for a "nuclear sharing" arrangement with other EU states, similar to the current arrangements within NATO whereby Germany and Italy gain some access to decision making about nuclear weapons policy in return for help in providing delivery and storage systems.
Such an arrangement could help further dilute the cost for Britain and
France, whilst giving the other countries a share of the nuclear
security umbrella.
