As part of today’s conference debate
F32Defending
the Future – UK Defence in the 21st Century (Defence Policy Paper),
(pages 50-53) in lines 49 to 72, the leadership advocate reducing the Trident
nuclear-carrying submarine fleet from the current four Vanguard-class boats to
two Successor-class boats and ending the Cold War policy of Continuous At Sea
Deterrence – known as CASD. It would
include such subterfuges as openly going to sea with unarmed missiles but
having a stockpile of real weapons ready that can be primed in times of
international stress (lines 57-58) and “surging” with armed patrols in the case
of the international situation deteriorating (59-60).
It is obvious from these examples that the paper’s authors
do not give any credence to Toby Fenwick’s paper Dropping the Bomb (Centre
Forum 2012), in which he outlines the problems of such a part-time deterrent.
“Such a part-time
deterrent is dangerously escalatory.
First, the act of sailing a ballistic missile submarine in a crisis
would be a major escalation just at the time when governments are attempting to
de-escalate. Second, as the UK’s only
nuclear weapon system, a part-time deterrent in port provides a major incentive
for an adversary to mount a pre-emptive strike to disable or destroy the
Trident submarines in port or to ambush them on sailing, again increasing the
incentives for an adversary to escalate a crisis more rapidly. A part-time deterrent is dangerously escalatory
in a crisis, and must be rejected.”
In his paper, Fenwick also dismisses the “Cruise Missile”
option, with multi-role submarines, as it runs the risk of giving the hypothetical
enemy a confused signal. In the twenty
minutes it takes from launch to impact, are those cruise missiles carrying
nuclear or conventional weapons? Should
the enemy launch an all-out nuclear retaliation or assume that we Brits are the
good guys and would never launch nuclear weapons first?
There are therefore only two real choices as far as a
credible policy on nuclear weapons are concerned. We should either maintain enough capacity for
CASD deployment, thus backing Conservative and Labour policy to replace the
Vanguard boats with Successor, or to end the United Kingdom’s ownership of
nuclear weapons altogether.
What the author’s of today’s paper are really trying to do
is maintain economic and expert capability in the fields related to nuclear
weapons, hence the call for continuous training and practice (61-62) and
dual-usage submarines (64). They know
that holding on to a Cold War stance is not credible but in their view neither
is the stark alternative of unilaterally disarming. Thus the fudge that conference is being asked
to approve today, a case of when the cart is being put before the horse if ever
there was one.
The best that Conference can do today is support the amendment
which calls for the cancellation of the Successor programme and thus leads to
the retirement of Trident within the next decade. Just
in case one is tempted to support the paper as it stands though, just remember
this one thing. In the 2030s, the
Trident missiles themselves will be at the end of their lives and will need
replacement too. So if one were to think
that any form of support for the Successor programme is viable, think
again. In spending all these billions
of pounds, the decision is only being put back 20-25 years and then the nation
will be facing exactly the same debate as we have today, but with even less
control of the outcome because Trident is almost exclusively US-made.
Today, end support for Successor and let Liberal Democrats
lead the way with the truly credible and realistic outlook on nuclear weapons.
