By Michael Faulkner – 08.15.2010
Before May’s general election it seemed possible that the
future of the Trident nuclear missile system might be open for serious
discussion. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, now Deputy Prime Minister, made
clear in the televised leaders’ debates that his party was in favour of
scrapping it as a relic of the cold war. The implication of what he said was
that Britain didn’t need a nuclear deterrent and the inordinate cost of
renewing Trident (calculated at £90bn over thirty years) could not be justified
in view of the stringent fiscal tightening to which all three parties were committed
in order to deal with the huge
budget deficit. Since the election the Lib Dems have not repeated their demand
to scrap Trident, though Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has
intimated that the cost of renewing it will have to come from the Defense
department budget rather than from the Treasury. If that direction sticks and
Trident is to be updated it means that drastic cuts in other areas of defense
spending will need to be made.
Labour and Tory governments have, down the years, embraced
Britain’s ‘nuclear deterrent’ as an article of faith. It was a Labour
government that, without parliamentary approval, first took Britain into the
nuclear club. The circumstances in which this decision was taken are of some
interest. In 1946 the Attlee government set up an Atom Bomb Committee to look
into the feasibility of Britain developing its own bomb. It will be recalled
that at this time the United States was the only nuclear power. As argued in
this column last month, Britain,
impoverished by the war, about to lose its empire and economically
dependent on the United States, was desperate to retain the illusion of ‘great
power’ status. France, also once a ‘great power’, had been occupied by Germany
during the war and, notwithstanding De Gaulle’s pretensions to the contrary,
had added little of substance to the allied victory. Britain’s role in the
defeat of Germany, although subsequently also much exaggerated, had been quite
substantial. The two undisputed ‘great powers’ were the United States and the
Soviet Union. By 1946 the wartime alliance was under increasing strain.
US-Soviet tensions were increasing and the division of Germany and Europe was
taking shape. The Labour government’s decision to subordinate its foreign
policy to the United States was born partly of necessity as a recipient in 1947
of Marshall aid, and partly in the belief that through the ‘special
relationship’ Britain would be able to continue to play the role of a ‘great
power’. But, in order give this a semblance of plausibility, the Attlee
government felt the need to become a nuclear power. Britain had to have the
atom bomb.
This decision was not taken without serious reservations within
the Attlee cabinet. The Atom Bomb Committee, established in October 1946, after
lengthy deliberation about the desirability of developing the bomb, was inclined
to reject the proposal largely on grounds of cost. The decision in favour was
only taken after a last minute intervention by Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin.
His argument was simple and it throws interesting light on the state of
British/US relations at the time. “We’ve got to have the thing”, he is reported
to have said. “I don’t mind for myself, but I don’t want any other Foreign
Secretary of this country to be talked at or to by the Secretary of State of
the United States as I have just been…We’ve got to have this thing over here,
whatever it costs. We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.”
Britain’s status from now on would be very much subordinate to the United
States, but, if the illusion of ‘great power’ status in a ‘special
relationship’ was to be maintained, it would be symbolized by the ‘independent
nuclear deterrent.’
Throughout the years of the cold war the number of countries
joining the nuclear club increased steadily. The US monopoly was broken in 1949
when the Soviet Union developed the atom bomb. Britain tested its first bomb in
1952. France followed suit in 1960. China joined the club in 1964. Following
the so-called Cuban missile crisis of 1962, during which the prospect of
nuclear war between the USA and the USSR seemed very real, the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1964. This was supposed to limit
possession of nuclear weapons to the five countries already in possession of
them. Counties signing the treaty pledged not to develop such weapons. It also
committed the nuclear powers to refrain from developing more advanced weaponry
and pledged them to work for global nuclear disarmament. Nevertheless, with the
connivance of the nuclear powers, three more countries joined the club; Israel,
India and Pakistan. The possessing powers have shown little serious sign of
wishing to give up their weapons.
The spread of nuclear weapons was a product of the cold war.
The official justification was that the possession of vast arsenals of nuclear
weapons and advanced means of delivery by both the Soviets and the USA was a
reliable means of keeping the peace. A nuclear attack by one power against the
other would ensure the mutual destruction of both – mutually assured
destruction – MAD. Nuclear weapons certainly did not prevent wars as the
most cursory glance at the course of world history from 1945 to the present
will confirm.
The justification for possession of such weapons by those
who came later to the club, makes clear that the late-comers had their own very
particular reasons for going nuclear. France, as a former great European power
wanted to assert its own national interest independently of the United States,
and to claim pre-eminence in Europe. De Gaulle was also keen to snub Britain,
whose leaders he regarded as US puppets, and keep them out of the European Common
Market. Unlike Britain’s ‘independent deterrent’, the French force de frappe
was achieved without any assistance from the USA. The Chinese tested their first bomb in 1964 at the height of
their breach with the Soviet Union. This was a bid to assert China’s complete
independence from its former ally and to warn of the certain consequences of
any attempt by the Russians to attack China. Notably, China is the only nuclear
power that has committed to no first use of nuclear weapons. Israel, a nuclear
power that refuses to admit its status, claims that its nuclear arsenal is
necessary to deter its Arab neighbours from attacking. Likewise, India and
Pakistan claim to need such weapons to prevent the destruction of each state by
the other. Neither of the last three named have signed the non-proliferation
treaty. Each has developed its nuclear arsenal with the tacit agreement and
assistance of the USA and Britain – which means that the main signatories
of the non-proliferation treaty have connived, as it suited their interests, in
its breach.
Leaving aside the question of whether any state can be
justified in possessing nuclear weapons – and this is a question that
needs to be addressed with all seriousness – Britain’s position as a
nuclear power is the most duplicitous. Even if one accepts the political
justifications advanced for the nuclear arms race during the cold war, which is
not to suggest that those arguments should be left unchallenged, this country’s
claim to possess an independent deterrent, won’t stand a moment’s serious
examination. Trident and its forerunners going back to the 1950s have never
been independent and they have not been deterrents. No remotely convincing
justification has ever been made for their existence. In any confrontation
between the USA and the USSR between 1947 and 1991, Britain, teeming with US
bases would have been a prime target whether or not it possessed a nuclear
‘deterrent’ of its own. Other European NATO states realized this and made no
attempt to achieve any kind of nuclear status. At least Ernest Bevin thought in
1946 that the bomb would be British and have the Union Jack on top of it. In
the 1950s Skybolt, an air-launched ballistic missile system was purchased from
the US. It was cancelled by J.F. Kennedy in 1962. After this Britain purchased
from the US the Polaris missile for use in UK built submarines. Trident is no
more independent than Skybolt or Polaris. As Dan Plesch, research Associate at
the Centre for International Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies
writes “cannot and do not make our own nuclear weapons. We are not a true
nuclear power; we are mere clients of the United States.” (New Statesman. 27.
March 2006).
The bombs on Trident missiles are not British. They are
produced in the US. All British nuclear testing is done in the US. Access to
the test site in Nevada is still vital to the UK programme. The submarine
maintenance base in Plymouth is owned mainly by Dick Cheney’s old firm,
Halliburton. In 2005 Admiral Raymond Logo, former head of nuclear programmes
and chairman of B.AE, admitted that any successor to Trident would “continue to
tie the UK to US policy.” On the Trident submarines, which are built in the UK,
all the computer technology is US made. The Trident D-5 missiles are designed,
made and stored in the USA. Likewise the filing systems, and guidance systems.
All this information is in the public domain. Yet successive government have
peddled the myth that the Trident system, which is about to be updated at
tremendous cost, is a British Independent Deterrent.
It is as certain as can be that the UK government could not
order the use of Trident missiles without the agreement of the United States.
Should there be any suggestion that in some imagined defense of British
national interest against a perceived enemy, the submarine commanders acting on
defense ministry instructions, intended to fire off the missiles without prior
approval from the US, there is no doubt that such action would be blocked and
all US facilities and know-how withdrawn.
If the French had imported nuclear missiles from China,
would anyone believe that France possessed an independent nuclear deterrent?
And yet self-deluded British governments expect us to believe that we should
sanction the spending of billions on the upgrading of just such a nuclear
non-deterrent missile system entirely dependent on the United States.