Demonstrators at an anti-Trident CND rally in Parliament Square, London, July, 2016.Dominic Lipinski/ Press Association. All rights reserved.How fitting that the UK’s failed test firing of a Trident
nuclear missile in June occurred as Donald Trump launched his Presidential
campaign. President Trump has stated
that he is not in favour of subsidising the cost of Europe’s nuclear
weapons. The US-owned Trident missiles
are leased to the UK under the terms of a mutual defence agreement. Once the bedrock of US/UK relations, this
agreement no longer enjoys such an exalted status. There is increasing ambivalence on both sides
and consequently the UK’s leasing of US nuclear missiles has every chance of
spiralling off course.
Why? Firstly, the
strategic arguments for nuclear weapons are different for the UK and for the
US. These considerations are essentially
a balance between the strategic value of nuclear weapons on the one hand and
the cost (both financial and ethical) on the other. On the ‘value’ side the United States cannot
easily give up nuclear weapons without ramifications for the Korean peninsula
and its brinkmanship with Russia. The UK
on the other hand has much greater latitude.
If we were to retire our US-leased Trident nuclear missiles, the world
would not fundamentally change. The UK would
still retain substantial influence as a military power through the strength and
capability of our conventional forces.
On the ‘cost’ side of the equation, nuclear weapons states share
a common ethical discomfort when they advance the argument that national
security is enhanced by their threat to breach international law in the killing
of 100,000s of innocent people. This
diabolical threat can only reasonably be justified[1]
if the alternative of declining to threaten mass destruction would clearly leave
us open to nuclear attack. For the UK this
is not the case. The likelihood of a
future nuclear attack on the UK, from Russia for example, has diminished in
part due to the more positive impacts of globalisation. In spite of the poor
behaviour of North Korea, there is no possibility of a nuclear attack on the UK
from that distant state. The United States have a different set of security
considerations, but for the UK at least, the balance sheet of ‘ethical cost’
verses ‘benefit’ of nuclear weapons is already in arrears and heading towards
bankruptcy.
The UK government has anchored arguments in support of nuclear
weapons in a rhetoric that has changed little since the Cold War. This has been made possible by the lack of any
effective international multilateral disarmament process. However, this too is changing.
On March 27, the majority of the world’s states will begin
to negotiate
a new treaty to clarify that the threat of use of nuclear weapons is
clearly illegitimate under international law.
For nuclear weapons states (particularly those such as the UK that place
value on international law) the perceived ethical cost of threatening mass
destruction will increase. The UK
Government insists that it is in favour of multilateral disarmament but this pretence
has been laid bare by its vehement opposition to the forthcoming Nuclear
Ban Treaty.
The Trident missile test failure has been exposed in the UK
media just as Donald Trump takes office in the White House. Although he questions the sanity
of investment in nuclear weapons, President Trump is no nuclear
pacifist. He sees the United States’ nuclear
arsenal in the context of “America first” and “making America great again”. Donald Trump’s pledge to ‘outmatch’ others in
a nuclear arms race is no doubt an embarrassment to the UK government given its
carefully crafted diplomacy on nuclear weapons. But the Trident missile system has always been
totemic of the United States’ stress on military dominance. At this juncture, its technical failure in the
hands of UK submariners seems particularly apt.
[1] Note:
Christian and other faith leaders in the UK are clear that no justification is
possible. “Security policies based on the
threat of the use of nuclear weapons are immoral and ultimately self-defeating.” Joint faiths’ statement,
March 2015. www.endnuclearweapons.org.uk