In 1963 US President John F Kennedy said he feared that by 1975, 15 or 20 states would have nuclear weapon systems. Happily, that prediction proved inaccurate. Fundamental to this has been the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970.
The NPT has always had an asymmetrical framework. The five states which already had nuclear weapons systems in 1967 – China , France, the Soviet Union (now Russia), the United Kingdom and the United States of America – were recognised as “nuclear weapon states”. All other signatory states were recognised as “non-nuclear weapon states” and agreed not to seek or develop nuclear weapons systems.
The NPT has worked. It is hard now to appreciate the extent in the 1960s of worldwide anxiety about the possibility of a nuclear conflict, and the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Instead, the NPT has been crucial to ensuring that no nuclear weapons have been used in the last half century, and that there have been no conventional weapons’ conflicts between major states of the United Nations. In other words, the UK’s nuclear weapons systems have helped make the world a safer place.
The original justification for the possession of the United Kingdom’s independent nuclear deterrent was to meet a Cold War threat from the then Soviet Union. The UK decided that it needed a system – not operationally reliant on the US – to ensure that our defensive needs were never subordinated to those of other nations, however close we were to them.
There is little doubt that the prospect of “Mutually Assured Destruction” helped to keep the peace in the Cold War, and made a contribution, however inchoate, to the factors which led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
In the aftermath of this collapse there were those who proclaimed “the end of history” and who looked towards a benign period of world peace and harmony. In many respects, however, the world since then has become much less certain. The Cold War has been replaced by regional conflicts of great intensity. Then there was 11th September 2001, the work of so-called “non-state actors” – i.e. international terrorists, but this could not have happened without the connivance of a UN member, Afghanistan.
At present, the greatest immediate threat to the UK comes from such international terrorists. It is trite to point out that nuclear weapons systems are no direct deterrent to such terrorists, but this is hardly a knock down argument. Nuclear weapons systems in the hands of the five nuclear powers have never been a deterrent to all types of military threat.
We have a strategy to address the direct threat from terrorism, but we need also to deter a wide range of threats. When Trident was ordered in 1984 few would have thought that, by the time it was deployed in 1994, the Cold War would have been over. Who can guarantee that there will not be a renewed strategic threat in thirty years’ time? We need to guard against just such a possibility.
Although never convincing, there may have been times in our post-war history where arguments for the UK unilaterally to reduce deterrent capability had some credibility. But now cannot be such a time. A decision not to renew Trident would be irrevocable, for all times and for all future generations. On relinquishing our capacity, nuclear expertise in the UK and the supporting infrastructure would filter away very quickly. The cost of re-establishing such a capacity, and the timescale would be such as to make this out of the question.
It is impossible to see how a unilateral decision by the UK to abandon its position as a nuclear weapons state could make us safer from future threats to the UK and its interests.
Nor is there the remotest evidence that by such a UK unilateral denunciation we would persuade others to do likewise. North Korea would not disarm. Iran denies any nuclear weapons ambition and so would claim they had nothing to give up. The three non NPT nuclear capable states – Israel, India and Pakistan – are outside the NPT structure precisely because they have been unwilling to be subject to any international obligations not to develop their systems.
Indeed, any unilateral move by the UK to renounce its position as a nuclear weapons state would greatly reduce the prospects of gradual multilateral reduction of nuclear capabilities by other recognised nuclear states.
The UK’s record in meeting its NPT obligation to negotiate on ways of curtailing the nuclear arms race has been exemplary. We are the only nuclear weapon state to have a deterrent based today on a single platform, delivery system and warhead design. We have reduced the explosive power of our arsenal by over 75% since the end of the Cold War, and cut the numbers of operationally available nuclear warheads by almost half since 1997.
But this NPT obligation is not a unilateral one. The UK can but continue to play its part in these negotiations as a nuclear weapon state leading by example, and persuading other state parties to move. That is the nature of multilateral negotiations; and it would not be possible for the UK to play such a part if it had unilaterally abandoned its capability.