The run-in to a general election often sees thinktanks float ideas they hope might influence an incoming government, or, since 2010, influence possible coalition negotiations.
Some of those ideas are good, some less good, some provocative in order to stimulate debate.
This week saw an idea floated that was simply dangerous, not just because of its badly thought-out content, and the existential nature of the topic in question, but because the thinktank in question, CentreForum, is seen as the one closest to the Liberal Democrat leadership, who may yet, despite crashing to a 25-year low in the polls, hold the balance of power. If the idea gets taken up by the Liberal Democrats it could well become part of their negotiating package. Then we might all pay a heavy price.
CentreForum’s new paper, launched on Monday, is called Retiring Trident: An alternative proposal for nuclear deterrence.
The current UK strategic nuclear deterrent consists of Trident ballistic missiles launched from Vanguard class submarines. There are four submarines in order to maintain continuous at-sea deterrence – one sub is always on patrol, undetectable at the bottom of the ocean. This package ensures we have a genuine deterrent – each Trident carries enough missiles and warheads to make any country thinking of attacking or blackmailing the UK realise the cost would be national destruction – which is available at all times in case a threat suddenly emerges, and cannot be destroyed by a pre-emptive attack as the location of the sub is undetectable. We are currently investing in a like-for-like replacement as the submarines are nearing the end of their working life.
CentreForum’s proposal is for ‘a free-fall nuclear capability based on Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II/Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) that the UK is currently procuring and the forthcoming US B61 Mod 12 (B61-12) bombs that will arm Nato nuclear Dual-Capable Aircraft (DCA) from 2020.’
This is basically a return to the type of RAF-operated air-dropped deterrent the UK had with the V-bombers in the 1950s and 1960s. There was a good reason why we moved to missiles launched from submarines: the USSR invested more in layered air defences (interceptor aircraft, and anti-aircraft missiles) than any other power, and by the 1970s it had surface-to-air missiles that meant the number of aircraft the UK had would not have been able to get through and make attacks big enough to be a deterrent. Labour scrapped the last UK free fall nuclear bombs, designed for tactical use on the battlefield, in the late 1990s
Vladimir Putin’s recent foreign policy stance shows Russia remains the main potential threat to the UK over the lifespan of the Trident replacement. Russia retains top-of-the-league air defences and is investing billions in upgrading its nuclear ICBMs. It has been probing UK air and naval defences with Bear reconnaissance flights and warships in a way that suggests its view of the UK is not benign.
The CentreForum proposal is actually more dangerous than CND’s view that we should just abandon the idea of nuclear deterrence and have a neutralist foreign policy where we avoid offending nuclear-armed bullies.
Buying a nuclear deterrent is not like buying a car where you can compromise and pick a lower-performing model. The bargain-basement bin-end ‘deterrent’, modelled on 1950s ideas proposed by CentreForum would actually increase the risk of a one-sided nuclear attack happening, rather than deterring such a war by making it unwinnable:
· The ability of just the two squadrons of RAF F-35s to be given the nuclear role according to the report, even though they are stealth aircraft, to penetrate Russian air defences in enough numbers to drop enough bombs to be a deterrent seems rather a precarious basis on which to counterbalance a power with 1,600 nuclear warheads and a triad of delivery mechanisms (land- and sea-based ballistic missiles and strategic bombers).
· Both the basing options for the F-35s, an air base on land and an aircraft carrier, are vulnerable to being destroyed pre-emptively by enemy aircraft, special forces or nuclear attack for the land base; or, in the case of the aircraft carrier by air attack, submarines, conventional warships or nuclear attack. Russia or the United States can afford to have their strategic bombers taken out by a pre-emptive strike as they would retain a Trident-style submarine-launched second strike capability, which this proposal is saying we would not have – this is what deters a pre-emptive strike against them or us at the moment.
· The carrier-based squadron actually risks escalating any future military confrontation into a nuclear one. If an enemy knows your carrier has capability to fly a nuclear bomber squadron they will worry you intend a nuclear strike as soon as you move it within flying range of their country. Conversely, they will be incentivised to strike pre-emptively while the carriers are not near them.
· By their nature, the aircraft concerned are not permanently on patrol and ready to strike like Trident is or even US strategic bombers like the B-52 could have been in the 1950s and 1960s. This again incentivises an enemy pre-emptive strike or surprise attack.
All this risk is to be incurred for a net saving that CentreForum itself calculate as only £4.1bn-£13bn spread over the 17 years 2015-2032. That is a maximum of £764m a year. For that saving – about the running cost of a small London borough council – we would run the risk of not being able to deter nuclear attacks or blackmail, and in fact actually incentivising a pre-emptive attack. This proposal would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. Opposing any watering-down of the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent needs to be a red line for Labour should we be unfortunate enough to end up negotiating with other parties in a hung parliament.
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Luke Akehurst is a former member of Labour’s NEC. He tweets @lukeakehurst
Trident is a pointless waste of money and getting rid of it would have no effect whatsoever. Does Luke think that Russia might invade the UK?
Yes.
But all argument for nuclear “deterrence” was blown out of the water in 2003, when Iraq was invaded precisely on the grounds (false, but that was not and is not the point) that it already had nuclear weapons.
Yes, it is very odd that some Labour MPs claim that they supported the invasion of Iraq because they thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Idiots!
Now, no, but we are buying a replacement system that will be in use until 2050 and we have no idea what the geopolitical situation will be then. A more likely scenario is that in the future Russia might use nuclear blackmail – threaten a limited attack on one city in order to bully us out of resisting their territorial ambitions elsewhere in Europe.
Luke. I assume you disagree with the party’s policy that we should be moving toward a nuclear weapon free world given Russia’s predominant military capability against its east European neighbours? Or perhaps you think that we cannot depend upon the Alliance (US extended deterrent) to neutralise any Russian nuclear threat assuming it remains for the indefinite future?
I am in favour of achieving a nuclear free world through a comprehensive multilateral process. I would want the UK to keep a strategic nuclear deterrent for as long as any other countries have one. I could not support a situation where Russia or China was nuclear armed and the UK was not.
“Russia remains the main potential threat to the UK”? Complete hysteria.
you’re tilting at straw men (to mix a metaphor). The alternative to a renewed deterrent isn’t a neutralist foreign policy. You could be active in every war going if you saw fit (though clearly the Syria vote in August 2013 suggests your party leader doesn’t) even without nukes – look at Denmark, who joins them all – Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya – and doesn’t even spend much time on angst and soul-searching afterwards when things, to some degree or other, go wrong. And giving up nukes doesn’t entail giving up our UNSC seat – indeed it would gain us great kudos from states like South Africa, Brazil, etc who don’t get the credit they deserve for giving up their nuclear programmes, yet have seen no diminution in their national security by doing so. The reality is that we have nukes by historical accident, and there’s no good reason why the UK should and Germany, Italy, Spain or Poland shouldn’t, yet we cling to the non-proliferation treaty, by which we are meant to disarm, while stopping proliferation, somehow suggesting we are different. If we want a world where Saudi Arabia and Egypt, or Japan and South Korea, might think twice before turning nuclear, we ought to set an example and say that we have faith in NATO, we could make better use of our defence budget to defend NATO allies and principles, redirecting the billions to genuinely deployable and interoperable assets, than with a white elephant system which everyone knows isn’t really an independent deterrent anyway, and give the damn things up for good, but for positive, pro-defence reasons. Why is no one in the Labour Party brave enough to confront this truth?