The politics of Trident

kardinal birkutzki

Brilliant. The moment the Middle East and the Islamic world is on the point of tooling up, Blighty disarms. Because, of course, we won't be needing it in the kind of geopolitical situation we will see in the future. Now where have we heard this kind of talk before?

Mike, Brighton

The chances of the government giving up Trident is ZERO. Period.
There is NO chance that we would voluntarily give up our nuclear weapons yet leave them in the hands of Pakistan and Iran.

Chris lancashire

Two points strike me. Taking advice from Baroness Williams on anything can only make the situation worse.
As kardinal birkutzki points out, the UK dropping nuclear weapons is really going to influence Iran, N Korea, Pakistan .... not.

Stop Labours Madness

Given that

-Pakistan is collapsing and has nuclear weapons
-Iran is near to getting nuclear weapons.
-Russia is re-arming

getting rid of Trident would appear to be quite mad. The world is becoming more unstable and the religious fanaticism of some Governments is horrifying.

I'm all for keeping Trident. It's not a luxory option, its a vital deterent in an unsafe world.

As for the fact that the funding could be spent on public services, so what, Labour is spending an extra £200 billion per annum over and above inflation since it came to office and we can all see the real benefit of that now, cant we?

TrevorsDen

We need nuclear weapons - we should never give them up.

But the weapons we have should match the threat we face. A deterrent does not have to mean trident.

But in terms of cost and employment - robbing Peter to pay Paul leaves you where you started.

THX1138

I said this last week

"I think along with Matthew Parris and Micheal Portillo that we should scrap Trident 25 billion saved"

Matthew Parris in Dec 2006

"Mine would be not the pacifist argument, but a perfectly Tory concern for getting military value for money, and preferring real punch in real and likely conflicts, to the useless swagger of international status symbols and expensive toys."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article657423.ece

It's a huge white elephant we can no longer afford, it has to go.

Matt

Interesting, and slightly scary, that she suggests the govt are looking at cheaper options- such as land based missiles.

The problem with that is that everyone knows where they are and then the location becomes a first strike target.

The French still have them but then they have ICBM launched by SSBN as well, which covers their backs. If it's one or the other, then it has to be submarine lauched.

We can't have tactical warheads either because they're outlawed by international treaty.

Can't see us sharing with the French, so, unless we unilaterally disarm, Trident and its successor it is.

Tiberius

So having Sovietized the UK culturally and nationalized its banks, Brown now wants to go the whole hog and enact CND policy.

He just can't believe his luck.

Austin Barry

'Trident is more useful as a 'tool for global disarmament than for UK defence'..

Absolutely. Let's target the silos in Pakistan, Iran and North Korea and press the red button.

TGF UKIP

"It's encouraging that the government is thinking again about renewing Trident." Quite sure we wouldn't feel more at home at the Staggers or the Grauniad, Pete?

The Labour Party are never to be trusted on defence matters and particularly not on the nuclear issue but there again neither are the Cameron Tories.

I have long held the suspicion that the UK's nuclear weaponry would certainly be at risk in Cameron's hands.

Hawkeye

They will not ditch Trident - too many jobs would be lost in Labour heartlands, too many union members would be made redundant.

Too many labour votes would vanish...

Rhoda Klapp

Nuclear cruise tomahawks on SSNs will be enough to frighten anybody without a top-class air defence system. We already have this capability, no extra kit required. It's hard to see the scenario where we would use Trident. We have also the possibility of air-dropped bombs. Should cover any real threat. Of course people in our own cities who wish us harm aren't frightened of nukes.

Will Yoxall

Why is spending money on defence - even in the form of the nuclear deterrent - always equated in a negative light to numbers of schools and hospitals. Surely defence is as important as education and healthcare?

Oh and Matt is quite right SLBMs are the only way to go.

Rob C

Why can't we replace but at less cost? The thing that always astonishes me about our Nuclear Warheads is the number. Why can't we have a fleet of say 10 subs which are 'nuclear capable' but just a dozen warheads? Surely if a potential enemy doesn't know which subs carry the nukes and which ones carry the conventional missiles, the deterrent is greater. For a rogue state to have the capacity to take out 10 subs in any 'first strike' would be implausible, but to locate 4 carrying 16 each would be more likely. Also, what's the point of 16 anyway (each armed with 3 of possible 12 warheads) - who's going to be around after the first couple? In the days of the cold war it may have been relevant, but now, more subs wider spread with less warheads would seem a better bet? Even if all of 10 subs carried 4 missiles with 1 warhead, the number of warheads would be just 40 instead of 192, yet the deterrent would be greater at less cost. To my knowledge, we current have around 13 subs anyway...

Dixon

We have squandered gigantic sums on the NHS already. Tripling its budget in 10 years to give us hospitals where patioents scream in uynattended agony and have to drink from flower-vases in the night. If iotys a choice between one or the other, its the NHS that should be scrapped.

But, hey, whats £65 billion when it comes to bail-outs?

We shouldnt be scrapping nuclear weapons. we should be USING them!

THX1138

Why don't we just pretend to have nuke's after all it worked for Saddam Hussein.

Saddam fooled the best intelligence services in the world into believing he had WMD with a bit of bluster and a few mocked up missle launchers, should be a doodle to trick likes of Pakistan & Iran and think of the money we'd save.

David Lindsay

Far from representing or effecting national pride or independence, our nuclear weapons programme has only ever represented and effected the wholesale subjugation of Britain's defence capability to a foreign power. That power maintains at least no less friendly relations with numerous other countries, almost none of which have nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons (like radiological, chemical and biological weapons) are morally repugnant simply in themselves. They offer not the slightest defence against a range of loosely-knit, if at all connected, terrorist organisations pursuing a range of loosely-knit, if at all connected, aims in relation to a range of countries while actually governing no state. Where would any such organisation keep nuclear weapons in the first place?

Furthermore, the possession of nuclear weapons serves to convey to terrorists and their supporters that Britain wishes to "play with the big boys", thereby contributing to making Britain a target for the terrorist activity against which such weapons are defensively useless. It is high time for Britain to grow up.

Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council could not be taken away without British consent, and so does not depend in any way on her possession of nuclear weapons; on the contrary, the world needs and deserves a non-nuclear permanent member of that Council.

Most European countries do not have nuclear weapons, and nor does Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Are these therefore in greater danger? On the contrary, the London bombings of 7th July 2005 were attacks on a country with nuclear weapons, while the attacks of 11th September 2001 were against the country with by far the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The only "nuclear power" in the Middle East is Israel. Is Israel the most secure state in the Middle East?

It is mind-boggling to hear people go on about Iran, whose President is in any case many years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and in any case only wants one (if he does) to use against the only Middle Eastern country that already has them. What does any of this have to do with us?

The Campaign for Democratic Socialism explicitly supported the unilateral renunciation of Britain's nuclear weapons, and the document 'Policy for Peace', on which Gaitskell eventually won his battle at the 1961 Labour Conference, stated: "Britain should cease the attempt to remain an independent nuclear power, since that neither strengthens the alliance, nor is it now a sensible use of our limited resources."

Unilateral nuclear disarmament did not cause the secession of the SDP, since it did not become Labour Party policy until two years and a General Election after that direct intervention in the British electoral process by a President of the European Commission as such, a true betrayal of Gaitskell, Bevan, Bevin, Attlee, the lot.

For that matter, numerous Tories with relevant experience – Anthony Head, Peter Thorneycroft, Nigel Birch, Aubrey Jones – were sceptical about, or downright hostile towards, British nuclear weapons in the Fifties and Sixties. In March 1964, while First Lord of the Admiralty and thus responsible for Polaris, George Jellicoe suggested that Britain might pool her nuclear deterrent with the rest of NATO. Enoch Powell denounced the whole thing as not just anything but independent in practice, but also immoral in principle.

Diverting enormous sums of money towards public services, and towards the relief of poverty at home and abroad, precisely by reasserting control over our own defence capability, would represent a most significant step towards One Nation politics, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation.

THX1138

David Lindsay - hear, hear, brilliant post.

Tiberius

"It is mind-boggling to hear people go on about Iran, whose President is in any case many years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and in any case only wants one (if he does) to use against the only Middle Eastern country that already has them. What does any of this have to do with us?"

David: no disrespect, mate, but you might just want to rethink this.

Matt

Rhoda,

we can't just stick a warhead on Tomohawk for 2 reasons:

1) we'd have to design a warhead- so that's a few million

2) As I stated above, we've signed international agreements outlawing the use of tactical nuclear weaponry, which this would be. Strictly legalistically, it's a strategic capability or nothing. The argument was always that if you allow tactical proliferation then someone may actually fire something.

Rob C, nice idea in principle- here's why it wouldn't work:

1) Warheads require maintenance, so you immediately need more than a base figure only just in double digits if you are to maintain a credible deterrent.

2) Each SSBN can carry up to 16 missiles, each of which carries up to 12 warheads. The exact number at any one time is classified.

3) There are fundamental differences between how we task our SSBNs (nuclear powered, nuclear armed), and our SSNs (nuclear powered, conventionaly armed).

Given the posture you suggest, no one would know at any time which submarine was carrying what. Given that many countries are anti-nuclear weapons, this presents problems. If a country like New Zealand will not let into its waters any vessel carrying nuclear weapons then, for security reasons we will be unable to send a submarine there- we can't say it hasn't got nuclear weapons even if it hasn't if we are going to start scattering them around the SSN fleet.

Equally, so-called Z berths, capable of accepting SSNs alongside are rare enough in the world. Add in the fact that you may be carrying nuclear weapons and the number falls to zero outside our own dockyards and those of the US that we already have access to.

Essentially, scattering tactical nukes around the SSN fleet would, even were it not prohibited by treaty as above, cripple the normal day to day ooperation of our submarine fleet in conventional roles.

Your point about why we need so many missiles when no one would be alive after the first salvo is a misunderstanding of nuclear conflict theory.

The UK posture has for many years been one of minimum credible deterrent- ie, we do not envisage a situation where we would strike first.

Therefore, we aim to deter nuclear aggression by pointing out that, were the UK to be attacked- and a first strike would in all likelihood end the existence of the UK- then we would retaliate in kind and ensure that so too would be the existence the attacking country.

Hence SSBNs, 1 on patrol at all times, no one knows where it is, and it's not in the UK to be destroyed in the event of strike. It is there for massive retaliation and to ensure that any nuclear aggression becomes zero sum.

Rhoda Klapp

Matt, we still have a warhead design facility, so OK, a little expense. I defer to your knowledge on tactical weapons, although to me there are no tactical or strategic weapons, only targets. If we are bound into some treaty which does not acknowledge that, it's a stupid negation of our ability to decide our own options.

mac

That'd be this Baroness Williams?
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/simon-carr/the-sketch-why-shirley-williams-is-less-interesting-than-my-hotel-air-conditioning-547180.html

David Lindsay - are you suggesting Attlee and Bevin were incipient ban the bombers? What do you think the two of them - and only them from the post-war Cabinet - were doing in the secret 'General 75' committee?

TomTom

If we get rid of Trident we can pay more into the EU Budget - after all T Blair did increase our net contributions considerably.

Or we could stop paying into the Eu and build our submarines without which the Royal Navy is defunct and if India is buiding a nuclear navy it does make Britain look foolish giving India and China economic aid each year

David Lindsay

"David Lindsay - are you suggesting Attlee and Bevin were incipient ban the bombers?"

I'm suggesting that they have been dead for a long time, and that we now live in an entirely different world.

THX1138, very many thanks, and keep an eye on my blog, as I know that you do. The BNP has today risen to the challenge. Will anyone else? NW Durham is looking like the most interesting mainland parliamentary contest for generations.

Michael Booth

David Lindsay
thanks for that - a really good post which hits the nail on the head

Coeur de Lion

Anyone worked out how many tube-launched cruise missiles we'd need for a credible deterrent; how many attack SSNs we'd need permanently on patrol; ?range therefore where?;how many do we actually have, today? tomorrow?; what cost?; would there be any left for conventionally coercing the tinpot? Answers on a postcard

mac

David Lindsay:
"I'm suggesting that they have been dead for a long time, and that we now live in an entirely different world".

Long dead indeed, but their names are so prominent in the 'Identity and Aims' section of the "British People's Alliance" it seems their world is one you're keen to restore. But without nuclear weapons, evidently.

Attlee and Bevin would take issue with that position.

The Laughing cavalier

Dropping a few of the neo-fascist databases would pay for Trident in a trice. Scrapping ID cards alone would save £18 billion.

Joss Cope

Greenpeace has just produced a new report, In The Firing Line, which reveals true costs of £97 billion for Trident: five times government estimates.

How can this expensive project be justified at a time of economic crisis and emerging threats to national security such as international terrorism, failed states, pandemic diseases and above all, climate change?

And does it really deliver genuine security for the UK?

The report has received the backing of many senior political and military figures, including former shadow defence secretary Michael Ancram, who wrote the report's forward, Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable, and Lord Ramsbotham, former Adjutant-General of Defence Management.

You can read a summary of the reportâ™s findings at: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/ITFLsummary

And the full report at http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/ITFL