Britain, the Prime Minister will be pleased to learn, once had a nuclear weapon named the Tony. (It was a prototype warhead to be fitted to the Bloodhound surface-to-air missile, tried in the 1950s but never developed.) The record books of our great nation’s early nuclear experiments also yield something called the Peter (appropriately enough, a trigger device for a larger explosion) but, alas, no Alastair, no Gordon (though there was, perhaps in anticipation of the late Robin Cook, another prototype unhappily christened the Pixie).
The first-generation Tony, produced by trench-coated chaps with soldering irons in a collection of sheds just off the A340, was reassuringly cheap. Hidden under a thick 1950s bedsheet of secrecy, it was also free from specific public controversy. The new generation of nukes now being planned by Mr Blair — the Tony II — will be neither.
Officially, of course, ‘no decision has yet been taken’ to replace Britain’s existing Trident ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) system, as the Prime Minister and his Defence Secretary, John Reid, continue to insist whenever they are asked. Last month, indeed, Mr Reid called for the nation to begin a ‘debate’ on the subject. But, in truth, the non-decision on a successor to Trident enjoys the same status within government as, say, the non-decision to invade Iraq did in the latter half of 2002.
During the election campaign, in one of those classic forked-tongue promises increasingly treasured by collectors, the Prime Minister proclaimed: ‘We have got to retain our nuclear deterrent. That decision is for another time. But I believe that is the right thing.’ He used a similar form of words in the Commons last week. The public can have all the debates it wants. But within Whitehall the only debate remaining is exactly what form the new system will take, and the only ‘decision for another time’ is when to lift the curtain and reveal it to the public.
The arguments will be none the less fierce for all that. CND is gearing up, with the launch of a new campaign. Labour MPs are threatening to stage a vote on the Tony II at next week’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour party, having failed to win a promise that it will be voted on in the Commons. The rebels have attracted some impressive new supporters, including the last Tory defence secretary, Michael Portillo. Ministers are showing signs of nerves, with Mr Reid inviting his backbenchers for private talks in small groups to listen to their views.
The antis have a better case than ever. The rationale for a Trident-style intercontinental ballistic missile system, capable of raining megadeath over millions of square miles, has evaporated as completely as the Soviet Union it was designed to deter. There have been moves in the last decade to scale down Trident’s firepower — to give it a ‘sub-strategic capability’, in the jargon. But it remains a blunderbuss, simply too big and too destructive to be used against any of the enemies currently in stock.
Our enemies know this. We know they know. Thus the deterrent is no longer credible, if indeed it ever was. In an era of small and medium-scale conflict, a nuclear weapon designed for a world of two superpowers is as much a military anachronism as the three-pronged spear after which it is named. In an era of small- and medium-scale defence budgets, all such a weapon can do is suck life-saving funds from those conventional forces which actually are useful, and are used. Twenty billion pounds is the most commonly mentioned figure for Tony II, something that would pay for all those armoured vehicles, functioning radios and sets of body armour that the army has had to do without in Iraq.
As Mr Portillo puts it: ‘The case for Britain having an independent nuclear deterrent depended on the existence of the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union collapsed long ago. There is no threat from China. The nuclear weapons states, from India to Israel, do not have the capability to hit us. Relations between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac may be strained, but as yet we have no reason to fear a nuclear strike from la force de frappe.’
Nuclear weapons, even when sitting peacefully in their silos, also emit radiation — politically at least. For years New Labour has proclaimed its fight against weapons of mass destruction and their spread. Older readers may recall that it has even fought a war on the theme. Now we will be commissioning our own new weapons of mass destruction, and will be able to make no honest reply when asked by a proliferator state, ‘If it’s all right for you, why isn’t it all right for us?’
In each of his five wars, Mr Blair has stressed how careful we are being to avoid collateral damage, how precise our targeting has become, how it is not innocent civilians but the men of evil in their bunkers who are being attacked. But nuclear weapons inevitably cause enormous collateral damage; that, arguably, is their point.
The only problem for CND, Mr Portillo and all the people gearing up to fight a son of Trident is that Mr Blair is unlikely to present them with so obvious a political target. The Tony II may well not, in fact, be a big, expensive-looking, brand-new Trident-type system, the nuclear equivalent of a showroom-fresh Range Rover with white leather seating. It may well be a cunning, minimalist, part-refurbished, part-new Ford Focus of a bomb with, at least ostensibly, a lower price tag.
The real cost of a nuke is often not so much the weapon itself, but the delivery system. Trident is a submarine-launched ballistic missile. Building four huge subs to carry it, vessels which could roam the oceans for months at a time, was the best way of hiding the missiles from the Russians, but it cost Britain a fortune. For the new-generation system, the betting among some senior defence people is that the government may simply opt to stretch the operational life of the existing four Trident submarines by about 15 years, as the Americans are already doing with theirs. The last US Trident sub is now due to retire in 2042.
The missile that actually goes inside the submarines is another matter. But here, again, the government may opt for refurbishment, more modest than expected, with the Americans playing a crucial part. The US is upgrading its Trident D5 missile to a standard known as ‘D5A’, with certain obsolete parts renewed, extending its life to 2040. We could do the same. Apart from the warhead, our missiles are also D5s, also made by the Americans; the two nations draw, in fact, from a common pool. Even the warhead is in some respects a copy of an American one.
Such a solution would highlight the fiction of the ‘independent’ British deterrent, and might be quite expensive. But it could be presented as a slimline option and would take a lot of the wind out of the protesters’ sails. Other modifications could be made to reduce firepower and destructiveness. Other, simpler nuclear weapons could be introduced, such as bolting nuclear warheads on to some of the UK’s conventional cruise missiles. Either or both of these could be spun as a new, more credible, lo-calorie deterrent.
All this could then, in turn, be justified by reference to the new scary nuclear states likely to exist by the time the Tony II enters service. Although the Soviet Union may have disappeared as a threat, it seems entirely likely that Iran will have nukes in 15 years’ time. And that, as the International Institute for Strategic Studies warned this week, would lead countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey to ‘reassess their [nuclear] options’.
One can understand the PR attractions of a Ford Focus deterrent. But it may actually be far more dangerous than what we’ve got now. If you can use a nuclear we apon without killing hundreds of thousands — merely, say, single thousands — it increases the possibility that a nuclear weapon might actually be used.
Just as Britain is dependent on American nuclear hardware, and heavily influenced by US purchasing and refurbishment decisions, it may also be influenced by the Bush White House’s terrifying proposed ‘joint nuclear operations’ doctrine which foresees small ‘preventative’ (pre-emptive) nuclear strikes on countries, terrorist groups or criminals armed with weapons of mass destruction.
The doctrine, which appeared on the Pentagon website over the summer, seems to mesh with President Bush’s attempts to build a ‘robust nuclear earth penetrator’, a small nuke designed for use against buried WMD bunkers. Yet if we are to go around attacking suspected WMD with real WMD of our own, we shall require rather more reliable intelligence than that let loose on Iraq.
We would be wise to fear a nuclear Iran, or a nuclear Saudi. But we should also remember that for a threat there needs to be not just capability — but also intention. There’s no evidence for intention. Remember, too, that the real threat to our lives and security comes not from distant rogue states, but from terrorism on the train to work — a threat against which nuclear weapons are useless.
The only real argument for a British nuke is political, not military. It is part of our associate membership subscription to the big boys’ club; used, in Alec Douglas-Home’s words, to ‘secure our place above the salt at the negotiating table’. For most of us, that argument has long been persuasive. But in reforming Trident, we face a new and troubling possibility.
Whether we support or oppose nuclear weapons, the real question in the months ahead is not whether ministers wish to maintain an ‘independent deterrent’. It is whether they agree — or even half-agree — with the developing American doctrine of usable, pre-emptive nukes.
So far, the government has refused to discuss this, or indeed any other issue. Parliamentary questions, freedom of information filings and media requests to disclose the purpose of the deterrent, the threats that might be deterred by it, and the costs of the replacement exercise have all been ignored.
Back in the golden days of the Cold War, when the issues were so much simpler, a famous government information film suggested we could survive a holocaust by whitewashing our windows and hiding under the table. For all their calls for a public debate, ministers seem to be behaving in a rather similar way now.
Andrew Gilligan is defence and diplomatic editor of The Spectator and a feature writer for the Evening Standard.