The Trident replacement debate
There has been ongoing debate in the British Parliament for nearly fifteen years surrounding the renewal of the UK’s nuclear weapons systems, called the “Trident Nuclear Deterrent”. The system was announced to the public in 1980, as a deterrent to the Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Bloc. The UK already had a nuclear missile system in place, but the new Trident II D-5 missiles that had been developed by the United States were more advanced and had greater range and destructive capabilities than the UK’s old “Polaris” nuclear system, in place since 1968. The Thatcher government negotiated with the Reagan administration to purchase the new missiles, and submarine patrols with the new missiles began almost fourteen years later in 1994. The submarines that carry the missiles had a twenty-five year life expectancy, while the missiles themselves do not require upgrades until the 2040’s. In 2006, under the Blair government, a Ministry of Defense white paper recommended to Parliament that the nuclear system infrastructure should be renovated, at a cost of approximately twenty-five billion pounds (adjusted for inflation). These measures were approved a year later in 2007, when a majority Labour government drew enough votes in the House of Commons to pass the renovations, despite significant rebellion from the Labour backbenchers. Another vote was held in 2016 to replace the submarines, which passed, and the fleet of new “Dreadnought” class submarines is currently under construction, to be operational by 2028.
A moral weapon?
The moral question of nuclear weapons should be easy to answer for anyone; the destruction caused by not only the cataclysmic explosive damage, but the lingering, malignant effects of ionising radiation left by the unstable nuclear fuel, causes unimaginable collateral pain and suffering for decades after the initial explosion. Harnessing nuclear fission for destructive purposes is no doubt one of the least humane advancements made by the human race, and the nuclear arsenal of the UK alone is enough to quite literally bring about the end of humanity. This is not taking into account the stockpiles of warheads held by Russia, the United States, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and (presumably) Israel, which would be more than enough to destroy all life on earth thousands of times over. The only reason nuclear weapons are still held is to deter other nations who also have nuclear weapons from attacking, and this has developed into an increasingly vicious cycle of threat and posturing.
The Cold War
The largest threat of nuclear war was present when the Soviet Union and United States were building their stockpiles against each other as political and military tensions peaked at the height of the Cold War. The UK was among the nations that developed the first nuclear weapon, and despite the assurance of mutual defense offered by NATO, the UK developed its own nuclear deterrent anyway. The debate surrounding the renewal of Tridents infrastructure has thrown into question the relevance of the UK’s ownership of weapons of mass destruction in a post-Cold War world, a world where the threat of nuclear annihilation from a hostile foreign power is significantly negated, especially as the mutual defense treaty supplied by NATO ensures that the United States’ will respond with its own, significantly larger and more powerful nuclear arsenal to any existential threat that necessitates such a response. Besides, the UK’s stockpile of two-hundred warheads is a drop in the ocean compared to the US’s stockpile of between five and six-thousand warheads. Also, it is widely accepted that nuclear war, in any capacity, is an instant lose-lose scenario, as every nuclear nation has a policy of immediate retaliation, which would almost certainly end with the destruction of all life in the nations responsible, and possibly the world, depending on the amount of weapons fired. This means that even the most hostile foreign power should be extremely hesitant to press their big red button, as if they do, the destruction of their own nation is assured.
The argumant to keep a nuclear deterrant
The main argument for the UK keeping its nuclear weapons is the same argument that every other nuclear nation uses to defend its potential to kill every living thing; “what if we’re attacked?” This is reasonably credible to nations such as Israel, which is subjected to threat and non-nuclear attack almost constantly, or India and Pakistan, who developed their weapons as a deterrent against each other. These nations have enemies, whereas the UK has only adversaries; competitors for global power in a non-military context. There is no immediate or blatant threat from a foreign power to the UK or its citizens, and the most likely scenario experts have hypothesised in which a nuclear weapon is used, is not by a nation at all, but if a terrorist organisation somehow gains possession of a nuclear weapon and detonates it in a civilian centre as a dirty bomb. There is no way in which a state’s nuclear arsenal could be useful to retaliate in this scenario, as terrorists do not usually have an area of land to bomb in response.
The invalid jobs argumant
Another argument used by the sitting government in defense of the UK’s nuclear arsenal is that it supports around two-thousand five-hundred jobs, and the renovations to Trident are necessary in order to maintain those jobs. The figure of twenty-five billion pounds is, for many people, too large to justify the maintenance of these jobs; if each of those two-thousand five-hundred people whose jobs are at stake were given a million pounds from the money set aside to renovate Trident, the government would still have over twenty-two billion pounds to invest into other areas of the public sector. While this line of policy is untenable, it does show that the amount of jobs being maintained at such great cost is quite substantially low.
The political impact of disarmament
The UK is a great power in global affairs; it sits on the G7 and G20, has significant diplomatic power, has one of the largest and healthiest economies in the world, and a highly modernised and efficient military, thought of around the world as one of the highest quality militaries in modern times. It’s power is certain, but how much of that power comes from it’s ownership of nuclear weapons? The world’s current great powers are generally thought to include the UK, US, China, Russia, France, Japan, Germany and Italy. The last three of those nations have no nuclear weapons. In 1945, after the Second World War had ended, the UK was on the list of great powers, as it was before the war, and before the First World War, even before the Napoleonic Wars. The UK has always been a very powerful nation, with or without nuclear weapons, and if it was to give up its nuclear weapons, it would no doubt send a very strong message to the world that we have moved past the time when the threat of mutual destruction was necessitated by the global climate, and the world must rid itself of these weapons if global peace is to be achieved.
stay safe
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