The Global Nuclear Scene

 

 

I should first make clear, to avoid any misunderstanding, that I am in no way a spokesman of the UK Government.  I come as a private individual, and my opinions and my words are entirely my own.

 

I plan to offer, as a starting-point for our exchange of ideas, a brief and inevitably selective overview of issues facing each of the nuclear powers, in the hope that aspects not confined to South Asia may be of interest now that your country is a de facto member of the nuclear-weapon ownership group.  Our conference’s previous session has looked at proliferation, which is a concern common to all these powers; but apart from that there is no single underlying theme – the situations of the countries differ, and so therefore do their problems.  But perhaps my run-through may give some sense of the wider nuclear  perspective in which South Asian issues arise.

 

I begin with the United States.  I would pick out four matters which the next Administration, of whichever party, will probably need to tackle:

 

First, there is the content of the US armoury.  Its main features in the classical strategic triad are very stable and long-lasting.  There is moreover, despite some change in tone of voice, virtually no real change of nuclear doctrine from what has long been established; it is, for example, not at all the case that nuclear weapons have some fresh role in the concept of pre-emption or prevention which the Bush Administration has sought to advance.  That said, the Administration and the current Congress have seemed sympathetic to the ambitions of the weapon laboratories for research on new types of weapon for special tasks like bunker-busting.  Senator Kerry, by contrast, has said that he would terminate this.  I think the operational case for it is anyway very thin.  More importantly, however, I believe that to be seen adding to and elaborating an already huge and diverse arsenal would be a damaging signal in the context of non-proliferation and Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

 

Second, there is the question of how far and in what ways the drive for ballistic missile defence of the US homeland is to be pursued.  I am a long-term and deep sceptic about the BMD business – I regard it as probably, at least in the strategic form as distinct just possibly from the protection of deployed forces, a massive waste of money.  But it could also have undesirable wider repercussions, for example in relation to Chinese reactions.

 

Third, there is the question of whether nuclear weapons should still be held in Europe.  The number – once over seven thousand, in Robert McNamara’s day – is now down to a few hundreds, and frankly I do not think it matters much in strategic terms whether they go or stay.  But it would be harmful to the transatlantic alliance, already scarred by the Iraq adventure, if withdrawal were made by either side into a big or contentious political issue.

 

Fourth, there is the question whether the next Administration will be as little interested as the present one has been in nuclear arms control.  The Moscow Treaty of 2002 was in my view a piece of political theatre rather than a constraining arms control deal.  The Bush Administration is, I understand, suggesting that it is still interested in a fissile-material-cut-off treaty, but since this is apparently to have no verification provisions I have some doubt about how serious or useful the interest may be.

 

Now two questions about Russia.  The first is whether, amid other heavy pressures upon resources, she can really keep a very big and varied strategic armoury and maintain it to the operational standards of the past, though there will surely be reluctance to weaken this last symbol of superpower status.  The second point, more important, is whether Russia will retain their massive numbers of non-strategic weapons – apparently three times as many as the United State now has – and, if so, whether these will be held in conditions of adequate security.  I find it hard to see a strict defence need for over three thousand weapons.

 

I turn to my own country.  We have the smallest and least diverse arsenal among the NPT-recognised Five, but the Trident SLBM is powerful and flexible and the running cost of the force is modest enough.  The question will however arise, probably before the end of this decade, what we should do when we have to face spending serious extra money either to keep the Trident force going or to develop options for replacing it.  That question is bound to revive political argument about whether, in the post-Cold-War environment, we need to stay in the business at all.  Anti-nuclear pressures, though quiescent at the moment, have always been stronger in the United Kingdom than in the other countries of the Five.  If I had to guess which of the Five was – I choose my words carefully – the least unlikely to withdraw from nuclear status, I would say the UK, though that is by no means to say that it is positively likely.

 

I come to France.  Her strategic situation is no more threatened than Britain's is, but I think her withdrawal from the business is almost unimaginable.  France is a great nation with a painful history for a century and a half, she has made a vast investment in nuclear capability and takes pride in the product, and I believe it has become central now to her self-image in the international scene.  The practical question may be whether she feels it right and necessary in the long term to continue with an armoury of the current scale and diversity, which costs far more than the UK's does and therefore entails high opportunity costs.  But I recognise that the diversity – SLBMs and ALCMs – is not just a luxury; for example, neither component is as flexible as the Trident system, and France has in recent years moved to a targeting doctrine requiring more flexibility than in the past.

 

I shall not spend time upon China, about which this audience probably knows more than I do.  But it will be interesting to see whether or how China responds in respect of nuclear capability if the United States does go ahead with a big BMD deployment, especially if system elements come to be made available to others in East Asia.

 

I have even less to say about Israel.  Almost all its neighbours complain about its nuclear capability and want a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East, but the idea has no practical reality unless the political facts of the region change durably in ways that look at present remote.

 

Finally South Asia.  India and Pakistan, being still in the emerging phase, the build-up phase, face a longer list of possible questions than the six older nuclear possessors.  I cannot attempt to enumerate them all, but I suggest four general categories:

 

First there is the question of what eventual force size and structure each of the two countries is going to aim for.  I recognise that that involves looking ahead a long way, and also that in some respects the answers may depend upon external events or the actions of others.  But I venture to suggest that it is desirable – not least for the interaction and the dialogue between them – that both countries should be as definite, and as open, as possible about plans at least in the near and medium term.

 

Second, the matter of operational doctrine.  As will be suggested in a briefing note about to be published on the IISS’s South Asia website (which I commend to you), nuclear doctrine exists at more than one level, and both countries have in different ways given some important indications about political doctrine and strategic doctrine.  But operational doctrine entails specific questions to which practical military planners need answers – about deployment and readiness, for example, about flexibility of options, about targeting and warning and detailed control.  There may well be reasons why the answers to such questions are not all made public; but serious nuclear capability does require that, whether publicly or in secret, the questions are truly faced and answered.

 

My third category concerns defences – in particular, and in the first instance for India rather than Pakistan, the question of defence against ballistic missiles.  In the Sub-Continent decisions about this could have deep repercussions, and plans would need to be very carefully weighed.  I admit to being heartened by the impression I have received that any enthusiasm there may have been in Delhi for BMD, at least at the strategic level, is fading.

 

And my fourth and final aspect concerns whether clear and useful understandings can be reached between the two South Asian neighbours, formally or informally, on some shared set of working principles about nuclear capability that will help them both to maintain strategic stability with minimum friction and at minimum cost.    I was glad to note that in a joint statement earlier this year the two Foreign Ministers spoke of their nuclear capabilities as factors for stability.  That valuable idea needs to be developed further.  During the Cold War East and West did by the later stages come, in an untidy and unsystematic way, to some sort of useful common comprehension.  I would like to think that in this as in other respects of the nuclear business South Asia might be able to do the job better and faster than we did, without some of the mistakes made, the blind alleys pursued, the opportunities missed and the long time taken.

 

I shall not attempt any summary of what I have said, but perhaps I might make one final very general comment.  Among the NPT Five nuclear armouries are mostly smaller, spending less heavy and political emphasis much less salient than during the Cold War days.  But we are not yet in or near to an environment in which all the Five believe that they can seal off the risks of major war, or of major damage to their interests by external force or pressure, without the existence of some nuclear capability in the background.  The nuclear world to which Article VI of the NPT aspires is accordingly, for the foreseeable future, scarcely less remote than the world of general and complete disarmament to which that Article also and equally aspires.  In my view there are certainly, for more than one of the powers, further steps that could usefully be taken in disarmament, and I would hope that for its part South Asia would, in recognition of this global reason as well as of regional ones, exercise careful restraint in their build-up decisions.  I personally by no means despair of an eventual non-nuclear world; but the path to it will be primarily a matter not of direct pressure for total disarmament but of changing the geo-political circumstances which now lead nuclear possessors to regard their weapons as relevant and useful.