Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 52, no. 1, February–March 2010, pp. 11–16
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The UK nuclear deterrent can be viewed as a bargaining chip in the global drive to zero, or as the nation’s ultimate insurance policy. Failing to strike a balance between these disparate views could lead to unintended and undesirable consequences. Indeed, determining the best way to resolve such tension is a challenge facing the entire international community, and one that will be centre stage at the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference.
Nuclear deterrence served the United Kingdom well in the Cold War by preventing all sorts of aggression among the major powers, not just nuclear coercion or blackmail. Some now say that nuclear deterrence is no longer relevant because it cannot address the threats of international terrorism or insurgency within a state. Those voices tend to overlook the fact that during the Cold War there was much low-level conflict which was likewise not subject to nuclear deterrence. Nor do they seem to recognise that the major developing threat to world security is the proliferation of nuclear weapons, resulting in new instability.
It is true that today there is no titanic power struggle between two major military powers and their allies in which one threatens to subjugate the other. But that is not to say that there is no conceivable threat in the future from countries with established nuclear arsenals. The more proximate concern is proliferation, that states newly acquiring the nuclear bomb could use it irresponsibly; deliberately or unintentionally pass nuclear-weapon technologies to a non-state actor such as a terrorist group; or use their capability coercively to dissuade others from operating in their region. There is also the proliferation risk that would accompany the more widespread use of civil nuclear power across the world as a means of reducing carbon emissions and thereby responding to the urgent challenge of climate change. These are not trivial concerns and should give pause for thought to anyone favouring unilateral disarmament. At the same time, however, the high moral purpose of those opposed to all nuclear armament and the desire to abide by NPT obligations make a strong contribution to policy development on nuclear disarmament. And there is the utilitarian thought that likely future proliferation risks may outweigh the benefits of the status quo and thus give weight to the argument for a secure reduction to zero.
The basis of British deterrence
The United Kingdom has nuclear weapons because successive governments decided that they enhanced the nation’s security. The British arsenal was intended to address existential threats and, because nuclear weapons can neither be wished away in a trice nor conjured into being in a moment, they were maintained as the ultimate insurance policy. At the time of the 2006 White Paper, then Prime Minister Tony Blair made clear that the decisions his cabinet were making related to the period following 2024, when the current fleet of nuclear-weapon-carrying submarines would come to the end of their (already extended) planned life. The uncertainty surrounding a period so far in the future and the fact…
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Desmond Bowen was a career civil servant working in the British Ministry of Defence until 2008.
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