DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING UK nuclear weapons policy: deconstructing ‘minimum deterrence’ Dr Nick Ritchie, University of Bradford [email protected] Introduction In a White Paper in December 2006 the Labour government set out its plans to begin the process of replacing the UK’s current Trident nuclear weapon system, starting with the procurement of a new generation of nuclear‐powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) to carry its Trident submarine‐
launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) over the long‐term.1 The decision to begin the replacement process will enable the UK to deploy nuclear weapons well into the 2050s.2 British nuclear weapons policy has long been characterised as one of ‘minimum deterrence’. The concept lacks precisions, but it derives from a particular understanding of how nuclear deterrence works in practice, related prescriptions for the size and posture of nuclear forces, and economic constraints on nuclear weapon programmes. It also reflects a political desire to be seen to be fully committed to the 1968 Treaty on the Non‐Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) by limiting the perceived value of nuclear weapons through ‘minimum’ numbers, a relaxed operational posture, and declaratory constraints on the circumstances in which the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons would ever be considered. At the heart of this paper sits the question of how ‘minimum’ UK ‘minimum deterrence’ is and how we might think about redefining that ‘minimum’ in UK policy and practice. This exploration begins with a summary outline of the broad commitments of ‘minimum deterrence’ and UK nuclear weapons policy. The paper then provides an overview of three contemporary drivers of ‘minimum deterrence’ that could take the concept in new directions, namely security, cost and disarmament. The last part of the paper takes a detailed look at opportunities (and costs) for nudging prevailing British notions of ‘minimum’ a few more steps along its post‐Cold War trajectory of reduction, restriction, and consolidation. Minimum deterrence The advent of nuclear weapons transformed concepts of deterrence and war‐fighting in military strategy.3 Nuclear weapons were soon grafted to the concept of nuclear deterrence as the Cold War unfolded in the late 1940s. Bernard Brodie’s prescient 1946 work The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order argued there could be no defence against nuclear weapons and states could only guard against nuclear attack if they had the ability to retaliate in kind.4 Gregory Giles notes that “The notion of nuclear deterrence began to be reflected in British military thinking shortly before the 1
Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent, Cm 6994, (London: HMSO, December 2006). 2
For more detail see Nick Ritchie, Trident: The Deal Isn't Done ‐ Serious Questions Remain Unanswered, Bradford Disarmament Research Centre Briefing Paper, December 2007. Available at <http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/bdrc/nuclear/trident/trident_deal_isnt_done.pdf>. 3
See Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1989). 4
Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1946). 1
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING first atomic bombings”.5 He cites the British Admiralty’s conclusion a year earlier than Brodie in September 1945 that, “The net effect of the Atomic Bomb is that the price worth paying for peace is now very much higher, and that the main function of our armed forces should be the prevention of major war, rather than the ability to fight it purely on military grounds”.6 Nuclear weapons were soon understood to represent a qualitatively different weapon whose purpose was to prevent industrialised war between the world’s major powers. Over time nuclear weapons policy became nuclear deterrence theory in practice.7 Nuclear deterrence theory was grounded in mathematical game theoretic models of rational interaction. It asserted that an adversary could be successfully persuaded to refrain from or to halt aggressive actions by threatening to inflict unacceptable and inescapable damage with a nuclear counter‐strike. The threat of nuclear devastation would change an aggressor’s calculation of the costs and benefits of its actions causing it to modify its behaviour.8 Writings on nuclear deterrence have sub‐divided the concept into a host of categories. Two of the most important for our purposes are ‘deterrence by punishment’ that threatens a devastating response in retaliation for aggression, and ‘deterrence by denial’ that threatens a pre‐emptive attack to degrade or eliminate the ability to undertake aggressive actions and mitigate the effect of an attack through robust defences, such as missile defences.9 Two broad schools of thought emerged from this early appreciation of nuclear deterrence and the challenge of translating theory into practice. The first has been described as ‘maximum’ deterrence.10 It reflects a set of arguments that nuclear weapons can be credibly used to deter a whole range of strategic threats, including nuclear attack but also attack with chemical and biological weapons and state‐sponsored acts of WMD terrorism. They can also be used to defend a range of ‘vital interests’ from strategic threats beyond the survival of the state, dissuade arms competition with other major powers, prevent nuclear proliferation by assuring allies through extended deterrence commitments, and provide a general ‘insurance’ against future strategic threats.11 For this ‘maximalist’ approach the most effective means of mitigating nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threats is through a robust military posture to deter and defeat peer adversaries and ‘rogue’ states and deny any advantage that might be gained by an adversary’s possession of WMD and ballistic missiles. This requires a diverse arsenal of warheads and delivery vehicles to maximise adaptable nuclear contingency planning to include deterrence by punishment and deterrence by denial. Nuclear parity with peer adversaries is essential for ‘strategic stability’ and 5
Gregory Giles, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Research: Final Report (Washington, D.C.: SAIC Strategic Group for Defense Threat Reduction Agency, May 2003), p. II‐18. 6
ADM 1/117259, “Effect of the Atomic Bomb on Warfare”, DNOR, September 4, 1945. Cited in John Baylis, Ambiguity and Deterrence: British Nuclear Strategy, 1945‐1964 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 46‐47. 7
See Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. 8
Michael Quinlan, ‘Deterrence and Deterrability’, in Ian Kenyon and John Simpson (Eds), Deterrence and the New Global Security Environment (London: Routledge, 2006). 9
Robert Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 3, 17; Freedman, Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. 10
For a discussion see Tom Sauer, “A Second Nuclear Revolution: From Nuclear Primacy to Post‐Existential Deterrence”, Journal of Strategic Studies, 2009, 32:5,745‐67. 11
See, for example, the Bush administration’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review at (2001), Nuclear Posture Review (Excerpts), Globalsecurity.org, Washington, D.C. Available at <http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm>. 2
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING effective deterrence, although nuclear primacy is preferred.12 Arguments for nuclear war‐fighting and the ability to prevail and ‘win’ a nuclear conflict also feature on the ‘maximalist’ landscape.13 The second school of ‘minimum deterrence’ reflects Churchill’s notion that the key to deterrence lies more in the ‘art’ than the ‘article’ in that so long as a country had a proven ability to produce nuclear weapons, the size of the stockpile and the ability to deliver it against an adversary are of lesser concern (an assertion that the deterrent effect of North Korea’s suspected handful of nuclear weapons appears to reinforce).14 Advocates of ‘minimum deterrence’ (elsewhere interpreted as ‘existential deterrence’15 and at times ‘finite deterrence’16) contend that nuclear weapons are only good for deterring nuclear threats, often citing former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara conclusion n 1983 that “nuclear weapons serve no military purpose whatsoever. They are totally useless – except only to deter one’s opponent from using them”.17 Furthermore, the notion that nuclear weapons could be used of war‐fighting in a controlled and limited fashion as opposed to deterrence is rejected, in part because a nuclear war will be difficult, if not impossible, to control or win in any meaningful sense, in part because to do so would, as Giles argues, “dilute the threat of nuclear devastation, upon which deterrence of major war ultimately rested”.18 Nuclear weapons should therefore be restricted to a minimal or background deterrent function.19 Any wider remit is judged to be not credible or necessary and risks increasing the salience of nuclear weapons in international relations and undermining nuclear non‐proliferation efforts.20 The advent of enormously destructive thermonuclear warheads, particularly when coupled with unstoppable ballistic missiles, mean that the number of weapons required to ensure the defeat of any enemy is comparatively small with little value in pursuing nuclear arsenals beyond a few hundred, at most. UK ‘minimum deterrence’ The concept of ‘minimum deterrence’ emerged quite early on in the UK. Baylis reports a growing acceptance by the mid‐1950s that the development of nuclear‐tipped ballistic missiles would enable the UK to develop a minimum deterrent posture capable of destroying the Soviet Union without 12
See Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy”, Foreign Affairs, 2006, 85:2 pp. 42‐54. 13
See Nick Ritchie, US Nuclear Weapons Policy after the Cold War: Russians, ‘Rogues’, and Domestic Division (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009). 14
Giles, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Research, p. 78. 15
Lawrence Freedman, “I exist; therefore I deter’, International Security 13: 1, 1988, pp. 177‐95. 16
Harvey Sapolsky, “The U.S. Navy’s Fleet Ballistic Missile Program and Finite Deterrence”, in Sokolski , H., (ed), Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, its Origins and Practice, US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, November 2004, pp. 123‐36. 17
Robert S. McNamara, “The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons: Perceptions and Misperceptions”, Foreign Affairs 62: 1, Fall 1983, p. 79. 18
Giles, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Research, p. II‐31. 19
See Michael MccGwire, “Is There a Future for Nuclear Weapons?”, International Affairs, 70(2), 1994, p. 224; Ashton Carter, William Perry, et al. A New Concept of Cooperative Security, (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1992), pp. 8, 19. 20
Stansfield Turner, “The Dilemma of Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty‐First Century”, Naval War College Review, vol. LIV no. 2, 2001;Robert Joseph and Barry Blechman, “Chapter Two”, in Binnendjik, H. & Goodby, J. E. (eds.) Transforming Nuclear Deterrence, (Washington, D.C. : National Defense University Press, 1997) p. 14; Steven Cimbala, Clinton and Post‐Cold War Defense, (Westport, CT, Praeger, 1996), p. 59. 3
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING resort to nuclear parity or superiority.21 This was compounded by the February 1955 Strath Report on the implications of nuclear attack on the UK that suggested 10 bombs on UK cities would cause utter devastation with up to 12 million deaths and 4 million casualties and potentially bomb British society beyond the point of recovery.22 The core strategic rationale for UK nuclear weapons, and the argument for procurement Trident in the early 1980s, was to provide “an ultimate defence of this country against a nuclear strike, a pre‐emptive strike by a nuclear power”, according to Defence Secretary John Nott.23 An effective UK ‘minimum deterrence’ therefore rested on the ability to inflict an assured level of destruction on an adversary with a nuclear force capable of a surviving a pre‐
emptive nuclear first strike and retaliating in kind. Beyond a set and often rather subjective level of assured destruction additional numbers of nuclear weapons were judged to have little impact on the deterrence calculus.24Successive governments have acknowledged that no major direct nuclear threat currently exists and hasn’t since the early 1990s.25 The procurement of the Polaris SLBM from the US in 1963 and its deployment aboard four British Resolution‐class submarines later that decade gave the UK an assured second‐strike retaliatory strategic nuclear capability with at least one submarine always at sea and ready to fire. Minimum deterrence cannot be objectively defined. It ultimately rests on how a nuclear weapon state chooses to define it in order to legitimise its nuclear arsenal, policy and practice.26 The ‘minimum’ in contemporary British ‘minimum deterrence’ is reflected in different dimensions of nuclear policy, notably deterrence missions, force size, operational posture, and declaratory policy explored below. Deterrence missions The UK insists that a nuclear capability is essential for countering a set of strategic threats that could emerge over the coming decades. Four broad areas in which the logic of nuclear deterrence is judged to pertain were described in the Labour government’s 2006 White Paper on The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent: 1. Deterrence of aggression towards British/NATO vital interests or nuclear coercion/blackmail by major powers with large nuclear arsenals (presumably Russia). 2. Deterrence of aggression by ‘emerging nuclear states’ (‘rogue’ states) to enable regional intervention, if necessary. 3. Deterrence of state‐sponsored acts of nuclear terrorism. The ‘state‐sponsored’ codicil is important and the Government acknowledges that Trident “is not designed to deter non‐
state actors” acting alone.27 4. A general ‘residual’ deterrent to preserve peace and stability in an uncertain world.28 21
Baylis, Ambiguity and Deterrence, pp. 188‐89. Ibid., p. 190. Citing DEFE 5/80, COS (57) 278, December 18, 1957. 23
House of Commons Defence Committee, Strategic Nuclear Weapons Policy, HC 266 (London: HMSO, April 1982), p. 21. 24
Baylis, Ambiguity and Deterrence, pp, 188‐89. 25
Cabinet Office, The National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom: Security in an Interdependent World, Cm 7291 (London: HMSO, March 2008) p. 12. 26
Nicholas Wheeler, “Minimum Deterrence and Nuclear Abolition”, in Cowen Karp, R., Security Without Nuclear Weapons, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 250. 27
House of Commons, Hansard, October 19, 2005, column 841; Ministry of Defence (MOD) and FCO and MoD, The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent, p. 19. 28
FCO and MoD, The Future of the United Kingdom's Nuclear Deterrent, pp. 5, 18, 19. 22
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DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING Taking each briefly in turn, the first maintains that nuclear weapons are required to provide a deterrent against the re‐emergence of “a major direct nuclear threat to the UK or our NATO Allies” and prevent major wars that may threaten the survival of the nation.29 Nevertheless, as Liam Fox argued in 2008 prior to his appointment in 2010 as Secretary of State for Defence, “the prospect . . . cannot be ruled out . . . that a hostile power might overrun the European Continent without a global nuclear conflict resulting” and that it would then be deterred from attacking Britain because of our nuclear capability.30 Indeed, Blair made precisely this point before parliament in 2006, stating that “It is written as a fact by many that there is no possibility of nuclear confrontation with any major nuclear power—except that it is not a fact. Like everything else germane to this judgment, it is a prediction. It is probably right—but certain? No, we cannot say that.”31 The only country that can deliver such an attack against the UK now and for the foreseeable future is Russia. The threat of a Russian nuclear strike may seem “entirely remote” according to the Labour government’s 2002 public consultation paper on missile defence, but “Russia maintains a substantial nuclear arsenal, to which our own strategic deterrent continues to provide an important counter‐poise”.32 Government officials argue that Russia’s long‐term political development is uncertain, that it continues to invest heavily in conventional and nuclear force modernisation, that it retains substantial nuclear capabilities and that the UK and NATO must insure against a resurgent, revisionist Russian leadership in the decades ahead, despite enhanced cooperation since the end of the Cold War. The government’s second area of deterrence focuses on deterring the use of nuclear weapons or other WMD by so‐called ‘rogue’ states in the context of regional intervention.33 Since the end of the Cold War nuclear deterrence policy for Western possessors has turned towards the emergence of WMD‐armed ‘rogue’ states whilst retaining a residual focus on Russian, and to a lesser extent Chinese, strategic nuclear arsenals.34 It is highly likely that the UK will continue to intervene in regional crises with conventional military forces (as the current intervention in Libya demonstrates) and this might bring it into conflict with WMD‐armed adversaries. For this reason, the government argues, Britain needs to keep its nuclear weapons in order to deter a ‘rogue’ state from using its WMD against Britain or its ‘vital interests’. In particular they provide “an assurance that we cannot be subjected in future to nuclear blackmail” or coercion by a ‘rogue’ state attempting to “deter us and the international community from taking the action required to maintain regional and global security”.35 The 2006 White Paper also asserted that British nuclear weapons can deter state‐sponsored acts of nuclear terrorism. The 2006 White Paper stated that “We know that international terrorists are 29
Ibid., p. 19. Liam Fox, “Is there a sound political rationale for the UK retaining its nuclear weapons?” in Barnaby, F. and Booth, K., (eds) The Future of Britain’s Nuclear Weapons: the experts debate the issues, Current Decisions Report. Oxford Research Group, March 2006, p.17. 31
House of Commons, Hansard, December 4, 2006, Column 21. 32
Ministry of Defence, Missile Defence: A Public Discussion Paper (London: Ministry of Defence, 2002), p. 28. 33
On the construction of ‘rogue’ states in US national security discourse see Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America's Search for a New Foreign Policy (New York, Hill and Wang, 1996). 34
See, for example, Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C., 1993, p. I‐3; Doctrine for Joint Theater Nuclear Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C., 1996, p. I‐2. 35
FCO and MoD, The Future of the United Kingdom's Nuclear Deterrent, pp. 6, 19. 30
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DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING trying to acquire radiological weapons. In future, there are risks that they may try to acquire nuclear weapons. While our nuclear deterrent is not designed to deter non‐state actors, it should influence the decision‐making of any state that might consider transferring nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to terrorists.”36 The ‘state‐sponsored’ codicil is important and the government acknowledges that Trident “is not designed to deter non‐state actors” acting alone.37 It is accepted that nuclear deterrent threats will not deter suicide bombers with improvised explosive devices but they could potentially help to deter some of the risks that do occur under the rubric of terrorism, including the risk that a state could transfer nuclear weapons, or nuclear technologies, to a terrorist group. The fourth deterrence role assigned to British nuclear weapons is to provide a general deterrent in an uncertain future characterised by three trends: the further spread of nuclear weapons; a likely increase in complex, regional conflicts that could threaten Britain’s ‘vital interests’; and the risk of future ‘strategic shocks’ that could undermine UK security, exemplified by 9/11. Government has been reluctant to define UK ‘vital interests’ in the context of its nuclear capability. Nevertheless, MOD’s 2003 White Paper on Delivering Security in a Changing World presented a set of vital interests that extend far beyond extreme threats to the survival of the nation. They include the deterrence of threats to the security of the European continent, global economic interests based on the free flow of trade, overseas and foreign investment and key raw materials, the safety and security of British citizens living and working overseas and its Overseas Territories, and general international stability.38 This conception of ‘vital interests’ extends beyond extreme threats to the survival of the nation. The theme of ‘future uncertainty’ and construction of a nuclear capability as an essential ‘insurance’ against strategic risk has defined contemporary government narratives around replacement of the current Trident system. The 2006 White Paper reiterated the argument that we cannot predict the future and had therefore better retain our nuclear weapons just in case: “We must therefore be realistic about our ability precisely to predict the nature of any future threats to our vital interests over the extended timescales associated with decisions about the renewal of our nuclear deterrent”.39 Necessity in the face of uncertainty is the theme. Britain must keep its nuclear weapons as an insurance’, or a guarantee of protection, against future strategic threats to its ‘vital interests’ in an uncertain and complex international security environment in which nuclear weapons may continue to proliferate.40 This reflects Booth and Wheeler’s description of ‘structural nuclearism’ in which “the case for nuclear weapons is seen to lie not in the need to counter particular threats, but in the strategic logic of the international system”.41 36
Ibid., p. 19 House of Commons, Hansard, October 19, 2005, column 841; FCO and MoD, The Future of the United Kingdom's Nuclear Deterrent, p. 19. 38
Ministry of Defence, Strategic Defence Review, Cm 3999, (London: HMSO, July 1998), chapter two, paragraphs 18‐20; Ministry of Defence, Delivering Security in a Changing World, Defence White Paper, Cm 6041‐I, (London, HMSO, December 2003), p. 4. 39
FCO and MoD, The Future of the United Kingdom's Nuclear Deterrent, p. 18 40
Ibid., pp. 5, 18.; Michael Quinlan, “The future of United Kingdom nuclear weapons: shaping the debate”, International Affairs 82: 4, 2006, p. 631. 41
Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler, “Beyond Nuclearism”, in Cowen Karp, R., Security Without Nuclear Weapons, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 23. 37
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DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING Force size The doctrine of ‘minimum deterrence’ coupled with the knowledge that from the late‐1950s onward the UK had the advantage of joint nuclear planning with US, has enabled Britain to limit its strategic nuclear forces to around 200 operationally deployed weapons during the Cold War.42 At their peak in the early 1960s Britain had an estimated 230 operational strategic warheads falling to less than 200 over the 1970s and 1980s with the Polaris system. The end of the Cold War facilitated cuts to both strategic and non‐strategic nuclear forces coincided just as new Trident system was being commissioned into service in the early 1990s with the retirement of Polaris. The Thatcher government capped planned Trident warhead procurement at 512 with 128 warheads per submarine.43 This was cut to 300 with up to 60 per boat in 1995 (although only around 260 warheads had been manufactured by then)44, down to 200 ‘operationally deployed’ warheads in Labour’s 1998 Strategic Defence Review45, with a further reduction to 160 in the 2006 White Paper46 with up to 48 per SSBN. The October 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) announced that the stockpile will be reduced to no more than 180 in total, of which no more than 120 will be ‘operationally deployed’ by the mid‐2020s and that the UK’s submarines will carry no more than 40 rather than 48 warheads.47 These steady reductions in strategic forces were accompanied by the consolidation and elimination of non‐strategic weapons leaving the UK with one nuclear system in Trident. In October 1993 the Conservative government scrapped the new Tactical Air‐Surface Missile (TASM) project due replace the stockpile of aging WE‐177 nuclear gravity bombs.48 Two years later it announced that the remaining WE‐177s would be withdrawn in 1998, five years earlier than originally planned.49 In 1996 the last weapons were decommissioned, Tornado strike aircraft based at RAF Brüggen in Germany were withdrawn, nuclear weapons storage vaults where up to 40 WE‐177 bombs had been stored were deactivated, and the RAF was denuclearised.50 The ‘sub‐strategic’ capability provided by the WE‐177 would now be provided by the Trident system, probably based on configuring one or two missiles with a single low yield Trident warhead, perhaps 10kt rather than the 100kt full yield.51 By 2008 it was reported that approximately 110 forward‐deployed US B61 nuclear gravity bombs for US F‐15E Strike Eagle aircraft stationed at RAF Lakenheath had been repatriated leaving no US nuclear 42
Giles, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Research, p. I‐5. Nicholas Whitney, The British Nuclear Deterrent after the Cold War, (RAND: Santa Monica, CA, 1995), p. 36. 44
House of Commons, Official Report, July 16, 1998, Column 237 45
MoD, The Strategic Defence Review, paragraph 64. 46
MoD and FCO, The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent, p. 5. 47
Cabinet Office, Strategic Defence and Security Review, Cm, 7948 (London: HMSO, October 2010), p. 38. 48
House of Commons, Official Report, October 18, 1993, Column 34. 49
Ministry of Defence, Statement on the Defence Estimates 1995, CM 2800 (HMSO: London, 1995), p. 38. 50
Progress of the Trident Programme, House of Commons Defence Committee, HC 297 (London: HMSO, May 1994), p. xviii. Hans Kristensen, U.S> Nuclear Weapons in Europe, National Resources Defense Council, Washington, D.C., February 2005, p. 57. 51
On ‘sub‐strategic’ capability see Michael Quinlan, “Nuclear weapons and the abolition of war”, International Affairs 67: 2, 1991, pp. 293–301; and Malcolm Rifkind, UK Defence Strategy; a continuing role for nuclear weapons, speech on November, 16 1993, Centre for Defence Studies, Kings College London. 43
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DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING weapons in the UK, no US nuclear weapons under dual‐key access, and no UK theatre nuclear forces.52 Guidance for sizing the UK arsenal, in particular the number of warheads on the submarine at sea on operational patrol has traditionally focussing on ‘holding at risk’ the greater Moscow area. This Cold War ‘Moscow Criterion’ stipulated that Britain must be able to destroy Moscow and a number of other major Soviet/Russian cities in a retaliatory nuclear attack if the Soviet Union struck first.53 This was complicated by the deployment of an anti‐ballistic missile (ABM) system of 100 interceptors around Moscow that could destroy some of the UK’s incoming nuclear warheads. The Soviet ABM system prompted the secret and very expensive Chevaline upgrade of Britain’s Polaris missiles in the 1970s to deploy dummy warheads and counter‐measures along with nuclear warheads in order to overwhelm the Soviet ABM system and ensure a sufficient quantity of nuclear warheads would detonate above Moscow.54 The 1980s saw a shift in planning towards a focus on “key aspects of Soviet state power”, including the Soviet and later Russian nuclear and military command and control infrastructure.55 This did not constitute a radical departure from the Moscow Criterion since the Soviet command and control system was centralised in and around Moscow.56 Since the end of the Cold War criteria for specifying the quantity and type of targets that must be held at risk and level of destruction required for a ‘minimum deterrent’ threat have not been articulated. In 1993 Nick Witney, Director of Nuclear Policy and Security at MoD, stated that with the ‘Moscow Criterion’ “clearly no longer operative”, the purpose of the UK nuclear force was to “hold out to the potential aggressor a scale of damage which would manifestly outweigh any gain he could hope to make from aggression. In making that calculation obviously we have regard to the possible attrition of a strategic strike by ABM defences”, suggesting that the ‘Moscow Criterion’ still served as a benchmark for the UK’s nuclear capability.57 This still seems to the case 20 years after the end of the Cold War. As noted above, the 2006 White Paper argued that the UK must retain a nuclear capability in part to guard against the re‐emergence of a major nuclear threat. Whilst not naming Russia, this justification seems to suggest that a UK nuclear capability provides a necessary ‘insurance’ against a future Russian leadership reverting to a Soviet‐style dictatorship threatening the West with mass destruction. However unlikely this scenario, a very conservative view of nuclear doctrine would stipulate that the UK must continue to maintain a strategic nuclear force of sufficient size to overcome Russian anti‐ballistic missile defences now and in the future in order to hold Russian command and control facilities in and around Moscow at risk. 52
Hans Kristensen, “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Withdrawn from the United Kingdom”, FAS Security Blog, June 26, 2008. Available at <http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2008/06/us‐nuclear‐weapons‐withdrawn‐from‐the‐united‐
kingdom.php>. 53
Kristan Stoddart, “Maintaining the ‘Moscow Criterion’: British Strategic Nuclear Targeting 1974–1979”, Journal of Strategic Studies, 31: 6 December 2008, p. 920. 54
John Baylis and Kristan Stoddart, “Chevaline: The Hidden Programme, 1967‐1982”, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 26: 3 December 2003, pp. 124‐155. 55 The Future United Kingdom Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Force, Defence Open Government Document 80/23 (DOGD 80/23), July 1980. Cited in David Owen, Nuclear Papers (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), p. 48. 56
John Ainslie, Trident: Britain’s Weapon of Mass Destruction (Glasgow: Scottish CND, 1999). 57
House of Commons Defence Committee, The Progress of the Trident Programme, HC 549 (London: HMSO, June 1993), p. 14. 8
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING Operational posture The credibility of a minimum nuclear capability according to successive UK governments rests on a submarine‐based nuclear delivery system on continuous patrol, an operational posture labelled ‘continuous‐at‐sea deterrence’ (CASD). Under a CASD posture at least one of the four current Vanguard submarines is at sea on operational patrol in the Atlantic at all times and fully armed with up to 40 nuclear warheads. During the Cold War the submarine on patrol was on Quick Reaction Alert ready to fire within 15 minutes of an order.58 A second submarine was held in port at 47 hours notice to sail. In 1994 the UK reached an agreement with Russia to de‐target its nuclear weapons to empty ocean zones to mitigate the consequences of accidental launch (de‐targeting agreements between Russia and the US and China followed later that year). The process is quickly reversible. In the 1998 Strategic Defence Review the alert status of the submarine on patrol was reduced to “several days ‘notice to fire’”, although this could be reduced considerably in a crisis.59 The Labour government considered other more radical de‐alerting postures during the SDR, such as taking submarines off deterrent patrol, and removing warheads from their missiles and storing them separately ashore but decided against them.60 Chalmers reports that the new Labour government though keen to make a UK contribution to the nuclear disarmament process was “unwilling to press strongly for proposal that might lead to open divisions between the UK and the other two Western nuclear weapon states”.61 A CASD operational policy shapes force structure. The UK currently deploys four Vanguard‐class SSBNs in order to ensure at least one is always on operational patrol whilst the other three are either preparing for patrol, returning from patrol, or undergoing maintenance or long‐term refit in port. The Labour government examined whether CASD could be maintained with three Successor SSBNs rather than four.62 Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated at the UN Security Council in September 2009 that “subject to technical analysis and to progress in multilateral negotiations, my aim is that when the next class of submarines enters service in the mid‐2020s, our fleet should be reduced from four boats to three”.63 The key issue is the degree of contingency in a three‐boat fleet. When the current Trident system was under development Rear Admiral Ian Pirnie, MoD’s Chief Strategic Systems Executive, stated in 1992 that “it is possible to construct a programme on paper that makes assumptions about commission lengths, about refit lengths, about the periods on work‐up and all the other things I was mentioning that would show on paper that continuous patrolling could be achieved [with three boats] but that ideal programme… would contain no contingency at all”.64 When the UK was 58
House of Commons Defence Committee, Strategic Nuclear Weapons Policy, HC 674‐iv (London: HMSO, October 1980), p. 90. 59
MoD, Strategic Defence Review, Chapter four: Deterrence and Disarmament, paragraph 68. 60
Ibid., paragraph 13. 61
Malcolm Chalmers, “Bombs Away? Britain and Nuclear Weapons under New Labour”, Security Dialogue 30:1, 1999, p. 63. 62
See comments by Defence Secretary Des Browne in House of Commons Defence Committee, The Future of the UK’s Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: The White Paper. Volume II: Oral and Written Evidence, HC 225‐II (London: HMSO, March 2007) p. Ev 69. 63
Statement by Gordon Brown, MP at the UN Security Council summit on nuclear disarmament and counter‐
proliferation, New York, September 24, 2009. 64
House of Commons Defence Committee, The Progress of the Trident Programme, HC 337 (London: HMSO, March 1992), p. 6. 9
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING preparing to procure the Polaris system in the 1960s the option of a three‐boat submarine fleet was considered. A Ministry of Defence Memorandum in November 1964 on The Size of the British Polaris Force stated that “a United Kingdom force of this size could be regarded as a minimal deterrent for national purposes – but only just”.65 It warned that “A force of this size would allow no margin for unforeseen contingencies – which over the total life of the force (some twenty years) are almost certain to occur…any delay in refit or work‐up would result in further periods when no submarine could be deployed on patrol”. This was during the Cold War with 1960s SSBN technology. Declaratory policy Minimum nuclear deterrence is also represented in declaratory nuclear policy. This refers to formal statements and legally‐binding commitments on the general circumstances in which the use of nuclear weapons will or will not be contemplate (not a priori criteria guaranteeing use or non‐use). They reflect government conceptions of the role, utility and value of nuclear weapons in addressing current and future threats to national security and international stability. The principal function is to enhance the credibility of nuclear deterrent threats by signalling the gravity of particular forms of aggression to would‐be adversaries whilst reassuring other states that they will not be subject to nuclear coercion or attack beyond the parameters of aggressive behaviour identified.66 The UK has formally restricted the circumstances under which it would contemplate using nuclear weapons in a number of ways. First, in 1995 the nuclear weapon states (NWS) issued ‘negative security assurances’ (NSA) that were noted in United Nations Security Council Resolution 984 (1995).67 The UK’s statement declared that “The United Kingdom will not use nuclear weapons against non‐nuclear‐weapon States Parties to the Treaty on the Non‐Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons except in the case of an invasion or any other attack on the United Kingdom, its dependent territories, its armed forces or other troops, its allies or on a State towards which it has a security commitment, carried out or sustained by such a non‐nuclear‐weapon State in association or alliance with a nuclear‐weapon State” with the caveat that “Her Majesty’s Government does not regard its assurance as applicable if any beneficiary is in material breach of its own non‐proliferation obligations under the Treaty on the Non‐Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”68 The last part of the assurance referring to a non‐nuclear weapon state “in association or alliance with a nuclear‐weapon State” is often referred to as the ‘Warsaw Pact clause’ designed to exempt from the NSA an attack on a nuclear weapon state by a member of the now defunct Warsaw Pact acting with the full support of the Soviet Union with large Soviet forces and tactical nuclear weapons on their territory.69 65
TNA, PRO, CAN 130.213. MoD Memorandum for MISC 17 on “The Size of the British Polaris Force”, November 20, 1964. Reproduced in Peter Hennessey, Cabinets and the Bomb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 176. 66
David Gompert, Dean Wilkening and Kenneth Watman, U.S Nuclear Declaratory Policy: The Question of First Use (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1995), p. 7. 67
These reflected statements first articulated by the NWS in 1978. 68
“Letter dated 6 April 1995 from the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary‐General”, United Nations Security Council statement S/1995/262, April 6, 1995, p. 3. 69
Malcolm Chalmers, Nuclear Narratives: Reflections on Declaratory Policy, Whitehall Report 1‐10 (London: Royal United Services Institute, 2010), p. 25. 10
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING This was removed in the 2010 SDSR. UK declaratory policy now states that “the UK will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non‐nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT”. 70 Second, the UK has legally codified its NSA for nearly 100 countries by ratifying the protocols annexed to the Treaties establishing nuclear weapon‐free zones in Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific and Africa. This will increase by 15 more countries if the UK resolves outstanding differences to enable signature of the protocols to the Treaties establishing the South‐East Asia and Central Asia Nuclear Weapon‐Free Zones.71 Many non‐nuclear weapon states want to codify this ‘negative security assurance’ in a legally binding international treaty. The 118‐member Non‐Aligned Movement (NAM) reiterated its long‐standing policy at the 2010 NPT Review Conference that “pending the total elimination of nuclear arsenals, efforts for the conclusion of a universal, unconditional and legally binding instrument on security assurances to the Non‐Nuclear Weapon States Parties to the Treaty should be undertaken as a matter of priority”.72 Third, the UK has accepted the judgement of the 1996 International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion on the “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons”. The ICJ stated that the rules of humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict are fundamental and constitute intransgressible principles of international customary law, including that the use of force in self‐defence must be proportionate to the armed attack, necessary to respond to it, distinguish between combatants and non‐combatants (civilians) and not cause unnecessary suffering.73 The 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Additional Protocol form the core of intentional humanitarian law and have been ratified by the UK.74 The Court’s Advisory Opinion concluded that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law” applicable in armed conflict because the destructive blast, incendiary and radiation effects of nuclear weapons cannot be contained either in space or time.75 It could not, however, “conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self‐defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake” (emphasis added).76 The UK does not dispute that international humanitarian law applies to the use of nuclear weapons and has incorporated the notion of “extreme circumstances of self‐
defence” into its declaratory nuclear policy statements.77 70
Strategic Defence and Security Review, pp. 37‐38. The assurance does not apply to states in material breach of NPT obligations and the assurance may be reviewed if states developing chemical or biological weapons directly threaten the UK. 71
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Lifting the Nuclear Shadow (London: HMSO, 2010), p. 35. 72
Statement by H.E. Dr. R.M Marty M. Natalegawa, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, on behalf of the NAM States Party to the NPT, May 3, 2010, United Nations, New York. 73
See Rabinder Singh, QC, and Professor Christine Chinkin, “The Maintenance and Possible Replacement of the Trident Nuclear Missile System: Joint Opinion”, Matrix Chambers, December 2005, pp. 6‐8. 74
House of Commons, Hansard, January 10, 200, Column 95W. 75
Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion at the request of the UN General Assembly, ICJ Reports, July 8, 1996, paragraph 95. 76
Ibid., paragraph 97. 77
For example, House of Commons Defence Committee, The Future of the UK's Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: The Strategic Context: The Government's Response to the Committee's Eighth Report of 2005‐06, HC 1558, (London: HMSO, July, 2006), p. 3. 11
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING It worth observing in this examination of nuclear deterrence roles that the UK does not rule out the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Britain’s nuclear forces are formally committed to NATO under the terms of the 1962 Nassau Agreement that facilitated that purchase of the US Polaris submarine‐launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system and subsequently Trident for the Royal Navy. This remains the case today. In 2006 then‐defence secretary Des Browne stated that “A policy of no first use of nuclear weapons would be incompatible with our and NATO's doctrine of deterrence”.78 Drivers of ‘minimum deterrence’ Having outlined the four key dimensions of Britain’s ‘minimum deterrence’ policy and posture we now look at three drivers of future thinking about what ‘minimum deterrence’ means in policy and practice. Deterrence The first reflects successive governments’ commitment to retaining a nuclear capability based on a largely unquestioned belief in the efficacy of nuclear deterrent threats. There is a powerful view in Whitehall that nuclear deterrence works, and works rather unproblematically based fundamentally on the destructive potential of thermonuclear weapons. The 2006 Defence White Paper, for example, stated that “The fundamental principles relevant to nuclear deterrence have not changed since the end of the Cold War, and are unlikely to change in future. In terms of their destructive power, nuclear weapons pose a uniquely terrible threat and consequently have a capability to deter acts of aggression that is of a completely different scale to any other form of deterrence.”79 In short, nuclear deterrence worked during the Cold War, it continues to perform an essential security function today, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Desmond Bowen, former Policy Director at the Ministry of Defence, insisted in 2010 that “Nuclear deterrence served the United Kingdom well during the Cold War by preventing all sorts of aggression among the major powers, not just nuclear coercion or blackmail.”80 Then‐Defence Secretary Des Browne said in 2007 “Why do we need a nuclear deterrent? The answer is because it works. Our deterrent has been a central plank of our national security strategy for fifty years. And the fact is that over this fifty years, neither our nor any other country’s nuclear weapons have ever been used, nor has there been a single significant conflict between the world’s major powers. We believe our nuclear deterrent, as part of NATO, helped make this happen” (although Browne concedes this belief is based on correlation rather than positive causation). 81 Furthermore, nuclear deterrence is an essential component of the international stability that underpins the current world order. As Forsyth, Saltzman and Schaub argue, “Nuclear weapons produce strategic effects. Their presence compels statesmen to behave cautiously in the face of grave danger. This cautiousness produces restraint, which shores up international stability. In short, 78
House of Commons, Hansard, May 22, 2006, Column 1331W. FCO and MoD, The Future of the United Kingdom's Nuclear Deterrent, p. 17 80
Desmond Bowen, “Deterrence and Disarmament in the UK”, Survival, 51(2), February‐March 2010, p. 11. 81
Des Browne, “The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent in the 21st Century”, King’s College London, January 25, 2007. 79
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DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING nuclear weapons deter.”82 Michael Quinlan, former Permanent Under Secretary at the Ministry of Defence from 1988‐92, made the case in 1991 that “Nuclear weapons have made all substantial warfare between nuclear powers, and not just nuclear warfare, absurd”83 and in 1993 for the ‘free world’ to maintain a nuclear weapon capability “to underpin war prevention, to close off nuclear adventurism and to serve as a low‐key element of insurance, not directed against specific adversaries, in support of world order”.84 Nuclear deterrence might not be a defining feature of relations between today’s major powers but, it is argued, nuclear deterrence continues to make an important contribution to international peace and stability at a basic, recessed level and as one of several background international conditions.85 In this context nuclear weapons are seen to provide a long‐term ‘insurance’ against a breakdown in the relatively benign constellation of major power relations and a return to major power conflict.86 Indeed, opponents of a nuclear weapons‐free world argue that the presence of nuclear weapons is the background condition that has prevented war between the world’s major powers since 1945 by escalating the costs of aggression to unthinkable levels through fear of nuclear retaliation.87 Cost Financial constraints have always shaped the historical evolution of Britain’s nuclear arsenal. Despite the importance attached to nuclear forces, the cost of developing and maintaining them has promoted ways to cap or reduce the nuclear burden. During the Cold War the UK found it impossible maintain technological parity with the two superpowers, to maintain its nuclear bomber force, or develop an indigenous ballistic missile capability, even after drastically scaling back its overseas military commitments.88 Giles argues that the impact of cost was “perhaps most pronounced in Britain, where the cost‐cutting imperative at times superseded the strategic rationale for sizing its nuclear forces. Accordingly, the notion that a smaller power could deter a much larger power with only a modest nuclear force was very attractive, indeed”, making a ‘minimum deterrence’ virtue out of financial necessity.89 Despite the very favourable terms on which the UK purchased the Polaris system from US and later the current Trident system, the current debate on Trident replacement has been further politicised by the economic crisis and relative cost of the replacement programme. In 2006 the government’s cost estimates at 2006/07 prices for replacing the Trident system were between £15‐20 billion, although MOD’s Permanent Under‐Secretary Sir Bill Jeffrey later stated that these were only 82
James Forsyth, B. Chance Saltzman, Gary Schaub, “Remembrance of Things Past: The Enduring Value of Nuclear Weapons”, Strategic Studies Quarterly Spring 2010, p. 75. Quinlan, 'The future of nuclear weapons: policy for Western possessors': , pp. 487, 496 83
Michael Quinlan, “Nuclear Weapons and the Abolition of War”, International Affairs 67(2), April 1991, p. 297. 84
Michael Quinlan, “The Future of Nuclear Weapons: Policy for Western Possessors”, International Affairs, 69(3), 1993, p. 496. 85
Patrick Morgan and T. V. Paul, “Deterrence among Great Powers in an Era of Globalization”, in Paul, T.V., Morgan, M. and Wirtz, J. (eds), Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2009), p. 259. 86
On the case for the ‘inevitable’ return of major power conflict see John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (Norton: New York, 2001). 87
For example, Bruno Tertrais, “The Illogic of Zero”, The Washington Quarterly, 201, 33:2, pp. 125‐138. 88
Giles, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Research, p. II‐2. 89
Ibid., p. I‐6. 13
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING ‘ballpark estimates’. Others argue that MOD has struggled to bring in major equipment projects on time and to budget and suggest a procurement figure closer to £30‐£35 billion.90 Critics also argue that MOD cannot afford the cost of the Trident replacement programme. It has been widely publicised that MOD faces a major funding shortfall in its future equipment budget of up to £36 billion over the next 10 years. Its budget will be cut by 7.5% over the current Parliament under the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review, and this comes after major cutbacks announced in December 2008 and December 2009. The Labour government’s insistence that the Trident replacement programme would not come at the expense of conventional capabilities cannot now be realised.91 MoD pursued a ‘Value for Money’ review of the Trident replacement programme and identified a series of savings reported in the 2010 SDSR, but pressure to reduce costs could once more take our understanding of ‘minimum deterrence’ in a new direction. Disarmament The third and final driver is the renewed momentum behind progress towards nuclear disarmament. Shortly after Labour published its 2006 White Paper on Trident replacement a new global opportunity to rethink current nuclear weapons policies emerged. It has been led by four influential former US statesmen (Henry Kissinger, William Perry, George Schultz and Sam Nunn) who in 2007 and 2008 urged the international community to work towards a world free of nuclear weapons. 92
They argued that the impact of the 9/11 attacks and spectre of nuclear terrorism and the global turn to new nuclear power generation as part of the solution to climate change and energy security demands places a major question mark over whether the international community, particularly the West, can indefinitely restrain the spread of nuclear weapons technology and knowledge; safely and indefinitely manage complex relations between a growing number of nuclear powers; and keep nuclear materials from civilian programmes that can be used to make basic weapons out of terrorists’ hands. They expressed extreme scepticism and argued the only solution over the long‐
term is verifiable global nuclear disarmament. Their call to work towards a world free of nuclear weapons became a central plank of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. Citizens, officials, parliamentarians, business and faith leaders, and former senior policy‐makers in many other countries have joined that call.93 The Labour and Coalition governments have declared a full commitment to this goal and a desire to take an active leadership role in examining the practical steps and challenges involved. At the recent NPT Review 90
See Nick Ritchie, Continuity / Change: Rethinking Options for Trident Replacement, Bradford Disarmament Research Centre report, June 2010. Available at <http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/bdrc/nuclear/trident/change.pdf>. 91
Nick Ritchie and Paul Ingram, “A Crisis in Financing Britain’s Replacement of Trident?”, BASIC, August 2010. Available at <http://www.basicint.org/publications/paul‐ingram/2010/crisis‐financing‐britain%E2%80%99s‐
replacement‐trident>. 92
Henry Kissinger, William Perry, George Shultz and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons”, Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007; Henry Kissinger, William Perry, George Shultz and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear Free World”, Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008. 93
Including the international ‘Global Zero’ initiative launched in Paris in December 2008, statements by senior former foreign and defence statesmen and women echoing those of Kissinger et al from Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, 204 Japanese parliamentarians, 40 European military and political leaders, and the International Commission on Nuclear Non‐Proliferation and Disarmament sponsored by Japan and Australia that released its final report on Eliminating Nuclear Threats ‐ A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers in December 2009. 14
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING Conference in May 2010 the Nuclear Weapons States, including the UK, agreed to “further diminish the role and significance of nuclear weapons in all military and security concepts, doctrines and policies” and to “commit to undertake further efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate all types of nuclear weapons, deployed and non‐deployed, including through unilateral, bilateral, regional and multilateral measures”. Nevertheless, the commitment to retaining a nuclear capability until a process of verifiable multilateral nuclear disarmament is underway remains firm. Government has attempted to square this circle through a commitment to ‘minimum deterrence’ that states that so long as the UK retains nuclear weapons its policies and doctrine will limit the size and role of its nuclear forces to the minimum acceptable for perceived national security requirements. Fundamentally the UK is keen to ensure it acts and is seen to act as a ‘responsible’ nuclear weapon state committed to nuclear disarmament as well as non‐proliferation under the NPT. An important part of that is being seen as a champion of a ‘minimum’ form of nuclear possession along the dimensions outlined above. In that context we see the Conservative Party’s 2009 Green Paper on National Security claiming that “Britain is unique among the nuclear weapons states in that we have reduced the UK’s nuclear deterrent capability to a single system – Trident. And we have led the way in transparency and accountability about our nuclear weapons. In the context of progress in nuclear disarmament and reduction, the UK must be prepared to take a rigorous look at whether we can take our excellent record in this area further forward”94; Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett in 2008 stating that “And when it comes to building this new impetus for global nuclear disarmament, I want the UK to be at the forefront of both the thinking and the practical work. To be, as it were, a “disarmament laboratory”95; Gordon Brown stating in 2008 that “I pledge that in the run‐up to the Non Proliferation Treaty review conference in 2010 we will be at the forefront of the international campaign to accelerate disarmament amongst possessor states, to prevent proliferation to new states, and to ultimately achieve a world that is free from nuclear weapons”96; and the Labour government’s Road to 2010 report that declared “The Government is committed to working with international partners to create the conditions that would give all countries that possess nuclear weapons the confidence to take further, bolder steps consistent with their commitments under Article VI of the NPT and, ultimately, achieving a world free of nuclear weapons”.97 The Coalition government’s steps to further refine conceptions of ‘minimum’ in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review that made further reductions in nuclear forces, further restrictions on the role of UK nuclear weapons, and released new information of the UK stockpile in the interest of transparency and confidence‐building with other nuclear powers and non‐nuclear weapon states can all be seen in this context. The convergence of a desire to lead on progress towards a nuclear weapons‐free world and to reduce the costs of replacing the current Trident system whilst remaining committed to the logic of 94
The Conservative Party, A Resilient Nation: National Security Green Paper, Policy Green Paper No. 13, 2009, p. 13. 95
Margaret Beckett, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?”, Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference, Keynote Address, June 25, 2007. 96
Gordon Brown, “Speech at the Chamber of Commerce in Delhi”, January 21, 2008. 97
Cabinet Office, The Road to 2010, Cm 7675 London: HMSO, July 2009), p. 8. 15
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING deterrence has the potential to generate a further rethinking of the ‘minimum’ character of that commitment. It is that prospect to which the paper now turns. How ‘minimum’ is British ‘minimum deterrence? Force size The UK currently deploys up to 40 warheads on its single submarine on operational patrol. It is assumed that this figure relates in some way to continued targeting requirements to overcome Russian missile defence systems around Moscow and hold Russian command and control and leadership targets at risk. The discussion of ‘minimum deterrence’ above suggests scope for reducing this further, particularly if any residual requirement to be able to destroy Moscow is removed from nuclear force planning. A useful analysis provided by a 2009 study on From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons by the US Federation of American Scientists argues that: “A minimal deterrence doctrine requires only that nuclear weapons be able to impose sufficient costs on a potential attacker to make the initial nuclear attack appear too costly”.98 Based on this definition they adopt a minimum deterrence targeting approach based on infrastructure targeting against “a series of targets that are crucial to a nation’s modern economy, for example, electrical, oil, and energy nodes, transportation hubs”99 with Russia as a case study. They selected 12 targets from oil refineries and steel works to thermal power plants and aluminium plants and calculated the level of destruction and casualties with nuclear warheads of various yields. Such an attack, they argue, would threaten economic collapse: “Given the complex interconnectedness of modern societies such as Russia and the United States and a rapidly changing China, we believe that the destruction of key targets meeting our criteria would have a profound effect upon the national infrastructure and economy and would negate any conceivable advantage an enemy might calculate it could gain by attacking the United States or its allies with nuclear weapons.”100 If executed with 100kt warheads comparable to the UK’s Trident warhead, casualties would be around 1.2 million, even though the 12 targets are in relatively remote areas. The study throws into sharp relief the level of nuclear destruction required to threaten the functioning of a country even the size of Russia. A shift in minimum deterrence criteria could facilitate a reduction in the number of missiles and warheads for current and future SSBNs, for example a reduction to eight or even four missile tubes with a corresponding reduction in operationally available warheads. For example, a three‐boat fleet armed with up to 3 warheads on 8 missiles (up to 24 per boat, or two warheads per target in the FAS study above) with a 10% spare margin would give a total stockpile of around 80 warheads101 98
Kristensen, H., Norris, R., and Oelrich, O., From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: Federation of American Scientists, April 2009), p. 21. 99
Ibid., p. 32 100
Ibid., p. 41 101
See Ritchie, Continuity/Change, p. 56. 16
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING But nuclear numbers are also a political matter, not just a function of nuclear planning and targeting processes. If nuclear planning guidance were altered to the extent that a dozen nuclear weapons aboard the submarine on operational patrol were deemed sufficient for deterrence purposes, could the government persuade parliament, the media and the public of the need to procure four new ballistic missile submarines and continue to invest heavily in stockpile stewardship facilities at AWE Aldermaston to enable routine deployment of just twelve nuclear weapons at sea? That could be a hard sell. The UK has also been mindful of its nuclear commitment to NATO and political desire to make a relatively significant contribution to NATO nuclear capability alongside the much larger and diverse nuclear forces of the US.102 It was recently revealed that the UK took steps to reassure the US that would maintain its nuclear capability amid concerns that the Trident replacement programme could be scrapped.103 It is noteworthy that the Liberal Democrat’s proposal in early 2007 to reduce the UK stockpile to 100 warheads was ridiculed by then‐Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett in the parliamentary debate on the 2006 White Paper on Trident replacement. Beckett stated that Labour’s “analysis does not, in our view, support any of the alternative proposals including those made by the Liberal Democrat party for a reduction to just 100 operational warheads…We do not believe that such a number would leave us with a credible and effective nuclear deterrent.”104 Yet the 2010 SDSR states that the Coalition governemnt will reduce the operational stockpile to 120 warheads, coming close to the Liberal Democrat’s recommendation, amid claims from the Tory right that the reductions were the result of a political compromise rather than informed analysis.105 The domestic politics of defining ‘minimum deterrence’ cannot be ecaped . Capability The ‘minimum’ character of the UK’s nuclear arsenal is also challenged by the fact that the Trident II (D5) missile and the ongoing programme to upgrade of the UK’s Trident warhead stockpile provide a strategic nuclear capability beyond its predecessor, Polaris.106 The reliability, flexibility and accuracy of Trident provide an important degree of assuredness to buttress a British nuclear deterrent threat, but its capacity exceeds UK requirements. As noted above, in the 1970s the UK initiated a secret and very expensive programme to upgrade the front‐end of its Polaris missiles to enable them to penetrate the Soviet Union’s anti‐ballistic missile (ABM) system of 100 interceptors around Moscow that could destroy some of the UK’s incoming nuclear warheads.107 The upgrade was labelled ‘Chevaline’ or A3TK. Polaris A3TK missiles carried two warheads with an estimated yield of 40kt (the pre‐Chevaline A3 warhead delivered a 102
Giles, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Research, p. II‐32. “US embassy cables: UK civil servants reassure US that Trident will be replaced, whatever Brown may say”, The Guardian, December 8, 2010. Available at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us‐embassy‐cables‐
documents/218106>. 104
House of Commons, Hansard, March 14, 2007, column 306. 105
See “Trident Delay Shows Lib Dem Influence – Lord Ashdown”, BBC News Online, September 20, 2010. Available at <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk‐politics‐11369589> and “David Cameron ‘Committed to Full Trident Replacement’”, BBC News Online, February 9, 2011. Available at <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk‐
politics‐12406073>. 106
On the warhead upgrade programme see Richard Norton‐Taylor, “Trident more effective with US arming device, tests suggest”, The Guardian, April 6, 2011. 107
Baylis and Stoddart, “Chevaline: The Hidden Programme”, pp. 124‐155. 103
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DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING yield of 200kt).108 With 16 missiles per boat a single submarine on patrol could fire 32 40kt A3TK warheads giving a potential explosive yield of 1.28 megatons (mt). Current policy stipulates up to 40 100kt Trident warheads per boat giving potential explosive yield of 4mt, representing a significant increase in yield over Polaris/Chevaline, even at reduced warhead loadings. The previous government argued that the reduction to 200 operationally deployed nuclear warheads announced in the 1998 SDR represented a 70% reduction in potential explosive power since the end of the Cold War, although the comparison included the shorter range, air‐delivered WE‐177 stockpile rather than a direct comparison between Polaris and Trident.109 In reality, however, the destructive power of a nuclear weapon does not vary linearly with the yield. In evaluating the destructive power of a nuclear weapon, it is customary to use the concept of equivalent megatons (EMT). Equivalent megatonnage is defined as the actual megatonnage raised to the two‐thirds power (EMT2/3). A single 40kt (0.04mt) Polaris warhead represents 0.12 EMT. A single 100kt (0.1mt) Trident warhead represents 0.22 EMT. 32 Polaris warheads therefore represent 3.74 EMT, whilst 40 Trident warheads represent 8.61 EMT – a 230% increase in EMT. Furthermore, Polaris missiles only had a range of approximately 2,800 miles and Polaris warheads were not independently‐targetable meaning that the 32 warheads on the 16 Polaris missiles o the submarine at sea could in reality only target 16 sites. Trident missiles, by comparison, have a much greater range of 4,600 miles and its warheads are independently targetable, allowing a single Vanguard submarine to attack 40 targets over a much wider geographic area and with greater accuracy and EMT – a considerable increase in capability. As the Defence Select Committee noted in 1994, "Trident’s accuracy and sophistication in other respects does ‐ and was always intended to ‐ represent a significant enhancement of the UK's nuclear capability. We have invested a great deal of money to make it possible to attack more targets with greater effectiveness using nominally equivalent explosive power”.110 Furthermore, when rethinking conceptions of ‘minimum deterrence’ it is essential to note that current understandings are in part defined by the capabilities of the Trident II (D5) missile system on offer from the United States in the early 1980s. The Trident II (D5) missile was not procured primarily for its technological capability, although this did offer certain advantages such as greater range enabling UK submarines to operate in larger areas of the Atlantic111, but for economic and political reasons. As Rear Admiral Richard Irwin, MoD’s Chief Strategic Systems Executive, stated in 1993, “we did not procure Trident for the large number of warheads it could carry. We procured it because it was the most economical system we could buy and would be supported by an ally for the length of 108
Dave Wright, “And then there were two: The Polaris ASTK Penetration Aids Carrier (PAC), British Contemporary History, 11: 4, Winter 1997, pp. 119‐122; Eric Grove, “Allied Nuclear Forces Complicate Negotiations”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June/July 1986, p. 20. 109
MoD, Strategic Defence Review, paragraph 64. See also Ministry of Defence, Statement on the Defence Estimates 1995, CM 2800 (HMSO: London, 1995), Figure 6, p. 39. 110
House of Commons Defence Committee, Progress of the Trident Programme, HC 297 (London: HMSO, May 1994), p.xiv. 111
House of Common Defence Committee, Strategic Nuclear Weapons Policy, HC 266 (London: HMSO, April 1982) p. 19. 18
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING time we expected to operate in”.112 Michael Quinlan also noted in 2004 that “Purely in weight of strike potential the United Kingdom could have been content with less than Trident could offer, even in C4 version originally chosen (let alone D5 version to which the United Kingdom switched in early 1982, when it had become clear that the United States was committed to proceed with its acquisition and deployment). The original choice and the switch were driven in large measure by the long‐term financial and logistic benefits of commonality with the United States. After the end of the Cold War, the United Kingdom announced a series of discretionary reductions in warhead load to well below what Trident was capable of carrying.”113 Trident exceeds the capability of its predecessor, particularly its destructive capability, and was purchased for political and financial expediency suggesting room for a further consolidation of ‘minimum’. Operational posture: CASD Current conceptions of minimum deterrence are underpinned by a commitment to a ‘continuous‐at‐
sea deterrence’ (CASD) operational posture. Any reconceptualisation of ‘minimum deterrence’ in Britain is likely to rest on a decision to step back from a CASD posture.114 Ending CASD does not mean mothballing the SSBN fleet and mooring all the submarines in port indefinitely, as is often assumed. It means ending continuous patrols and operating a ‘reduced readiness’ posture in which there may be periods of weeks, or even months, in which the UK does not a have a nuclear‐armed SSBN at sea. This would open up a range of options that could allow the UK to retain a smaller nuclear force at a reduced rate of readiness in a number of possible configurations that push nuclear weapons further into the background of UK national security policy in line with renewed commitments at the 2010 NPT Review Conference. The deterrence rationale for CASD is that a credible and effective nuclear deterrent threat requires an assured capability to retaliate against a strategic attack. This in turn requires a nuclear delivery platform that is invulnerable to a surprise first strike, which means maintaining an undetectable submarine at sea at all times. The credibility of a nuclear deterrent threat depends on an opponent’s belief that the UK has both deliverable weapons capable of inflicting unacceptable damage and the political will to use them given the perceived interests at stake. Some still believe a guaranteed capability to retaliate against a surprise pre‐emptive nuclear attack is essential to the credibility and effectiveness of the deterrent threat. They believe any sign of invulnerability, any chink in the nuclear armour as a result of ending CASD, may be seized upon as a weakness that could concede the initiative to an adversary and invite a devastating pre‐emptive attack in a crisis.115 But important caveats pertain; in particular a pre‐emptive attack would rest on a judgement that the advantages of striking first clearly outweighed the potential consequences of waiting for the opponent’s next move. A state contemplating a pre‐emptive attack against the UK, for example, would have to be absolutely confident that: 1) there was, in fact, no nuclear‐armed 112
House of Commons Defence Committee, The Progress of the Trident Programme, HC 549 (London: HMSO, June 1993), p. 15. 113
Michael Quinlan, “The British Experience”, in Sokolski, H., (Ed), Getting MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction, its Origins and Practice (Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College: Carlisle, PA, November 2004), p. 271. 114
This is explored further in Nick Ritchie and Paul Ingram, "A Progressive Nuclear Policy: Rethinking Continuous‐at‐sea Deterrence", RUSI Journal, 155: 2, April/May 2010 and Ritchie, Continuity / Change. 115
See MoD & FCO, The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent, p. 22 and Box 5‐2, p. 27. 19
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING submarine at sea at the time of its attack (ending CASD would lower the probability of being able to fire nuclear weapons in response to an attack from near certain under CASD to a lower percentage, but an adversary would have to be confident that the probability was near zero): 2) the UK’s entire nuclear retaliatory capability could be eliminated; and 3) that they would not suffer a devastating response from the United States. The burden of proof and certainty of response in this context does not lie with the specific configuration of the UK’s nuclear arsenal, but rather in the calculations of an aggressor. As the late Sir Michael Quinlan observed in 2006, “Even a modest chance of a huge penalty can have great deterrent force”.116 A second argument in favour of CASD argues that a ‘reduced readiness’ posture would undermine ‘crisis stability’, which refers to the mutual interaction of processes for mobilising and heightening the alert‐status of military forces during a crisis that could be interpreted by one or more sides as aggressive, escalatory and a prelude to an attack such that the risks of not firing first become unacceptable. Under a non‐CASD posture any decision to sail a nuclear‐armed submarine in a crisis risks unintentional escalation leading to heightened chances of conflict. Far better, it is argued, to maintain CASD and avoid this hypothetical scenario altogether.117 But this dynamic is far from clear. Sailing a Trident submarine in a crisis could equally send a clear, credible and verifiable message that a crisis is serious enough to warrant strengthening the deterrent capability, thus reducing the risk of 118
conflict. Furthermore, any decision to sail a Trident submarine would likely be part of a wider and observable mobilisation of the UK’s armed forces rather than singular event. In any case, the unintended impacts of a decision to launch a Trident submarine could be reduced in a number of ways, for example by adjusting the duration and tempo of sailing patterns of the submarine fleet, including periods of continuous patrols, to create uncertainty in the mind of the adversary as to whether a nuclear‐armed submarine is at sea, or through demonstrable plans for holding a nuclear‐
armed SSBN in port for a period of months on enhanced alert ready to launch at short notice if intelligence suggests an imminent attack. The UK regularly maintained a Resolution‐class SSBN armed with Polaris SLBMs at 47 hours notice to sail to join the SSBN on patrol during the Cold War. A third argument insists that operating a ballistic missile submarine fleet requires a high tempo of operations to maintain crew cohesion, morale and unquestioned confidence in the firing chain. Only a CASD posture can provide the morale, surety and tempo required.119 Yet there is no deterministic relationship between a lower tempo of operations and reduced confidence in the firing chain and the professionalism, crew cohesion and exacting standards of stealth, safety and technical reliability for maintaining and operating an SSBN fleet. Deterrent patrols are currently combined with extensive on‐shore simulation and training. A non‐CASD posture could include substantial sea‐based training to maintain absolute confidence in the surety of the firing chain so long as the government chooses to deploy nuclear forces. Ending CASD should not be conflated with ending the rigorous oversight and planning currently applied to all aspects of the Royal Navy’s nuclear mission. 116
Michael Quinlan, ‘Deterrence and Deterrability’, in Ian Kenyon and John Simpson (Eds), Deterrence and the New Global Security Environment, Routledge, London, 2006, p. 5. 117
MoD, The Strategic Defence Review, paragraph 13. 118
Owen Price, “Preparing for the Inevitable: Nuclear Signalling for Regional Nuclear Crises”, Comparative Strategy, 26:2, 2007, p. 105. 119
See Ritchie and Ingram, "A Progressive Nuclear Policy”. 20
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING These arguments in support of CASD have been questioned over recent years. Former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Guthrie urged the government in March 2009 to “seriously examine the number of submarines that we have and whether we always need to have one boat at sea”.120 Former Foreign Secretary Lord Owen has argued that the requirement for a nuclear deterrent that provides “100 per cent assurance that a retaliatory blow can be delivered via an invulnerable delivery platform” to defend against a ‘bolt from the blue’ attack is unnecessary. “Such a sophisticated, high deterrent threshold for the UK is considered by many in 2009 to be excessive”.121 The Liberal Democrats have also questioned the need for CASD in a policy review published in March 2010 on Policy Options for the Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Weapons. They argued that “The logic of maintaining Continuous At‐Sea Deterrence (CASD) patrols in the post‐Cold War era is no longer so compelling” and that “Without a major nuclear threat of a Soviet scale, the purpose of an assured second strike is no longer clear and the case for CASD weak”.122 Operational posture: ‘minimum’ alternatives Rethinking current nuclear policy based on a risk assessment that no longer necessitates CASD would open up a number of alternative ’minimum’ postures, including the ‘reduced readiness’ posture outlined above whereby its SSBNs are regularly, but not continuously, deployed at sea. Examples of ‘reduced readiness’ operational postures in nuclear doctrine include the US Tomahawk Land Attack Missile‐Nuclear (TLAM‐N) cruise missile capability, the US B1‐B bomber aircraft, and NATO’s Dual Capable Aircraft (DCA) capability. In 1992 the US Navy withdrew the TLAM‐N cruise missile fleet from operational duty as part of the Bush‐Gorbachev (later Yeltsin) Presidential Nuclear Initiatives to reduce, retire and consolidate a range of nuclear forces after the Cold War. The missiles and warheads were “secured in central areas where they would be available if necessary in a future crisis”.123 Procedures were put in place to enable the redeployment of TLAM‐N cruise missiles on SSN attack submarines in a crisis. This included periodic certification of a number of SSNs in the US Pacific and Atlantic fleets and Quality Assurance and Surveillance Tests (QAST) that involved a live test firing of an unarmed TLAM‐N to ensure the submarines could deploy and fire the missiles within 30 days of a decision to redeploy.124 The missile was formally retired in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, but this working practice remained official policy for 18 years. It is therefore possible to envisage a fleet of two or three UK SSBNs routinely operating at sea performing non‐nuclear military missions (see below) but able to redeploy a small number of nuclear‐armed Trident missiles within a specific period of time from weeks to months with the necessary combat control systems onboard and to sustain that nascent capability over many years with the requisite onshore submarine, missile and warhead support facilities. 120
House of Lords, Official Report, March 26, 2009, Column 806. Owen, Nuclear Papers, p. 13. 122
Policy Options for the Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Weapons, Liberal Democrats, March 2010, pp. 5 and 16. 123
Cited in Brian Alexander and Alistair Millar (Eds), Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Brassey’s, Inc: Dulles, VA, 2003, p. 169. 124
Robert Norris, William Arkin, Hans Kristensen and Joshua Handler, “U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2001”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March‐April 2001; Nuclear Weapons Systems Sustainment Programs, Office the Secretary of Defense (US Department of Defense: Washington, D.C.), May 1997. 121
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DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING The operational status of NATO’s Dual‐Capable Aircraft (DCA) and the US B1_B bomber fleet reinforce this case. Nuclear deterrence remains a key part of NATO’s military posture and the US maintains between 150 and 240 forward‐deployed B61 nuclear bombs at six airbases in Turkey, Germany, Italy, Holland and Belgium under ‘dual key’ arrangements. They are assigned for delivery by F‐15, F‐16 and Tornado fighter aircraft referred to as Dual‐Capable Aircraft.125 The size and readiness of this nuclear arsenal has been reduced significantly since the end of the Cold War.126 The DCA fleet was reduced in 1995 to a readiness posture measured in weeks rather than minutes and in 2002 this was reduced to months. 127 The nuclear mission is maintained through regular training missions where US and NATO pilots practice their skills in dropping nuclear bombs, through regular Nuclear Surety Inspections, and through NATO Tactical Evaluations.128 The forward‐deployed NATO nuclear arsenal therefore operates under a different conception of ‘minimum deterrence’ than the UK Trident arsenal and again demonstrates how a nuclear force can be maintained at much lower levels of readiness for a long period of time. The B‐1B is a US multi‐role, long‐range bomber, capable of flying intercontinental missions and penetrating sophisticated enemy air defences that entered service in the mid‐1980s. The bomber fleet was originally dedicated to a nuclear role but was formally removed from nuclear‐strike missions in October 1997 subject to a US Air Force ‘re‐role’ plan developed several years earlier. This involved retention of additional B61 and B83 nuclear bombs in the US ‘active reserve’ nuclear weapons stockpile – nuclear weapons that are not operationally deployed but maintained at a state of readiness for redeployment if required, and ensuring that the B‐1B’s Conventional Mission Upgrade Program would not preclude future deployment of nuclear weapons.129 The official B‐1 Nuclear Re‐Role Plan states that “In the event of a national emergency...the Air Force will be directed by the National Command Authority (NCA) to recapture a B‐1 nuclear capability” 130 and sets out actions necessary to reconstitute the B‐1 B’s nuclear role and minimise that risk that “as time and events move forward, the expense – both dollars and duration – to accomplish B‐1 nuclear rerole may make it unrealistic and impractical.”131 The B‐1B nuclear re‐role plan highlights the feasibility of retaining a dual‐capable nuclear delivery system that is routinely assigned to conventional missions with plans in place to return the platform to nuclear missions if required. 125
Hans Kristensen, U.S. Nuclear Forces in Europe (Natural Resources Defense Council: Washington, D.C.), February 2005, p. 11. 126
Hans Kristensen, “The Minot Investigations: From Fixing Problems to Nuclear Advocacy”, FAS Security Blog, January 14, 2009. Available at <http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2009/01/schlesingerreport.php#more‐669>; Hans Kristensen, “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Withdrawn from the United Kingdom”, FAS Security Blog, June 26, 2008. Available at <http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2008/06/us‐nuclear‐weapons‐withdrawn‐from‐the‐united‐
kingdom.php>. 127
“NATO's Nuclear Forces in the New Security Environment”, NATO, 1995. Available at <http://www.nato.int/issues/nuclear/sec‐environment.html>. 128
Kristensen, U.S. Nuclear Forces in Europe, p. 64; Ainslie, The Future of the British Bomb, p. 68. 129
Hans Kristensen, “The Unruly Hedge”, Arms Control Today Vol. 31, December 2001. 130
“B‐1 Nuclear Re‐Role Plan”, US Air Force Air Combat Command, October 14, 1998. Released under the US Freedom of Information Act to Hans M. Kristensen in January 2001, p. 2. 131
Ibid., p. 13. 22
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING One should also note that historically the UK has been prepared to live with a less than 100% assured strategic retaliatory capability. As Giles observes: “...in later years, a ‘deterrence gap’ was opened during which the ability of the V bombers to penetrate Soviet air defenses was increasingly put in doubt. This gap endured from 1965‐1969 until the third Polaris submarine became operational and the Royal Navy relieved the Royal Air Force of its strategic deterrence mission. Even then, the Polaris force was not above question… All of this suggests that Britain’s deterrent at times relied more on whether the Soviets were certain that British nuclear forces could not get through to their targets – a highly risky proposition – rather than its own certainty that they could.”132 Furthermore, the Coalition government’s 2010 SDSR was based on “A cross‐government approach” to ensure “intelligent pruning of older capabilities less well adapted to high priority current and future risks”.133 In doing so it divided the planned ‘Future Force 2020’ into three categories of readiness: the deployed force; the high readiness force; and the low readiness force. The review states that “We will hold some capabilities at what is known as extended readiness. The capabilities will not be available for operations in the short term but will be capable of being reconstituted if we have strategic notice of possible, but low probability, events to which we might have to respond to protect our national security. So for example, we will place elements of our amphibious capability in extended readiness rather than remove them from the force structure entirely.” Over time the nuclear force could be re‐categorised as part of the high or even low readiness force.134
A further step to a de‐alerted minimum deterrence posture could involve routine storage of a reduced stockpile of Trident warheads ashore at the Royal Naval Armaments Depot (RNAD) Coulport at the Clyde Naval Base, home to the UK’s SSBN fleet. Procedures would be put in place to re‐mate some or all of these warheads with Trident missiles should a profound nuclear threat to the survival of the nation emerge to provide a minimum but credible means of retaliation. Planning for such an eventuality may revolve around a redeployment timeline measured in months rather than weeks. These procedures could be tested during annual exercises to re‐mate warheads with missiles and redeploy aboard a submarine. Two or three submarines would routinely engage in other non‐nuclear activities and operational missions drawing on technologies developed for the US SSGN (guided missile submarine) programme. This comprises four Ohio‐class Trident submarines that were withdrawn from nuclear service in the 1990s and converted to conventional military missions. The missile tubes that formerly housed Trident ballistic missiles now accommodate packages of conventionally‐armed Tomahawk cruise missiles (up to 154 per converted submarine), attack/reconnaissance un‐
manned aerial and underwater vehicles, and the capability to deploy US Navy SEAL Special Forces. The US has leveraged these technologies into its current Virginia‐class attack submarine building programme and may incorporate them into its future ballistic missile submarines.135 132
Giles, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Research, p. II‐3. Cabinet Office, Strategic Defence and Security Review, p. 9. 134
Ibid., p. 20. 135
Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Trident Submarine Conversion (SSGN) Program: Background and Issues for Congress, CRS Report for Congress (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, May 2008). For further details see Ritchie, Continuity / Change, pp. 58‐70. 133
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DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING Such a posture would reflect the ‘strategic escrow’ scenario set out by former CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner in 1997. Turner envisaged a staggered ‘de‐alerting’ of the US and Russian nuclear arsenals by removing increasing numbers of nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles and securely storing them some distance away in facilities open to external inspection to monitor warhead movements in and out of the facilities so that eventually there would be no nuclear weapons immediately ready to fire.136 An even more ‘minimal’ deterrent posture would mirror the concept of a ‘virtual arsenal’ set out by Michael Mazarr in 1995. This, again, might involve a small number of ballistic missile submarines configured for a variety of conventional military missions but with a small stockpile of Trident missiles stored at Coulport and a small number of warheads maintained in a disassembled state for long‐term storage at AWE Aldermaston. In this context nuclear deterrence rests on the ability to reconstitute and re‐deploy a survivable nuclear arsenal rather than the ability to retaliate within hours or days of an attack.137 Or, as Schell argues, via ‘weaponless deterrence’ based on the mutual threat of nuclear rearmament.138 Further steps might be taken to render nuclear facilities at Faslane, Coulport, and AWE Aldermaston capable of surviving precision conventional attack in order to provide sufficient confidence that a deliverable nuclear force could be reconstituted within an acceptable time frame in a period of prolonged international tension. Disassembly could take a number of forms and require different timescales for reassembly from days, to weeks and months. This scenario envisages a reconstitution time frame measured in many months based on removal of limited life components from warheads, such as neutron generators and tritium reservoirs, and other components leaving the core explosive nuclear warhead physics package intact. Under this scenario warhead reassembly could be staggered such that a few weapons were made available on short notice with full‐scale reconstitution and redeployment of functioning warheads measured in months. Again, annual exercises could be established to re‐assemble actual or mock warheads and re‐deploy to Coulport for loading on to Trident missiles to sail on operational patrol. Declaratory policy Current conceptions of ‘minimum deterrence’ could also be revised by further restricting the declaratory role (and therefore security value) of nuclear weapons. Declaratory value was tightened in the 2010 SDSR but it could go further. Options include a ‘sole purpose’ declaration to explicitly declare that the only reason for deploying nuclear weapons is to deter their use by others in line with McNamara’s conclusion noted above. States covered by a ‘sole purpose’ declaration would not be subjected to nuclear attack in a conflict even if they used CBW or a mounted a major conventional attack. The 2009 report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non‐Proliferation and Disarmament, for example, suggests a declaration to the effect that “the sole purpose of the 136
Adm. Stansfield Turner, Caging the Nuclear Genie, An American Challenge for Global Security (Westview Press: Boulder, CO), 1997. 137
Michael Mazarr, “Virtual Nuclear Arsenals”, Survival 37:3, Autumn 1995; Michael Mazarr, “The Notion of Virtual Arsenals” in Michael Mazarr (ed), Nuclear Weapons in a transformed World: The Challenge of Virtual Nuclear Arsenals (St. Martin’s Press: New York), 1997, p. 15. 138
Jonathan Schell, The Abolition (London: Picador, 1984). 24
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING possession of nuclear weapons is to deter the use of such weapons against one’s own state and that of one’s allies.”139 As noted above, the 2006 Defence White Paper stipulates that UK nuclear weapons are deployed to deter threats to the country’s ‘vital interests’. Current conceptions of ‘vital interests’ described in the 1998 SDR and 2003 Defence White Paper do not appear to correspond to the ICJ Advisory Opinion that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self‐defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake”. The government could therefore outline in further detail the ‘vital interests’ that warrant nuclear protection in ‘extreme circumstances’ and to unequivocally link the potential use of nuclear weapons to the survival of the state. Malcolm Chalmers has used the formulation of ‘a very last resort’ to describe the circumstances in which nuclear weapons might be employed. This option would still, however, allow for the first use of nuclear weapons in circumstances when the very existence of the state was incontrovertibly under threat.140 Such a step would bring declaratory policy more in line with the political realities of possible nuclear use based on a robust case that the UK would only ever consider using its nuclear weapons in an extremely limited set of circumstances. In fact, the only potentially credible, justifiable and conceivable scenario (in terms of the Prime Minister’s willingness to ‘push the button’) for use of nuclear weapons is in retaliation for a major strategic attack against the UK that threatens the very survival of the state, i.e. the UK government will be destroyed through military defeat and hostile occupation and/or UK society as we know it will be bombed past the point of recovery. A decision to actually use nuclear weapons would, in reality, only be taken as a very last resort when the survival of the nation was under imminent threat. Currently the only prospect of an attack having this type of effect is the extremely remote possibility of nuclear strike. But the UK does not face a significant nuclear threat to the survival of the state and hasn’t done so since the mid‐1990s.141 Even in the context of a CBW attack by a regional ‘rogue’ state, the credibility and utility of UK nuclear deterrent threats against CBW use such states is highly questionable.142 Conclusion The British defence and political establishment grasped the deterrence implications of nuclear weapons at the onset of the nuclear age. An appreciation of the relatively limited number of thermonuclear weapons required to inflict catastrophic punishment on an adversary and a financial aversion to competing in the superpower arms race facilitated adoption of a ‘minimum deterrence’ nuclear posture, buttressed nonetheless by the US nuclear commitment to NATO. This ‘minimum’ has been operationalised in deterrence missions, force size, operational policy and declaratory policy. Successive post‐Cold War governments have routinely publicised their disarmament credentials at NPT gatherings as the only NWS to have significantly reduced and consolidated its 139
“Eliminating Nuclear Threats”, International Commission on Non‐Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament, Australia and Japan, 2009, p.173. 140
Chalmers, Nuclear Narratives, p. 33. 141
Cabinet Office, The National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom: Update 2009 – Security for the Next Generation, Cm 7590 (London: HMSO, June 2009). 141 See Nick Ritchie, “Deterrence Dogma: Challenging the Relevance of British Nuclear Weapons”, International Affairs 85(1), January 2009. 25
DRAFT: NOT FOR CITING nuclear forces to a single system.143 Indeed, the notion of ‘minimum’ has become Britain’s means of aligning its commitments to the logic of deterrence and the logic of disarmament (albeit an incongruent alignment for many). Britain’s nuclear future has been widely debated over the past five years as the Trident replacement process has unfolded. It remains politically, economically, and culturally contentious, and within that contention the convergence of the firm commitment to remaining a nuclear power in some form, a tough financial prognosis for MoD, and renewed global momentum for very serious progress towards nuclear abolition has generated a window of opportunity for a further evolution of the ‘minimum’. This could include further force reductions in terms of absolute numbers and warhead loadings on the single submarine at sea, further consolidation of deterrence missions and a more restrictive declaratory policy that explicitly reflects the political realities of potential nuclear use, and rethinking the necessity of a continuous‐at‐sea deterrence posture in favour of some form of ‘reduced readiness’ drawing on US and NATO operational nuclear practices. In fact the key to taking further steps along the post‐Cold War path of force reductions, consolidation, operational relaxation (albeit minor), and declaratory restrictions rests on rethinking CASD and the domestic politics of reconceptualising ‘minimum’. On the former, the powerful argument that fixes deterrence credibility to an irreducible ‘minimum’ of 100% assured second strike will have to be overcome amid accusations of a ‘part‐time’ deterrent144 or an ineffective ‘just in time’ deterrent.145 Domestically, further contraction of the parameters of the ‘minimum’ risk undermining the case for renewing Trident altogether. The strategic, political and economic case for renewing Trident is already far from robust. If a reconceptualisation of ‘minimum deterrence’ yields a smaller arsenal, reduce readiness posture, and more restrictive (and more extreme and fanciful) scenarios for use, political pressure to bet out of the nuclear weapons business altogether could become insurmountable. In this context a strategic and economic ‘minimum’ could be incommensurate with a political ‘minimum’. Indeed, one can argue that the expansive set of nuclear roles presented in the 2006 White Paper reflect a political imperative for role maximisation to justify the current iteration of ‘minimum’. Nevertheless, a further consolidation of ‘minimum’ in UK nuclear policy and practice could set important precedents for progress towards global zero by establishing new norms of deterrence doctrine and practice for one of the original nuclear powers and one of the three depository states of the NPT. Britain certainly has the potential to take a major leadership role as the most progressive of the nuclear weapon states having ended nuclear testing and ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, ended production of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons, published accounts of its holdings and history of fissile material production, reduced to a single nuclear system in Trident, and undertaken important research on the technical verification of nuclear disarmament. Britain can and should continue on this trajectory and demonstrate international leadership by taking concrete steps to reduce the salience of and reliance upon its nuclear weapons for national security by pushing the boundaries of ‘minimum deterrence’. 143
For example Ambassador John Freeman, head of UK Delegation, Statement to Main Committee I, Seventh Review Conference of the NPT, May 2005. 144
Tim Hare, “Nuclear Policy all at Sea: A Part Time Deterrent Will Not Do!”, RUSI Journal, 154: 6 2009. 145
Franklin Miller, “The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent”, RUSI Journal, 155: 2, 2010, 26