The first thing to say about the replacement for our existing Trident defence system is that Tony Blair’s claim that it has to be decided this winter, before he goes, is ludicrous. You know that. The defence White Paper, which he will unveil on Monday, is all about cutting a dash as he departs and sucking up to an arms industry at present in a state of hyperventilation.
The second thing to say is that the price tag he will quote at the dispatch box will be purely notional: plucked from the air and doomed to prove a grotesque underestimate. You know that, too.
The third is that almost nobody really, really thinks we need it. If you are honest with yourself, you know that as well.
And, sometimes, just sometimes, logic does break through. Sometimes in politics — and often when we least expect it — the unconvinced do decline to shrug their shoulders and shut up; reason does rebel, does prevail. Sometimes even the Conservative Party thinks better of a long-unchallenged nonsense.
For a nonsense Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent has become. In truth Trident never had much potential practical use, even during the Cold War. It was hardly conceivable that we could deploy this weapon except in co-operation with the United States. The one occasion on which the ability to threaten a nuclear strike might have delivered a specifically British policy goal was the Falklands War: the threat of a strike on Buenos Aires might just have turned Argentina back at an early stage. But nobody thought the Americans would have let us do that. Nor should they have.
Otherwise there was just one good argument for Trident. As a backbench Government MP I on balance accepted it; and voted for it. Solidarity with the United States in the free world’s stand against the advance of Soviet communism may sound a rather abstract goal today, now the Cold War is won, but it mattered then, and Trident was part of it: a potent symbol of parallel resolve, if not a huge practical help. Containing Soviet ambitions was a prize for which the price of our “ independent” nuclear deterrent seemed worth paying.
Even so, the forward costings usually proved to be underestimates, even when what was being budgeted for was the maintenance and renewal of an existing system. It looks likely that on Monday Mr Blair will commend a more ambitious option than extending the life of the existing deterrent beyond its likely expiry in ten to fifteen years. He may talk of a “replacement” for Trident. Huge figures for the cost of a renewed independent deterrent have tended to lump together the investment in the new system with the costs of running it. But simply running an independent deterrent has never been all that expensive and rarely amounted to more than 5 per cent of the annual defence budget. It is building the system that costs so much. That’s why the case for plodding on for a few more years with the old system is stronger than in philosophical logic than it might appear.
In fact, the Prime Minister has little idea what his proposals will cost. Nobody has. Ministry of Defence estimates have an abysmal record. We can be sure only that true costs will greatly exceed whatever figures a prime minister, anxious to secure a go-ahead in the division lobbies next year, brings to the dispatch box.
What, then, is the prize? It was with forethought that, in saying that nobody really, really wants this thing, I served up that double order of reallys. Mr Blair will have little difficulty in finding defence experts who will mumble that we’d probably better renew our independent deterrent; but few will shout it loud: and not with anything like the intellectual confidence this huge decision should require. The Royal Navy, of course, will be in favour of anything that has to be carried in boats, but away from the roar of the surf, cock your ear to how tentative and apologetic the argument for a new generation of British nuclear missiles is becoming.
Of all these arguments, “it does get us a ticket to the top table” is surely the feeblest: the habitual resort of those whose folder of arguments is slim. What top table? The table of nations who possess nuclear weapons? Well, obviously. But if we are not a nuclear power we no longer need to sup there. Full stop. If we British had landed a spacecraft on Mars we’d have a ticket to the interplanetary top table, too.
Next, your apologist for a British nuclear deterrent will mutter darkly (and in a slightly unconvinced way) about an “uncertain world” in which we cannot know the nature or provenance of future threats. You could use this argument for virtually any weapons system. It is true we cannot know how or where we may be threatened, but we can make useful guesses. Such threats are unlikely to include the very thing we originally acquired Trident to deter: threats from a superpower. The USSR is gone. Not only is the British nuclear deterrent not intended for use against America, but it could not even (practically speaking) be used against America’s wishes.
“Ah,” says counsel for the nuclear defence, “but now we face a new terrorist threat.” This has to be the sloppiest argument of all. Any dubious logic it may seem to possess derives from the hint that terrorists may one day use nuclear devices — as though the nuclear deterrent we may develop would be any kind of answer to the nuclear devices they might acquire. How could the presence in the Atlantic of a British submarine carrying a nuclear missile influence the calculations of an al-Qaeda cell in the hills of Pakistan? Can we use Trident to take out a terror cell in Tottenham? Think, though, how the billions saved might buy enhanced intelligence designed to locate that cell in Tottenham.
Forced to concede that this argument is nonsense, the pro-nuclear defence lobby begin to talk about “rogue nuclear states”. North Korea? Iran? Does anyone seriously think that, as Kim Jong Il ponders a strike on South Korea, the existence of a British deterrent could swing the balance? As for Iran, if it ever comes to nuclear sabre-rattling between Israel, the US and Tehran, here is a top table to be avoided.
Unfortunately, the sceptics’ case against renewal has been weakened by overstatement. The argument is made for joining the non-nuclear club in order to become a “moral force” within it; but I doubt that Iran, or Israel, or India, will be influenced one way or the other by whether Britain replaces Trident. The argument is made for beating swords into ploughshares and diverting the billions saved into beating poverty, or malaria, or HIV, but such spending should be argued on its merits.
Defence spending should be argued on its merits too, and can be. We could use those billions for beefing up our conventional defences, supplying and supporting our existing armed forces properly; for intelligence work; and for developing further the defence roles we already play well and may rely upon more in the coming century: military firefighting; small wars; coups and insurgencies; riot control; training allies’ armies; rescue and disaster work. How any minister can argue for earmarking £20 billion, £40billion or whatever fabulous sum it may turn out to be for a weapons system for which no proper strategic or business case can be made, when British troops in Afghanistan lack the armoured vehicles they need for their own protection, beats me.
Mine would be not the pacifist argument, but a perfectly Tory concern for getting military value for money, and preferring real punch in real and likely conflicts, to the useless swagger of international status symbols and expensive toys. If that were the united opposition position on Monday, a costly and distracting case of military illogic would be in trouble next year in the division lobbies. The Tories should argue for eking out the existing deterrent for a few years more, and postponing any decision on this pointless piece of Blairite posturing.
Read Michael Smith's blog on "the travesty of a Trident debate"
