26h

Here’s Johann Hari taking up Tony Blair’s challenge to explain how Trident disarmament would help UK security. Hari’s a thoughtful and level-headed writer – I generally agree with him wholeheartedly, but I didn’t find this piece particularly convincing. (That’s not to say I’m particularly sold on Trident renewal. (I’m perhaps sixty-forty in favour of it as a continued deterrent.) But I don’t have all the facts, which is why my questions here are by no means entirely rhetorical.)

The Prime Minister has slapped down a challenge to the opponents: “Those who question this decision need to explain why disarmament by the UK would help our security.” He’s right. So let’s do it…

Nuclear Threat One: A fundamentalist group could smuggle a nuclear weapon into this country and detonate it in London or Manchester or Glasgow…

Trident is, of course, useless against this sort of threat, because non-state actors leave you with nowhere to retaliate against. If the 9/11 massacres had been nuclear, the only retaliatory target would have been Hamburg, where most of the planning took place - hardly a sane suggestion. Besides, jihadists actually welcome death. For them mutually assured destruction isn’t a deterrent; it’s an incentive.

Hari explains perfectly convincingly and in some detail how Trident renewal won’t make us any safer from a jihadi with a nuclear bomb. But doing so seems a little disingenuous. It implies that Blair is claiming Trident will act as a deterrent against nuclear threats in general. But that’s not his tack at all. And the fact that jihadis themselves welcome death is neither here nor there. However:

Does Trident actually make this situation worse? I think it does, for one reason. Every penny we spend on the illusory ’safety’ of Trident is a penny we are not spending on securing collapsing nuclear facilities across the globe.

Well maybe that’s so, but while it would be exceptionally prudent idea, rounding up and securing the worlds feral nuclear materials does not exclude the possibility of renewing Trident. It’s not as if the UK would need to reallocate the Trident budget to finance such a project as it wouldn’t just be the UK footing the bill. (Even it were, it could still be the case that renewing Trident would result in greater holistic security. I don’t think that’s a particularly strong possibility, but would have thought it at least needs acknowledging.)

Nuclear Threat Number Two: A regional nuclear war could break out somewhere else in the world and trigger a nuclear winter that makes the planet uninhabitable… This is not a wildly implausible scenario: only five years ago, Britain had to advise its citizens to evacuate India and Pakistan because of the real risk of a nuclear war, and it’s not hard to imagine a similar situation soon between Iran and Israel.

There is only one route out of this. It is the NPT, created in the 1960s after the world came within inches of consuming itself in fire during the Cuban Missile Crisis. (I have met Robert McNamara, who was in the Oval Office throughout. He is still ashen with the memory). The NPT is based on a simple deal: the existing nuclear powers slowly scale down their nuclear arsenals in lockstep, in return for the non-nuclear powers agreeing not to tool up. The renewal of Trident blatantly violates this, our last best hope. Article VI of the Treaty is unequivocal: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” As Rabinder Singh QC and Professor Christine Chinkin said in a recent legal opinion, the renewal of Trident “in our view constitues material breach.”

A global momentum towards disarmament is the best way to sway Iran and other countries in the Middle East from going nuclear. Of course, only the criminally naive believe the deranged anti-Semite Mahmoud Ahmajinejadh will wake up the morning after Britain disarms and realise he doesn’t need a nuke after all. Gandhian suasion has little effect on religious fundamentalists. But we need to be playing a long game here, appealing to the Iranian people themselves. Most estimates suggest it will take a decade for Iran to have an actionable nuclear weapon, and Amadinejadh’s domestic popularity is already dissolving. (just look at the local election results). Unless the US and Israel bolster him by attacking, he will be gone before he has access to a weapon. But the core will remain: the Iranian people will still want a nuclear bomb, with around 80 percent demanding one in opinion polls. In their situation, it’s not hard to see why. They are ringed by nuclear neighbours, and traumatised by the memory of the CIA overthrowing their democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953 and installing a fascistic dictator…

If we want to change this pre-and-post-Ahmadinejadh wish within Iran, we need to change the external situation. In a world that is increasing its nuclear arsenal, the Iranians want a weapon of their own. In a world that is steadily decommissioning its nuclear weapons, they probably would rather spend the money on schools and hospitals, like everyone else. Renewing Trident diminishes the chances of that ever happening - and therefore our own safety.

So, Iran has nuclear neighbours; and the idea is, if I’ve understood it correctly, that the unease this causes explains why the vast majority of the Iranian people support a nuclear weapons program. And if the UK shows an unconditional commitment to disarmament, the level of global nuclear anxiety will ebb, Iran’s neighbours will start to disarm and Iran’s nuclear ambitions will, in turn, abate. Presumably however, the key dynamic here is Israel – a state that does not even officially admit to having nuclear weapons capabilities; and a state that Iran generally, to use an understatement, distrusts. So, is it likely that British disarmament will – either directly or by proxy – have a significant prompting effect on Israeli disarmament? A prompting effect on public Israeli disarmament? Public Israeli disarmament to the Iran’s satisfaction?

To be fair, it is conceivable that immediate British disarmament is a step (albeit an uncertain one) towards that goal, but it’s hardly a decisive reason to think it’ll make the UK safer.

Nuclear Threat Three: Some as yet unidentified state will one day emerge and threaten us with nuclear annihilation. This is unlikely, but not impossible: in the 1920s, few people saw Nazism on the horizon. But there is a better way to guarantee against this than Trident. It is known as ‘the Japanese option’. At the moment, Japan has a virtual nuclear arsenal. Dr Andrew Dorman of King’s College London explains what this means: “Japan currently has a civil nuclear programme and advanced rocket technology. Estimates range from six months to two years for how long it would take Japan to build a nuclear capability. Likewise, Britain could retain its design teams and maintain the capacity to build and reconstruct its nuclear force, but not actually have one day to day.” No threat is going to emerge in less than six months. By going Japanese, we could simultaneously strengthen the NPT, appeal to the Iranian people, and retain a guarantee against nuclear blackmail.

Just how daft do we think the Iranian people are? If renewing Trident is a flagrant violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (not that I’m wholly convinced it is,) then “the Japanese option” is skirting round the violation on a technicality. In other words, if it isn’t a breach of the treaty, then it’s certainly a breach of its spirit; a factor hardly likely to garner much trust from Iran.

Personally, I think attempting to answer Blair’s challenge directly affords it rather too much credit. The measure of all UK security policy shouldn’t be that it makes the British (and only the British) markedly safer – just that it shouldn’t do the exact opposite.