There are few government policies that are so
financially ruinous that they cannot be made more so by a determined
politician. And this weekend, it was Ed Davey’s turn,
for the Lib Dems. His diagnosis – that the US is no longer a dependable ally
and relying on them to allow the use of missiles which are leased from the US
may make them potentially unusable – is accurate enough. His cure, however –
that the UK should develop a completely new set of missiles on its own – would add
vast amounts of additional cost to a programme which is already hugely
expensive. It would also have a lengthy timescale before it could be ready for
use, and one of the known unknowns is whether the US will remain a hostile
actor for the whole of that period.
Whether it would make the weapons any more usable is another
open question. Their value as a deterrent has always depended on a series of
assumptions. That the UK has the ability to fire them at all without US permission
is certainly one of those, but there are others: that ‘the enemy’ will
simultaneously be mad enough to launch a strike which will incinerate millions
and make large areas of the earth (maybe even all of it) uninhabitable and sane
enough to be deterred by the thought of millions of their own citizens being incinerated
in return; that the orders given to the submarine commander instruct him to
launch in certain circumstances and that the commander, contemplating the scale
of destruction already wreaked on the planet, would follow those instructions;
and that the enemy would not already have located and destroyed the submarine.
That’s a whole load of caveats, without even considering whether the system
would actually work
anyway.
All of that matters only if the possession of nuclear
weapons had anything at all to do with war, peace or deterrence. If, as many
suspect, it’s actually more to do with a post-imperial mindset amongst UK
politicians – Labour, Tory and Lib Dem alike – that still doesn’t accept the
reduced status of the UK in the world and clings to the belief that what the UK
PM thinks is of any importance, then whether they work or not is largely
irrelevant; the important thing is whether the UK is accepted by other states as
being what its leaders think it is. It fails, though, even on that level. One
of the consequences of diverting so much resource into a single weapons system
is that the UK doesn’t have the sort of forces which can actually be of use,
leading to boats spending three days bobbing
about in the English Channel. Some of us might think that’s a positive, of
sorts – but I doubt that it’s what Davey had in mind.
I was mature enough not to comment when you ridiculed my previous views on defence and nuclear weapons.
ReplyDeleteBut
It seems to me the the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party may have taken up baton.
Talk gently but carry a big stick has a lot going for it
We clearly have very different vews about the sort of world in which we wish to live, and I doubt that we will find much by way of common ground on the issue of armaments. A world where those with the biggest sticks 'win' all arguments is one which encourages people to develop and wield ever bigger sticks. In short, it encourages more states to develop nuclear weapons. If Iran actually had a nuclear weapon and the capability to deliver it, would Israel and the US have attacked it?
ReplyDeleteAgain I feel that you are misunderstanding me
ReplyDeleteMy initial comments have always been about military defence of the uk.
My views on the use of nuclear weapons falls under a 21st century definition of a big stick, I suspect Theodore Roosevelt was talking about Battleships.
I agree that Trump would not have attacked Iran of Iran possessed deliverable nuclear weapons but does this not support my view and negate yours?
"I agree that Trump would not have attacked Iran [if] Iran possessed deliverable nuclear weapons but does this not support my view and negate yours?" I didn't say that. I only asked the question - I didn't answer it. And the question is really two questions, not one. For what it's worth, I believe that had Iran possessed a few nuclear bombs, Israel and the US would still have attacked, and in Israel's case, probably using its own (undeclared) nuclear weapons. Netanyahu is mad and reckless, and Trump cares nothing for deaths as long as they don't include his own. But the second aspect of the question is whether Iran might have believed that possession of nuclear weapons would protect them from attack - and it's probable that they would. My point is that, in a world run on the principle that he who has the biggest stick dominates, two things happen: firstly, the number of people wanting their own big sticks increases, and secondly, the probability that the sticks will actually be used goes up not down.
ReplyDelete"My initial comments have always been about military defence of the uk." Understood. And my perspective on the world comes more from the point of view of smaller countries, such as an independent Wales. The perspectives are very different. But, even seen from a UK perspective, whether the UK's Trident system actually deters anyone or not is far from being a clear-cut question. To summarise the points in the original post, 'the enemy' has to both believe that the UK can (without US input) use the weapons and would be willing to do so, and also that the damage done to itself would be tolerable. It is widely believed that the US would have to authorise use, althuogh the government always deny that. They would, though, wouldn't they? Putin is probably one of the few people in the world who actually knows the answer to that. Whether the 'deterrent' actually 'deters' is little more than guesswork to you and I, but clearly we have drawn different conclusions. What we do know is that a world in which it was actually used would not be a pleasant place.
Sorry for the delay, did a bit of thinking and then research.
ReplyDeleteI forget sometimes that you are looking at this from a Welsh point of view so I looked for a politically stable, law abiding country with about the same population in a "safe" part of the world and fell upon Uruguay.
Check out their defense spending set against their possible needs and think about that in the context of of Wales
PS
I spent a couple of years working in Brazil so I know a bit about the real South America.
Have a good day
This is straying a bit from the original post,which was specifically related to nuclear weapons. As far as I'm aware, Uruguay has no ambitions in that direction.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you have touched on, whether intentionally or not, one of the big issues for the economics of an independent Wales. It isn't independence which determines econmic success or failure, but what we do with it, and one of the questions involved in that concerns the level of 'defence' expenditure. It's not as straightfoward as we might wish to compare the level of defence expenditure as a proportion of GDP, because different countries use different rules to determine what is or is not counted, but let's leave that to one side and assume that the international league tables tell us something useful as a starting point. I'm referring to this as a source. You choose Uruguay as a comparator, where approximately 2.3% of GDP goes on the military. I might prefer to choose Ireland, where the percentage is aroun 0.3%. Which we choose depends on a whole series of factors, some of which relate to an assessment of the different types and levels of threat, others of which relate more to a view of how we'd like things to be. The point is that there is no simple 'right' answer which we can arrive at by an entirely objective study of the evidence. Each country ultimately makes its own judgement - Wales would be no different. The one we choose, however, makes a huge difference to the economics. Which is 'safer', in a dangerous world, is a judgement call too. It's one on which I doubt we will agree, because your starting point seems to be about the size of the stick a country can wield, whereas mine is that for small countries, security ultimately depends on establishing a functioning and effective rules-based order. I'm not sure that there's a compromise position available between those two views.
Hi
ReplyDeleteI looked at the population of Wales and then at a ranking of countries by population to find an equivalent. Uruguay fitted as a close fit to Wales and I was amazed at their level of defence spending given their geopolitical location.
I think we have reached a natural end to these interesting discussions and I look forward to reading your future views.