Comment: Liam Fox should rethink his position on Trident
The defence secretary has his head in the sand over Trident. Fortunately, his supporters are shrinking.
By Kate Hudson
While the defence secretary seems to be pursuing a like-for-like replacement of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system – minus parliamentary authorisation and outside of the government’s own stated time-frame – his camp appears to be shrinking.
Unquestioning and apparently unthinking adherence to Britain’s nuclear weapons system – or ‘the deterrent’ as it is often euphemistically called – is becoming a minority sport. Public opinion polls have shown majority opposition to Trident for some time, no doubt shaped to a considerable extent by financial concerns. But of particular interest is the increasingly serious questioning of nuclear weapons in general, and Trident in particular, that is taking place amongst establishment figures, from retired military top brass, to formerly hawkish Labour defence heavy-weights, to top-drawer Tory grandees. Attaching a caricature of knee-jerk pro-nuclearism to any political or social strata can now be abandoned, not least because of the recent impact of inclusion of Trident in the MoD budget, and the opportunity cost of that for other defence spending.
Not surprisingly, a number of retired senior military figures have made exactly this point. According to the former Adjutant General Lord Ramsbotham, who has argued strongly in favour of restarting the debate over Trident replacement, Trident is “an inappropriate weapons system”, a Cold War system that is virtually irrelevant, except in the context of domestic politics. Lord Ramsbotham is also quite certain that some serving members of the military share his doubts, as do former Chief of Defence Staff Field Marshal Lord Bramall and General Sir Hugh Beach, former Deputy Commander-in-Chief of UK Land Forces, who argue for spending instead on improving conventional forces.
Of course some in the pro-nuclear camp are eager to dismiss this as inter-forces rivalry, competing for resources, rather than a serious evaluation of Britain’s security needs. But even in Warships: International Fleet Review we find a willingness to consider breaking with the like-for-like model: “A follow-on Astute Class SSN armed with a new generation cruise missile might be a cheaper alternative to building a successor to the Vanguard Class SSBN and acquiring the replacement Trident missile system. We know there are good reasons a SSBN deterrent is best, but can the UK afford it?” These are precisely the type of questions that need to be considered – as well as whether Britain actually ‘needs’ nuclear weapons at all. But Liam Fox refused to include consideration of Trident in last year’s strategic defence and security review, in spite of pledging to jettison Cold War baggage from Britain’s defence policy. The type of idea put forward by Warships is no doubt derided by Liam Fox as a piece of namby-pamby Lib-Demism rubbing off in places where it shouldn’t.
Fortunately, open-minded military types are joined by a number of cross-party political big-hitters who have taken significant initiatives that should make stuck-in-the-nuclear mud backbenchers on both sides of the House sit up and think. Inspired by the work towards multilateral disarmament in the US, led initially not by Obama but by former Cold Warriors Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, a cross-party ‘top level group’ on multilateral nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation was set up to help advance an agenda orientating away from nuclear weapons which, as Kissinger has concluded, are now just too dangerous to keep.
Now, a further and very necessary development has taken place. Former Labour defence secretary Lord Des Browne, former Tory defence secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell are leading an independent cross-party Trident commission that will do what the government has so far failed to do: take a long hard look at Trident and Britain’s security. Browne’s participation is highly significant because it was he who drove the Trident replacement vote through parliament in 2007. Now he says that today’s coalition government is wrong just to continue the policy of Browne’s government, because: “I know how much the world has changed since we made our original renewal decision.”
And any unquestioning Tories in the Fox camp would do well to take a leaf out of Rifkind’s book, who has described himself as being on a journey, where his own position has shifted considerably in the last five years in response to international changes. At the launch of the Trident commission in February, he identified three key questions for its consideration: is there a need for a deterrent today; if so, is Trident the best solution; if so, can its structure and operational posture be modified in helpful ways? That the first question should even be asked by such a panel would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Now it is a mainstream matter. Fox and his camp need to be aware: heads in the sand over Trident are no longer an option.
Kate Hudson is general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
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