THE GUARDIAN

  COMMENT

Max Hastings
Monday July 17, 2006
 

Tony Blair and his ministers have declared their commitment to a "full and open debate" before Britain decides whether to replace the Trident nuclear deterrent. Yet I am reliably informed that one of John Reid's last acts before leaving the Ministry of Defence was to threaten with summary emasculation anyone, in uniform or out of it, who opened his mouth about Trident.

At a Trident conference at Chatham House last week, there was no sign of a government presence, even to listen. No "full and open debate" has even started. Yet Blair and Gordon Brown have publicly asserted a determination to replace the missile system. How can any of us respect an administration that, on a complex issue with implications for this country half a century hence, makes up its mind before hearing the evidence?

There are many people with visceral instincts either convinced that Britain must have its own bomb, or that our nuclear weapons are inherently repugnant. Yet inbetween, there is a large group of pragmatists, who hold no entrenched moral view but wish to consider, in strategic terms, whether nuclear weapons have a role to play in protecting Britain in the 21st century.

Only a handful of powers are rich or assertive enough to fund a comprehensive range of weapons systems to address the entire spectrum of nuclear and conventional threats. The rest of us are obliged to make choices. Planners assess a range of contingencies, and buy weapons to meet the most likely. Often they get it wrong. They simply hope to get enough right to muddle through, recognising that acquiring one system means doing without something else. We have Apache helicopters, so we cannot afford Blackhawks. We order aircraft-carriers, which may mean fewer tanks. If we replace Trident, in 20 years the Treasury could be insisting that the army makes do with fewer foot soldiers.

During the cold war, the case for a British nuclear deterrent seemed convincing. Margaret Thatcher took little heed of intellectual arguments about Trident: she simply committed Britain to buying the biggest bang it could afford. Today, we are in a new world. I am impressed that Sir Michael Quinlan, Britain's foremost nuclear strategist, who played a key part in policy-making at the MoD a generation ago, now declares himself undecided about whether we should replace Trident.

He wants more information before making up his mind. So do we all, but there is little sign of the government hastening to provide this. It is not good enough for ministers ruthlessly to suppress debate on critical issues, as Reid also sought to do about Afghanistan. Thuggery becomes a substitute for thought. There are a few questions we need answered to hold an informed public debate about Trident.

First, is it practicable simply to modernise the existing system and submarines, and what would this cost? Second, does the government agree that Britain will never again need nuclear weapons capable of retaliation against a major power such as Russia or China? If so, what it is the cheapest and least sophisticated system Britain might buy, capable of posing a credible deterrent to a rogue state, and what would this cost? Third, what are the plausible scenarios in which such a system might be useful, never mind used? And, finally, if Britain did not already possess nuclear weapons, would we choose to buy any now?

Those who take an intensely moral view of nuclear weapons think it vulgar to mention mere money. For pragmatists, however, the cash matters. If a cheap option exists to keep a minimal British nuclear capability, this should be considered. We need to know what other elements of our defences are likely to suffer if we renew Trident.

At Chatham House last week, an academic remarked that his students were uninterested in the nuclear weapons issue. To them, this is irrelevant alongside other visible threats, of which global warming is the most prominent. Those students may not be wrong. Our most plausible dangers in the years ahead derive from terrorism, and ethnic and cultural pressure on and within our societies. It is hard to postulate a threat of nuclear assault by an external state enemy. One could scarcely launch a Trident replacement in a retaliatory strike against son-of-Osama bin Laden.

Yet the arguments are not all on one side. Quinlan says that if we abandon nuclear weapons, it will be almost impossible ever to reverse such a decision. Trident's successor would become operational in the 2020s. Who, in 1975, correctly anticipated how the world, and our place in it, would look today?

Colin Gray, in his book Another Bloody Century, warns against supposing that conventional wars have been abolished. It is entirely plausible that the next 30 years will see big international conflicts, perhaps about natural resources. It will be surprising if somebody does not explode a nuclear weapon. The India-Pakistan situation is always acutely dangerous, the Middle East will not become less so. The conventional military invincibility of the US has prompted a rush by its potential foes to acquire nuclear weapons.

Yet what has any of this do with Britain? With whom might we swap holocausts? Even if one accepts Gray's bleak view of the new century, it is hard to come up with a plausible answer. The only certainty is that we shall do better in debating the Trident replacement decision if we focus on practical arguments rather than moral ones. At Chatham House, many gasbags were filled with hot air about the inherent wickedness of nuclear weapons. This is a proposition that can be expressed in a single sentence.

Much is said about the value of the example we would set to the world, by voluntarily abandoning our deterrent. This is tosh. Every nation owns or seeks to acquire such systems for its own reasons. Who can imagine Israel, India, Pakistan or Iran forswearing nuclear ambitions because we have done so? Our decision should be based on the same national criteria: what are the needs of Britain? Will this country be more plausibly defended by spending about £20bn on replacing Trident, or by buying other weapons? Until the MoD tells us what the nuclear options are, and what they might cost, there can be no serious debate.

These things should be set out long before the government makes any decision, and certainly before any more senior ministers diminish themselves by making off-the-cuff assertions rooted in hunches or Labour party politics.

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