REFLECTIONS ON NUCLEAR DETERRENCE: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Accept the Bomb.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Accept the Bomb.

In the early 1980's I was an active supporter of CND. I marched, I protested, and in Easter 1983 I held hands to form a human chain linking the US nuclear bases in southern England.

Human Chain Easter 1983

My support was not purely based upon a deep abhorrence of nuclear weapons, - what sane person doesn’t feel such abhorrence. No, I was as much concerned by the gung-ho attitude of the Reagan and Thatcher governments of the period. With all the talk of missile defence shields and ‘tactical’ devices you did not have to feel especially paranoid to think that, Reagan in particular, they were just mad enough to use them. So I don’t regret my involvement not even that we might have proved useful to Russian propagandists; ‘playing into the hands of…’   always a weak argument, particularly when moral issues are concerned. I have however changed my mind and I could no longer support CND.

My abhorrence of these weapons has not diminished but what has changed is my sense of both the reality of the existence of such weapons and of the nature of the world we now inhabit. On the first point, put simply, nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, though of course world would be a better place if they did not exist. But this short statement is also misleading in its simplicity, for to say that nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented is to say a great deal. We live daily with a potent and perilous existential truth, a truth with which we have made an uneasy accommodation, namely that actions taken cannot be undone, and words said cannot be unsaid. We may of course make amends, we can seek to restore an original state of affairs, but the act, the words spoken, remain forever, like footprints in quick drying cement.

In the field of science this truth carries extra costs, never better illustrated than at Los Alamos. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Robert Oppenheimer intoned, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, as the first atomic bomb exploded. The scientists in the Nevada desert knew what they had done and knew that it could not be undone.

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

This does not mean that we should not seek to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, nor take steps to reduce the number of such weapons in the world. However it is to realise that the idea of a nuclear weapon free world is little more than wishful thinking. However for the sake of argument just suppose that all the current nuclear armed states agreed to destroy their weapons, that India, Pakistan, China, North Korea, and Russia and of course Israel, all agreed with Britain, France and the US to create a nuclear free world. Would that be problem solved? Well no, - for leaving aside the little matter of non-state actors, - there is still the problem of the scientific knowledge. This knowledge would still be out there, still available. Even if it was not, that it could somehow be magically erased, science has an incredibly strong record of stumbling upon such facts. Sooner or later the problem would re-emerge.

All of this of course is wholly fanciful, a nuclear free world is not going to happen and we must therefore face the fact that we live in a world where nuclear weapons are a reality that is not going to go away. The question remains how we are to live with this reality.

Firstly every step must be taken to try and prevent the proliferation of such weapons, neither India nor Pakistan paid a sufficiently high price for developing the bomb, whilst Israel has paid no price at all. This sent out a clear message to other would be nuclear powers that the initial storm could easily be ridden out.

Secondly through a process of negotiations the number of such weapons must continue to be reduced. This will at first continue to be between Russia and the US, though other states would eventually need to also be engaged in the process.

Particular attention needs to be brought to bear on the conflict between India and Pakistan, both sides should be encouraged to participate in conflict reduction forums and an emergency hot-line structure established.

Respecting the UK’s own weapons, given the state of the world at present, it seems to me now that we would be foolish to rid ourselves of them. They represent a serious deterrent to any would be aggressor, but only a deterrent. Using such weapons would be not only the ultimate disaster but also the ultimate failure. They exist to create in the mind of any potential enemy an unacceptable level of risk should they choose to attack, the risk that we might just press the button. So to have them and then state openly, as Jeremy Corbyn did, that he would never use them was the most stupid statement I have heard in a very long time. It is rather like declaring to any would be intruder that ‘no matter what, you kill my children, rape my partner attempt to kill me, I will never resort to lethal violence, this may be true but you are not wise to advertise the fact.  As it happens I find the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn being willing to press ‘the button’ as unlikely as Corbyn ever being Prime Minister. (For that matter I am not certain that I, in the circumstances, would be willing to do so myself). But to be so stupid as to remove any doubt! All he needed to say that he was not willing to confirm or deny that he would be able to sanction the use of Trident, secure in the knowledge that he would not, -thus keeping his conscience clean and maintaining the deterrent effect. Instead of which he chose to parade his conscience, to assure the world of his moral worth, an assurance for which we all may pick up the tab.

Retaining these weapons whilst working against further proliferation of course involves a degree of hypocrisy, however given the stakes it seems to me to be no great moral dilemma. Though for what it’s worth if I genuinely believed that the UK abandoning its nuclear weapons would lead to India and Pakistan following suit, I would support such a move.

I began writing this before the events in Paris began unfolding. People will say that nuclear weapons are not any use against terrorism and of course that’s true up to a point. We are now however entering the era of the terrorist state, with the creation of ISIS, and in which whole tracts of lawless territory are scattered about the Middle East and parts of Africa. The possibility of terrorist groups getting hold of a primitive nuclear weapon or dirty bomb increases. Could it be that even the ‘Caliphate’ might baulk at bringing about its own nuclear annihilation?[1]

Talking about nuclear weapons is a grim business, but there is no ducking the debate and I have decided where I stand, consequently my CND badge will remain in a drawer, a souvenir from another age.

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[1] Or they may indeed wish to incite precisely this, in which case it needs to be made clear to them that we will survive in some shape or form, Islamism will not.