Trident Renewal

James Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

I shall also try to be more concise in the remainder of my speech, Mr Deputy Speaker.

All I can say to the hon. Member for North Devon, whom I greatly respect and admire, is that he ought to have a word with the then president of the Liberal Democrats, who proudly proclaimed on the Liberal Democrats’ official website that it was entirely as a result of the Liberal Democrats that we had not taken the decisive step of signing the maingate contract in this Parliament. I can only leave them to decide the issue between themselves.

Let me return to some of the purely military arguments in favour of the continuation of the strategic deterrent, mercifully leaving the politics to one side. The most important argument, as I have stated in previous debates in this House, is the recognition that future military threats and conflicts will be no more predictable than those that engulfed us throughout the 20th century. That is the overriding justification for preserving armed forces in peace time as a national insurance policy. No one knows which enemies might confront us during the next 50 years, for that is the period we are discussing by the time everything is designed, constructed and deployed, and has served out its operational lifetime. It is highly probable that at least some of those potential enemies will be armed with weapons of mass destruction.

Secondly, it is not the weapons themselves that we have to fear but the nature of the regimes that possess them. While democracies are usually reluctant to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear dictatorships, although they did so against Japan in 1945 as has been pointed out, the reverse is not true.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

There is consensus in the international community about the Iranian nuclear programme and efforts to reduce it. Significant nuclear proliferation in the middle east is likely in the next 20 or 30 years, which feeds into my hon. Friend’s argument about the 50-year time span that we should consider in this debate.

[Dr Lewis]

It does indeed. I cannot think of an existing nuclear power that has done more than the United Kingdom to slim down and reduce the firepower of its independent nuclear deterrent. The response, as has been repeatedly pointed out by Government Members and by some Opposition Members, to those unilateral reductions on our part has been absolutely zero. There is not the slightest shred of evidence that if we were to abandon our nuclear deterrent completely any other country would follow suit. All that would happen would be that those near-misses, which have been discussed so eloquently today—the risks of nuclear Armageddon by accident—would continue between the superpowers if they are tangible risks, but we would add another risk: the risk that someone hostile to us with a nuclear armament could blackmail us into concessions, surrender or absolute annihilation. The risk of the deliberate firing of nuclear weapons against us is something that we would be crazy to accept voluntarily and unnecessarily.

Returning to the reluctance of democracies to launch nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them—although we use them, as I have said, continuously as deterrents—we should consider the alternative. If a dictatorship such as that in Argentina had had an arsenal of even a few small atomic weapons and the means to deliver them, no matter how many conventional forces we had had, we would not have dared to retake the Falkland Islands, because we must not project on to other countries that do not share our political principles and freedoms the sense of self-restraint that we apply to ourselves.

The third argument that I always outline is that the United Kingdom has traditionally played a more important and decisive role in preserving freedom than other medium-sized democracies have been able or willing to do. Democratic countries that do not have a nuclear deterrent have little choice but to declare themselves neutral and hope for the best or to rely on the nuclear umbrella of more powerful allies. The United Kingdom, for historical reasons, is a nuclear power, and it is much harder to defeat it than many other democracies by conventional means because of our physical separation from the continent.

The next argument is that our prominence as the principal ally of the United States, our strategic geographical position, to which I have just referred, and the fact that we are the junior partner might tempt an aggressor to risk attacking us separately. Given the difficulties of overrunning the UK with conventional forces, compared with our more vulnerable allies, an aggressor might be tempted to use one or more mass-destruction weapons against us on the assumption that the United States would not respond on our behalf. Even if that assumption were false, the attacker would find out his mistake only when it was too late for all concerned. An independently controlled British nuclear deterrent massively reduces the prospect of such a fatal miscalculation.

The fifth military argument, which was mentioned earlier, is that no amount of conventional force can compensate for the military disadvantage that faces a non-nuclear country in a conflict against a nuclear-armed enemy. The atomic bombing of Japan is especially instructive not only because the emperor was forced to surrender but because of what might have happened in the reverse scenario. If Japan had developed atomic bombs in the summer of 1945 and the allies had not, a conventional allied invasion to end the war would have been out of the question.

I tend to find that people wish to try to sweep aside the patent logic of nuclear deterrence by projecting on to historical figures events that did not happen and could never possibly be tested. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who has now left his place, asserted that Hitler would not have been constrained by a nuclear deterrent held by the allies if he had had nuclear weapons. In 1943, Hitler proposed to use the nerve gas, tabun, which was far, far more deadly than the gases that the allies then possessed. When he consulted his chief scientists, they said that it was most unlikely that the allies had not discovered tabun too, and he therefore decided not to employ it, even though it would have had a devastating effect. That is an example of even Hitler being deterred by the mistaken belief that his enemies had a weapon when in fact they did not.

The hon. Member for Moray made his points with clarity and calmness, as always. He said that he did not think that deterrence had worked. Of course, when something does not happen—that is, world war three—it is difficult to show that it would have happened if one had done something different. However, I always apply the test of the proxy war. The right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) observed that throughout the cold war period many proxy wars went on around the globe. In fact, that is an argument in favour of the case that nuclear deterrence had something to do with the fact that the superpowers did not fight each other in Europe. If no other conflicts had been going on among proxies of the superpowers, one could have argued that they would not be likely to have been at each others’ throats if they did not have a nuclear deterrent. The fact that they were fighting each other by every means possible other than open war—state to state—on the European continent strongly suggests that the possession of the nuclear deterrent, and the balance of terror, had something to do with that stability.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Plato, among other Greek scholars, is reported to have said:

“If you want peace, prepare for war”.

That is the fundamental principle behind the theory of deterrence, and why the United Kingdom has to maintain its independent nuclear deterrent. We need one now and in the future. Our independent nuclear deterrent is the ultimate guarantee that a potential aggressor state—possibly possessing nuclear weapons itself—will not attack us. As we have heard, over the past 10 years or so we have watched the Russians greatly enhance their military and strategic weaponry. They most certainly are not scrapping their nuclear weaponry. Indeed their military presence, around our shores, in the air, on the seas and under it, is increasing not decreasing, especially around Scotland. Why are they doing this, and why should we abandon a defence against such a latent threat?

No other nuclear state has given up its nuclear deterrent, with the possible exception of Ukraine, but that is a fairly good case study—is it not?—and a warning too. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, about one third of the Soviet nuclear arsenal remained within an independent Ukraine. Then in December 1994, Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom signed a memorandum to give Ukraine security assurances if it gave up its nuclear arsenal, which it did. Twenty years later—last year—Crimea was seized back from Ukraine by Russia, and then Moscow fomented discontent and military action in eastern Ukraine. Hardly surprisingly, some Ukrainian leaders and outside commentators have argued that if Ukraine had not removed its nuclear weapons, Russia might have been deterred from its aggression in Ukraine. Do they have a point? Is there a lesson there for us?

Once given up, we will never realistically be able to reactivate a nuclear deterrent capability. Our nuclear know-how has been built up since the second world war, with, of course, considerable American support. But once gone, it is gone for ever. I accept that international terrorist groups may well be trying to get their hands on a nuclear device and that they may not act rationally, as is a normal requirement for the strategy of deterrence. However, even international terrorists such as the Daesh in Iraq and Syria may—just may—think twice about exploding a nuclear device, assuming they get their hands on one and have the specialised knowledge required to use it. After all, the so-called Islamic State may not face its own obliteration with the same enthusiasm with which they murder countless people.

[James Morris]

Is not the crucial point, which was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), that the deterrent needs to be sufficiently credible, as in the point about Hitler, to deter even an irrational actor from the thought of using nuclear weapons against us?

[Bob Stewart]

I agree absolutely. Armageddon is seldom faced by anyone with equanimity.

I was an officer who spent several years in the 1st British Corps in Germany, supposedly preparing to face a Soviet threat from the east. We knew that the group of Soviet forces in eastern Europe had a huge conventional advantage over us and realised that our chances of survival would be very slight if the balloon went up. But we also trained and practised the use of tactical nuclear weapons. The Soviets knew that full well and it gave those of us due to be positioned right up against the inner German border some comfort. We felt that our possession of nuclear weapons was definitely a deterrent that the Soviet Union would have to take seriously. Most of my fellow front line officers agreed with me. Some did not, but the majority did.

Remember: smaller NATO countries such as Denmark also have aeroplanes fitted with bomb racks to pick up tactical nuclear bombs from American stockpiles to fly and to use them. It is not just the nuclear members of NATO.

Most of us in 1st British Corps felt that our possession of nuclear weapons was a very sound insurance policy. Of course the situation is different today, but I use the example to explain how possession of a nuclear capability can help conventional forces.

I hate the idea of war. Who doesn’t? All my friends in the military are of the same mind as Winston Churchill, who once said that “jaw-jaw” is better than “war-war”. But in truth jaw-jaw often depends on the ability to have war-war. In the 1960s, I remember the US strategic nuclear bombers had a special motto that they painted on the noses of their B52s—“Peace is our profession”.

Nuclear weapons are a fact in our world and potential enemies may use them whether we like it or not. So I believe that we as a nation must also possess them. If you want peace, prepare for war—so that you deter it.