Nuclear Weapons

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, opening the Munich security conference this weekend its chairman, Wolfgang Ischinger, formerly ambassador to the US and later the UK, said that he was worried. He said:

“I think the global security situation is more unstable today than it has been at any time since the demise of the Soviet Union”.


The report prepared for the conference was entitled To the Brink—and Back? Note the question mark. Having listened to the noble Lord, Lord West, and his contribution I feel even more unstable than I did before. He talked about the instability of the current situation and the risks that Putin was prepared to take in the belief that the West would not retaliate, and he painted a picture that underlines everything that Wolfgang Ischinger was worried about at the conference.

The noble Lord, Lord West, also referred to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My mind goes back to the black and white Pathé news reports I saw in my local Odeon when I was a boy. The burgeoning mushroom clouds from those two cities brought us initially a sense of relief that the war would finally be over. Then the full horror emerged as we saw in later newsreels the death, devastation and destruction on the ground. Later, in 1949, after the Iron Curtain had divided Europe, we learned that our former glorious ally, Russia, had succeeded in testing its own atom bomb in Kazakhstan. At meetings of the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, we have a brave but deformed survivor of those tests, Karipbek Kuyukov, who carries his disabilities with great grace.

Britain was not far behind. Operation Grapple, between 1957 and 1959, saw the development of the British atom and hydrogen bombs at Christmas Island and elsewhere in Australia, and some of my contemporaries as national servicemen—21,000 of them, some dressed in no more than khaki desert fatigues—were there to turn their backs to the explosions as they occurred. A study undertaken by Sue Rabbitt Roff, a social scientist at the University of Dundee, in 1999 found that of 2,261 children born to veterans of those tests 39% were born with serious medical conditions.

In October 1962 we saw more newsreels, of Russian merchant vessels heading towards Cuba with canisters containing nuclear missiles on their decks. Air reconnaissance showed that launch sites were being constructed on the island of Cuba itself. President Kennedy said in an address to the nation on television that they had identified missiles capable of striking Washington and indeed any other city in the south-east of the United States, the Caribbean or Mexico. He declared:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union”.


For 13 days we held our breath. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, referred to concerns for family. I had been married for just over a year, I was starting out on my career as a lawyer; indeed, I had even stood as a Liberal candidate in the local elections. The whole world that I was hoping to build seemed to be in the gravest danger. Then Khrushchev ordered the merchant fleet to turn back and commanded his submarines, which carried nuclear-tipped torpedoes, to return to base. So did the doctrine of deterrence prevent war? Yes, on this occasion, I think it probably did, but it required stable and rational leaders on both sides who weighed the risks, considered the consequences and took realistic decisions. Contrast that with the world today.

Noble Lords have talked about Iran. At Munich on Saturday, President Netanyahu warned Iran not to test Israel’s resolve. His country—a nuclear power, of course—would not allow Iran,

“to put a noose of terror around our neck ... we will act if necessary, not just against Iran’s proxies … but against Iran itself”.

He compared the Iranian nuclear deal with the US with the Munich attempt to appease Hitler: sanctions relief, he said, had,

“unleashed a dangerous Iranian tiger”.

While in Munich at the weekend, the US National Security Advisor, General McMaster, warned of Moscow’s campaign to divide the West through subterfuge. What did the leader of the West, President Trump, have to say about it? He tweeted a rebuke to General McMaster:

“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems. Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!”.


That is the so-called leader of the western world. Mr President, you are no Jack Kennedy. Meanwhile, in North Korea, President Kim Jong-un declares:

“The entire United States is within range of our nuclear weapons, a nuclear button is always on my desk. This is reality, not a threat … This year, we should focus on mass-producing nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles for operational deployment. These weapons will be used only if our society is threatened”.


Trump’s response was to claim that his nuclear button,

“is a much bigger & more powerful one than his”.

This is the context in which we are discussing the ban treaty. In an uncertain and unstable world, we have uncertain and unstable leaders. The risks of an accidental or deliberate detonation of a nuclear weapon have increased. The noble Lord, Lord West, referred to the accidental detonation of these weapons. The possession and deployment of nuclear weapons can result in misjudgments and the escalation of crises, as the Cuba crisis demonstrated.

It is deplorable that this Government refused even to attend the discussions which proceeded the ban treaty. Britain has been prepared to join treaties to ban chemical and biological weapons, as many noble Lords have said. We agree that the possession of such weapons, and cluster bombs, is a war crime punishable by the International Criminal Court. Each of those treaties formulated a sequence for the destruction of the weapons concerned: first, the negotiation of a prohibition treaty; then accession to the treaty; the removal of such weapons from operational positions; and a commitment verifiably to destroy stockpiles within a limited period. Perhaps the Minister will claim that the United Kingdom is committed to multilateral disarmament. But it has to start somewhere so let us make a start and commit to joining the treaty as soon as possible. The first step is for this country to be present at the table at the high-level conference in May. Why should the UK not be present, at least with observer status?

To the brink—and back? Mr Ischinger said at the conclusion of this weekend’s conference that after all the rancorous debate he had heard, the question mark remains.