George Robertson

is caught in a

Cold War time-warp

Alan Mackinnon

Lord George Robertson's article in Scottish Review (10 August) needs a response. It celebrates the cynical double standards that have characterised British government and MoD thinking for decades.  And, unlike so many of his colleagues in the present and previous governments, he does not even pay lip service to Britain's solemn commitments under article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that 'each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control'.
     Indeed, in the NPT review conference in May of last year, the government signed up to a final document which recognised the goal of nuclear disarmament and committed nuclear weapons states 'to accelerate concrete progress towards nuclear disarmament'. Going ahead with Trident replacement takes us in exactly the opposite direction. It binds us into the possession of nuclear weapons for the next 50 years. 
     Lord Robertson argues that we live in an uncertain world and that for the UK, nuclear weapons offer some kind of protection or defence. He uses the term 'deterrence' or 'deterrent' no less than 11 times in the article, always in connection with British weapons (never about the weapons of any other state). But nuclear 'deterrence' is the biggest myth of all. The possession of overwhelming nuclear force by Britain and the United States did not 'deter' General Galtieri from invading the Falklands or Saddam Husain from invading Kuwait. Indeed, it's hard to think of any state which has been deterred from any action over the past 60 years because of nuclear weapons. 
     The basic flaw in this argument is that nuclear weapons are not defensive at all. They are the ultimate in offensive weapons, designed to project power and fear across the world. And the real reason why British governments have been reluctant to give them up is not because they would make us vulnerable to attack, but because they fear a loss of global power and status. Most countries, including many who have the technology and wealth to do otherwise, choose not to have nuclear weapons and manage to maintain their security very well without them.
     In the coalition government's strategic security review in October 2010, the 'tier one' threats to the UK were listed as terrorism, cyber attack, natural disasters (such as severe coastal flooding) and international crisis drawing in Britain. We can safely leave aside the last 'threat'. This is a war of choice – an Iraq or Afghanistan. We chose to become involved in these wars at the behest of the United States, while most countries did not. The other 'threats' are not military threats where a 'military' response would be effective or appropriate, far less a response with nuclear weapons.
     Real security is not about predicting the future. It is about taking action to reduce threat and make the world a safer place. There is no 'magic bullet' which will create absolute military security in an unequal and changing world. Every new weapon acquired by one country is perceived as a new threat to another. That leads, not to greater security, as George Robertson would have us believe, but greater insecurity.

 

     Even if the deliberate use of nuclear weapons is less likely today than at the height of the Cold War, the risk of nuclear war by accident is probably greater. Today there are over 2,000 nuclear weapons facing each other on hair trigger alert (a launch-on-warning policy). There have been several near misses where we have been minutes away from an accidental nuclear war. In today's multi-polar world with nine nuclear weapons states, there is nothing 'stable' about the existing balance of terror. A new arms race will only increase that instability. 
     George Robertson tells us that 'we cannot dis-invent nuclear weapons'. True. But we can ban them. We heard the same arguments about chemical and biological weapons but these are now banned by international statute, as are land mines. And we are well on the way to doing the same with cluster munitions. There is now growing support from 130 countries worldwide to negotiate a nuclear weapons convention – a global ban on these weapons.      Many of the existing nuclear weapons states support such a ban, including China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Only the United States, France, Russia and the UK, desperate to cling to their nuclear monopoly, are resisting. But as long as we claim that nuclear weapons are essential for our security, other countries can make the same argument. Would the world be safer if we had 190 nuclear states rather than nine? That is the logic of George Robertson's argument. Do as we say, not as we do. The world will no longer accept such arrogance and double standards. 
     Existing US-Russia nuclear weapons treaties have to build in measures of verification. A  phased and balanced reduction of nuclear weapons facilities under a 'Nuclear Weapons Convention' would have to do the same with on the spot inspections of nuclear sites, satellite surveillance and the protection of whistleblowers. 
     Recent events in Japan have awakened people across the world to the essentially unsafe and unstable nature of nuclear technology. If there are growing concerns about the safety of land-based nuclear power stations, how much more dangerous are floating nuclear reactors with the same basic design flaws as the Fukushima reactors on board submarines bristling with nuclear weapons. The history of nuclear powered submarines in this country has been characterised by a series of fires, explosions, collisions and nuclear discharges. The greatest danger of these weapons could now be to the very people they are supposed to protect – the people of Scotland.
     So nuclear weapons are unnecessary, dangerous and encourage proliferation. They are also expensive. We currently spend £2.2 billion a year on Trident, a figure that will rise to over £3 billion in the next few years (£100 billion over the lifetime of Trident). At a time of unprecedented austerity this is simply unaffordable. A government that chooses to spend billions on a new weapon of mass destruction is choosing not to spend that money on health, education or welfare. In Scotland a majority of MPs, MSPs, churches, trade unions and public opinion is opposed to Trident. George Robertson, caught in a Cold War time warp of his own making, is sadly out of step.

 

Alan Mackinnon is chair of Scottish CND