Britain and Disarmament

The UK and Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons Arms Control and Programmes 1956-1975

John R. Walker

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317172383
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Categoría: Ciencia y tecnología militares

Since the use of poison gas during the First World War and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War, nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) weapons have registered high on the fears of governments and individuals alike. Recognising both the particular horror of these weapons, and their potential for inflicting mass death and destruction, much effort has been expended in finding ways to eliminate such weapons on a multi-lateral level. Based on extensive official archives, this book looks at how successive British governments approached the subject of control and disarmament between 1956 and 1975. This period reflects the UK's landmark decision in 1956 to abandon its offensive chemical weapons programme (a decision that was reversed in 1963, but never fully implemented), and ends with the internal travails over the possible use of CR (tear gas) in Northern Ireland. Whilst the issue of nuclear arms control has been much debated, the integration of biological and chemical weapons into the wider disarmament picture is much less well understood, there being no clear statement by the UK authorities for much of the period under review in this book as to whether the country even possessed such weapons or had an active research and development programme. Through a thorough exploration of government records the book addresses fundamental questions relating to the history of NBC weapons programmes, including the military, economic and political pressures that influenced policy; the degree to which the UK was a reluctant or enthusiastic player on the international arms control stage; and the effect of international agreements on Britain's weapons programmes. In exploring these issues, the study provides the first attempt to assess UK NBC arms control policy and practice during the Cold War.

Chapter 1
Introduction
Britain and Disarmament: Weapons Programmes and Arms Control: Balancing Conflicting Requirements

Little has been written about Britain’s arms control and disarmament and how it has impacted on the UK’s own nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes.¹ There is a wealth of material in The National Archives (TNA) at Kew covering not only the UK’s role in multilateral and bilateral arms control negotiations since the late 1950s, but also on the UK’s own weapons programmes. Now whilst the nuclear weapons programme was avowed and the centre of public and Ministerial concerns, the UK’s own chemical and biological weapons programmes lurked in the shadows in comparison, there being no clear statement on whether the UK even possessed such weapons or had active programmes for much of the period covered in this book.² The reality was that essentially economic pressures and the nuclear programme itself had led to the abandonment of offensive CB programmes and the redirection of effort onto defensive work – protective clothing, agent detectors, medical countermeasures and decontamination. However, in the chemical area there was a renewed interest in reacquiring an offensive programme for both lethal and incapacitating weapons in the early 1960s. Although the nuclear programme faced potential or actual constraints from arms control measures, there was nothing comparable facing the CW programme in the way that a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty or a Cut-off in the Production of Fissile Material for weapons purposes could have hobbled the UK’s nuclear weapons programme. The only constraint in place in the 1950s and 1960s was the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which was effectively only a no-first use agreement (covering both chemical and biological weapons) as most parties had reserved the right of retaliation if attacked first.

There are several key questions that can be addressed by a detailed review of a wide range of National Archive papers on UK nuclear, chemical and biological programmes and the formulation and conduct of arms control and disarmament policy. What were the histories of the weapons programmes? What pressures impacted on them domestically in terms of economic and doctrinal as well as tactical considerations? What was the impact of arms control and disarmament? Was the UK an enthusiastic or reluctant player on the arms control stage and did arms control adversely affect the directions and content of weapons programmes? Hopefully the following chapters will provide some initial answers to these and other questions. There are several possible areas in the time period 1956 through to 1975 that provide good case studies and enable us to look in detail at the nuclear, chemical and biological programmes, which in turn allows some useful comparisons to be made and, hopefully, useful conclusions to be drawn. We can also explore UK attitudes to effective verification in these areas, which for the entire period and beyond was an ever present requirement.

Inevitably since nuclear weapons were so prominent in UK defence policy, much of the material in this study reflects preoccupations in this area – something that can be seen from the volume of original departmental files covering nuclear issues compared to biological or chemical and hence the level of detail in those chapters covering nuclear topics. There is an intentionally strong narrative element in this study; this, in part, reflects the origins of some of the chapters, which were originally internal Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) research papers designed to address specific questions of interest to policy makers, such as why was the Biological and Toxin Convention (BTWC) written this way? Or why did the UK abandon its offensive chemical weapons (CW) programme? Other topics have a contemporary resonance with issues facing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), in this case incapacitating chemical agents, riot control agents and law enforcement. Understanding the past can help make sense of the present and future. This is no less true in arms control than in any other subject. The objectives in the research papers were often to explain how an issue evolved, to identify the key factors explaining the decisions and to characterise the key turning points. Although the chapters in this volume therefore started off as separate ventures, and the nuclear ones were contributions to an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project at Southampton University on the UK nuclear weapons programme 1953 to 1973, when pulled together it seems that they do present a coherent narrative and illuminate common cross-cutting issues. It is also a first attempt to look at UK nuclear, chemical and biological arms control policy and programmes in the Cold War in a single place based on extensive use of primary sources. The period under review here (1956–75) starts with the landmark decision to abandon the offensive CW programme and ends with the internal travails over the use of CR (a potent riot control agent to emerge from the UK’s incapacitating chemical programme) in extremis to deal with a mass break-out of Republican prisoners from the Maze prison in Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’. Just why this is relevant to a history of the UK and disarmament will hopefully become clear.

Chapter 2 begins with a brief overview of chemical warfare in the UK from the decision in 1956 to abandon its offensive programme through the reversal of that decision in 1963 and the subsequent abortive attempts to implement that rearmament requirement. It also reviews the UK CW programme and any impact of arms control considerations in the years to 1975. There was, however, one more promising area of chemical warfare research in this period and that concerns identification and development of incapacitating chemical agents for UK military use; the UK programme from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s is considered in Chapter 3 along with the impact of the 1925 Geneva Protocol on concepts of use and policy. We then look at another aspect of chemical warfare, riot control agents: Chapter 4 considers UK policy on the interpretation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the internal sensitivities over the use of the potent riot control agent CR in Northern Ireland and in Hong Kong.

The next three chapters switch to biological warfare with Chapter 5 describing the BTWC’s origins in the late 1960s and more particularly the UK’s role in it. Negotiations leading to the Convention ran from 1969 through to 1971, but we focus in Chapter 6 on the decisive months from March to September 1971 when the Convention was finalised during which period the UK sought to maintain its original vision of a Convention. Chapter 7 looks at a specific issue within the negotiations; namely whether the Convention in the end did extend to a prohibition on offensive research as originally envisaged by the UK in 1968. This helps illustrate one of the problems of treaty development and interpretation where its negotiating history can play a key part in determining the nature and extent of its basic obligations, in this case the scope of the prohibitions.

Chapters 8, 9 and 10 respectively address the UK and three key nuclear arms control treaties. The first of these, cut-off in the production of fissile material for weapons purposes and safeguards on civil nuclear power programmes, are reviewed in Chapter 8. A cut-off treaty could have imposed severe restrictions on the UK nuclear weapons programme given its perennial shortage of fissile material without which nuclear weapons could not be produced. It is thus most instructive to see how the UK managed to balance the need to be seen supporting arms control whilst protecting its defence interests at the same time. Is such a balancing act achievable? Hopefully the discussions here will show that this is possible. This chapter will also discuss the UK role in the evolution of safeguards for civil nuclear facilities, which sheds light on British attitudes to verification or, as it used to be known, ‘control’, without which acceptance of any disarmament treaty would not happen. Chapter 9 looks at the proposals for an Atlantic Nuclear Force raised by the Labour Government of Harold Wilson as an alternative to the US inspired Multilateral Nuclear Force – both were variations of nuclear sharing arrangements within NATO – and the extent to which these constrained or risked proliferation. It then goes on to see how the UK’s nuclear programme and cooperation with the US could have been affected by the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as the negotiations grappled with the difficult issue of nuclear sharing arrangements in NATO. The final nuclear chapter (10) reviews UK attitudes to the bilateral US and USSR strategic nuclear arms control talks as well as the negotiations for an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the extent to which the UK was able to protect the Polaris Improvement Programme that had begun at roughly the same time and was aimed at maintaining the UK nuclear deterrent’s effectiveness in the face of feared Soviet ballistic missile defence developments in the 1970s.

Chapter 11 offers some concluding thoughts on three key questions: To what extent has the UK’s need to protect its own weapons programmes constrained its role in arms control? What, if any, impact have the UK’s own programme experiences such as overcoming production and weaponisation problems had on shaping its policies? Does the UK experience tell us anything more generally about the arms control process? We end with some thoughts on areas for further research.

This might appear at first sight a somewhat eclectic selection of topics, but they do show the breadth of UK engagement and record for the first time in detail how nuclear, biological and chemical programmes (offensive and defensive) developed in the UK through a period of gradual retrenchment where even the nuclear weapons programme was not immune to economic pressures. These topics provide insights into UK thinking about arms control and disarmament negotiations, agreements and regimes as well as on their implementation; they also open a window on the tortuous and protracted process of agreeing treaty language in a multilateral setting.

A brief word on some of the technical aspects of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons will help explain a little of the context. Nuclear weapons cannot be produced without access to the fissile materials highly enriched uranium or plutonium, which are produced in large and expensive facilities; the exact quantities required for individual weapons depends on a number of variables such as the sophistication of the warhead design and the isotopic ratios of the fissile material involved. Generally speaking the more advanced the design, the smaller the quantity required. This is why the prospects of halting production of these materials for weapons purposes posed problems for the UK. Further explanations of nuclear weapons design issues are in Chuck Hansen’s US Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History.³ Chemical weapons on the other hand can be, and have been, made from a wide range of materials whose effects range from lethal in very small doses to the merely incapacitating or irritating. Dose is important here too as lethal chemicals can be merely incapacitating in effect at very low levels. The chemicals needed to manufacture chemical warfare agents moreover are produced in civil plants and often have many extensive legitimate peaceful uses from pesticides through to pharmaceuticals. Any ban or controls on their production would require extensive verification measures – declarations of facilities and on-site inspections – if they were to be at all credible. Finding an ideal incapacitating agent – one that acts quickly with minimal adverse side effects on the target population – presented significant technical problems in the 1960s and these have not gone away even today in the early twenty-first century. Biological weapons present a unique set of problems in terms of disarmament: they are comparatively easy to produce, certainly when compared to nuclear weapons – although this is by no means a trivial exercise as the UK found out in the early 1950s. The agents exist in nature as microorganisms that cause disease, death and incapacitation in humans, animals and plants. Microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, rickettsia) and toxins (poisonous substances produced by bacteria, plants, scorpions and algae for example) exist in nature, some of which have legitimate and extensive uses in medical research, industry, agriculture, vaccines and in the pharmaceutical industry, which make the concept of control especially challenging or even impossible in the view of some observers. A more detailed discussion of the technical aspects of chemical and biological weapons agents can be found in a World Health Organisation (WHO) publication Public Health Response to Biological and Chemical Weapons.⁴

A word about the distinction between arms control and disarmament: until the late 1950s, when negotiations started between the UK, US and USSR on a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1958, diplomatic efforts focused on disarmament measures – the elimination of entire categories of weapons – and this was to be achieved in stages, usually three in the various plans of the period. However, by this time and into the early 1960s many academic and strategic thinkers such as Thomas Schelling, Morton Halperin and Hedley Bull were developing a new concept of arms control for the modern era, which was not necessarily about disarmament per se, but more about ensuring stability and predictability in the strategic arms race between the superpowers. Force levels might in fact end up being higher, but the net result would be greater security for all with deterrence strengthened. For Schelling and Halperin arms control, ‘can be as formal as a multilateral treaty or as informal as a shared recognition that certain forms of self-control will be reciprocated. It may involve “cops and robbers” activities like cheating and detection, but may also involve many of the continuing regulatory and negotiatory processes that we associate with bureaucracy and diplomacy.’⁵ As Hedley Bull, who went on to become the first head of the Foreign Office’s Arms Control and Disarmament Research Unit in 1965, noted, arms control is ‘concerned with discriminating between those kinds or quantities of forces and weapons that promote the stability of the balance of power, and those which do not’.⁶ Therefore in this study international agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty 1972 are examples of arms control, whilst the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) 1972 is a disarmament treaty. Throughout the period of this book pursuit of arms control and disarmament measures was an activity that no British government – whether Conservative or Labour – could be seen to be avoiding or obstructing. Exactly why they felt this way will hopefully become clearer in the chapters that follow.

¹ See author’s own British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban 1954–1973 (Farnham, 2010).

² In March 1960 the Minister of Defence Harold Watkinson told the House of Commons in response to a question from Mr A. Henderson that the UK was ‘not stockpiling these weapons’ (Hansard Oral Answers 23 March 1960 column 497). The issue of UK capabilities would emerge again in 1968. See also Brian Balmer, ‘Keeping Nothing Secret: United Kingdom Chemical Warfare Policy in the 1960s’, The Journal of Strategic Studies vol. 33, no. 6 (2010), pp. 871–93.

³ Chuck Hansen, U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History (Arlington, TX, 1988), Chapter 1: ‘Weapons Physics’, pp. 11–29.

⁴ World Health Organization, Public Health Response to Biological and Chemical Weapons. WHO Guidance, Second edition of Health Aspects of Chemical and Biological Weapons: Report of a WHO Group of Consultants, Geneva World Health Organization, 1970 (Geneva, 2004).

⁵ Thomas C. Schelling and Morton H. Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control (Washington, DC: 1985 edition) (first published 1961), p. 141. One of the other key works from this era is Donald G. Brennan (ed.), Arms Control and Disarmament and National Security (New York, 1961).

⁶ Hedley Bull, The Control of the Arms Race (New York, 1961), p. 61.

Chapter 2
The UK’s Offensive CW Programmes: Abandonment and Aspirations 1956–1969

Intr...