UK Nuclear Deterrent

10 Key excerpts on "UK Nuclear Deterrent"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Development of British Defence Policy

  Blair, Brown and Beyond

  • David Brown(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Trident . This paper argued that ‘the fundamental principles relevant to nuclear deterrence have not changed since the end of the Cold War and are unlikely to change in future’. The government’s basic stated rationale in this paper was – again – existentialist:

  Nuclear weapons pose a uniquely terrible threat and consequently have a capability to deter acts of aggression that is of a completely different scale to any other form of deterrence. Nuclear weapons remain a necessary element of the capability we need to deter threats from others possessing nuclear weapons (Ministry of Defence, 2006, 17).

  Both reflecting and reinforcing these political statements about the role of nuclear weapons, current British defence doctrine distinguishes clearly between ‘deterrence’ and ‘coercion’, although it accepts that the two approaches are closely related and can be complementary. The doctrine also makes clear that the UK’s nuclear capability is a deterrent rather than coercive force. It states that:

  Deterrence is at the heart of UK Defence Policy; its purpose at all levels of warfare is to dissuade a potential opponent from adopting a course of action that threatens national interests ... The British Armed Forces in their entirety serve to deter, with strategic deterrence ultimately underpinned by a nuclear capability. Deployable nuclear weapons provide an effective means of deterring other states’ use of the most destructive weapons and indicate absolute national resolve (Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, 2008, 1–12).

  Strategic uncertainty is also highlighted in the defence doctrine as a positive asset in influencing a potential aggressor’s calculations:

  Whereas the purpose of deterrence is to dissuade an opponent from taking a course of action, coercion induces behaviour that he would not otherwise choose. In reality, it is useful that a potential opponent cannot easily distinguish between deterrence and coercion; most situations are likely to require a combination of the threat of force, reassurance and encouragement to prevent undesirable consequences and to induce desirable behaviour in an adversary (Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, 2008, 1–12, 1–13).

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  The United Kingdom and Nuclear Deterrence

  • Jeremy Stocker(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Often overlooked has been the UK's own extended deterrence on behalf of NATO allies, though it was re-stated in the 2006 White Paper: 'we would only consider using nuclear weapons in self-defence (including the defence of our NATO allies)'. 88 This is formally recognised in NATO's 1999 Strategic Concept: 'the independent nuclear forces of the United Kingdom and France... contribute to the overall deterrence and security of the Allies'. 89 More minimal postures than the minimum deterrent have sometimes been suggested, as further moves towards eventual nuclear disarmament and as confidence-building measures. Submarines could be taken off patrol, possibly with warheads removed from the missiles. Britain could even give up an operational capability altogether, while retaining the ability to re-constitute a nuclear force if required. Such policies are sometimes called 'virtual deterrence'. 90 These options are explicitly rejected by the current British government: 'any move from a dormant programme towards an active one could be seen as escalatory, and thus potentially destabilising, in a crisis'. The maintenance of a submarine always at sea is needed to assure its invulnerability and to remove an incentive for a preemptive attack. 91 Nuclear defence The British approach to nuclear deterrence has always been based on inflicting 'punishment' on an aggressor. 92 Faced by the Soviet Union, there was no alternative approach, as effective defence was impossible. But there are two principal forms of deterrence. Punishment threatens a response, the cost of which outweighs any gains from the original action. However, deterrence by denial instead aims to defeat the initial action itself, preventing the realisation of gain. Denial promises resistance, punishment retaliation. Both can be effective and need not be mutually exclusive

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  A Nuclear Weapons-Free World?

  Britain, Trident and the Challenges Ahead

  • Nick Ritchie(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The legitimate, valid, and necessary practice of nuclear deterrence as a solution to strategic threats over the coming dec- ades remains a key enabler of the decision to stay in the nuclear weap- ons business well into the second half of this century by replacing the current Trident system. The advent of nuclear weapons transformed the concepts of deterrence and war-fighting in military strategy. 5 Bernard Brodie’s prescient 1946 edited volume, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order , argued that there could be no defence against nuclear weapons and that states could only guard against nuclear attack if they had the ability to retaliate in kind. 6 Gregory Giles notes that ‘The notion of nuclear deterrence began to be reflected in British military thinking shortly before the first atomic bombings’. 7 He cites the British Admiralty’s conclusion a year earlier than Brodie in September 1945 that, ‘The net effect of the Atomic Bomb is that the price worth paying for peace is now very much higher, and that the main function of our armed forces should be the prevention of major war, rather than the ability to fight it purely on military grounds’. 8 Nuclear weapons were soon understood to represent a qualitatively different weapon whose purpose was to prevent a repeat of the carnage of total war between the world’s major powers. They were inexorably bound to the concept of nuclear deterrence in defence planning as the Cold War unfolded in the late 1940s. Nuclear deterrence theory itself was grounded in mathematical game theoretic models of rational interaction. It asserts that an adversary can be successfully persuaded to refrain from or halt aggressive actions by Deterrence 53 threatening to inflict unacceptable, catastrophic, and inescapable dam- age with a nuclear counter-strike.

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  Britain's Strategic Nuclear Deterrent

  From Before the V-Bomber to Beyond Trident

  • Robert H. Paterson(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Decision to Deploy a British Strategic Nuclear Deterrent

  Introduction

  Much of Britain’s post-war history – in foreign and defence policy, in its economic and social difficulties – has been reflected in the quest for, the achievement of, and the maintenance of a British nuclear deterrent, its warheads and delivery systems. This reflection is but partial, although its implication is that the policy of successive British governments towards the deterrent cannot be seen in isolation either from defence policy as a whole or from wider considerations.1

  T HE RÉSUMÉ OF the historical background in Chapter 1 ended with the deployment of the Polaris boats in the late 1960s while Chapter 2 examined developments in nuclear strategy until 1970. The two key issues on which that period ended were the adoption of flexible response by NATO and, in recognition of the nuclear equality between the superpowers, the United States’ decision to take tentative steps towards strategic arms limitation talks.

  The assessment of the decision to procure and deploy a British strategic nuclear deterrent will now be considered against this background. The assessment covers the period from the lead up to the Sandys 1957 White Paper to the Labour government’s decision, in 1974, to go ahead with the Chevaline programme while simultaneously stating that it had no intention of moving to a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons. This assessment examines three conflicting perspectives: the strategic political goals, the operational military requirements and the economic realities and seeks to answer the nine key questions posed below.

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  Supreme emergency

  How Britain lives with the Bomb

  • Andrew Corbett(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Manchester University Press

    (Publisher)

  5 Alec Folwell, ‘Opinion formers poll: views on Trident highly politicised as Scotland vote approaches’, Politics, Reputation Research, Scotland, UK. London: YouGov, 2014.
• 6 Ibid.
• 7 Mills, Parliamentary briefing paper 7353: ‘Replacing the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent’. London: House of Commons Library/TSO, 2016.
• 8 Ibid., p. 10.
• 9 Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, ‘Education is as important to security as aircraft carriers or missile defence’, The Big Issue, 21 November 2016.
• 10 UK Government, ‘Trident alternatives review’, 16 July 2013. London: HMSO, para. 1.
• 11 MOD, joint doctrine note 1/19, ‘Deterrence; the defence contribution’, UK MOD Doctrine and Concepts Development Centre.
• 12 Andrew Corbett, ‘Deterring nuclear Russia in the 21st century; theory and practice’, NATO Defense College Research Report. Rome: NATO Defense College, 2016.
• 13 I differentiate between the five nuclear weapon states which are recognised by the NPT and four nuclear-armed states (Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea) which are not.
• 14 Attlee, GEN 75/3 ‘The atomic bomb’.
• 15 Fallon, ‘The case for retention’.
• 16 Cabinet Office. Future UK strategic nuclear deterrent force.
• 17 Michael Quinlan, Thinking about nuclear weapons; principles, problems, prospects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 126.
• 18 Wheldon to Adam, 31 December 1964.
• 19 Stoddart, ‘Maintaining the “Moscow criterion”’.
• 20 HL Deb. 24 January 2007, Armed forces: nuclear deterrent. Hansard, Vol. 688, cols 1129–31: 1130.
• 21 David Owen, Nuclear papers (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 17.
• 22 UK Government, Strategic Defence Review. London: TSO, 1998, foreword para. 8 and ch. 4 paras 66–8.
• 23 UK Government, White Paper: The future of the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent: CM6994 (London: HMSO, 2006).
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