Disarmament Diplomacy

The Realist Message: Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Editorial by Rebecca Johnson

Nuclear weapons should be abolished because they are "totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization". These aren't the words of the religious leaders, eminent professors or Members of the Scottish and European Parliaments who have joined protesters opposing Tony Blair's pre-cooked decision to mortgage Britain's future on the next generation of Trident nuclear weapons. The words are Ronald Reagan's, quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial by Henry Kissinger, arch realist of the Nixon era, together with George Shultz, Bill Perry and Sam Nunn - former US Secretaries of State and Defence, and the influential former Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-architect of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction initiatives.

In the bipartisan essay, endorsed by other former US policymakers, Kissinger-Shultz et al draw from history and experience to call for a "solid consensus" to reverse reliance on nuclear weapons globally. They want the United States and other nuclear weapon possessors to wake up and realise that "the world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era", which will be "more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically even more costly than was Cold War deterrence". They call for nuclear weapons to be devalued and the NPT's goal of a world free of nuclear weapons to be pursued in earnest.

As Blair's career sails into the sunset he is desperate to be remembered for something other than the debacle in Iraq. So, in his wisdom, he wants his lasting legacy to be a rushed decision to invest billions of pounds to commit these European Islands to carry on with nuclear weapons beyond the 2050s. Scheduled to leave in the summer, Blair is pushing for Parliament to vote in March, on the spurious claim that commissioning new submarines can't wait a moment longer. To that end, the government has issued a White Paper that is a mishmash of outdated platitudes and wishful thinking about deterrence, stuck in a time warp. Lacking a convincing case for hanging on to Trident, Mr Blair is relying on traditionally pro-nuclear Conservative MPs to back his decision to get more nuclear weapons, even if he splits the Labour Party that he purports to lead.

If the MPs do not take heed of the opinion poll majorities against renewing Trident or the thousands that have participated in civil resistance at the Faslane base, where UK nuclear weapons are deployed, and Aldermaston, the nuclear warhead production plant, then perhaps they will pay attention to Messrs. Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn.

Quoting from Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Rajiv Gandhi (ten years before India joined the nuclear club), the essay notes that it "is far from certain that we can successfully replicate the old Soviet-American 'mutually assured destruction' with an increasing number of potential nuclear enemies world-wide without dramatically increasing the risk that nuclear weapons will be used."

In other words, deterrence aint what it used to be.

No-one could possibly accuse Kissinger et al of being 'soft on defence', the label that Blair and his coterie seem to fear most. Their argument for nuclear disarmament stems from the fact that the world has changed. Even if they once thought nuclear weapons to be useful, they now recognise them to be a problem and not an asset, more likely to provoke proliferation and use by others than to deter.

Though they advocate continuing deep cuts in the largest arsenals, Kissinger et al go beyond the numbers game of cold war arms control. The practical steps they advocate are more explicit and US-oriented, but they build on the 'Thirteen Practical Steps' agreed by NPT States Parties in 2000, and recognise the need to devalue and marginalise nuclear weapons in security and defence policies.

These points have also been made by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, when it moved the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. If the second nuclear age takes hold, small arsenals will be as salient as large ones, and everyone will be made more insecure.

Mr Blair is hoping to pull the wool over the eyes of NPT states and MPs with his offer to cut the UK's "stockpile of operationally available warheads" by 20 percent. Sounds like a step in the right direction, but as explained in the Acronym Institute's critique of the White Paper, it is essentially a con. The lite version of Trident proposed by the government does not mean Britain will reduce the number of nuclear weapons it deploys at sea, ready to launch on the order of the Prime Minister.

But the real point is not whether there are 160 or 200 warheads in the stockpile, but the fact that Tony Blair's choice is a unilateral step towards revaluing nuclear weapons when Britain should be joining with others to devalue and marginalise them. Renewing Trident will further erode the credibility of the nonproliferation regime and make it more difficult to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Dr Rebecca Johnson is the executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy.

Back to the top of page

© 2006 The Acronym Institute.