Tribune leader, 23 March 1990
To read the reports in most British newspapers on last
week's Anglo-American summit in the Bahamas, anyone would think that Margaret
Thatcher's decision not to insist on "modernisation" of NATO ground-launched
nuclear weapons in West Germany was a magnanimous gesture of compromise. In
fact, she was recognising a fait accompli. Even before the Berlin Wall came
down last November, Mrs Thatcher had been almost alone in pressing for
deployment in West Germany of "Follow-on-to-Lance" missiles and new
nuclear artillery. Since then, the consensus within NATO has been that the
programme is stone dead.
Nevertheless, Mrs Thatcher's "concession" was a
smart move. It successfully diverted the attention of the diplomatic
correspondents from her intransigence on the NATO nuclear
"modernisation" that really matters, the plan to introduce new
American strike aircraft to Europe, eventually equipped with new air-to-surface
nuclear missiles instead of bombs. Most of this new hardware will be stationed
in Britain if the plan goes ahead.
Air-launched "modernisation" was always the kernel
of NATO's programme to compensate for the loss of Cruise and Pershing missiles
under the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty. Today, with ground-launched
systems out of the picture, getting the United States to upgrade its nuclear
airpower in Europe is the only way that beleaguered West European Atlanticists can
preserve both the visibility of the American "nuclear guarantee to
Europe" and the "ladder of escalation" at the heart of NATO's
doctrine of "flexible response". American nuclear submarines in the
North Sea might have the requisite strategic capacity, but they are out of
sight and too easily withdrawn.
The problem for Mrs Thatcher is that preservation of flexible
response and the American nuclear guarantee no longer seems a particularly
pressing issue either to the Bush Administration or to a growing section of the
west European political class.
Since the revolutions in east and central Europe last autumn,
the Warsaw Pact has collapsed. The Soviet Union can barely keep itself from
disintegrating, let alone launch a military assault on western Europe. The talk
in the White House and the chancellories of Europe is increasingly of cutting
military spending and building a new security order for Europe.
This is not to say that the forthcoming NATO summit might
not acquiesce in Mrs Thatcher's wild-eyed avowals that
"business-as-usual" must continue at all cost. Continental NATO
leaders do want to maintain some element of American nuclear commitment to
Europe, at least for the time being and, if that can be done without their own countries
having to play host to unpopular new nuclear weapons, all the better. Because
air-launched "modernisation" would single out Britain for the bulk
of deployments, Britain's European allies see a chance of having their cake and
eating it.
Labour has made little of its opposition to air-launched nuclear
"modernisation", largely because of its desire to win friends and
influence people in Washington. Indeed, the party's defence spokesman, Martin
O'Neill, has made it clear that a Labour government would accept deployment of
"modernised" forces in Britain, albeit only if NATO insisted and only
if Britain were not the only European country to take them.
With the issue coming to a head and the possibility of a Labour
government acknowledged even by George Bush, it is now important that Labour
makes its objections to "modernisation" absolutely clear.
