Tribune, 9 November 1990
Nuclear disarmament might not be headline news today, writes
Paul Anderson, but it could easily become a big issue for a Labour government
The end of the cold war has taken the urgency out of the
issue of nuclear disarmament in Britain. The fear of nuclear holocaust that
swept the country in the early eighties is long forgotten. Arms control
negotiations have been relegated to inside pages in the papers.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, meeting in Coventry
this weekend for its annual conference, is these days almost as much a general
anti-militarist movement - opposing war in the Gulf, discussing new security
systems for Europe and lobbying for the "peace dividend" - as it is a campaign against nuclear arms.
Both the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party have
abandoned unilateral nuclear disarmament against only the smallest wimpers of
dissent, and both are doing their best to play down their defence policies as
the next general election approaches. Today, only the Greens and the Welsh and
Scottish nationalists stand by unequivocally anti-nuclear defence policies.
But nuclear disarmament has not gone away forever as a
mainstream political issue. Public apathy about nuclear arms rests on a sense
that progress is being made in arms reduction talks - and that could easily
evaporate.
Inside the Labour Party, acquiescence in the leadership's
line has more to do with wanting to win the next general election that with any
real conviction. Although most Labour Party members believe that the chances
for negotiated disarmament are good there are widespread worries, even among
"Kinnock loyalist" MPs, that Labour will not be able to deliver even
on its much reduced promises.
These worries are focussed particularly on Labour's
proposals on the British "independent deterrent". Because it would
be too expensive to cancel the whole Trident nuclear missile submarine project
at this late stage, party leaders say, Labour would build three of the four
submarines currently planned. But it would attempt to get Trident and its
Polaris predecessor included in the second round of the strategic arms
reduction talks (START-2), and it would drop Tory plans to replace Britain's
ageing WE-177 free-fall nuclear bombs with new air-to-surface missiles, either
bought from the United States or developed jointly with France.
But is it true that Trident would be more expensive to
cancel than to build? The Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston
is having serious problems with producing the warheads for British Trident
missiles. There is a real possibility that the American Trident programme, on
which the British programme relies for rocketry and guidance systems, will be
cancelled. An incoming Labour government could find either that it cannot
build warheads without substantial extra funding or that an alternative to the
Trident missile system needs to be found if the submarines are to have nuclear
arms.
In the latter case, it is unlikely that Labour would go
ahead (though there is always the possibility of adapting Trident submarines
to carry French missiles); but if it is simply a matter of letting Aldermaston
have more money, there is the potential for a fierce argument.
There are also concerns that no one has given very much
thought to how Britain could get in on START-2. Labour's front-bench defence
spokesman, Martin O'Neill, told Tribune in an interview published on
September 28 that the opening of START-2 could coincide with the election of a
Labour government and that the party leadership was "hopeful that we would
be able to start talking with the Chinese and French as well as the Russians
and the Americans".
It may not be so easy. According to French diplomatic
sources, the French Government will not even consider putting the force de
frappe into disarmament negotiations until Soviet nuclear capabilities are
reduced to the same level as the French - which will not happen until the late
nineties at the very earliest.
The Chinese also show no signs of eagerness to enter into
negotiations on their nuclear weapons. If Labour's commitment to negotiated disarmament
depends on START-2 bringing in all five nuclear weapons states, it is at best a
recipe for very slow progress.
Labour might settle for Britain alone joining the Soviet
Union and the United States in START-2. But there is considerable resistance in
the British military and in the Foreign Office to allowing France to become
the only West European nuclear power, the obvious result if British nuclear
weapons are negotiated away.
But would there even be room for Britain in START-2? An
argument is raging between the Soviet Union and the United States over its
scope, with the Soviet Union pressing hard for inclusion of sea-launched
cruise missiles and America resisting (partly, it seems, as a means of gaining
time while the crisis in the Soviet Union develops). Soviet spokesmen have
also said that progress in START could be held back unless the force de frappe
and the British "independent deterrent" (which the Soviet Union
rightly sees as an integral part of Nato's nuclear capacity) are included in
negotiations. Most commentators believe, however, that the Soviet line on
British and French nuclear forces is a bargaining position, which would be
modified or dropped in return for American agreement to negotiations on
sea-launched cruise.
By the time Labour enters government, in other words, the
United States and the Soviet Union could have carved up an arms control agenda
that does not include British nuclear weapons until the late nineties.
Even if Britain manages to join START-2 at an early stage,
there are worries about what a Labour government would do next. Would it
negotiate away all Britain's nuclear forces in return for the Soviet Union
cutting the same number of warheads? And if not, what would it do?
Labour's leaders, facing Tory claims that their new policy
is really unilateralism in disguise, are unwilling to disclose whether they
have formulated a detailed negotiating position, let alone what it might be.
Just about the only indication of intentions has been Martin
O'Neill's insistence in his Tribune interview that progress on negotiating
nuclear disarmament would be swift. What he bases his optimism upon is not at
all obvious. Nor is it clear how widely his views are shared among his
colleagues.
The future of the "independent deterrent" is not
the only nuclear issue that will face a Labour government in 1991 or 1992.
There is also the question of Nato's nuclear role and the American
"nuclear guarantee to Europe."
Here, there are several related contentious questions, starting with the fate
of Nato's plans to replace its stocks of nuclear bombs with nuclear tactical
air-to-surface missiles (TASMs) and ending with the future of Nato strategy
and of the alliance itself.
The TASM plans are all that remain from a grandiose scheme
for short-range nuclear "modernisation" which went to the top of the
Nato agenda in the wake of the 1987 INF treaty. Although no formal Nato
decision to deploy TASMs has ever been made, the American Administration has
given Boeing funds to develop a version of its SRAM-II short-range attack missile,
SRAM-T, and preparations have been made for SRAM-T to be deployed from the
mid-nineties on F-lll, F-15E and Tornado strike aircraft, many of them
stationed in. Britain.
Labour has taken the line that it is opposed to deployment
of TASM but would accept a Nato decision to deploy. Now, however, the SRAM-T
programme has hit technical snags and its budget has been cut dramatically.
Next year, Congress could decide to abandon the project altogether.
Meanwhile, several Nato governments, including Belgium and
Holland, have voiced strong opposition to TASM, and it is likely that Germany
will refuse to deploy any new nuclear weapons on its territory, as a prelude to
complete "denuclearisation" from the Rhine to the Oder.
The TASM seems unlikely to go ahead, although it is still
supported strongly by the Nato military and by several right-wing European Nato
governments - particularly the British.
The whole Nato strategy of "flexible response",
according to which a Warsaw Pact assault on Western Europe would be met by
gradually escalating American nuclear retaliation, has been severely weakened
by the removal of Cruise and Pershing missiles under the INF treaty and the
abandonment of plans to modernise land-based short-range nuclear forces. If
TASM is not deployed and nuclear weapons are removed from German soil, the
strategy will be close to collapse.
That looks like a convenient outcome for Labour, which has
long advocated a move away from flexible response and towards a more political
role for Nato.
But it's not quite as simple as that. A version of flexible
response could still be kept alive if the Americans continue to deploy
nuclear-armed aircraft and sea-launched nuclear weapons in and around Europe.
And, because this is just about the only way to preserve the American
"nuclear guarantee" to Europe, it has the support of most European Nato
governments.
In such circumstances most of the American nuclear forces
stationed in Europe would of necessity be in Britain, which would alienate many
supporters. The alternative is for a Labour, government effectively to argue
for abandonment of the American "nuclear guarantee", which would
bring into question Nato's very raison d'etre.
This is something the party leadership -has always been at
pains to avoid, partly because it does not want to upset the status quo, but
also because it sees American nuclear involvement in Europe as a lesser evil
than the most likely other option, a purely West European nuclear alliance
dominated by the French.
Today, the debate on post-cold-war security structures for
Europe has barely begun in the Labour Party. But as it gains momentum, it will
become increasingly clear that stark choices on the American nuclear presence
in Britain cannot be ducked. Like Britain's "independent deterrent",
this is hardly going to be a burning issue between now and the election. After
that, however, particularly if Labour wins, it is certain to race up the
political agenda.
