The Trident Commission’s Mandate

By Chris Jones

The Guardian reported today that the UK has established an independent “Trident commission.” The opening paragraph explains:

The government's decision to go ahead with a new, but as yet undefined, nuclear missile system will be subjected to unprecedented independent scrutiny by a group of senior defence, diplomatic, scientific, and political figures. The new Trident commission will be headed by the former Labour defence secretary, Lord Browne, the former Conservative defence secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and the former Lib Dem defence spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell. The government has decided to put off a decision on the shape and size of a new nuclear weapons system until 2015, as part of the coalition agreement, after the next general election is due.

The SDSR was pretty light on the specific of Trident modernization so some high-level thinking on how to shape and size the British deterrent could be a useful contribution. Yet the rest of the article, continuing immediately after the quoted paragraph, seems to suggest that the commission will be less interested in how to do Trident and more interested in whether to do Trident:

It also comes at a time more and more leading establishment figures, such as the former US secretary of state and national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, say they are becoming increasingly anxious about nuclear proliferation, sources involved in setting up the commission said.
Other members of the group include Lord Guthrie, the former chief of defence staff, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador at the UN at the time of the invasion of Iraq, and Professor Sir Martin Rees, former Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society. They were all described yesterday as having an "open mind" about whether Britain should continue to possess nuclear weapons, and if so, how they would be delivered.
"This is the first time in a very long time that we have had a wholesale review of nuclear weapons policy", Campbell said. He added: "It is high time it was subjected to rigorous analysis".
Lord Browne, defence secretary at the time the Labour decided to renew Trident in 2006, said that an independent review was crucial now in light of the government's insistence that the cost of a new nuclear weapons system must come out of the core defence budget. "No one has debated the impact of this on the rest of expenditure on defence", he told the Guardian. In the past, spending on the nuclear deterrent was in addition to that agreed for non-nuclear weapons. Browne attacked the government for not allowing nuclear weapons to be included in its recent strategic defence review.
Ian Kearns, research director of the British American Security Information Council (Basic) who proposed the new commission, said that it would be an "open-minded look at the issue from first principles … Should the UK be a nuclear power at all and if it should, is Trident the only or best way to go about it?"
He added: "What more can and should the government be doing to promote global nuclear disarmament in a world of growing proliferation risks?"
Kearns continued: "Given the government's decision to delay Trident renewal until after the next election, there is an important opportunity before the country for a fresh an in-depth debate. This commission will provide a focal point for that debate". [emphasis mine]

There are two problems with the characterization of the commission, if it is correct.  First, it ignores the thinking that has gone into nuclear issues since the Kissinger op-ed was first written four years ago.  The UK recently issued the first new defence strategy in over 12 years together with a National Security Strategy. Both documents, backed by a great deal of thinking, were quite clear that in the 21st century (1) WMD proliferation is a major concern, (2) “The Government will maintain a continuous submarine-based deterrent and begin the work of replacing its existing submarines.” (SDSR)

Second, and perhaps more worrisome, is that it could contribute to swinging the nuclear pendulum far enough to hamstring the government but not far enough to actualize the commission's goals.  By populating the commission entirely of members who have an "open mind" about "whether Britain should continue to possess nuclear weapons," the group has seemingly established, at the outset, a predisposition against current Trident plans (and perhaps nuclear weapons writ large).  Adding nuclear weapons to the core of the defence budget does pose additional challenges for the UK but it is not a given that this requires a wholesale rethinking of nuclear policy while the paint on the 2010 SDSR still dries. 

Billed by former Lib Dem defence spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell as the "first time in a very long time that we have had a wholesale review of nuclear weapons policy," the commission might be cited as a reason to continue delaying Trident action.  After all, some would say, we may not even need Trident.  This line of thinking, however, continues to remain worrisome because it exacerbates the difficulty of modernizing Trident in a timely manner in the likely event that the UK government continues to embrace an independent nuclear deterrent for the foreseeable future.