A significant debate is occurring in the UK over whether or not to renew the Trident missile system set to expire 2024. With no replacement for the Vanguard-class submarine and Trident missile designated as yet and a defense review upcoming, MPs as senior as Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, are looking to stop the renewal program before it begins. As the UK’s four Trident-armed Vanguard-class subs constitute its deployed nuclear arsenal, the debate over the Trident is in many ways a debate over what, if any, nuclear weapons the UK should possess.
The main issue spurring the opposition to the Trident’s renewal is the UK’s dire economic straits. The global recession has been particularly unkind to the UK. This has manifested itself in significant defense budget shortfalls, with the Ministry of Defense (MoD) facing a potential £10 billion deficit next year out of a projected £36 billion budget. Given that Trident renewal is projected to cost up to £20 billion, the opposition argues that renewal is simply not a cost-feasible option.
This raises a significant question about nuclear weapons policy not just in the UK, but also in the US and other nuclear powers debating or implementing modernization programs. To what extent should cost feasibility enter into the strategic nuclear calculus of nuclear weapons states? Nuclear weapons are very costly to maintain and modernization programs require major long-term investments in facilities, manpower, and technology. While the global disarmament process has largely been influenced by political and military considerations, with disarmament coming through cooperative threat reduction programs and treaties to provide weapons states assurances about the integrity of their national security, the UK’s experience shows the potential power of economic factors on a weapons state’s strategic posture.
The UK’s Trident debate is additionally significant insofar as it may be the most serious contemplation yet from one of the five NPT weapons states about actually eliminating its nuclear forces in the foreseeable future. Many see failure to renew the Trident as tantamount to nuclear disarmament. With that in mind, this debate demonstrates that the UK is reconsidering the value of nuclear weapons. Clegg, for example, stated:
New leadership in Russia, new leadership obviously in the White House and a wider geostrategic appreciation means that a Cold War missile system designed to penetrate Soviet defences and land in Moscow and St Petersburg at any time, in any weather, from any location anywhere round the planet, is not our foremost security challenge now.
He went on to say that it would be an “unhappy event” if a review led to Britain retaining a nuclear capability.
On the other hand, another op-ed argued that the value of the deterrent lay not in being able to bomb any particular adversary, but rather as a demonstration that the UK remained in the same power class as its fellow permanent UN Security Council members and NPT weapons states. Absent nuclear weapons, the op-ed warns, the UK “join[s] the second rank of European countries, on a par with Italy or Spain economically and militarily.”
The UK’s Trident debate again raises difficult questions about the role of nuclear weapons in the 21st century and the broader geopolitical significance of the weapons beyond their traditional and assumed role as a “deterrent.” These are important questions for scholars and policymakers to think about.