Nuclear weapons: an ‘evolving threat’?

April 08, 2013, 2:23 PM GMT+0

John Humphrys asks: do the threats posed by Iran and North Korea gaining nuclear weapons mean that Britain too must remain a nuclear power?

Yet again talks aimed at preventing Iran from building its own nuclear weapons have broken down. Meanwhile, North Korea is rumoured to be about to undertake a fourth underground nuclear test to enhance its own nuclear capability just as its rhetoric against South Korea and the United States becomes more belligerent. David Cameron says all this shows that the threat posed to Britain by other countries gaining nuclear weapons means we too must remain a nuclear power. Is he right?

Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, said after the failed talks with Iran this weekend that the two sides “remain far apart on substance”. The negotiators – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France) together with Germany – have been trying to persuade Iran to curtail its programme of enriching uranium. Iran says the programme is intended purely for civil nuclear energy purposes but few other countries believe them. They are convinced Iran wants to build its own nuclear weapons and that the enrichment programme is part of that plan.

In particular, Israel is certain this is what Iran intends to do and sees itself as in the immediate firing line, not least because Iranian leaders so often publicly state their belief that Israel has no right to exist. The combination of talks and economic sanctions has so far failed to pressure Iran into agreeing anything that satisfies those who are suspicious of its intentions.

Both Israel and the United States have made clear that they are simply not willing to allow Iran to become a nuclear power. Not only do they think this would pose an intolerable threat to Israel (itself a nuclear power), but they believe it would set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, among other countries, would then want their own nuclear weapons, it’s believed.

So if talks fail, both Israel and the US have left open the option of using military means to thwart Iran’s ambition. This could certainly delay Iran becoming a nuclear power, however many commentators believe military action would not only exacerbate tensions in an already highly tense region but also serve to convince Iranian leaders that their ultimate security depended on achieving nuclear status.

North Korea is already much further down the road to being a nuclear state. It has built up a huge arsenal of missiles, some of which are thought to have an intercontinental range and some to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads. No one outside North Korea can be certain, however. What is clear is that North Korea has been holding underground nuclear tests, the third of which caused the United Nations to impose sanctions on the country last month.

It is in response to these sanctions that the North Korean regime has hit back with increasingly belligerent rhetoric. It has said it is now in a state of war with the South, has threatened to restart a nuclear reactor closed down after an earlier agreement, told foreign diplomats in Pyongyang that it can no longer assure their safety and threatened to use its nuclear weapons against both the South and the United States.

In the case of both Iran and North Korea, however, domestic politics is widely believed to be playing as much a role in these recent increases in tension as anything else. In North Korea, sabre-rattling against the outside world is a familiar response to internal difficulties. In the current case it is being interpreted as a means to shore up the image of the young and newly-appointed leader, Kim Jong-un, in order to make him appear as resolute and defiant as his father and grandfather before him. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said over the weekend that it was important to stay calm in the face of provocations born of paranoia, though he added: “We have to be concerned about the danger of miscalculation by the North Korean regime.”

With respect to Iran, some commentators see forthcoming presidential elections as the real reason for the country’s refusal to come to an agreement.

It was in the context of these anxieties about other countries’ nuclear ambitions that the Prime Minister addressed the issue of Britain’s own future as a nuclear power when he visited the home of our nuclear submarines at Faslane in Scotland last week. He said bluntly that Britain needed a nuclear deterrent more than ever because uncertainty and risk had increased in the world.

Mr Cameron said: “We need our nuclear deterrent as much today as we did when a previous British government embarked on it over six decades ago. Of course the world has changed dramatically. The Soviet Union no longer exists. But the nuclear threat has not gone away. In terms of uncertainty and potential risk it has, if anything, increased. … Does anyone seriously argue that it would be wise for Britain faced with this evolving threat today, to surrender our deterrent? Only the retention of our independent deterrent makes clear to any adversary that the devastating cost of an attack on the United Kingdom or its allies will always be far greater than anything it might hope to gain.”

But, of course, not everyone in Britain agrees. Some have always been opposed to our having nuclear weapons as a matter of principle. They argue that the only point in having nuclear weapons is if the threat to use them is real, but they believe it is simply immoral to threaten innocent civilians in another country with nuclear annihilation.

Others, however, took a different view during the Cold War. They believed that the nuclear-armed Soviet Union posed a genuine threat to Western Europe, including Britain, and that the only way to contain that threat was for the West to have its own nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Soviet attack.

But many of those who took this view now look at the changed world in a different way from the Prime Minister. They argue that neither Iran nor North Korea (nor, for that matter, other recent nuclear powers like Israel, India and Pakistan) pose a remotely conceivable threat to Britain. Furthermore, they argue, whilst it may be alarming to contemplate countries run by unstable regimes having control of nuclear weapons, deterrence may no longer work in such cases. A madman really intent on using his country’s nuclear weapons will not be deterred by our ability to retaliate, they say.

So increasing numbers of people who used to support Britain’s nuclear deterrent are having second thoughts. And the need to come to a decision in the middle of this decade on whether or not to replace our existing Trident system is focusing minds.

David Cameron is committed to a like-for-like replacement that will cost tens of billions of pounds. The Liberal Democrats and Labour (and, indeed, some Tories) are wondering whether there might be a cheaper option, for example by no longer having one nuclear-armed submarine always permanently at sea, or by abandoning a submarine-based deterrent altogether in favour of a system using nuclear warheads on cruise missiles.

Others are asking whether we need a nuclear deterrent at all. Some are arguing that at a time when our conventional forces are being stretched to breaking point, as spending cuts fail to be matched any reduction in the demands we make on those forces, scarce defence resources should be channelled into conventional forces even if that means we cease to be a nuclear power.

We are going to hear a lot more of this argument in the next few years. In the meantime we need to think about how threatened we feel (or not) by Iran and North Korea.

What’s your view?