Memorandum from Greenpeace UK
1. Greenpeace welcomes the Secretary of
Defence, Dr John Reid's, promise of a full and open national debate
on Trident renewal. Such a debate can only take place if the Government
provides Parliament, independent experts, civil society groups,
and citizens with its case studies of the financial, military
and foreign policy consequences of building a new nuclear weapon
and of alternative non-nuclear strategies. To date Greenpeace
Freedom of Information requests for such case studies have been
refused.
2. This makes no sense at a time when, as
the Government has stated in its Strategic Defence Review, there
is no direct military threat to Western Europe and it does not
foresee the emergence of such a threat. It also makes no sense
as such studies do not concern current military operations. The
large number of Members of Parliament from all political parties
signing Early Day Motion 1113 shows that there is a strong sentiment
in the House of Commons that these case studies should be released.
In order that the House of Commons Defence Select Committee can
make a full assessment of the case for and against replacing Trident
by a new nuclear weapon system, the Government should provide
the Committee with all relevant case studies before it begins
its investigations so that it can ask the relevant questions and
call on expert witnesses to assess these studies.
3. Since its beginnings in 1971, Greenpeace
has campaigned for practical measures to end the nuclear threat,
such as a ban on nuclear weapons testing. In that time, half the
world's nuclear weapons have been dismantled, and there has been
a de-facto end to nuclear testing since 1998. The post-Cold
War development and deployment of Trident threaten this progress
and is destabilising. The development and deployment of a new
nuclear weapon system by the UK would make an already bad situation
worse. It would give states across the world an excuse to upgrade
their own nuclear weapons or to acquire their first atomic bomb.
4. To appreciate why this is the worst possible
time to go ahead with the development of a new nuclear weapon,
a look at Britain's existing Trident nuclear weapon system. Trident
is a globally destabilising weapon for several reasons.
5. Trident threatens states across the
globe. Trident was designed so as to give the US the ability
to carry out a nuclear first strike which would destroy Soviet
missiles before they could be fired from their silos. This led
to the development of a high-speed, first strike, weapon with
global reach. A Trident submarine patrolling in the Atlantic can
hit targets across the Middle East, Russia and China. The net
result of Trident's exceptional capabilities was that its impact
immediately exceeded its original anti-Soviet mission specification—making
countries across the globe potential targets of a devastating
first strike. Moreover, the addition of the UK Trident fleet to
the US one has increased the Trident system's globally destabilising
effect. The disposition of the US and UK Trident fleets, and the
extraordinary range of the Trident D5 missile, means that every
day the USA and the UK project massive nuclear force into the
Middle East—providing states such as Iran with a not unjustifiable
argument for acquiring their own nuclear weapons. The recent shifting
of part of the US Trident fleet to the Pacific so that the major
part is now based there is especially short-sighted. The relatively
small number of Chinese land-based intercontinental ballistic
missiles could be easily destroyed in a surprise attack, meaning
that the new threat from Trident gives China a strong incentive
to upgrade its nuclear arsenal.
6. Trident increases the danger of accidental
nuclear war. Even if the UK never intended to use Trident
aggressively, its acquisition of a weapon with the capability
to take part in a US-led first strike against the Soviet Union
made nuclear war more likely. Through increasing the capacity
of the USA and the UK to carry out such a strike, it added to
the pressure on Soviet commanders who, whenever they received
warning that a nuclear surprise attack might be underway, had
only minutes to assess whether the alert was genuine or (as frequently
happened) a false alarm, and decide whether to fire their missiles
or face losing them. In a crisis and time of high alert, Russian
and Chinese commanders would face the same dilemma today.
7. The end of the Cold War made a nonsense
of the UK Government's official rationale for Trident—deterring
a Soviet nuclear attack on UK territory. Since then Trident has
been progressively remade so as to enhance its capacity to be
used as an instrument of coercion against non-nuclear states—a
process which has only added to its destabilising effect.
8. The problem facing US and British nuclear
strategists is that they can only use their nuclear weapons as
instruments of coercion if the state being coerced actually believes
that they might use them. This is at present an incredible prospect
in the UK, because the public is overwhelmingly opposed to the
first use of nuclear weapons and to their use against non-nuclear
states. In a September 2005 Greenpeace/MORI poll looking at British
public opinion, 87% were against using nuclear weapons against
a non-nuclear state, and 77% were against the first use of nuclear
weapons. Such actions would also be completely contrary to international
law, which absolutely prohibits the use of nuclear weapons as
instruments of coercion and the first use of a nuclear weapon
against a non-nuclear state.
9. To overcome these barriers of illegality
and public opinion, proponents of the continued development of
the US and UK nuclear arsenals have developed two tactics:
10. First, presenting some non-nuclear
states as constituting an imminent threat which can only be dealt
with through the use of nuclear weapons. The first step has
been to try to convince the public that their very existence can
be immediately threatened by distant non-nuclear states. This
has been done by suggesting that by "rogue" states armed
with chemical or biological weapons pose an immediate threat to
the US and UK population and by arguing that we have "vital"
interests that are vulnerable to attack by such states, with catastrophic
results. Most strikingly, in its 1998 Strategic Defence Review,
after stating that "there is today no direct military threat
to the United Kingdom. Nor do we forsee the re-emergence of such
a threat," the Government developed a new rationale for Trident.
It stated that the size of Britain's Trident force would now be
determined by what was "necessary to deter any threats to
our vital interests"—according to the Strategic Defence
Review "vital interests" means UK trade, investments,
and access to resources (especially Middle Eastern oil).
11. Second, attempting the impossible
task of making Trident a weapon which could be used against military
or economic targets without the death of (many) civilians.
This has involved research and development to make Trident more
accurate, the deployment of missiles with single warheads, and
a contact fuse (which enables a smaller warhead to be used to
destroy a hardened target). The UK Government statements suggest
the UK may already have adapted its Trident warhead to give a
smaller explosion—effectively transforming Trident into
a "mini" nuclear weapon. This work has gone hand in
hand with the development of targeting technologies which increase
Trident's ability to hit a wide range of targets across the globe
as soon as their locations are known (See Annex A).
12. The UK's Trident system is not independent—in
fact it is entirely dependent on US technical support (See Annex
B). It is inconceivable that the UK would use Trident without
US permission. The only way that the UK is ever likely to use
Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear strike.
13. There are precedents for the US using
UK participation in this way for conventional military operations.
The principle value of the UK's participation in the recent Iraq
war was to help legitimise the US attack. Likewise the principle
value of the firing of UK cruise missiles as part of the larger
US cruise missile attack on Baghdad was to help legitimise the
use of such weapons against urban targets.
14. It would be a grave mistake for the
UK to replace Trident with a new nuclear weapon. We have already
given states across the world an incentive to upgrade their nuclear
arsenals or to acquire the atomic bomb for the first time through
upgrading and continuing to deploy Trident at a time when the
Cold War is over and, as the Government has stated in the Strategic
Defence Review, there is no direct military threat to us. The
development of a new nuclear weapons system would provide a further
incentive for states to upgrade their nuclear arsenals or to acquire
the bomb for the first time. In particular, while the UK Government
might claim that this was for the defence of UK territory against
nuclear attack, other states would look at how we have upgraded
the Trident system and wonder whether we were taking a further
step in developing more "usable" nuclear weapons.
15. The development of a new nuclear weapon
would also strike at which stop the spread of nuclear weapons
and are vital to the achievement of nuclear disarmament, the Nuclear
Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test
Ban Treaty (CTBT). Both Treaties are already on the critical list.
The US and the UK's development of more "usable" nuclear
weapons and strategies which involve using nuclear weapons against
non nuclear states to protect "vital interests" is directly
contrary to the deal at the heart of the NPT, and strengthened
in the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conferences, whereby the declared
nuclear weapon states are to carry out nuclear disarmament and
non nuclear states are not to acquire nuclear weapons. The CTBT,
for its part, has not entered into force but has contributed to
a de facto end to nuclear testing since 1998. The danger is that
the continued deployment and development of the Trident system
by the US and the UK will lead other states to ask, why should
we continue not to test when the US and the UK are continuing
to develop their Trident system and make it more "usable"
without testing?
16. The development of a new nuclear weapon
would be against the UK's legally binding commitment under the
NPT to take progressive steps to disarm its nuclear weapons, and
while it may not be against the letter of the CTBT, it would strike
at the heart of that Treaty. Other states would ask, if the UK
is upgrading its nuclear arsenal then why should we respect the
de facto ban on nuclear testing? Equally seriously, it may not
be possible to develop a new nuclear weapon without eventually
having to test it and this would almost certainly kill the CTBT
completely.
17. This is a critical time. The UK played
a leading role in strengthening global cooperation to reduce the
nuclear danger after the end of the Cold War. Most vitally the
UK played a major role in the negotiation of the CTBT in 1996.
The impasse at the 2005 NPT Review Conference show that there
is now a danger that global cooperation to deal with the nuclear
threat may now unravel. To emphasis the danger, the UN Secretary-General,
Kofi Annan stated on 9 August 2005: "We are witnessing the
continued efforts to strengthen and modernise nuclear arsenals.
We also face a real threat that nuclear weapons will spread. Without
concerted action we may face a cascade of nuclear proliferation."
18. At such a time it would be height of
folly for the UK to now build a new nuclear weapon system. Greenpeace
urges the Government to uphold its promises and legal obligations
under the NPT to reduce, and then eliminate, the role of nuclear
weapons in its security policies, by:
Firstly, taking Trident off patrol
and storing its warheads in an internationally monitored facility.
Secondly, immediately abandoning
preparations to build a Trident replacement;
and Thirdly, working with European
partners and other non-nuclear states to restart the multilateral
nuclear disarmament process.
19. This is a strategy which members of
all political parties can unite behind: It would provide reassurance
to those who believe that it would be unwise to be completely
without a nuclear option while other countries continue to have
nuclear weapons. Moreover, as the 2005 Greenpeace/MORI poll has
shown, such a policy would be popular because it would respond
to the public's strong conviction that we should not use nuclear
weapons first or use them against non-nuclear states. These moves
would send a clear and unambiguous message to Washington that
it is absolutely opposed to the current US doctrine of pre-emptive
use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. It would make
clear that the US could not call on the UK to legitimate a US
nuclear attack by participating in it. Furthermore, it would make
clear the UK's commitment to the NPT and the CTBT and put us at
the forefront of the agenda of multilateral disarmament and peace-building
which alone can ward off the return of a Cold-War type situation,
in which we as a nation are once again threatened by thousands
of nuclear weapons.
20. Greenpeace would welcome the opportunity
to give further oral evidence to the Committee on the future of
the strategic deterrent.
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